17 • CELEBRATION DAYS
November–DecemberThe 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 alto-
gether 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 fl ock she
had chosen antique, heavy- bodied breeds with good reputations for lay-
ing 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-