Last weekend I was planting seeds in the greenhouse, weeding the garden in just a T-shirt, and thinking spring was right around the corner. The next thing you know there’s talk of a groundhog seeing his shadow, and here we are a few days later with 12 inches of snow on the ground and it’s still coming down. All the ladies and gents of 5R Farm are doing just fine, although Lil’ Red Rooster did have a bit of a scare yesterday afternoon. In the morning he ran up to visit the ladies as usual, and when it started snowing at about 9 am he took shelter under the ladies’ coop as he often does. Unfortunately, once it started snowing it didn’t stop, and before you know it the snow was higher than a Lil’ Red Rooster’s eye! He was too scared to make the journey back to his coop for the night, so we had to rescue him (although I’m sure he didn’t see it that way!) and put him in his coop so he didn’t become coyote chow. I had just seen a roadkill coyote on the road not far from our house a day before, and I didn’t want to take any chances leaving Lil’ Red out all night. Unlike most of our other chickens, Lil’ Red cannot easily be picked up, so we had to resort to using a fishing net attached to a long handle to scare him out from under the coop long enough for me to grab the quite frightened little ball of squirming red frizzle feathers and escort him back to the safety of his coop for the night.
This morning was clear and bright and 24 degrees. While I made my morning rounds of defrosting chicken waterers and dishing out oatmeal treats, the snow shovel got a workout thanks to my better half. The ladies appreciated having a path cleared for them to leave the coop and were soon venturing out into the snow. Despite having a path cleared for him to leave his coop, I think it will be a few days before Lil’ Red Rooster musters up the courage to venture out into that mysterious white stuff. But all’s well that ends well, and luckily for Lil’ Red he has a couple of very well trained human servants to tend to his every need while he’s hunkered down in his coop.