Farmers’ daughter

#blog52 #week46

This will always be home.

“a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot” Ecclesiastes 3:2

I am not a farmer’s daughter; I am a farmers’ daughter. Because I am not the daughter of just one farmer; I am the daughter of two farmers. And the granddaughter of four farmers. Some of the land my family farmed had been owned by my great-grandmother, and by my great-great-grandfather before her.

My dad is a farmer.

My mom is a farmer.

I am not a farmer. I knew very early on that I would break the chain. I didn’t mind helping out on the farm — feeding pigs, driving trucks, picking vegetables — but I had no intention of being either a farmer or a farmer’s wife. I was planning to live in a city and have a career.

After a long, meandering journey through suburbs and unsatisfying jobs, I’m finally there: I live in a city. I’ve worked in the same field long enough to call it a career. Also, I raise chickens in my backyard, so I like to call myself an urban farmer.

Left to right (back to front): Ruby, Lucille, Chloe

But I’m not really a farmer. I’ve always thought I fled the farm because I was drawn to both the grit and the glamour of the city, and that’s true. But it occurred to me this week that I am also temperamentally unsuited for farming. Because I’m a squeamish wimp.

We lost a chicken this week. She died a horrific, violent death. A mean neighborhood cat pushed his way under the fence and attacked, disemboweling my sweet, helpless hen.

Her name was Sennua. Well, I’ve never been sure how to spell it. Orchid named her when she was a baby chick. She said it was an African name from a song she was singing in middle school chorus, and that it meant “happy,” but I think she misheard it or made it up; I could never figure it out.

Orchid with Baby Sennua

Full-grown Sennua, in the foreground

So it was awful. I went out to feed the chickens Wednesday afternoon and noticed there were only four of them. I started poking around the pen, and quickly found the mutilated body of the fifth. I gasped and immediately went back in the house and called Allen. He was out of town, selling lawn and garden products in Knoxville. He’s never gone overnight for work, but this week he was.

“We really don’t want to leave her body in the pen with the others,” he said. He was right, of course. I steeled myself, found a long shovel, and managed to scoop her up. (This was particularly challenging because I broke my left elbow about a month ago and can’t really lift any weight with that arm. I know, I wrote in an earlier post that it wasn’t broken. Turns out it was.) I didn’t even bury her. I just tossed her in a pile of brush in the edge of the wooded area at the back of the yard. It was absolutely all I could manage. When Allen came home the next day and went out to bury her, the body was nowhere to be found. I hate that damn cat.

My parents deal with dead cows regularly.

I couldn’t do it. It’s too gross. If I have to, I can handle blood, poop, puke and spiders. I can not cope with dead animals or live snakes or rodents. I can put a worm on a hook, but I have never taken a fish off of a hook. We are going to visit my folks on the farm in just a few days, for Thanksgiving. If we happen to go fishing, and I happen to catch a fish, my mother will take it off the hook for me. And dress it (meaning gut it). I could cook it.

So next week I’ll be back on the farm, basking in the peace and quiet and beauty of the place. And being thankful for my hardworking, tough-as-nails parents. And thankful that I have a house and a job back in the City of Atlanta to go home to.

Tags: chickens, farmer, farming, urban farming