It is pure dark when we go to the barn in the morning…unless the moon is gleaming at the zenith like a cold pearl in a sea of jet. Then there is an unearthly freezing light making spooky shadows behind everything on the lawn. The lawn mower looks like a grizzly bear and the garden pond is the black lagoon. Orion is stomping his way across the heifer barn ridgepole, bound straight north to the horizon. It is dark as ink. Dark as black velvet. Dark as night.
The rooster is crowing.
It is half dark when we are finished with morning chores. Although a flashlight isn't needed, it is dim enough that it is easy to remember to take the one we used to get to the barn back to the house to illuminate our evening stroll. Orion has gone to bed and the moon is long gone.
The rooster is crowing.
At seven, when the girls are warming the Dakota up for the drive to SUNY Cobleskill, and Alan is rushing through a pre-bus shower, it is sorta dark. You can see, but all is shrouded in a misty, clinging gloom. It is not a pretty time of day.
The rooster is crowing.
It is sorta dark again when the girls get home. (Unless it is Monday or Wednesday, when they have late classes.) Then it is pure dark when the beam from their headlights sweeps the gloom away as it precedes them up the driveway.
The rooster gets in one last rebel yell at the sight of the light.
It is half-dark when the guys go out to night feed. By the time they are done, you can trace their progress by the tractor lights out on the hill.
It is pure dark when we start to milk again and pitch dark when we are done. Orion is standing on the eastern horizon, pulling on his boots for his nightly trek across the sky.
At least the rooster has finally wound down for the night.
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Going Forward—Monday, December 23, 2024
9 hours ago
8 comments:
So... Daylight Saving Time has not benefitted the farmer as much as they said it would, eh?
My grandfather, a farm boy, said the switch to Daylight Saving Time was a political trick that did nothing for the farmer, but did loads for the energy companies. Nothing new under the sun, huh?
According to history, Benjamin Franklin is recorded as the one who first suggested DST. In his older years, he liked to stay up late playing cards and sleep in without the sun streaming in so early.
Me again. By the way, that is some rooster you have there!
We have one... well, sort of. He sounds like he could be ours... a neighbor has a small barn filled with domestic livestock like geese, chickens, ducks, and one rooster. That noisy thing feels it must compete with the cackling crows that strike across our landscape. We have a falcon in the summer here, too. Every morning it soars over our roof and plummets toward the house-- right over my head as I hang the morning wash. It is probably looking for the small squirrels and mice that lie shivering in the grass along my side yard, nearby.
Anyway, that's a long story of saying how I "have" a rooster like that, too.
Now, if I can just think of a way to rid the neighborhood of those mind-numbing Harley Davidsons next door...
Hi Mrs. M, I HATE the time change, just hate it to pieces. It affects me like jet lag. I knew Franklin was one of the first to want to perpetrate the torment upon us, but the card playing part was new to me....the bum!
I don't envy you the Harleys! A rooster is bad enough.
Ah, you have made the deprssing sound lyrical.
Yes, lyrical is the word! I enjoyed that post>
Thanks, Jan.....
And NW too!
What a lovely, evocative post!
Thank you so much, Rose, I was just thinking about the dark because we seem to spend so much time in it...lack of both light and enlightenment that is. lol
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