chickens are too easy
Everyone should have chickens. As I tell anyone who asks (and some people who don't) they're a lot less work than a dog and need less room than you expect. And you get eggs, and the simple enjoyment of watching hens do their thing: a delightful mix of silly, beautiful, and dinosaur-like deadly. But this morning, as I ventured out into the cold rain to fill their food and water and give them some new straw bedding, I wished they were a little more work.
Not for very long, of course! This time of year is when the number of necessary trips out to the coop doubles to two, as I need to bring in the waterer overnight to keep it from freezing solid; and since I need to put the water out first thing in the morning, it also enforces a time-line on a chore that in warmer days I could do whenever I felt like it. (Yes, I also let the hens out in nice weather, and sometimes visit them just to hang out, but in the summer I don't have to.) So I'm more aware now than I was a week ago of my responsibilities to the flock.
But there's something valuable about having those sorts of responsibilities to take care of before you get going on the rest of your day. Sure, I actually need to leave home to work—to sully my hands in the business of commerce, if you will—but when I spend a few minutes pitching hay before I leave it puts the workday world into perspective: an interval in the middle of real life, rather than all there is. I suppose it doesn't need to be agriculture: you could probably get the same effect with a morning run or bike-ride, or by putting in some time on a musical instrument, or by baking something. Anything that's your own work rather than the paying job you happen to have fallen into.
And I say that as someone who likes his job, and doesn't even work that hard anyways! Today I wasn't even going to work: as I watched the hens in the rain I was looking forward to a hard day of "homeschooling" and riding the T all over the city with Harvey and Zion (more about that later!). But the chickens were still wonderfully grounding, and for a little while I wished they were enough work to give me that sort of feeling every morning.
Leah, maybe we should get goats!