The Chicken Schedule

 If you have never lived on a ranch, you have missed out on a most fascinating phenomenon.   You become a chicken.  Ask anyone who HAS chickens and they will tell you the same thing.  

Chickens get up early.  They start crowing about 4:30 am, waking up everyone in the neighborhood.  Peacocks follow suit.  Pigeons and dove are not far behind.  There are at least four houses in my neighborhood that raise MANY chickens in their back yards.  Every morning when I go outside with the puppies, I can hear every rooster bragging about his prowess all up and down the street.

Sadly, I've become the chicken.  I wake up every morning at 3:30 now and force myself to stay in bed until 4:30 when I have to let the dogs out.  Not the dog"s" .... but Miss Jessie.  Lucky for the neighbors, I haven't started cackling yet.

The first order of business is feeding the pups.  It was the same for the chickens.  They had to be fed early in the morning on the ranch.  A few hours later, you would find them snoozing on the rafters in the barn.

Yup .... we do the same thing, only since we have no balance left, we park on the couch.  Oh I do spend an hour or so on the computer, but the next four ours is usually full of breakfast and brain games.  Do NOT knock on my door before 9:00.

This is why.  You'll find me with crazy bed hair, lollygagging around in my red robe, a hark back to the days of well made goods.  My cozy soft red robe is now 31 years old and it looks like brand new.  This is the picture of me cavorting in the back forty checking the skunk trap.  

The dark spot above the red is my green ski parka.  It was 30 degrees this morning.   I'm telling you, I'm definitely a fashionista when it comes to trapping skunks.  Luckily ice had covered the lens or you might be scared into hiding.
 

That being said, it was pretty hard to get out to washing the rig before 2:00.  I still had half to go ... the worst side ever.  Literally the entire side was covered in white stripes and dots.  Biggest mess I've ever seen, about half of which came from me cleaning off the roof.  There MUST be a solution for this.
 

 The puppies and I finally got to it, about the same time of day the chickens would come down to scratch around for grass and weeds.   It's the same time I got home from school and proceeded with my first job.  I had to gather eggs.  It was dangerous work.  If you've ever confronted a mad-as-a-wet-hen chicken, you will understand just how scary they can be.  I always ran into the saddle house and slammed the door, peaking through the cracks until the chicken left.

At long last, the rig was done.  It always makes me feel good to see her clean, although it won't last long.  Then, just like the chickens, I headed for the coop.

I went back a couple of times to admire my handiwork and set up the skunk trap again.   It's been very hard to get motivated to do anything, but I did work on this quilt for awhile.  No your eyes aren't going bad, some of the pieces are overlapping.  

It's not really one of my favorites, but I needed to use up that jelly roll (a bunch of 2-1/2 wide pieces already cut up and rolled together).  I like the pattern, just not the colors. 
 

 The next thing I know, I'm falling asleep on the couch at exactly the same time I would shut the chickens up in the coop to keep the coyotes out and hit the sack myself .... 8:30.  So after all these many years, I've become a chicken with a chicken schedule.

I would love to have some chickens again, but I've seen the results of a family who carries them in the belly of their motorhome.  There's not much more stinky than chicken "doo", unless it's skunk!!

Maybe one day when Prince Charming shows up and we settle down in a castle, I'll have chickens again to go with my chicken schedule.