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C E L E B R AT I O N D AY S
November–December The closing-down season of the year set us to dragging out storm windows and draining outdoor pipes, but Lily had a whole different agenda: her egg enterprise opened for business. Her April chicks had matured into laying hens, surprising us with their first eggs in late October. Winter is the slow season for egg-laying, with many breeds ceasing production altogether when days are less than thirteen hours long. We’d counseled Lily not to expect much from her flock until next spring. Never underestimate the value of motivational speeches from the boss. Lily shot out of bed extra early every morning so she’d have time to spend in the chicken coop before the school bus came. Her hens have special nest boxes that open from outside the chickens’ roosting quarters, so it’s possible to stand (in clean shoes) in the front room of the poultry barn and reach through to collect the eggs. Or in Lily’s case, to stand for hours peering in, supervising the hens at their labors. She actually has watched eggs exiting the hens’ oviducts—a sight few people on earth have yet checked off their to-do lists, I imagine. When planning this flock she had chosen antique, heavy-bodied breeds with good reputations for laying right through cold weather. By mid-November she was bringing in as many as a dozen eggs a day from her nineteen layers. Lily apparently knew all along that her workforce could actualize its potential. She had also been working her customer base for months, tak-
