Ruffled Feathers and Spilled Milk

Farming with ducks and dairy goats, chickens and children.

What do the City Folk do on Easter Sunday?

Posted on | April 25, 2011 | 2 Comments

Church, perhaps?  Maybe brunch?  Enjoying that special Peeps cake I made for dessert after stuffing ourselves full of ham?  I’m just assuming that’s what they do since that’s what we had planned, too.  Until I went to the barn to milk and found a dirty pony rolling on the ground and refusing to eat her breakfast.  Someone sound the colic siren, please.

It’s a loud siren.  Loud enough to wake my friend on her farm miles away.  OK, maybe that wasn’t a siren.  Maybe that was a phone call where I started babbling into her answering machine, “Pony down!  Pony down!” while I wondered why her kids hadn’t already dragged her out of bed at 6am to check the yard for overflowing baskets and candy-filled eggs.  She was probably wondering why she ever suggested I adopt this pony in the first place since it means routine calls to her farm for help.  It’s true what they say:  No good deed ever goes without a million follow up phone calls.  Or something like that.

We settled on walking poor Candy Corn up and down the driveway to keep her intestines moving and prevent her from twisting anything.  Which meant the plan for a blueberry French toast breakfast was exchanged for the kids eating Easter candy and me sipping coffee while strolling up and down the driveway in shorts, barn boots, and the T-shirt I slept in.  The neighbors honked and waved as they drove by in cars filled with pretty dresses and children in button down shirts on their way to Sunday school.  Maybe they waved.  Or maybe they were just covering their laughter with their hands.  It’s hard to tell sometimes.

Pretty joined me after a while and we walked up and down the driveway together.  Up and down.  Watching the dew dry on the grass.  Feeling the sun begin to warm our faces.  Up.  And down.  The chickens began to scratch under the Leland Cypress trees.  The goats checked the backside of the pond for blackberry brambles.

Up.  We checked out the expanding sage and peppermint patches.  And down.  We noticed the wild roses were beginning to blossom along the fence line, drawing the season’s first bees to the garden.  Up.  The mourning dove’s call from the powerline became lost in the increasing birdsong.  And down.  A breeze began stirring the new leaves and lifting our hair off our necks.

Up.  Candy Corn began to show interest in the passing cars.  And down.  She nibbled at the spring grass.  Up and down.  For an hour and a half.  And the entire time we walked, Bruno strolled inside the fence, up and down with us, smiling his loyal smile, and wagging his happy tail.  As if Easter morning was the perfect time to walk a colicky pony.  To believe that everything will be OK.  He was right, of course.  What better day is there for hope than Easter morning?

By the time we brushed Candy Corn, picked her hooves, and put her back in the barn yard, we had just enough time to get ready for church service.  If “getting ready” means grabbing an old dress instead of the one I had planned (that one required panty hose), and checking my sandals sitting by the front door for mud real quick before sliding them on and getting in the truck.  Luckily for us, we go to a church that cares more about Jesus than J.Crew.

Also luckily for us, a colicky pony was the last of the dilemmas for the day.  I mean, besides that nonsense in the nesting boxes in the afternoon.  When a duck hatched out some chicks and a hen tried to take over brooding on the duck eggs.  Ladies, ladies, please!

So what do people without a backyard full of fur and feathers do on Easter Sunday?  Getting ready for church while enjoying a second cup of coffee and a bagel is so mundane, right?  Getting your morning exercise on the elliptical machine instead of traipsing up and down the driveway is so blah, don’t you think?  Hunting for plastic eggs without worrying about the real ones some ridiculous chicken laid alongside them is just too easy, right?  Right?

Category: Uncategorized, What do the city folks do?

Comments

2 Responses to “What do the City Folk do on Easter Sunday?”

  1. Lisa D.
    April 27th, 2011 @ 4:43 am

    Glad Candy Corn made it. You are a good woman!

  2. Annabelle
    April 27th, 2011 @ 8:50 am

    We had a very slow sunday morning and my mom came to visit for the afternoon. I couldn’t figure out why my mom was so excited to collect eggs around the farm with my 4 year old. I only realized that it was easter when we wandered out to the old pig yard to get eggs out of a nest and we noticed that our neighbors (not farmers) had 50 of their family members dressed in their Easter best just starting an egg hunt! “OH! it’s Easter, we’re collecting eggs too” I said! They invited my son over to come collect the plastic eggs filled with candy, who was embarrassingly still in pjs… he traded the fake eggs for real ones and those kids thought the real eggs were the most magical things ever!

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