By AmberLi Emery
I’m downsizing the flock and winterizing the coops, which sounds lovely until you realize it involves personally dismantling a geological formation built entirely out of poultry poop.
I cleaned this coop out in the spring. Roughly five months later, there were TWO FEET of bedding across the floor, with the top eight inches compressed into a solid sheet of duck and chicken poop.
These birds have been pouring concrete with their butts.
And I’m about 75% done with ONE coop. The SMALL coop. There’s still the big coop and the cow barn, because apparently I signed up for the homestead triathlon and all three events are poop.
Meanwhile, my socks are filling with sawdust, grass clippings, hay, and whatever ancient poultry civilization I’ve disturbed.
INSIDE my boots.
How? The boots are on. My feet are in them. Yet somehow an entire compost pile has bypassed security and taken up residence between my toes. I could plant potatoes in these socks.
Every five minutes I’m blowing my nose and discovering that my sinuses have apparently volunteered to filter the entire building. Black. Every time. At this point, I’m expecting a feather and a handwritten complaint from a duck.
Naturally, my brain has decided I’m going to die of some previously undiscovered, flesh-eating chicken-poop disease. I don’t know whether it’s a virus, a bacterium, or an ancient curse released when I pried up the bottom layer. In my imagination, the medical journal has already titled the case “Woman Who Should Have Just Bought Twelve Chickens.”
The chickens, meanwhile, will contribute absolutely nothing to my recovery. They’ll stand there tilting their heads, wondering whether my collapse means snacks.
If I go down in here, please retrieve me before they start acting like I was always part of the deep litter method.
I would like a proper obituary, not “She composted beautifully.”
Anyway. Still shoveling. There’s hay in my socks, poultry in my pores, and a cow waiting for me to stop being dramatic and get to her building.
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