Nature is amazing!
Exactly twenty-one days ago, I walked out to the chicken coop the way I had every morning for the past eight years — ready to let the hens and roosters greet a new day of roaming, scratching for treats, laying eggs, and soaking up sunshine.
But when I opened the coop, to my horror, I found a pile of lifeless bodies. A predator — likely a raccoon — had torn its way in through the roof. In a violent, senseless massacre, it killed every hen and all but one rooster, tearing off heads and ripping out their hearts. I was devastated. In a single moment, the homestead shifted from a lively place of fresh eggs and morning crowing to a silent graveyard.
When I finally gathered myself enough to start cleaning up, I found something unexpected: an egg tucked beneath the body of my favorite hen. That small egg sparked a thought — maybe this could be a beginning rather than an ending.
So I set up the incubator and placed the precious egg inside, along with two eggs from the previous day. They were fertile; I'd always kept roosters.
Later that same day, I stopped by the local feed store, hoping against the odds that they might still have chicks this late in the fall. To my surprise, they did — and I drove home with seven chirping babies in a cardboard box. I rigged a makeshift brooder in the shed, hung a heat lamp, and gave the seven little ones a safe, warm place to begin again.
Today — twenty-one days after that terrible morning — I walked into the shed to find two newly hatched chicks in the incubator. Meanwhile, the seven store-bought chicks have already grown into sturdy young pullets, living outside in the new coop we built just for them.
I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the resilience of nature and the quiet wisdom of Mother Earth. She always knows what to do. When we trust that we belong to this place — to this living world — we find that we are held, supported, and guided.
Life is good.