Yesterday, February 4, was Risshun – 立春, the start of spring according to the seasonal calendar used in Japan. Yesterday’s sunrise, with clouds burning brightly, was fitting for the first day of spring

A sure sign of spring are the nine dozen eggs I took to Tweets this morning. The hens are producing twice as many eggs as just a few weeks ago. It’s time for soufflés and omelettes and raw egg on hot rice.

Maggie, tucked in her dark nest, and Special, on her bed of straw and hay, laid their eggs early this morning. Special reminds me of an art lesson I learned as a child, that red and gray go well together. She also has a distinctive voice. When she belts out, her loud cry makes you jump and yell, “What the hell was that!” Her voice sounds like a peacock on LSD. Her eggs are unusual too. They are slender and pointed. She tossed convention out the window when she was born. “I gotta be me! I gotta be me!” I think that’s what she’s saying when she yells.

See, Special’s pointed egg is nothing like Maggie’s round one. If you get a pointed egg, put your ear next to it and see if you can hear a special chicken’s cry.

Just because it’s cold and the snow lies heavy on the hills doesn’t mean that I can stay indoors and not tend to the compost. All of January I’ve been collecting the bedding from under the roosts and setting it aside in a covered spot for a substantial compost pile. With the change of the months, it’s time to stir it all up and get it wet so that it can start to cook. Fortunately, I have plenty of feet wanting to give a hand. How people compost without chickens is beyond me. They are indispensable when it comes to stirring and mixing and turning compost piles. They get to all the bits you and your pitchfork don’t. If you look closely at a chicken’s feet, they look like small pitchforks. It wouldn’t surprise me if the first pitchforks were designed after chicken feet.

Sometimes the eggs I gather are too beautiful to eat, especially the spotted ones. Large, commercial egg producers consider speckled and spotted eggs to be defaults. They want every egg to be the same. Perhaps the reasoning is that if everything is the same, you don’t have to make a choice. That carton of eggs is the same as every other carton of eggs, so you can shop without having to think.

Even these hens know that you can’t go through life without thinking and making choices. They know that one worm isn’t the same as every other worm, and that some roosters are better than others.

Three queens, Shiun-hime, Sunshine, and Svenda, up on their roost. Of the three, Shim-hime, exudes a most royal air. She looks down at me as if I am one of her countless subjects. You can almost see her fiery eyes commanding, “Off with its head!”

Svenda is out early this morning, enjoying a morning drink out of the cold flowing stream. The stream flows from fall through spring. The headwaters are just a few hundred feet away in the woods to the north. It’s pure rain water, flowing down through branches of cedars, firs, alders, wild cherry, and vine maples, filtering through mosses and ferns before running into the creek. It makes me wonder if Svenda can taste the different trees as she drinks. “Hmm, today’s stream has a heavy taste of cedar with a hint of maple.”

Ungetsu-hime is one of the many hens who are back to laying after their winter break. The basket gets fuller every day, a sure sign that spring is around the corner. Tonight, quite a few frogs are singing at the pond. It’s only January and frogs are coming out of hibernation. It’s a most unusual year.