One thing about SSF - one is never alone for long. No matter how one might wish to be. With an Australian Shepherd - also known as the "Velcro breed" for the way they stick to their person - 2 curious cats, 30-something hens, and 2 too many roosters, someone is always interested in whatever I might be tackling.
Even though they arrive in a cardboard box at 1 day old and are bred and shipped in a fairly factory setting, chickens nonetheless develop remarkably unique and quirky personalities. Do a little Googling and I bet you will turn up myriad personal odes to the chicken. They are just a hoot. When they are fist-sized fuzzballs scurrying around an old plastic wading pool or a cut-down fridge box, jostling for position under the heat lamp, it is tough to envision the comic, and at times elegant or even regal, individuals they will soon become.
Our accidental rooster has thus far shown himself to be a gentlemen and therefore has earned himself a place in the SSF family as long as he behaves himself. He is all things Excellent Rooster: stunningly beautiful, proud, quite covetous of his flock, gentle in his...couplings - relatively speaking anyway, courteous to his humans, and he has a magnificent cocka-doodle-do that so far he has limited to respectable hours of the day (unlike the 3AM performances of his predecessor). And, like his girls, he is intensely interested in whatever I am doing right now.
His 2 accidental male counterparts, however, not so much. They are not regal, nor nice, nor particularly interested in protecting the flock. They are, very much, interested in what being a rooster around a bunch of beautiful hens, gets them. They are mean to the hens and oblivious of everything else around them. So, in short, they annoy me immensely. We look forward to enjoying them in Coq au Vin.
So, these guys flounce around chasing and harassing all the hens, but Owl (our Excellent Rooster) and the Girls migrate to scratch and sniff the general vicinity of wherever we happen to be working. I joked yesterday as Dylan, Mark, and I prepared a potato bed inside our deer-fenced veggie garden, that we were like zoo animals - the hens, cats, and dog were all parked just on the other side of the 8-foot fence, watching our goings-on keenly (except the 3 intrepid hens who'd tunneled in and were "helping" us by snatching up every precious worm we overturned). Jessie whined and harumphed occasionally to express the unfairness of it all, and the cats were just generally unimpressed with the whole thing.
So, it's never lonely here. Whatever's on your mind, there's someone to talk to and plenty of fowl gossip to hear. The multi-specied gals and guys of SSF are always up for a good huddle.
Yes, I do have days when I question the wisdom of the whole enchilada. Today was one of those days. It is 8:08PM and I am just now hanging up my proverbial hat for the evening. My hands are shaking with exhaustion and I am ironically eating a deli pizza dressed up with rehydrated Costco mushrooms after having spent the past 2 and a half hours grinding my own lamb meat. It isn't all pasture-raised meats and organic eggs here at SSF.
Between a half-day small-farming workshop on Monday and losing all of Tuesday to driving my mom into Seattle for her cardiology appointment, the rest of the week has felt like running a marathon to catch up.
Spring is intense, for small-scale farmers and for stay-at-home parents alike. Taxes, baseball, lambing, a spike in egg-laying in conjunction with a sudden island glut in eggs, getting the ewes back up to weight, a local election I'm involved in both professionally and as a volunteer, Dylan's homework, swimming lessons, piano, transition from cub scouts into boy scouts, and helping my mom with her current and future art class and shows...these (in addition to the mundane grocery shopping and everyday household chores) frame my days and leave precious little time for strategic thinking about which project comes next: finish Dylan's treehouse, start building his cottage/the guest house, fence off a production garden, get the ram separated or slaughter the ram, prune the trees and shrubs trashed by the winter and overcome with horizontal growth, expand the chicken run, build a proper fence for the veggie garden, establish a fruit tree orchard. What's most urgent first?
And every day I wake up with "finish planting seeds" on the top of my to-do list and every night I go to bed with "finish planting seeds" on the top of tomorrow's to-do list.
Now I'm really tired.
Tomorrow we head to Seattle for another rare city evening of dinner and symphony with our dear friends. But, when I bought the tickets in January, I didn't think about our ewes dropping lambs right now and didn't know my mom's first full art show would open tomorrow night. So, even though I know I will enjoy it and be glad we did it, right now the idea of going off-island for 18 hours or so just fills me with anxiety and fear. Every weekend seems a battleground for farm/family/couple/musician obligations and attractions. Mark and I spent 15 minutes on the phone today, walking through our calendar for the month to figure out how to pull it all off.
One of the main reasons we went to a single-career family model was to free up our time and make sure that our family spent most weekends recreating and enjoying each other's company. Right now it doesn't feel like we're meeting that goal very well.
I know this isn't anything close to a unique situation - we all struggle with time management, whether we're two-career couples or one, urban or rural or suburban. Farm commitments can be uniquely frustrating, however, because they trump everything - spending time on homework or other parental activities, for instance, b/c if you don't attend to your animals, they die. So, your kid handles his homework on his own while you're out throwing hay.
On the flip side, of course, there's working together on weekends and long afternoons as the days lengthen. Building the property and the business side-by-side as a family carries a satisfaction that's tough to match. And those times do happen - pretty often.
But, we all have long days.
