| One of Those MorningsHi all, Mark here.I am a creature of habit and an inveterate procrastinator. Both are generally considered undesirable characteristics. A procrastinator is a lazy avoider of responsibility. A follower of unchanging daily routines is simply boring.I try to look at the upside of my faults. Thanks to daily repetition of tasks in the same sequence, I virtually never forget to do a chore. If I postpone a difficult or distasteful task long enough, sometimes the need to do it just goes away. My personal anthem might be the very catchy “Pourquoi faire aujourd’hui qu’est-ce que tu pourrais faire demain?” (Why do today what you could put off to tomorrow?) by Acadian singer songwriter Lisa LeBlanc.But I can’t ignore the downsides. Slavish loyalty to routine makes it hard to incorporate new tasks that are constantly added to the agenda each spring. In March, when we planted seeds under lights in the basement, I kept forgetting to water the trays. It deviated too much from my pattern. Eric, tired of reminding me in our daily calls, ultimately posted a sign on the refrigerator: “I want to be a plant, don’t forget me downstairs.” Thankfully, that worked.And ignoring some tasks will not make them go away. Waiting to the last minute just puts you at risk of being unready when the deadline comes, or shifts. When that happens, I was reminded this week, procrastination can utterly explode your routine. That’s how I had one of those mornings.Wednesday morning, May 8, I awoke with a clear conception of the day ahead. I would do the usual chores, prepare a Farms 2 Tables order, do some legal work, and organize 10 boxes of documents for a shredding appointment at mid-day. Then I would pick up turkey starter feed I had ordered and set things up for 70 newly hatched turkey poults scheduled to arrive on Thursday, May 9.Hatcheries time their hatches for the beginning of the week. Birds mailed from Missouri on Tuesday often arrive here on Thursday, although sometimes on Friday, and on one disastrous occasion a few years ago, Saturday. I felt I had a comfortable cushion to prepare. I declined Eric’s offer last weekend to help me move the 8 x 12 foot portable chicken tractor, the turkeys’ secure home for the first four weeks of life or so, into the barn’s hay storage room from outside. It required sweeping out the space, and we had already worked a long day.My daily 7 a.m. Postal Service “informed delivery” email on Wednesday confirmed that the birds would arrive the following day. I decided to go back to sleep for a while. Then, at 8 a.m., the phone rang: “It’s Dave from the Germantown post office. Your birds are here.”“Oh my God,” I responded. “They’re a day early. I’m not ready. I’ll try to be there in an hour or so.”My race began, keystone cops style. I threw on clothes and high-tailed it to the chicken coop. I usually start chores by feeding and watering them, but this time I also had to retrieve the feeding trays, waterers, heat lamps, extension cords, and pack of wood shavings stored in the coop, and wash the equipment.Thankfully I could skip watering the newly planted raspberries and currants, as it had rained the night before, and proceed to my usual next chore stop, the barn. But not to feed the sheep. “They can just graze for now,” I thought. After all, I was myself just getting breakfast in little dribs. A glass of juice on my way out, munching on a matzoh while cleaning the feeding trays and heat lamps.As I approached the barn with my full wheelbarrow of materials, I heard ungodly cries like I’d never heard before emanating from within. Had someone caught her head in the manger? How could I both get the turkeys and deal with a badly hurt sheep? I panicked a bit and ran in, only to find it was a young ewe, Sophie’s daughter, in her first labor. Not the usual grunts and groans of sheep labor, but full out cries. But since she stopped crying when I came in, I figured I could leave her to her business.I swept out the space, dragged the tractor in, covered the interior floor with wood shavings, fixed the heat lamps on the tractor and turned them on to get the space up to 90 degrees. Then, as I got ready to set up the water and feed, to which you introduce the turkeys by dipping their beaks in each successively as you take them out of their traveling box, I remembered that I had no feed yet and couldn’t possibly get it until after 11. Given everything else that had to be accomplished by noon, I’d have to introduce the turkeys to the concept of food using chicken feed.By now it was 9:30, and still at least a half dozen things needed to be done by noon. I quickly ascertained that the ewe had given birth and was quietly licking off her lamb, so I headed for the post office, my first desperately needed cup of coffee in hand.By 10:15, I had the turkeys checked in. While I wanted to pat myself on the back for compressing an afternoon of work into a couple of frantic hours, I could hardly take the time. The new mom had to be isolated in a pen and given hay and water, the lamb’s umbilicus iodined, five pounds of rhubarb picked and packed, a client email researched and answered, the basement seedlings watered, and the car loaded with boxes and driven out to the street for the shredding truck. The sheep did not get their morning grain treat until 11:30.Will I prepare further ahead in the future? Ummm… I’m afraid it’s my human nature just to have one of these mornings every now and again. |
Newly arrived turkey poults eat egg yolks for fortification, Photo by Mark Scherzer
Eric tries to change my routine Photo by Mark Scherzer
FARM PICKUPS:Email us your order at farm@turkanafarms.com, and let us know when you’d like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I’m now here full time, we’re abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we’ll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464 or email.
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