Spring Peepers

Is there anything cuter than the fluffy yellow ball of a baby chick sitting in the palm of your hand?  Yes, there is:  a swarm of one hundred fluff balls cuddled up together in your chicken coop.  I know chicks lose much of that adorableness as soon as their pin feathers come in, but that is the magic of the metamorphosis from “chickens” (the creature) to “chicken” (the delicious food you raised yourself), a fabulous and mysterious gradual progression, that is actually quite natural, and free of the guilt associated with raising, say, Easter Lambs, who remain sweet and lovable for their entire lives.

Oh how I love Chick Day: picking up all those noisy cardboard boxes from the post office, the postal workers tripping over themselves to get that package out of earshot, the commotion you cause walking out to the car.  And then the ride home, when you drive as slowly as you did while bringing your newborn child home from the hospital, ignoring the angry, beeping line of traffic behind you.  There is so much promise in plucking up a peeping, fuzzy creature, methodically dipping his beak in fresh water and setting him down on soft clean woodchips.  He is unsteady and understandably dazed, but he finds that feeder every time and starts pecking away.

Our first few Chick Days were a bit more hectic than this year.  Insane, really.  The four of us were running around like chickens with… oh sorry, that expression is more appropriate for chicken harvesting day, isn’t it?  Well, let’s just say it used to be all racing and nervousness and questions and double-checking and backtracking.  We used to keep them in the house, which is very small, and between the smell and the dustiness and the noise and our very, um, active young boys (believe me, you don’t want to know), we quickly decided a room inside the chicken coop was a much better option.  I know, some people just love having those wading pools full of baby poultry in their mudrooms, but I am not one of those people.  I prefer my farmy smell to remain in the out of doors.  And I prefer that my baby chicks remain at least mostly calm.  And alive. 

Once the babies were all settled in their new home, my husband went back to work.  The kids each held exactly one chick, declared them all “a bunch of Mr. Poopies” (for obvious reasons), and resumed hunting for worms with which to terrorize their dear mother.  I was left alone to watch my new flock, and wonder at the collective consciousness of baby poultry under the heat lamp.  It seems almost orchestrated, the circulation of each individual chick from the outside of the circle in toward the warmth of the middle, and then back out again.  At times it’s impossible to tell where one chick ends and another begins. 

Maybe it was the heat, or the hypnotizing effect of staring at an amorphous, pulsating mob of chicks, but I couldn’t help but feel a little nostalgic for the excitement of Chick Days gone by.  It’s kind of sad to see a once thrilling event become almost ordinary.  And yet, it really is just human nature.  Not only does the novelty wear off, but as we begin to master a task, we seek out new challenges, develop new goals.  RunAmok Farm didn’t happen overnight.  We started with a vegetable garden and some pigs, and once we figured that out, we added more animals, a bigger garden.  We seem to be following our own fabulous gradual progression.  We have our own unseen force pushing us forward, through the metamorphosis from consumer to producer.  I don’t think we’ll ever bust out of a chrysalis, pitchforks a-blazin’, perfectly perfect farmers.  That’s just not how it works.  It’s a step by step, one escaped sheep at a time kind of thing.  A wooden pallet becomes a pig fence, a compost bin turns into a lamb nursery and then a duck house.  A girl from the suburbs learns to fend off a rooster attack.  A young mother takes eggs out from under hens, develops a taste for lamb chops. 

So although it’s less new, and more routine, Chick Day will always remain special for me.  How could one be in the presence of so many brand-new lives and not be overwhelmed by the promise of things to come?