10 minutes before the alarm.
21 minutes before sunrise.
The room is filled with that predawn grey blue light.
If I concentrate, I can hear the birds through the window.
I have ten minutes. I could close my eyes for a few.
But the day's tasks already have their grip on me.
The comforting weight of Sawyer the yellow lab is pressed into me. She's the best little spoon. I just need to think in her direction and she wags her tail against the comforter in response.
She's the first sign that the day has started. Sawyer sleeps with Kenzie, whose already woken up and gone downstairs. Sawyer comes to our room for what we affectionately call “second sleepies.”
More light is filtering in every minute. The cover of night is receding. We work with the sun, and it's nearly here.
I look ahead in my mind to the day and to the long list of tasks that keeps every heartbeat here fed, watered, and happy. It's a list as long as the morning.
Hopefully I can sneak in some laundry between chores and breakfast. These days are several outfit days for all of us, and not in a way that means you can wear anything again. I hope to use the clothesline today. The dryer has been acting up.
Breakfast. I think I'll pull some biscuits out of the freezer to bake. Fry some bacon and a few duck eggs, which we're thankfully getting again now. Breakfast is typically a big deal around here. Usually at 9am after a few hours work. A large, full meal.
We have leftover burgers for lunch but I'll need to pull some moose from the freezer for dinner.
Five minutes before the alarm. Sawyer is breathing heavily, almost in time with Jack.
First thing when I get downstairs is to start funnelling dogs outside. Then the coffee. Kenzie has a lingering cough, so I'll make her a tea with honey. I'll make Jack a coffee, and bring it to him upstairs. He'll mumble a thank you. Sawyer will wag. And then they'll sleep for another hour.
I'll sit with my coffee and turn our videos and pictures from yesterday into social media posts. This doesn't take long, but if I don't do it first thing, it won't happen.
This also gives me time to sit with Kenzie. She'll give me a nonstop commentary on her minecraft progress. Every day. Currently she has a cat named Eloise and a chicken named Chuckles.
It must just be a minute before the alarm now. My knee throbs from yesterday. Something went pop that shouldn't have on my run with the two younger dogs, Banjo and Hazel. Hopefully it isn't too bad once I get up and moving. It's not like I can take the day and stay off of it.
Aside from all the regular keeping-things-fed chores, we have huge projects on the docket for today. Our tiller rental arrives tomorrow, which means we need to finalize our row plan for the upick. We've gone through so many iterations of this plan, even in the last week, but I think we finally have it now. We'll need to get out the huge measuring tape and the post pounder and the t posts. Get our lines straight and marked, and ready to break ground.
I sit up and swing my legs out of bed. My knee protests. I look outside, a little blurry without my glasses, and see unforecasted drizzle and new buds on the trees. That's both good and bad news. Perhaps the throb in my knee is more weather related than injury related, which means it'll subside faster. The unfortunate part is that we need to work outside until the job is done, regardless of the wet weather. Delaying this project isn't an option. We have the tiller a finite number of days, for a cost that we can little afford, but simply can't afford not to pay. Such it is with so many farm expenses.
And there it is.
The alarm.
I'm both excited to start the day and loathe to leave the warm bed and the snuggly Sawyer. I won't have another truly calm moment until tomorrow morning.
Ten minutes before the alarm.
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