Adjusting time

That’s how I feel at this time of year, adjusting. Adjusting to darkness at 5:30pm. As the days go by it will continue to get dark earlier, creeping, creeping, until suddenly 4pm can be pretty gloomy. “Fall back” is the reminder to turn the clocks back, but at times it feels more like sink back. “Spring ahead” is a whole lot easier and more fun to get used to. It will be months before we can enjoy that again. An entire winter to endure first.

It is an adjustment to have the work day end not at 9pm as in June, but at 6pm because it is just too dark to safely do outside farm chores. So, we adjust. Start the day a bit earlier to use the day light to balance the short afternoons. The laying hens notice right away, they are such sun worshippers! They require 15 hours of day light to keep up their one egg/day quota, obviously they have a bit of SAD, seasonal affective disorder! To help them maintain their production the hen house lights are on from 4pm to 9pm. Even the sheep prefer to eat while it is light, so when they come inside late afternoon to keep the barn warm, on go the lights while they munch on a bale of hay. But they are also romantics, with shorter days and longer nights the ewes cycle for fall breeding.

It seems we and our farm animals are creatures that love the sun.

As the month goes by, I’m slowly getting used to short days. The long evenings get filled with reading, knitting and researching history or agriculture articles. Thoughts of “his and hers” computers comes into the fore front, that might help put in the evening hours. And the time ticks by.

I’m hoping for a winter with plenty of sunshine and blue skies, one can always hope. My carrot on the end of the stick is the date February 16^th when the afternoon sun reaches the west kitchen window. The light at the end of the tunnel!

Sunshine cures all.

To be continued….

Sue