the big day

I just left the chickenhouse, the sound of peeping fading behind closed doors as I walked away. I’m tempted to go there again, sit on the floor, and watch those shuffle-hop-waddle creatures for a few minutes.

I was a wreck with nerves! We had last minute preparations this morning  that I rushed through. The mailman was due in three hours, then two, then one, maybe now? We put the brooders on blocks off the floor, set up the heat lamps, spread the bedding and filled the new mason jar-top waterers. Then we checked the temperatures in the boxes (90 degrees and rising) and went to the truck to haul a large trashcan filled with 170 pounds of grain. We used a dolly to ferry it across the soggy marsh the yard has become after days of rain.

Then the phone rang. The post office. The chicks had arrived, and would I please come pick them up?

At the post office, the staff had put the box on the counter. We could hear them the moment we entered the doorway. The employee who asked if they were ours cooed at them and told them goodbye. “I’ve been talking to them,” he said. “Must be working too much.”

The large box emitted sharp chirps the whole way home.

In the chickenhouse, we carefully opened the carton and picked up each tiny day-old bird. With one hand we held each one firmly and with the other gently pressed its beak into the water. Fifty-four times in a row, the same quick motion.  Twenty-four hours on the road makes a little bird thirsty, and we wanted them to know where to get started.

Then we watched them, oooed and awed. New life at the farm.

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