A Dust Bath for Five Chickens: satisfaction in small things

I’m in Wisconsin, helping my daughter with a small chicken project. Her five chickens needed a bin in the coop to take their dust baths. So we gathered a couple of old vegetable beds and transferred the soil into sheltered boxes where they could scratch, roll, and clean their feathers.

Building a dust bath for five chickens on a summer day is not important work by most standards. The chickens certainly didn’t clap or bow in thanks. They wandered nearby, squawking their opinions, occasionally stepping into the work before it was finished, entirely unconcerned with labor.

Yet, when we finished, there it was; a small, completed thing that for some odd reason provides me with satisfaction.

My life has been spent working with words. Classes, speeches, books, and essays. I love that work, and it continues, but ideas disappear without my ever knowing where they land. The response to most writing I do is chicken-like; someone may wander nearby and squawk out an opinion, but that’s usually about it.

I gathered up dirt and threw it in the dustbin as sweat gathered on my shirt. By evening there was something that did not exist that morning; and perhaps that is why I find myself increasingly drawn to work like this. It reminds me of the dignity of tangible work and the quiet satisfaction that comes from leaving something just a little better than you found it.

The project was laughably small. But I felt it, and perhaps that is exactly the point.

Human life is not measured only by grand accomplishments. It is also measured in these ordinary acts of attention and repair. A moment to tend, lift, plant, build, and care for things that cannot return the favor . . . five chickens.

The chickens will soon test out their dust bath. I hope they like it. For some reason, this small offering from my hands matters to me just as your offerings matter to you. And that’s what we all hope, I think, that we walk away at the end knowing that, for a little while at least, something is better because we were there.