Eggs don't lie

Nine eggs from nine chickens. A sure sign of Spring, even to those of us who live in the perpetual gray gloomiverse of March.

I’m hardly a local (ie, less than seven generations of Vermont lineage), but even I know that rooting for Spring too early is a sucker bet. Generations have tried. Generations have failed.

Experienced Vermonters are so beaten down by it, in fact, that they deliberately don’t travel to anyplace too nice prior to mid-April. It’s too depressing, they say, to come back and be faced by more darkness.

So that’s the thing. So people are wary. So they don’t get too excited, too fast. But the chickens do.

The chickens have no qualms about bringing it on as soon as it starts to get even a little peckish. They eat, they drink, and apparently they get super super merry.

Producing buckets of late winter eggs, it's easy to see why one of our savvy ancestors came up with the bright idea of dyeing eggs for Easter ("...one more quiche, honey, and I'm going Postal.")

So while our chickens are focused on business, we the people are hunkered down waiting for the cruelest of months to pass. We dream and fantasize about that late June trip to the coast of Maine, and by July Fourth, we barely recognize that we’re complaining about the heat and humidity.

The funk is unavoidable, sure. But so is the recovery.

Maybe the bottom’s already here, perhaps its over the horizon. But relief is coming, and no amount of pessimism can stop it.