Life's a Garden, Chickens Dig it Up

As you all have had the pleasure (I hope!) of reading about my news that I am now a farmer with chickens, which my husband has to (always) follow up behind me with, “we don’t live on a real farm, she’s kidding”. This was a recent experience which is why it is still a fresh burn. I am a farmer! With four chickens. It’s not about the size of the farm, it's the size of the delulu dreams of the farmer. I picked that term up from my TikTok days and it has stuck with me ever since, it might be totally stale now. Something about millennials- we (or just I) love an abbrev or initialing of something, it's almost a reflex and I can’t help but to take to them. Another habit my husband doesn’t full throated endorse and feels permanently on duty to clean up in conversation (“she means ____”). Tangents aren’t exclusive to millennials either, but I suffer from those all the same. Back to business! Rearing chickens isn’t something I set out to write a full article about, but I think sharing a bit of the journey can shed some light on my larger, more important journey of reversion and learning the lessons God is setting out for me to learn. Also to warn others that as the title suggests, chickens are quite rough on the bulbs - so beware and invest in some protection. I have no suggestions, because ours have eaten Beyonson and every bulb in the garden, so it’s too late for us but maybe not for you!

Recently on a podcast I heard a priest say that Christ is always with us, like Ted tells us, but may feel like there are dry or dark times when we feel alone, forsaken. But rather than being alone, perhaps it is God’s hand just a heartbeat away behind us, so that we can learn to walk on our own. In the way I hover my hand behind my younger daughter’s back as she clobbers up the stairs, because she (we) has to learn somehow, I feel maybe that God is right behind me, too- hand hovering, ready to either catch me before I fall or help me up if I do. Sometimes there is a slip down the stairs, some ending in a cry and others in a laugh, but either way as much as I’d like to also lay in a heap on the floor recovering from the fall, I have to help my daughter up and keep going. With chickens, sometimes they escape and you’re chasing them in the yard with a fishnet and baby blanket for eight hours. Both experiences with the stairs and the fishnet produce valuable lessons of persistence, humility, and exhaustion. 

So it turns out the biggest lesson of chickens, gardening or reversion has been faith. WOW- talk about groundbreaking. I know. But let’s humor an old bag like myself, a dinosaur set free to roam after being in the captivity of the workforce for over a decade. I started with the garden after moving to our new home but quickly learned and realized gardening needs direct sunlight. Please hold all applause until the end, thank you. We live in a beautiful, rural and WOODED area which complicated the sunlight of it all, but fortunately we prevailed! Which was of course all part of His plan I can see now, because I had to fail with potted plants before I could dare fail with two 8x8 raised beds. As Edison reminds us vis a vis (I don’t know if that’s appropriate here, I just wanted to use it) Benjamin Gates, “I didn’t fail, I just found two thousand ways how not to make a lightbulb”. So in that spirit, I learned two dozen ways to sabotage, neglect, over/under address and everything in between to yield my very first crops. I’m extremely proud and also humbled to report I was able to grow AND EAT my own sustenance of ~ 50 green beans, 6 cherry tomatoes, 12 blueberries and lots of loose leaf lettuce. I had probably 5 full salads, not to mention all of the lettuce toppings my sandwiches had the benefit of. 

Behold, this is called a 'crop'

As I may have mentioned previously, I suffer from delusions of grandeur and believe everything I set out to do will be perfectly successful without a whif of complication or failure. This requires heaps of humility to course correct and you’d think it would feel discouraging, disappointing, embarrassing and frustrating. Well- you’d be right! It does. But somehow knowing that this is where I’m meant to be, learning these lessons alongside my children and husband, softens the blow and dare I say even allows me to enjoy the experience. Something I wasn’t expecting to happen over this year was feeling less personally offended or attacked (yes, attacked) by comments, lack of comments, commitments, plans or actions that didn’t really involve me. Part of my reversion experience has included reading tons of excellent works on the spiritual principalities and sad, but very real spiritual warfare going on all around us. While I of course believe in and would love to gab about the whole kit and kaboodle (demons, Satan, hell, to be clear), I think that’s premature for our relationship and don’t want to spook anyone off too soon. So with that, back to evil- the devil really does look for ways to sow and cause division even in the simplest, smallest ways in my life. I can see that now that I’ve slowed down- in that I don’t feel rushed to respond; reflected on what had been said in the past through the lens of someone else- in that I don’t instinctively assume something is about me, to hurt me; now that I (try to) put Christ above all else- in that I stop thinking so much about myself and even if someone does hurt my feelings, I (try to) show them the grace Christ has shown me. None of those feelings, let alone words I’ve just written, would have been possible without turning down the noise, ridding my life of distraction and ultimately temptation, and putting God and therefore meaning back in my life. I’m not saying the fifteenth delicious wretched little Pillsbury sugar cookie is the devil in my ear (it’s me in my ear) or that I live a pious life devoid of any noise or temptation, I don’t- but I am trying to. That’s the coolest part about this entire experience- I find myself WANTING to do better, to try harder, to give full effort and benefit of the doubt on behalf of Jesus Christ. Having Christ back in my life gives it meaning in the scholastic way, in that I’ve truly enjoyed re-learning everything about our religion and look forward to my next read or lesson; but also in a very tangible way, that I perform tasks with more care, (try to) treat interactions with more patience and grace, and think of how I can model Christian behavior when I’m in the wild. You’ll notice all of the parens ‘try to’s’ - this is the point, that is what Christ is asking me to do - just try, and soon see that the trying gets easier and sometimes even comes without the trying. This never would have been my story if I was still busy kicking my own, and husbands, ass every five seconds because I was all torn and twisted up from the master of deceit.

Liar Liar (1998) for any less cultured here

Woof, let’s move on to something a little lighter- shall we! On to the chickens, which I can assure you is not a lighter or easier lesson to share that I’ve learned. Oh well, you’re here aren’t you! Stay a little longer, come on. The chickens were a much bigger risk and commitment that I have to admit I’m still a bit surprised my husband signed off on. But like a ten year old getting their first pet, he was and remains very firm on NOT helping pick up the poop and making me do the hard stuff, like take care of them. That’s fine, if I’m the farmer I say I am- I have to walk the walk, or run the run when they’re trying to escape. It turns out that chickens can’t fly in the sky sense, but they can very much get some air and distance when they pick up speed on the talons. Ergo- they are fast little bastards and really not catchable, so I had to learn to train them and make them trust me. Easier written than done, as goes all of my story. But over a period of a few weeks, probably two full in total, I learned the right time of day to let them out, how to use the scratch (chicken treats, to you non farmers out there) to lead them back, and even get close enough to pick them up and hold them. I had a real life hen in my arms and both of us live to tell the tale! That is the craziest twist of all, that these beasts survived chick-fancy. Another learned on the job harrowing piece of this was that one of my (hen) girls had an impacted situation, so I had to manually release the situation three times a day in a warm -get this, bird bath- for three days in the beginning. Even a newborn didn’t give me that much anxo, yet I was preparing for bereavement if I lost one of these girls! But all has worked out in the end and I’m still learning new things about them almost every day. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the very first egg on September 11, 2025 - a date I at least remember for now. I had no faith that this would work, that I could actually keep and raise chickens to lay eggs and even come when called, and yet that is exactly what happened. God set this path out for me and without knowing whether it will succeed or fail, with His and my family’s help, I persevered (sometimes blubbering) to learn the lesson(s) meant for me. “Therefore, do not throw away your confidence; it will have great recompense. You need endurance to do the will of God and receive what he has promised” Hebrews 10:35-36.

However, as much fun (?) as all of this has been, and it actually has been truly fun in most instances, there was and will always remain a real, hard, necessary and hopefully rewarding lesson at the end of the day. The vocation of motherhood is the ultimate leap of faith, the longest seed to sprout to crop cycle (God willing), and the most important lesson I’ll have to learn and keep learning. There will be many more times of doubt, drought, abundance and attitude adjustments on this journey through life, but that’s what the Church is for - to give me the community (on earth and in heaven), the Word, body and blood of the Savior, and the courage to keep trying, keep putting on the armor of God, to protect and grow the blessings I’ve been bestowed. This is the cause worth fighting (read: not quitting) for. 

From left to right: Head Hen, Dorothy and Blanche. Not pictured: Sophia and Rose.