Light and dark

Last month the sun sank to its lowest point on the horizon, and this month we are aware of the growing light, the growing sunshine, and the coming growing season.

We have very short winter days on our hilly east-facing homestead, and when the sun disappears behind the hills at 2:30pm, it can feel like we live much closer to the Antarctic than we really do. In Europe, the further north one goes, the more importance is placed on winter celebrations and the return of the sun, and from living on this land for the past nine years I can see how important it is in the darkest days of winter to look forward to the turning of the seasons.

Some days I wait as long as possible before I put any lights on in the late afternoon, living and working as the dark closes in on us and the fire from the wood stove seems brighter and warmer than ever.

It’s nice to experience real dark, and notice how bright the glow of the fire is in this time. Likewise, in the mornings, I try to see as much as possible by the early dawn light coming through the windows, taking a moment to appreciate the growing of the day.

It’s healthy to experience real dark, real light, real hunger, and real satiety. We are experiencing what is real, what is intense, what is full of life and nature, rather than living in a haze of technology.

I think in the modern world there is a lot of focus on uniformity, comfort and ease. People expect to be able to see the same and do the same activities at any time of day or year, to have access to the same foods all the time. To be able to change this or that at the flick of a switch. I wonder if important things that we are meant to experience are getting lost in the search for the easy life and the reliance on technology.

This year I’ve been reflecting a bit on the differences between farming and homesteading. We sometimes drive past a pastured poultry farm in the middle of nowhere at night and see eerie-looking lights around each of the chicken caravans. Outside is silent and still, completely dark except for the small area around the caravans, where you can see chickens lazily moving about, living their lives, expressing their chicken-ness, oblivious to the artificial light.

For an egg farmer, some artificial light in winter would be an essential decision: without it, the chickens stop laying, but still need to be fed.

As a homesteader carrying a couple of dozen chickens through winter, it’s a minor inconvenience to be without eggs, and storing some eggs in autumn is a natural part of preparing for winter. There’s time to ponder whether it’s helpful to long-term chicken health to have a break from laying in the darkest days.

As a farmer, where the cost of chicken feed, replacement hens, packaging, and other costs is very close to the income made from selling the eggs, having these lights on can be the difference between farming and not farming.

Part of the problem is that people expect to have the same foods, at the same price, all year round. Not many people are prepared to pay extra for eggs in winter, or to eat more eggs in spring and less in winter, so even if it weren’t for the feed cost, farmers are still expected to produce consistent eggs all through the year, because people eat them the same all through the year.

A big change in our diets that has come from homesteading with health concerns is to rely 100% on our own hens for eggs. We eat a lot of eggs in spring, a bit less in summer and autumn, and in winter we don’t use many eggs at all. When our hens lay, we eat more eggs, when they don’t, we eat less eggs. This is the way things used to be, and even though we were both raised in suburbia, disconnected from natural cycles, it’s still possible to return to these old ways.