death's door

It being spring, we have quite a number of broody girls here at the farm. Five chickens went broody at the same time, and the two turkey hens shared a nest. When a hen goes broody, we just grab a bunch of random eggs and shove 'em under her. Might be a goose egg under a turkey, a duck egg under a chicken, who knows. The hen doesn't seem too concerned about genetic loyalty herself. She just fluffs herself as wide as she can reach, tucks any errant eggs under her, and keeps those babies warm for weeks. Before you know it, a bunch of squeaking puffballs appear. 

And some of those puffballs don't make it. A crack appears in one of the turkey eggs, and a tiny beak peaks through. By the next day half of the shell is gone, and the plucky bit of feather inside unfurls to reveal a single black eye. But the next morning, the baby is dead, curled up in a little spiral. And another egg that had just begun to crack the day before is still and cold.

Willow asks to see the babies, specifically the one who had been half-born the day before. I stoop down to her level and explain gently that the poults were not strong and didn't survive their births. She is very sad and asks what had happened, so I describe death as I always do: the body returned to the earth where it can feed new life. She brightens at that and asks if the babies would become soil so we can plant them in the garden someday, and I say yes. I'm trying to convince myself, too.

Sometimes you wish for death. A few of the eggs incubated before we got here were under too-hot lamps and the contents became, for lack of a better word, scrambled. One chick was born with a twisted foot. Another was born with both feet essentially useless. I thought that chick should be put down. I couldn't see how he would survive. Such severe external abnormalities virtually guarantee that the innards are scrambled as well. But he did manage to get around, pulling himself by his little wings to the food and water dishes. This was taken as evidence that he should live. I was skeptical. Chickens don't like deformed or injured flock-mates. The other chicks stepped all over this guy, and pecked at the foot that dragged behind him. I worried what would happen if he grew to adulthood and began to free-range. He would have no way to defend himself.

I talked to him about it, foolishly perhaps, but when you're around animals all day it comes naturally. His wings were ragged, his feet were scabbed, he had no feathers on his belly from the constant pressure of lying on the ground. I told him to go. I said that I would release him if I could. And I thought about doing it anyway. I hated watching him struggle to eat and drink, ducking his head as the other pullets converged for vicious attacks. I thought it was wrong to keep him alive.

One day I opened the isolation coop and saw this boy curled up in the corner. He was breathing, but his eyes were closed. I distributed food and water but he made no move to drag himself over to the dispensers. I picked him up and he barely moved against my hand. His eyes opened briefly and he let out a feeble peep before seeming to fall asleep, his little head nestled between two fingers. I tucked him back into a corner of the coop and sent down a little prayer to the Earth that she would take him before nightfall. She did. His little head was curled under a wing and he was dead. I didn't feel relief so much as regret, that he was not shown better mercy.

The rains come and one thriving turkey chick goes missing. A skunk miraculously evades the dogs and decapitates two pullets. A sheep, pregnant with twins, herniates an organ. I don't know if she will survive, if her babies will be born. And of course we have our hands in the mess of death sometimes, selectively culling so we can eat and the animals can be safe and healthy. The buzzards circle over this farm almost constantly, knowing that if they wait long enough, they'll be rewarded.

My dreams are dying here, too. We cannot stay.

It's not the work. I love the work. I love the ache in my knees and the backbreaking labor of double-digging in clay soil. I love the animals fiercely. I love our little dusty home. I love this landscape. I've learned so much in this small time, about how strong I am and how much I can do on my own and how much I can live without and how much I love laboring alongside my good man. I learned that I can do this work and that I want to do it. But not here.

When people ask, I usually tell them that our children love this place, and that is essentially true. They've never breathed a complaint about our living conditions, and they talk excitedly of the animals and the garden. A farm is a wonderful place to raise a child, but this place is just coming together, and on a fundamental level they are not safe here. They are terrified, rightfully, of the aggressive geese and the goats who have a sense of entitlement about being in the barn. They cannot be nearby during feeding or herding, and they cannot move around the farm unaccompanied. So they spend almost all of their time inside -- except when we're working in the fenced garden, which is not really part of my job.

And because we have to work to live here, the work often comes first, even if it means distracting the children with a movie while we do it. Willow is developing a complex about being left alone and I cannot respond quickly to their needs if I'm in the middle of a heavy job. Sometimes I cannot respond at all.

I'm the last person to be dogmatic about "stay-at-home" versus "working" parenthood. I think these distinctions are useless. Jeremy and I have an equal commitment to directly parenting our children and that is the sum total of my approach to that popular dilemma. But I'm very troubled by the practice of using the television as a babysitter, and kids should spend most of their time outside. I have a very strong opinion about the need for self-sufficiency -- it's not my duty to entertain them -- but Willow and Isaiah are 4 and 6 and cannot be expected to be alone, outright alone, for long stretches of time.

I put my family first in all things, until we came here, as did Jeremy. And this, combined with so many large and small issues at odds with all the wonderful things about this work, makes me realize the truth in what my wiser friends have warned: it's too soon. We have to wait.

So it's time to move on. And it's time to say it out loud: maybe it's time to let this go altogether, at least for the next long while. Maybe I will find a job on another farm, but it's not the right time to have my labor tied to our ability to live there. And it's very possible that the most we'll manage to do for ourselves for the next long while is a small chicken coop, a large garden, and a rabid support of small local farms. Maybe that's all we'll ever have. Maybe it has to be good enough.

And now I must say: I'm sorry. I made this sound better than it was because I didn't know how to explain what's gone wrong. But I learned to love the work and I learned to handle animals large and small, I saw birth and I saw death, I was a participant, I was capable. I can move forward with this, out of this dying and into some smaller birth.