There is nothing quite like sunshine and relative warmth on a spring day in the pacific northwest.  It speaks of the promise of summer, of days where rain and its inevitable threat are the furthest things from ones mind.  We drink up the sun on these days, coming out of the cocoon of our homes to welcome it, worship it, will it to stick around with everything we have inside us.  Everything comes out of the woodwork; people, insects, the first shoots of directly planted seeds.

Today is one of those days.

Today I rocked my baby to sleep on the front porch, with my energetic boys bounding like crazy up and down the sidewalk, screaming to their hearts content.  Our street, so unbelievably busy on Friday and Saturday nights, is wonderfully silent and peaceful on weekday afternoons. 

Our front yard is a haven and soon it will also be home to the three baby chicks we brought home this weekend.  For now, they are ensconsed in the makeshift brooder we setup in the basement.  They peep, peep, peep all day and night.  They sleep.  They eat.  They void.  They peep.  They sleep.  Every day I tend to them, add fresh pine shavings to those they have trampled, change their water, give them new food, check the temperature of their temporary home, pick them up and hold them close, willing them to love me in the hopes they will produce the loveliest of eggs when the time comes.

The process is incredibly peaceful and satisfying in a way uncomparable to tending to mere household pets.  These chicks will sustain us, hopefully.  These chicks will provide for us in exchange for our loving care.

I have wanted chickens for years now. 

This spring we are finally beginning to see a break in the financial misfortune, which had befallen us last year.  While I cannot say we are above water, we are at least tilting the other direction in our desperate attempts to achieve equillibrium once more.  Moose has been working and travelling for work a great deal, which means there is money coming in.  Since the end of February he has spent a combined total of six weeks away from us and while it is difficult, we embrace the influx of money it brings and it is the excessive travel paving the way for my dreams of chickens.

My children are thriving and thankfully never really knew or understood the dire nature of the situation in which we found ourselves.  Somehow, we seemed to have weathered the storm.  We are coming out of it better prepared, better educated and with the firm commitment to continue the austerity plan we put in place last spring. 

In the almost six years Moose and I have been together, we have weathered so much.  Our bond is strong and as he says, "forged in steel."  It is hard to see anything that could break that bond.