The time has come where I wake at 5.30am to make a cup of tea and start the earliest of early morning chores and it is still dark.
Cool and Dark.
It does make me a bit sad.
The good news is that I get to watch the sun rise again. As the light makes its way gently through the trees hand and hand with the day.
Our little duck flock sleeps on the pond at night.
Here are today’s early, early morning chores. (They change. Farming is not static).
- Call the cows out of the Pig Field
- Let the white chicks out onto their porch
- Lay down breakfast and call the piglets along the track from the barn to the Pig Field
The trick is to do these little morning jobs without waking Tima and Wai. (Virtually impossible).
Then I make a cup of tea and come back into my study and say Good Morning to you. Our John does the rest of the morning feeds and he is not an early riser. But I need for feeding out to come naturally to him for when I am away. So I make encourage him to do the first feeding of the hogs and pigs.
There is a rhythm to everything that once established highlights when something is wrong. If that makes sense. When an animal always greets you a certain way then the day it does not rise up and grunt stands out and a person will pay attention to something being awry. If you are not deep in the rhythm, and the normal sounds have become a white noise in a way, if you have to think of your every move, and try to remember what is next, and focus too much on your own inner workings, you might miss a warning sign from one of the herd.
So I try to give everyone working on the farm the same jobs. Then they become second nature. Once you are humming as you work you are absorbed. A new sound or movement will stand out. Once you lean on the gate after feeding a group and just watch you will see more.
Good Morning! ☀️
Have a lovely day.
(The barn maintenance list is growing).
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
20 responses to “Rising Before the Light”
I’m sure Tima would be tapping on your window before dawn if she could get out!
Poor old Tima. She’ll have to wait until harvest- just imagine her let loose in a corn field!
Ha ha – I remember poor Tane wandering off, with his bad leg, in search of the last corn husks after harvest.
Oh ~ Tane ~ he was a lovely boy.
Good morning! Love the shot of Tima and the rooster strutting into the day.
Tima and her roosters!
I love to wake with the sun, and slowly slide into the day. setting up the rhythm for the farm, and those who will keep it running, is an important thing to do –
It is. There are a great team this year!!
First light is so lovely. I am reading this at 530AM my time. It is pitch dark outside but like you the world is already waiting and getting itself busy for the light. The buses are running, the first 2 commuter trains are off for more riders and I have laundry started. The birds though are still tucked up sleeping 🙂
Even those sounds of trains and the buses – I loved those sounds when I lived in central London
I am so used to them after 7 years I only notice when it is too quiet that something is off from my “normal” and so I pay attention just like you!
Yes! That is exactly what I was trying to find the words for!
Losing light at night and in the morning…, not too happy about it, but, as you mentioned in another blog post, the ‘good ole saying,’ “It is what it is,” is exactly what it is. Just loved the walkabout on Sunday. So much fun to see the animals and the Kitchen’s Gardens! We have our fall garden in with lots of veggies and so far it is doing well. Thank goodness we have drip irrigation set up as we haven’t had rain in weeks. We seems that we are always waiting for the rain down here.
We have had no rain for ages either. And no irrigation!! I always feel heavy with dread when I think of the winter, coming. But the last few winters have been much warmer with cold snaps. So we will see.
5:30 am is hard in the winter! I am hoping my puppy, who is an earlier riser than my preference, learns to sleep in a little longer than her usual 5 am start as the mornings get dark and cold.
She will! Boo decided not to come out either with me this morning! Just curled tighter into his bed.
Oh, I love the change of seasons. It’s been lovely here the last several days, nights in the 50’s and even down into the 40’s. Yes, a harbinger of fall, cool nights and mornings and flannel pajamas (love those—-so cozy). But the absolute best thing about fall for me is the demise of the hungry mosquito hordes—-the bane of my existence. Not quite there with those pesky things, but soon!
A beautiful photograph…
The shortening days are definitely here. I tend to rise with the sun, so I’m getting a bit more sleep now!
I’m rarely up at 5:30 although I’m sometimes awake. The switchover of seasons is always a nostalgic feeling for me. The loss of light is also a bit depressing; being so far north, it hits us hard in November and December, our gloomiest months anyway. Then we notice it staying lighter in the afternoons. The cycle of life, eh?