It is around six in the morning, I have a full day ahead. Grind the coffee, pour in the water, hit the on switch, pour the coffee down the hatch and like magic the eyes open. The day’s to do list is long, too long and I know full well that half will not get done. But I slip on my Birks and trod off through the wet grass to at least get the feeding and watering done early.

The sun is still sleeping in and what was the full moon is about to take a swan dive in the west. A replacement rooster is replying from the other side of the garden to Mr. Foghorn Leghorn in the coop. Like an artillery barrage they volley back and forth. The younger rooster sending the message, “I’m still here, old man.” The old man has his reply ready, “yeah, who’s sleeping in the weeds and who’s sleeping with the ladies?”

Otherwise all is quiet until the rattle of the cans. Ginger, our workhorse, comes to the gate expectantly. I grab a small amount of feed and lead her out to her pasture. A bit more grain for the sheep and I call Becky, our English Shepherd, to the corral. I position her to the outside left of the barn door. Opening it, I step back, as the flood of sheep, like an unstoppable river current, bursts out the opening.

Becky has little to do except act as a bouncer at a rowdy bar, a reminder that bad behavior has consequences. She walks up on a few ewes who’d rather graze in the wrong pasture; they scurry to catch up with the others. Once they are safe in the proper field I close the gate on them for the day.

A bit of grain to the chickens, I open the door to the run and let them out. Most ignore the grains and head out to look for grubs. Early bird and all of that….

The cattle are fine and grazing the top of the pasture. We only give them grain every few days, mainly just so they know to come when called. Meanwhile, as they move, they look like barges coursing slowly across a bay of grass, not a care in the world.

The pigs are safely in the freezer of six different families. Our new crop will arrive in another week. So with the chores done I walk out to the front of the barn and watch the fog rise from the creek bottom up the hill to just below me. And then, with a mind of its own, it moves swiftly down the valley, clearly on a mission.

I turn back for the house, feeling about as peaceful as one can at the start of a busy day.

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We have been taking turns this week reading poems from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses. A great way to fade off to sleep with the “Northwest Passage” rattling around the brain.

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