The Silence of The Roosters and Other Fall Traditions

Sad to do it, but we get to the point every year when a few formerly cute little chicks morph into nightmarish teenage boys who fight each other and roughly molest hens. One nearly blinded our former Alpha rooster, Big Daddy. BD now is our Beta, and we'd be sorry to lose him. As Roger our "chicken whisperer" tells us, older males mating with young hens result in fewer male chicks.

Win win.

And the aggressor? That punk teenager went into a dutch oven today. Young roos "taste just like chicken." Only older birds prove too tough to eat, good only for the stockpot.

Culling roosters we cannot re-home with Roger is, thankfully, only one of the annual rituals that begin about the time of the Autumnal Equinox. The heat and humidity have broken, so I get entire days for physical labor of splitting firewood and stacking it, pruning trees ahead of hurricanes, baling a bit of late-cut hay, planting garlic and onions, putting in kale and lettuce, picking figs and last tomatoes for last batches of jam and sauce.

As my full-time professional career nears its end, I'm ever more in love with this perfect time of year. I cannot sit still for long or look at screens except to write or study more about my hobbies. At night I read books, but while there's enough light in the evenings I get a bit more work done. There's also enough cool, dry air to make sweating fun. It's not hunting season yet, but the lakes are good for fishing for quite a while longer.  We even suddenly, after my wife's retirement, have time now for short vacations. It requires a farm-sitter, but the "shoulder months" are good for that, without fretting about animals needing constant attention to water and shade in summer or well-prepared shelter and fresh dry bedding in winter.

With Fall in mind, I went to the movie theater and sat in front of a big screen for the first time since COVID-19. I was deeply moved by Brett Morgen's film Moonage Daydream, about my favorite musician, David Bowie. I've missed his music terribly since his passing; he never seemed to run out of good ideas, even late in life.

Bowie's passing may have left a hole, but the film provided closure appropriately connected to my thoughts about Autumn.

 Fall can seem sad to some folks I know, yet to others "the veil is thin" between us and eternity. Our ancestors seem near. It was a good time to see that film. Bowie left this coda in the film, expressed as a prose-poem, and it fits well with any meditation about Fall:

You're aware of a deeper existence
Maybe a temporary reassurance that indeed there is no beginning, no end
And all at once, the outward appearance of meaning is transcended
And you find yourself struggling to comprehend a deep  and formidable mystery
I'm dying
You are dying
Second by second
All is transient
Does it matter?
Do I bother?
Yes, I do
Life is fantastic, it never ends, it only changes
Flesh to stone to flesh
And 'round and 'round
Bеst keep walking. 

Yes, keep walking. I'm walking outside now to cut up some limbs that fell in the last storm, before what is left of Hurricane Ian arrives.