by Gary Abdullah

Lucinda Hart-Gonzalez walks from the farmhouse into the gray twilight of a Jefferson County morning and heads for the chicken coop. As she enters, Tick Not Hen, her rooster, meets her at the door, following her as she goes from nest to nest and sitting on her shoulder as she cleans the brooder and feeder. She pauses in mid-motion as a flock of geese flies overhead, honking and calling to one another. As she watches the V pass over, Hart-Gonzalez notices that the chickens and rooster are also motionless, silently fixated on the squadron’s flight path.

Lucinda Hart-Gonzalez tends free-range chickens in her coop at Paradise Gardens and Farm in Reynoldsville.