The “Little Farm Orchestra”

I’m sitting here on a rainy Monday morning listening to music of a rare kind. There is no real rhythm, or tune. The only beat comes from the dripping of the eaves onto the various bowls, buckets, and wooden items below, and it has no pattern you can follow. The horn section is filled with the unique voices of 7 different roosters crowing at separate intervals, and from various directions, punctuated by the occasional fluttering, and squawks from a chicken being pursued by a rooster or 2. (Four are in cages, bound for the auction) There is an occasional flutter, and tweet from the family of starlings nesting in the air conditioner. From out back comes the occasional blat of a goat, and on the front porch is the incessant “Mah-rooooow” of a cat that wants in….

NO WONDER I was up half an hour early!

Doug Alley

About Doug Alley

I grew up in Bath, Maine in an upper lower class family with 3 step sisters, a step brother, and a little sister. After high school I spent 3 years serving in the USAF at Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage AK. I've competed in, and won, demolition derbies. I've competed in, and never won, stock car races. I am the 47-year-old father of an 11-year-old boy who is pretty sure he is smarter than I ever was. We live on a little less than an acre of land in a 1973 mobile home in Stetson with my wife Jen, some cats, a few chickens, and rabbits, and a couple of goats. I hunt, fish, camp out, dabble in photography, gardening, and I cook in variable degrees of near success.