“Always be funny,” directed a customer/reader at a farmer’s market one day, years ago. Ironically, it is funny that I can’t recall the person’s name or face but I can’t forget the wistful directive.
The sky is falling, human kindness never makes the news, politics appears to be holding to the extremes, folks with nothing to lose but their lives continue to gather at the edges of shores or the sides of wire walls hoping to be part of a better existence.
What’s to laugh or even snicker at? There’re always the chickens. Even my two sheep enjoy either watching or listening to them. And, their situation is always in flux, particularly when weather changes and the daylight shortens. This side of the sun’s arc presents the most dramatic differences.
The first happening is the absence of egg laying. Instead of two to three dozen eggs per day, with hens peering out from 12 laying boxes, glaring and daring me to snatch away their precious microscopic chick in the shell, I find at four o’clock each afternoon emptiness in every box except for three eggs randomly nestled in no special order of boxes. This is exact opposite behavior than spring or summer when hens are gathered beneath one or two favored laying boxes, cackling and scolding a hen who believes the “first come-first served” mantra – no succumbing to forced eviction until she is good and ready.
Winter is a foul time to be a fowl, particularly for the roosters, of which there are still five. With the summer introduction of two young bucks, er – cocks, the older, less handsome three roosters got bounced out of their pecking order. (The arrival of the two new Barred Rock roosters from the HHS agriculture department was a summer column and can be found in the on-line version of Country Roads.)
The oldest and least able rooster is still occupying the chicken coop and is living a life of some comfort as long as the two young bullies don’t burst in and chase him up the perches. Often, I will simply shut the door and allow him some peace for a few hours and he enjoys his freedom to roam the coop, obtain food and drink, and visit with some of the gentle hens that share his feather color – red.
The other, flashier red rooster, the past pecking order president, resides in the back yard with a white rooster and Henny Penny the Aracauna. These three are mostly agreeable to one another except when Red gets on his high horse and pushes the white one around.
During the disappointing baseball World Series without the Giants, the name “Mookie Betts,” took hold of me, just like the name “Buster Posey.” So, to add to the roster of players in the back yard (Posey is my ewe lamb) I’ve named the white rooster “Mookie.” He likes his name. In the morning when he hears, “How are you, Mookie?” he comes running across the lawn. He is the sole creature who refuses to get in out of the rain. He won’t get into the sheep house like the other two back yard chickens. I think he is afraid he’ll be stepped on by Patrick, the wether lamb who can’t see but loves to follow the chickens around.
Though Mookie shuns the sheep house at night he chooses to hop up to an old cage in the corner of the decades old redwood structure, and seems to be satisfied with the scant protection that the roof overhang provides. The downside to his choice is that he is fair game to any weasel, possum or raccoon that might gain entry to the back yard and grab a cornered old white rooster. So far, there are few varmints willing to enter a farm with four dogs.
As the daylight lessens, these two wondrous farm creatures, the chickens and the sheep, retire earlier and earlier. If the sky darkens due to a storm, they retreat to the protection of their houses. If their caretaker isn’t watching the clock, she finds the flock already tucked away — even Mookie, in his ramshackle corner cage.
The two sheep wait patiently for her to arrive, COB (corn, oats, barley) and carrot greens in hand. Once Posey checks to SEE the greens and COB, she leads Patrick into their safe house for the night.
