Chickens in the Road Read online

  He took the boys to chop down a Christmas tree in the woods above my cousin’s barn where there was a lot of pine. The tree we brought home was too tall, too wide, too sparse, but it was free and it was something to pull us all together.

  I went along as the tree picker. I spotted a nice white pine.

  52 said, “Go over there and shake it.”

  And I did. Because I’m so naive. 52 was in good humor.

  The boys had divided up their duties before we ever walked up the hill. Weston was going to chop down the tree and Ross was going to drag the tree down the hill.

  Weston chopped. And chopped. And even tried to push the tree down. At one point, he kicked it.

  He got hot and took his jacket off.

  “Any time you want to admit that you’re a weenie who needs help with his job, I’ll help you,” Ross told him. Then they chased each other around the tree, fighting over the ax.

  “It might have been safer to keep them in the city,” I told 52 after I finished screaming.

  Luckily, the chasing stopped before there was any blood. Weston gave it one more good heave, then abruptly said, “I’m done.” And handed the ax to Ross. I think he just wanted to give up with dignity.

  Ross gave the tree the final blow and it fell. He still had to drag the tree off the hill, which he found quite disappointing.

  It was a long way down in the cold, snowy woods with the barren trees set against the bright, lowering sun. 52 held my hand as we walked. It felt like a new beginning. Everything was going to be all right.

  I decorated the tree with sugar cookie stars, gingerbread men, dried orange slices, and popcorn garlands. I made homemade gifts for friends and family. We were festive and frugal. 52 gave me an antique ring that had come from his father’s clock and jewelry shop that had once stood on the town square in the county seat.

  I knew, somewhere inside, was that kind and patient man who had won me with his tender tale of the feral cat. He was under a lot of stress. I redoubled my efforts to make a success of my website, afraid the financial pressure of the farm would do us in.

  After Christmas, I baked a beautiful loaf of raisin bread for the Ornery Angel. I put together bags of homemade cookies, bourbon balls, peppermint pretzels, and chocolate-dipped spoons. I’d been engaged in battle with the Ornery Angel for months. When I met her on the road, I would wave to her like a good country neighbor, but she wouldn’t wave back. She still wouldn’t move over, either, leaving me to creep along anytime I was caught behind her on the road. Nobody understood my battle with the Ornery Angel, particularly me, and I was pretty sure the Ornery Angel didn’t even know we were doing battle.

  I revealed my plan to Morgan.

  “Now she will like me!” I said.

  “You’re doing this so she will like you?”

  “No! I’m doing this so she’ll move over!”

  “That’ll never happen.”

  I explained it all to 52.

  “Now she will like me!” I said.

  “You’re doing this so she will like you?”

  “No! I’m doing this so she’ll move over!”

  52 just shook his head.

  Morgan got into the spirit of my plan, at least as far as making a gift to the Ornery Angel and her family. She gathered some things for the Ornery Angel’s children. A brand-new jacket that was too small and never worn, a Nintendo DS game (she had earlier given one of the Ornery Angel’s children her old Nintendo DS), and a little pink purse for one of the girls.

  The Ornery Angel liked Morgan and was always friendly to her, so I had her do the delivery. Morgan marched down the driveway, wearing her Santa hat, and up the road with the big bag of bribery.

  The next week was back-to-school week after the holidays. That Tuesday, I got away from the house late and got caught behind the Ornery Angel. We crept along for half a mile and then . . .

  She moved over.

  And the fact that my bribery succeeded . . . the fact that I did something nice for her for no reason other than selfish gain . . . the fact that I had therefore made no personal development in the preceding months at all . . .

  I didn’t care.

  She moved over! And in the midst of that first hard winter on the farm, that was something to celebrate. I was, kind of, maybe, a little bit, being accepted. And in a back road hollow in the hills of West Virginia, that was hard to accomplish.

  Toward the end of winter, we acquired a flock of sheep. A reader had told me about a farmer in Virginia who was closing out his sheep operation and he was giving away the sheep for free. A friend had recently given me a Dorset-Suffolk bottle lamb I’d been raising on the porch with the dogs. We named her Annabelle and I was completely smitten. I treated her like a puppy.

  I didn’t know anything about sheep, but next thing I knew I was a couple hundred miles away in the back of a pickup truck inside a barn in Virginia holding on to a 250-pound ram by a fistful of his incredibly long, curly wool while four more sheep were being loaded in with him.

  One ewe bolted before making it onto the ramp into the truck and escaped the barn. Luckily, she circled back into the barn from the other side where the retiring sheep farmer and 52 shoved her up the ramp into the truck. Every time a sheep was shoved in, the tailgate on the truck would have to be opened and it was my job to keep everybody who was already on the truck in place. Every time the men loaded one and left me alone standing in the bed of the pickup with those woolly mammoths, I was scared the sheep would kill me before they returned with the next one.

  We drove off with a sea of wool waving in the bed of the pickup truck—two Jacob ewes, two Cotswold ewes, and one Cotswold ram. We took all we could fit, and we felt like farmers when we pulled in to a gas station to fill up on the way back with a load of sheep on board. It was the type of adventure that drew us together. 52 would be relaxed at such times, and all our troubles would seem to fall away.

  Jacobs are dramatic and unique sheep. An “Old World” unimproved breed (meaning not altered or enhanced over the centuries by crossing with other breeds, also referred to as a “primitive” breed), they’re considered to be almost goatlike with their slight builds and more playful, agile personalities. They sport anywhere from two to six horns, and they have very thick multicolored wool. I stuck my hand into one of them and the wool swallowed my fingers before I hit skin.

  Cotswold is an old English heritage breed that was popular in the Middle Ages for the long, curly fleece. The ewes are also known as good mothers and are very calm. Not to mention massive.

  I was excited at the idea of contributing to the continuance of these beautiful heirloom breeds and had high hopes of raising lambs and shearing wool for sale. I wanted to find a Jacob ram and keep two purebred flocks. I had no idea how much sheep eat, or how difficult it would be to keep two separate flocks of anything on one small farm.

  Or that eventually I would become so scared of the Cotswold ram that I wouldn’t even enter a pasture where he was grazing if I was alone.

  All I knew was that I wanted to become more self-sustaining, and a couple of little goats and a handful of chickens weren’t going to cut it. All the goats did was eat cookies, and the chickens didn’t lay half the time.

  The first thing we did was get the sheep sheared. The shearer was seventy-four years old, and when he showed up, the sheep were still wandering around in the field.

  That’s how much we knew about keeping sheep. We spent the next hour chasing them around in circles between bouts of throwing ourselves at them while the shearer watched with a doubtful eye. Eventually, we decided to herd them behind the goat house. The shearer stood at one end, blocking outlet from the narrow path between the rear of the goat house and the fence with a pallet while 52 and I attempted to direct the sheep into the makeshift chute. We ran the first one in, and I stayed, blocking with my body, while 52 ran back to the other side. The shearer moved out of the way with the pallet, and 52 and I tackled the sheep.

  Then all three of us
held on to the long, lovely wool ringlets while we pushed and shoved and ordered the sheep into the pen. We had to repeat this procedure for every single one of them.

  Even so, the result was fascinating. I’d never seen sheep sheared before. Once we had a sheep in the pen, the shearer flipped it onto its bottom in a martial arts–type move that belied his age and scrawny appearance. I learned that once a sheep was positioned that way, it was helpless. The shearer went to work.

  He’d been shearing sheep for fifty years but told us that he’d never sheared a Cotswold before. Back in the day, he used to shear three thousand sheep a year, but most years anymore, he only sheared three hundred. Sheep weren’t so common around here these days.

  “I used to be able to shear twelve sheep an hour,” he said. He kept a running tale of his shearing experience going as he worked. I watched in awe as the thick wool fell away, leaving much smaller, bald sheep behind.

  I think he sheared about two an hour that day, but that included time spent chasing sheep. The Jacob ewes were slightly easier to manage because they had handles (horns) by which they could be dragged to the pen.

  By the time we got to the final sheep, I was covered head to toe in mud from flinging myself at sheep, and everyone was exhausted.

  The shearer was several minutes into shearing the last one, a Cotswold ewe, when he said, “I ain’t never cut off a tit before.”

  I don’t think I expected to ever hear that particular sentence, in any scenario, in my entire life. The shearer finished the job while I ran to the house for medical supplies. The ewe wasn’t happy, but she was all right. We paid the shearer, cleaned up the blood, looked at our huge piles of fluffy wool, and wondered, Now what?

  The next day, I swept off the back porch and we laid out the first fleece, inside (the part that was next to the sheep’s skin) down. The inside is already clean. The “outside” is what needs skirting. The outside of wool is dirty—the sheep has been wearing it. Skirting wool means to cut away the debris, any matted parts, and stuck-on poop. Then, with the “outside” still on top, you fold the fleece over and roll it up. This process always keeps the dirtier “outside” separated from the clean inside and leaves the nice, clean inside out so you can see the lovely wool. Then we’d move on to the next. And the next.

  We made bags out of old cotton bedsheets and left the tops open. Wool should be stored in something breathable. After skirting comes washing, drying, carding, spinning, and knitting.

  I looked at the five huge rolls of wool and wondered, not for the first time, if I’d lost my mind. I didn’t have time to make wool processing my new part-time job. “Let’s sell it,” I suggested.

  “Whatever you want to do,” 52 said. He’d helped skirt it, but he was done.

  I set aside some of the wool for myself to play with when I had time, and I put the rest up for sale to my readers.

  We were lucky the shearer ever came back for subsequent shearings (and that he remained alive, because we were never able to find anyone else who knew how to shear).

  Meanwhile, 52 had given me a baby jenny (female donkey), and I’d named her Poky. Not long afterward, I was at the hardware counter at the little store talking to Faye. They’d recently developed a spring to run water into their house. After twenty years at their farm and raising three children, they didn’t have an outhouse anymore. I was about to leave when Faye said, “You want a donkey?”

  I said, “I have a donkey.”

  She said, “I know you have a donkey. You want another donkey?”

  Someone had come in the store recently and mentioned they were looking for a new home for their old jack (male donkey). Their jack was named Jack.

  Of course, I took Jack home.

  I still had my small herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats, and I’d started a second small herd of Tennessee Fainting goats, too. They were entertaining, but not much more useful than the Nigerians.

  We were one year into the farm, and I felt like the lost baby bird that kept running around crying, “Are you my mother?” I kept acquiring animals and experiences, crying, “Are you my farm?”

  That spring, we planted like crazy. Berry bushes, fruit trees, grapes, wherever we could find a spot. 52 hauled in compost and expanded the vegetable garden, building a couple of raised beds that were more manageable for me while he tilled the larger regular garden that was so sloped I could hardly stand to work in it.

  He started fencing the meadow bottom for the sheep and building sheep shelters. The counseling sessions we’d started in the winter petered out. I still thought we needed to go, though I wasn’t sure we were accomplishing anything. Even so, 52 seemed committed to the farm, and our relationship was better at times.

  Then there were times when it wasn’t better, but I redoubled my efforts to be patient. I wanted this good life that we were building on the farm.

  My birthday was on a Saturday in April. It was a lovely spring day. The house was clean, the porch swept, the animals munching peacefully in the goat yard, the roosters crowing, brand-new chicks peeping in their brooder, and company on the way. All seemed right in Stringtown Rising Farm world.

  At 2 P.M., I found our little wether, Honey, down. I’d let him out of the goat house that morning. He’d eaten, browsed around the yard with Clover and her doeling, Nutmeg. I’d seen him as recently as 1 P.M., behaving normally. An hour later he was down, couldn’t get up, and looked as if he might die. And we had no idea why.

  Throughout the afternoon, we worked on various theories. Had he sustained some sort of internal injury? (There was no outward sign of injury, broken bones, etc.) We wondered if one of the big sheep, still up in the goat yard while the fencing was being completed in the bottom, had butted him too hard. Honey had a frisky little way of teasing them. Could he have had a stone, suddenly, lodge that quickly and put him down? I administered vinegar, just in case, but there was no real sign that a stone was the cause of his distress. (A stone would usually be prefaced by a period of straining and crying, not cause a goat to immediately go down in such a severe state.) Could he have some other type of infection? What sort of infection would cause him to go down so fast with no clue in advance? His behavior throughout the morning had been fine. There are a couple of fairly uncommon conditions called goat polio and listeriosis that can cause goats to become very sick, but in both cases, there are usually advance symptoms, and moldy hay/feed/silage is usually the cause.

  Company arrived on the brink of this crisis and did what they could to help—researching Honey’s symptoms on the Internet while we were on the phone for hours. The first two hours were spent desperately pursuing mission impossible. Large animal (farm) vets are few and far between as it is (even in farm country), and on a Saturday afternoon before Easter? If we’d had a cat or a dog or a bird, there were emergency vets available. Not for a goat. In two hours, the closest vet we could find to call us back was in Maryland.

  Honey appeared worse every minute. The vet we spoke with in Maryland told us to find some Banamine. Banamine is an anti-inflammatory that is sometimes administered for shock. She told us to call somebody with horses, that anyone with horses would have Banamine. By this time, we had called every vet in the phone book and were facing the panic-inspiring revelation that this was the be-all and end-all of professional assistance we were going to get. As one farmer I spoke to that day said to me, “This is the ugly side of experience.” Now I knew why so many farmers were amateur veterinarians—they had learned what I learned that weekend. And I also know why so many farmers were so generous in offering help in this type of crisis—they had been in our shoes and knew how frightening it could be.

  We spent the next couple of hours on the phone again—this time calling farmers. We started out calling horse farmers. None of them had Banamine. We called goat farmers. We called sheep farmers. We called farmers we knew and we called farmers we didn’t know. We’d call one person and they’d give us the phone number of someone else. We called friends of strangers. We had one phon
e line going all the time calling people and another phone line for people to call back where we had left messages. Everyone had stories about their own animals and advice. We went back and forth checking on Honey, looking at this, trying that. A farmer we’d never met before drove out to our farm and brought penicillin, administered the shot, and left us needles so we could give him more. (The penicillin was in case there was some kind of infection at work.)

  But in the end, there was nothing we could do. By Easter morning, Honey was gone.

  I had written so many stories on my website about the animals, and especially the goats—but this wasn’t a storybook. Honey was our first major loss, and the first head-on collision with the reality of farm life. This was a real farm and these were real animals, and sometimes there was going to be real heartbreak.

  Honey was a little goat with seemingly no purpose in life. He didn’t have a “job” on the farm. He didn’t make wool or provide milk or lay eggs. He was wethered (neutered) so he wouldn’t breed. He was, in fact, free, a product of buckling overflow who came as an add-on with Clover and Nutmeg. He was, pure and simple, a farm pet, and he had been a delight. He was sweet, somewhat submissive to the domineering does of his world, but he was a playful little thing. He loved to dance about the goat yard standing up on two feet, and oh my, he was a tease.

  I imagined him dancing on two feet with angel wings, way up there, somewhere, in a sky full of cookies. And I wondered, not for the first time, if I was really tough enough to be a farmer, especially when we decided to get pigs, our first animals brought on with the single-minded intention of slaughter.

  Chapter 8

  We put a pet crate in the back of 52’s pickup and drove down the road to the Ornery Angel’s house one spring weekend afternoon to pick up two piglets. I sat next to him on the truck’s bench seat, my hand resting on his jean-clad leg, as we puttered past our sun-dappled meadow bottom. I liked driving around in the truck with 52 on our farm when he was in a good mood. We had the sheep in the bottom now, and I’d ride down the driveway with him to feed them or check on them.