THE GREETER

Every morning I walk out the door at 30 minutes past dawn with a bowl of cat food, a bucket of water and a bottle of goats milk and baby rice for the piglet. The moment I shut the door and the dogs and I clatter down the steps the ducks begin to shuffle and call from behind their gate in the barn.

I go the other way and empty the cats food onto the work bench outside the feed shed where all the cats mill about waiting for me.

Then refill the bowl with poultry mash from the feed shed.

Picking up my bucket of warm water again I walk across the quad to the barn. Greet Duck starts to bob up and down.The ducks behind her begin to pace and call and this duck who is always waiting perched like a sleepy chicken on top of the gate will stop bobbing stand straight up and turn around and jump back in with her sisters. Every morning.

I fill their outside water bowls, quickly fill their feed bowls and then slowly so as not to set off a stampede in the wrong direction I open the short gate ( an old truck side) and out they all wobble – straight to the food and water for a few moments then they peel off under the field gates and into the fields and are gone.

Then I take the babies bottle out of my pocket and feed the piglet. Who has not been waiting quietly.

After this I retrieve the bowl and fill it with ducks eggs. The bowl of eggs and the empty baby bottle and the empty water bucket come with me straight back to the kitchen.

I wash the eggs, wash the bottle, refill the water bucket, take another bowl of kitchen scraps and the 5 gallon bucket of warm water and off I go again, back out to start the chores.

It is raining this morning so I will be working with my head down. Scrambling between the sheds and barns.

One thing I notice when I go to to town is I consciously walk straight. I am different from the farmer girl.

My shoulders go back and my brow unfurrows.

On the winter farm I tend to scuttle, like one of my animals, hunched, camouflaged amongst the cold or the wet. So many clothes on, multi – skinned, intent upon my routine, smelling and listening for changes, eyes darting from under my hat for signs of ill health or hunger. Watching for danger underfoot or from a large animal. One of the cogs in the farm wheel. Submerged. Going about my mother-farmer business. Brown and earth like. Content.

In the city I walk open up to the sky, I feel my shoulders throw back in delight, straight and strong, I swing off the train, bouncing up the steps to the road – my spine unfurls, my feet in their town boots with height, my head comes up to watch and be aware, I think differently, I consciously don’t flare for smells as much, I listen to words with amusement, I need not comment or manage, I become individual- sharper- more female, apart, more woman than herd animal. I slip into another kind of gear. A single transparent original skin. What is the word. Glide. That’s the word.

Instead of a cold scuttle I do a cold glide!

We are all many characters in our own play. There is no reason why we cannot be all of them – and quite happily too!

Now I will put on layers against cold and rain, make the bottle, fill the bucket, scoop the cat food and soon relieve the Greeter Duck from her post. Time to go to work.

Love celi

WEATHER- Rain and the wind coming in from the Southeast. That’s not a wind we get often. But very warm today.