Teach a Woman To Cull Her Chickens, and You Feed Her For a Lifetime
The past weeks seem to have been full of animals here on the farm — animals coming and going, preparing to go. Yes, we will be butchering our pigs this month. Yes, it is sad and YES, we are waaaaaaay too attached to them. Yes, we made the mistake of naming them and petting them and loving them and calling them adorable nicknames. Everyone told us to name them “Bacon” and “Pork Chop” but I cannot. I will get attached to my pigs every time and every time we butcher them, it will be sad to see them go. But also, you will be able to order very delicious bacon from our farm store very soon. It’s getting OFFICIAL around here.
Enter, Jersey Cow
Our jersey cow is on her way to us. She currently resides in Oklahoma and is three years old. She responds to the name of Clover but I am going to have to change her name because I cannot have our cow having a regular, old cow name. She’s “IN MILK” which means that she is ready for us to milk her. So, when she rolls up to our farm at 9pm next Tuesday evening, she will need to be milked immediately upon her arrival.
Jersey cows can produce up to 6 gallons of milk a day. That’s a shit ton of milk. Whenever I tell people that we are getting a cow, the first thing they usually say to me is, “Wow, that’s a big commitment. You really have to be ready for that kind of commitment.” And what I think people have forgotten is that we have committed. We are committed. We bought a farm. We MADE a farm. We went all in. We’ve committed to a septic tank and a mortgage. We’ve committed to piñon and juniper trees, we’ve committed to snow and seasons, we’ve committed to a broken front door that constantly needs fixing and we’ve committed to the color turquoise on all our structures. We have both feet in on this farm project and figuring out (that’s right, no one on this farm has ever milked a cow before) how to milk a cow DOES NOT scare me in the least at this point.
Boone Ray and Tucker: The Tiniest Kittens (a short story about baby cats)
Heathar and I drive down the dirt road, the low and trickling river to our right, our truck kicking up dust in our taillights. It is already pitch black outside at 6:30pm, the blanket of winter setting in. We are on our way to pick up two kittens that were found in a barn down the road. They are too small to live outside just yet and so we have created a place in our bathtub for them to live (complete with bone broth, raw milk and warm towels) until they are big enough to go live in our barn, catch mice and keep our very generous jersey cow company.
When we arrive at the house where our kittens are, we are greeted by a woman who has one side of her head shaved and what look likes a purple streak in her greying hair. It’s hard to tell because it’s so dark outside. There is one dog chained to the front porch (what looks like a Husky mix) barking loudly as we pull into the driveway and dozens of empty dog kennels littered around her front yard. She leads us into the back of her house where there is a small garden shed. As we enter the shed, we are ambushed by the scent of warm puppy shit. She has just rescued seven Pitbull puppies from the side of the road this afternoon. They are undoubtedly adorable and Heathar has an eternal weak spot for Pitbulls. We stay focused. We aim for the kittens. The woman with the possible purple streak in her hair climbs her way through the mountain of occupied kennels and reaches our yellow and white kittens. She hands us the kittens and I wrap my hands around their tender and full bellies, immediately stuffing my face into their soft and warm fur. Their claws are like tiny needles, finding their way conveniently into my down jacket, plucking out small white feathers.
As we ride home, back through the arroyos and the grated dirt roads, one cat sits silently and obediently in my lap while the other claws her way around my upper body, looking up at me with her enormous, black saucer eyes begging me not to disapprove of her adventurous spirit. We get home and place them in the bathtub with all their warm towels. Immediately they insist on crawling behind the cold toilet and claiming their place there. They seem to calm down when I turn the light off and leave them alone but as I enter the bathroom, turn the light on and start brushing my teeth, they become wild — leaping and bouncing on top of one another, chewing on one another’s tails. They are fierce and sassy. They are going to be able to catch mice, I just know it.
Give a Woman a Chicken, and You Feed Her For a Day. Teach a Woman To Cull Her Chickens, and You Feed Her For a Lifetime
In between my therapy clients this week, Andrea and I helped our neighbors slaughter several of their chickens. More importantly, we taught them how to do it so they would forever carry the skill with them. We taught them how to remove the internal organs from their birds, how to know when their chickens were done bleeding out and how to remove all the feathers. We did this all in one hour — from start to finish we culled three birds. And by the end of it, our neighbors (all women) were holding the scalpels in their own hands, taking deep breaths and making all the cuts themselves. Andrea and I looked at each other, standing in the dead and wilted garden patch, with chicken heads laying in a bucket beside us and we smiled at one another. Everything we taught ourselves, we passed on. We did it. It felt so…normal. It felt like there was not ever a time in my life when I did not know how to cull a chicken and de-feather it. It felt like my hands had always known this work and I am more than happy to pass it on.
Notes on Being a Conductor
Watching the working pieces of our farm come together is like conducting a symphony — a little more violin there, less cello here, faster tempo all throughout and a big crescendo in the middle. (I feel like I am waving my conductor wand furiously at the tubas in the back when they start to lag and they lag frequently.) Our farm is peaking its head out from under the pile of chaos and rotting wood that it has been and it’s starting to look like something. It’s starting to look more organized. I am able to notice smaller things that need to be done instead of ALL the huge things that have been activating my primal survival instincts (like the roof leaking when it rains) and sending me into panicked and immediate action. This can only mean that the property is no longer screaming at me, but simply talking loudly in my general direction.
I know we are still in the beginning stages of creation (one year in) but in moments, I feel what it might be like when all of the instruments in the orchestra start to realize they are part of a collective and are not simply playing on their own. There is a synching up, a rhythm that is reached together, a hum, a purr and a rightness. Patience has paid off (or rather, I have internalized patience by watching other people handle challenges on my farm) and I am starting to see what happens when you stay with something. Over time, things take shape — how about that? That’s the beauty of commitment. If you stay with it, it starts to form into something that you have wanted, and maybe have wanted for a very long time. I know beautiful things don’t usually happen all at once. They happen over time — while you are milking a cow, tiling a floor or painting a chicken coop. And all of a sudden, you look up and you have a farm where all the instruments starts to realize they are playing the same song.
