Tasks Within My Pay Grade

The morning chores are complete — later than usual, but not by my procrastination.  Daylight didn’t invite the work until almost 8 a.m., a dramatic shift from the 5 a.m. wake up call only weeks ago.  Even allowing for the seasonal shift, it’s been interesting to note the more granular variations.  Within the last week chicken bedtime has varied from 4:30 pm to 5:15 — incrementally later as we approach the winter solstice, rather than the earlier I would expect.  Similarly, the morning release.  Recent days have varied between 7 a.m. and this morning’s bugle blow almost an hour later.

The girls don’t seem to mind, neither SamtheRooster.  Perhaps between the bitter cold nights and the persistent possum problem they are simply delighted to be alive and moving around at all.  That delights me as well.  Every morning I hold my breath when I release the latch and look inside to assess what price the flock might have paid for winter.  Every evening I hesitantly, cautiously peek inside, bracing at the prospect of coming face to face with gray fur and egg-coated bared teeth rather than coos and feathers.  So far, so good.  The birds are cold-hardy breeds and shouldn’t have a problem, but still.  It’s cold.  I wouldn’t want to trade places with them.  As for the possums, they are generally more interested in eggs than meat, but hunger has a funny and predictable way of tamping down our preferences.  And I notice the distance the chickens maintain anytime one is around.  Smart girls.

And so it is that I keep the feeders filled and the waterers topped off and plugged in to keep from freezing, and we collectively relish the absence of snow that keeps the flock sequestered and me frost bitten.  As it is they are free to roam the range — inside the fence and, for the adventuresome, beyond.  As long as they willingly return in the evening I don’t really mind.  They never go far, and their exploratory forays somehow make me smile.  After all, I enjoy a new patch of ground every now and then, so I don’t begrudge them their wanderlust.  One of these days I’ll get around to repairing the breach in the fence, but I’m really in no hurry.  And who knows?  Maybe all that extra exercise will shake loose a few more eggs now and then.

Snow will inevitably come, and the daylight hours will continue to shift one way and then the other.  Each of those eventualities brings blessing and hardship.  We will manage them as they come.  Life in the country, after all, is more response than control — a kind of holy submission to forces infinitely larger and beyond us.  Try as I might, I’ve so far not managed to move the sun.  Or move the mercury beyond my walls.

Somehow I suspect the world is thusly better off.