True confession: it used to be that the only time I saw 6 am was when I was coming home or catching a plane. Now I’m up at 6 am with great regularity. I’m pretty impressed at how much is happening at that hour that I’ve missed all these years. Who knew? The rooster crows at first break of dawn and rustles up sleepy hens from their roosts. They greet me on a busy morning to get their daily feed of leftovers and chicken scratch–make that chicken crack, they love that stuff. We’ve now managed to keep them alive for one year and think we should get more. Because we’re crazy that way. They did finally start laying, now we’re trying to figure out how to slow them down! Although everyone at work is happily enjoying fresh farm eggs, because we actually can’t eat six eggs a day, no matter how cute they look all lined up in my fridge.
Life is crazy busy in the summer in the Okanagan. Running the wine club at Tinhorn Creek means madly trying to get out cases of wine, plan events, chat on the phone and make things more fun for the members. Okay. For myself, I love parties and anything to do with wine. Then hubby comes home from his full time job and I come home and we have a full time vineyard job, and try to sell a little wine here and there with our first vintage and more in the barrel. Add to that the usual stress of family, finances, fatigue, and animals that keep running away–or worse, run home covered in ticks that you have to pull off with tweezers while you try not to faint. But faint anyway when your husband has one on his leg that he pulls off in front of you, and then you lay in bed all night throwing the covers off and the lights on anytime you feel a little itch anywhere on your body. Not to mention the rattlesnakes and black widow spider issues. Farm life gets to me and sometimes I daydream about Starbucks and traffic and high heels. But when I tromp up the hill in my boots at 6 am as the morning sun lights up the valley, the view from the coop is like a blow to the heart. Then nothing else matters and I think I am the luckiest crazy woman in the world.