This essay was originally sent to my newsletter subscribers (are you subscribed?) on the New Moon in August 2023. There’s another heat wave on today’s New Moon in July 2024 and re-sharing here/now feels very relevant. A few small updates during those intervening months: my daughter’s pronouns are now they/them, plus they did get their much-longed-for kitten for their 10th birthday. Happy New Moon!
My daughter at a local farm a while back, dreaming of chickens.
I live in a farmhouse cottage in a once-rural town in the Pacific Northwest. The house is about a hundred years old and is situated on a parcel of land that produces more fruit than we can eat. It’s the kind of property that begs for chickens.
My 9 year-old may well be speaking for the land, as she’s been begging for chickens since we bought the place. But until she’s able to care for them substantively by herself, the chickens will need to wait. She tells me she’ll be ready when she’s 10. We’ll see.
She says she’ll be ready for a second cat (“a kitten!”) then, too. A recent visit to the allergist revealed that she’s allergic to pretty much every tree, weed, and furry beast.. but not to feathers. So her interest in chickens has eclipsed her kitten craving for now.
The land, the house, and our possible future chickens are on my mind as I sit in my office with the AC roaring in my ears. It’s 105º out and this old house is cooled by a single window unit situated just to my left. I give thanks for that little AC every summer, as the temperature creeps up more and more each year. Two years ago we even had a 118º heat wave.
I muse: Would we bring the chickens indoors on the hottest days? How would we get heat to their coop in the winter? I clearly do not know enough about chickens to tend them. YouTube has all the answers on this, but I don’t have the bandwidth to research poultry care. I think about enrolling my daughter in 4H so she can get support from a community of tried-and-true homesteaders.
The chickens and the AC and today’s heat wave have tuned me in to the omnipresent backdrop of climate change. It’s actually always on my mind. It’s a theme that snakes through the psyches of many of my clients, as well. Some are addressing it head on in their professional and creative work. Some are overwhelmed by it. We are all affected by it.
The possible future chickens will be affected by it, too. Any raising of chickens here will need to accommodate the reality of the climate as it is now… not as it used to be.
While I haven’t researched how to care for the possible future chickens through the extremes of heat and cold, I have researched local regulations around livestock. I know that I don’t know all the answers to questions on the poultry permit application. Questions like these: “Where will you store the animal waste? How (and how often) will it be removed from your property?” My daughter and I hadn’t even considered waste removal. We’d just googled cute enclosures and looked at cute breeds and dreamed cute dreams.
Which is why we are clearly not ready for chickens. When we are (if we ever are), we will need to design the systems of their care in such a way that reflects reality, not just our sweet idyll.
The possible future chickens and the 105º weather bring a teaching that feels very resonant with this New Moon:
Good design is based in reality. Great design bends to the future. Bad design clings to the past.
There are a lot of details that go into manifesting our dreams and visions. You may not be dreaming of chickens, but you do have desires and your energy reaches out toward them across the arc of time.
Let this New Moon be a starting place for re-calibrating to the energy of now.
As you sketch out possible futures for yourself — a career change, a business upgrade, a new relationship, anything at all — be sure that you are basing your starting place off the circumstances of now. Honor who you are and how you are now. In reality.
This does not mean staying stuck in circumstances. This moment of now will evolve. You will evolve.
But it does mean dropping the stories about yourself and your circumstances that simply aren’t true. This New Moon is a welcome time for a “systems update.”
Here’s a little charm:
I compost the past, and let it go.
I honor what’s now, and let it flow.
I embrace what’s true and create what’s new!
May your New Moon be filled with creative possibility, grounded in reality, and guided by the principles of good design.