Cabin Staycation, Last Batch Of Chickens
It’s hard to get away from the farm, especially during chicken season. Even if I could get away, I often tell people that there’s no place I’d rather go than to the cabin. With vacancies at our Airbnb cabins this week, we decided to take the whole crew up to the cabin for a two night staycation. The kids have been requesting a cabin stay all summer. They loved it. We all did.
It was the perfect get away while still allowing us to get our farm work done. We had plenty to do, but intentionally tried to work less to allow for more time at the cabin. A slow morning on Wednesday as we welcomed a half inch of steady rain. Just being a one bedroom cabin, the kids slept on the couch or in the floor. They would all agree that playing in the hot tub was their favorite part. My favorite would be a toss up between sitting on the porch while it rained or sitting around the fire at dusk. If you’re looking to unplug, check out our cabins. I doubt you’ll regret it.
Farm wise, another load of cows and pigs to the processor on Monday, which meant rounding them up Sunday afternoon. We caught and crated another batch of over 500 chickens to sell to another fellow farmer that evening. The kids were helping us catch chickens til 11:30 that night. Long day.
Tuesday we restocked the emptied shelters with over 500 chicks from the brooder.
Wednesday we sorted meat and finished filling this month’s beef shares.
Thursday we filled the brooder back up with about 1000 baby chicks. Last batch of the season. And biggest batch of the season.
We filled in the gaps throughout the week moving cows, making broth, bush hogging, and mowing the cabin yards.
Not much time for book listening, but I did listen to some of Andy Catlett by Wendell Berry. Amy says this quotation is too long, but I think it’s too good to fragment. I listened to this section multiple times.
“Time is told by death. Who doubts it? But time is always halved. For all we know it is halved by the eye blink, the synapse, the immeasurable moment of the present. Time is only the past and maybe the future. The present moment dividing and connecting them is eternal. The time of the past is there somewhat, but only somewhat, to be remembered and examined. We believe that the future is there too, for it keeps arriving, though we know nothing about it. But try to stop the present for your patient scrutiny or to measure its length with your most advanced chronometer. It exists, so far as I can tell, only as a leak in time through which, if we are quiet enough, eternity falls upon us and makes its claim. And here I am, an old man traveling as a child among the dead. We measure time by its deaths, yes, and by its births, for time is told also by life. As some depart, others come. The hand opened in farewell, remains open in welcome. I, who once had grandparents and parents, now have children and grandchildren. Like the flowing river that is yet always present, time that is always going is always coming. And time that is told by death and birth is held and redeemed by love, which is always present. Time, then, is told by love’s losses and by the coming of love. And by love continuing in gratitude for what is lost. It is folded and enfolded and unfolded forever and ever. The love by which the dead are alive and the unborn welcomed into the womb. The great question for the old and the dying I think, is not if they have loved and been loved enough, but if they’ve been grateful enough for love received and given, however much. No one who has gratitude is the onliest one. Let us pray to be grateful to the last.”
Have a good week.
Will