One of my favorite spring things is to see where daffodils spark from the earth. These arrived randomly by the goat fence.
Someone small and feathered is singing up a flagrant storm outside. I don’t know bird songs well, but whatever this little one is, she is boisterous this Easter morning.
As are the cherries. We are seeing our first spring here at the new farmstead, and she is not disappointing. Daffodils, a few tulips that have survived the moles (voles? I can never remember which), forsythia, and these cherries. . . I’m not a fan of pastel colors, except in flowers. Then, I feel like the world has opened slowly to joy and childhood again.
Yesterday, Dad and Philip spent hours smoothing the space around and in the barn, and then they spread four loads of gravel on the barn floor and in the road around it. They also dug 100 holes on the driveway for the sugar maples that will soon line it – autumn will go riotous with red and orange soon.
Now, the barn is ready for events – including Shawn Smucker’s reading here on April 13th. (FREE and GREAT for kids.) We still have a great deal of work to do – frame in Philip’s shop, the goat room, the bunk room, and the bathroom; bring in electric and plumbing; decorate (we have a really great puzzle collection that will hang up by the rafters; landscape.
In the meantime, we need to also open up the rest of the wagon shed as a chicken coop so that we have room for our 16 new babies that arrive on the 20th. (We’re building them a brooder from a large tote, and they’ll spend their first weeks under heat lamps in the new barn – our first occupants.) Plus, we have a farm store to finish preparing – we began by hanging a great rooster flag out front.
Add to that the mowing that has just begun in earnest (we got a new mower from P’s parents for Easter), the trimming of hooves (although we got the girls all spiffy for Easter yesterday), the cleaning of poop (LOTS of poop), and the mulching and gardening that need to be done, and we are busy folks. Busy in all the perfect ways – although that list makes my chest hurt just a bit. 🙂
We are blessed beyond measure to have been given the privilege and honor of stewarding this little piece of heaven, to have been handed the dream of a place of respite and rest for folks who need, to have been gifted the joy of all these animals to care for. (Be sure to check out this video of Mosey and Sabeen in the new barn.) Sometimes, the work makes us hurt all over and brings a few drops of blood, but maybe all good things require aches and pains and the shedding of some blood.
Maybe that’s one reminder from Easter and Passover – that tending one another, caring for the gifts of life, loving each other to as much wholeness as we can requires some of the very essence of ourselves.
Happy Easter, Blessed Passover, All.
I’m going outside to revel in the birdsong and flowers.