It’s April Fool’s Day as I write this and the snow is finally melting. Can I hear an “Amen” from everyone? It’s been a long winter and most people are anxious for spring to arrive. Now we’re experiencing the spring thaw and runoff as the melting snow heads for lower ground. Water is flowing like a river in the little valley behind our house. Actually, I shouldn’t call it a valley; it’s more like a swale, or just plain low area on the prairie. It’s where the water runs in the spring and during heavy rains, and can sometimes be fifty feet across.
The pond is filled to overflowing. I wish it would stay that way, but I know it will soon disappear. I really think it’s turned into a sinkhole. A dry waterhole isn’t much good when it comes to attracting wildlife.
The spring thaw also brings us soft, mushy ground and lots of mud. Most of the side roads have gravel or blacktop these days, but I bet many of you can remember when roads became a muddy quagmire in the spring. Those were the days when you went from being stuck in snowdrifts to being stuck in the mud. The ruts became so deep, that once your wheels dropped into them you couldn’t get out until you came to firmer ground.
Spring was, and still is, a dirty time of year as the frost works its way out of the ground. It’s especially muddy around barnyards. We slogged through the mud doing our chores as we brought feed from the granary to the barn in a wheelbarrow. If you haven’t tried pushing a loaded-down wheelbarrow through the mud, you’ve missed out on one of the character-building moments in life. It ranks right up there with balancing a wheelbarrow full of manure on an icy plank as you push it from the barn to the manure pile outside.
Spring was also when you got rid of that huge manure pile that had accumulated behind the barn during the winter months, when you couldn’t get out in the fields to spread it. We spent many days standing knee-deep in the fragrant manure pile and filling the manure spreader one forkful at a time. That was before Dad finally bought a front-end loader to do the job after I had graduated. That kind of hard, physical work would kill me now.
Another spring job was cleaning out the chicken house where droppings had accumulated a foot deep during the winter. Our chicken house was divided into two rooms. The front part was where we fed the chickens and where the nesting boxes were located along the walls. That was where the hens laid their eggs.
The back room was where they roosted at night. Chickens liked to spend the night off the ground, where they roosted, not roasted, on horizontal poles that were supported by notched supports on the walls of the chicken house. The chickens flew up, sat on the poles, and slept during the evening. I always wondered how they could balance on those poles and sleep without falling off. I guess it’s easy if you have the DNA of a chicken. If chickens can think, they probably wonder how we can sleep in a bed. Chickens, like other birds, roost high in a tree at night to avoid predators, like foxes and coyotes, who are looking for a meal. That inbred survival instinct remains, even when chickens are kept in the safety of a hen house at night.
Just like the Crooked River Country where we live, this story seems to have taken a few twists and bends too. I started telling you about cleaning out the chicken house in the spring and the next thing you know where sailing up a tributary of the fjord and talking about chickens roosting at night. Never let it be said that you don’t get a well-rounded education reading these meanderings.
Anyway, the droppings under those roosting poles had to be cleaned out too. It wasn’t much fun. The dry dust from all those droppings filled the air as you worked, and you breathed it all in. That’s not good for the lungs as I found out later. All that “chicken dust” settles in your lungs and can cause an infection resulting in calcified lymph nodes, which I’m now blessed with. Guess they were just getting even with me for beheading a few of their relatives so we could have them for dinner. Yes, there was a time when people didn’t depend on Colonel Sanders or the supermarket for a chicken meal.
Luckily there are some things that never seem to change. Young kids still like to go splashing through water and mud puddles and building snow dams when the water is running in the spring. I’ve always liked hearing the sound of rushing water. We would build dams and when enough water had backed up behind our dam, we would knock a hole in the dam and watch the water rush through it and quickly fill the ditch below it.
Children love wading in the mud and playing in the cold water during the spring thaw. Maybe I need to get in touch with that playful side of me again, instead of complaining about all the running water and mud.
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Howard, do you remember sailing boats down those rivers in the spring. It was just sticks but we thought they were ships navigating the mighty river. At times we'd lash some together to make a raft. Many hours of fun and as always we ended wet to the bone.
ReplyDeleteWe made boats too. We usually used short pieces of broken tobacco laths. But you are right, sticks would work too and we'd see how far our boats could travel and follow them - through the water of course - and would get very wet, but we never seemed to mind the cold water at the time. One time we even put our plastic army men on the flat tobacco laths and pretended they were assault boats carrying them into battle. Isn't it something how we could have so much fun with some wood or sticks, running water, and our imagination!
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