Small caveat, dear reader. I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, when my chickens were big. That flock is gone now, weighing in at an average weight of over 7 ½ pounds at 60 days. I got new baby chicks yesterday and didn’t have time to write in between. So, here’s a sort of oldy and hopefully a goody. J
It’s been very hot and the chickens are very big. Always, in the back of my head…the thought of the disaster that could happen. The water line breaks, flooding the house. The fogger pump goes out and 26,000 chickens die from the heat. The power could go out. The wells could give out. I check them every hour during the daylight, praying and worrying.
And, oh the buzzards.
They circle and land near the composter, ripping apart the dead and stringing feathers and chicken feet all around.
It’s gross. So, to avoid that, we cover the dead birds with a mixture of old chicken litter and composted dead chickens. It’s disgusting, smelly stuff, but is better than a pile of dead, rotting chickens in 95 degree heat.
People will often call and want a truckload of compost. It is the best fertilizer around, but lawsy lord have mercy!! It stinks and often still has bits of bone, feathers, and feet with the claws still attached.
I’ve been picking up a lot of dead chickens, not uncommon this time of year. Clint has been able to help me a day or two here and there, but mostly it’s my job. So I get out there early as I can, bypassing my morning workout to walk the chickens in the relative cool of the morning. Clint told me I should hire some teenage boys to come and help me. I guess I could, but what else I gotta do? I say to him. If it takes me all day, it takes me all day. It’s my job.
The mortality was down today and I was grateful. Only about a hundred in all three houses combined. That’s still higher than I like, but I’ll take it. I have to dump the dead in between each house, making 3 trips total to the fly ridden, stinky composter. The tractor is parked nearby, Clint coming home each night and covering them. I can drive the tractor, but as my history will show, I have a penchant for ripping boards down and being destructive in general with the front end loader. I try to be very careful, but I have this fear always that I’m going to tear something really important up and Clint will have to come home and fix it. I hate to give him more work to do and that’s what was on my mind as the tractor started easily and I shifted in into low (granny) gear and pulled with all my might, leaning hard to turn the steering wheel. This old tractor is just a TRACTOR , it isn’t for show or comfort, it is for WORK and WORK only, so there is no such thing as power steering. I feel my arms strain to turn this wheel. The seat is too far back for me to sit all the way into it, so I perch on the edge and turn the wheel while trying NOT to mash down on the clutch or brake.
I pulled forward into the first bin of the composter, full of dark litter/dead chicken/maggot/unknown bug substance. I lower the front end bucket, then scoop it upward while backing out. I pull forward toward the dead chickens, white and large, pale yellow bony chicken feet sticking out here and there. I raise the bucket and un-scoop the compost on top of the white feathers, covering up their bodies, no feet sticking out now.
I back out slowly and decide I really need another load. I repeat the above process, covering most of the dead, leaving only a few showing.
But, I shall stop now…I have done good work and haven’t broken anything. It’s good enough for today and Clint can bypass this little job tonight. I’ll try it again tomorrow, perhaps I’ll get better and take the job away from him completely.
See? That’s what I do. I make people feel like they aren’t needed. I don’t mean to do that, I just swell up to fill whatever space I’m put in. I just DO things. I think about a conversation I had the other day with a friend who is like a sister to me. She has a new boyfriend, a much better man than her husband and they got into their first argument the other day. Why? I asked but I knew the answer before she spoke. She had tried and tried to figure out how to get this kid to ball practice and this kid to the dentist and this kid picked up from school and this kid a sitter. (she’s got 4)
The new boyfriend YELLED at her and said “WHAT AM I?? CHOPPED LIVER?? I can help you, you know!!”
This had never occurred to my sister/friend, that she couldn’t do it all by herself and that people will help you.
I’m not so much like that anymore, I was years ago…now I just don’t think to ask for help. I think I can do anything and am stunned when I can’t.
When we first got the chicken houses, I didn’t even drive the tractor, I just piled the birds up by the door and Clint hauled them off when he got home.
One day, I thought “this is stupid” and I drove the tractor down there and hauled them myself. Before long, it became old hat and I branched out during cold, cold frozen winters. I would take hay on the tractor to the cows…it was so cold and the wind so strong…I would bundle up and take one bale at a time, making 3 trips to hay the cows, the wind blowing the occasional piece of dry hay into my eyes off of the big round bale. I was afraid to take 2 at a time, one on the front, one on the back, it scared me. But I could take one, and then when Clint came home, he wasn’t driving around in the dark AND cold, haying the cows.
But today wasn’t cold, it was HOT and the compost STINKS. I didn’t break anything on the tractor and I did it by myself.
I think about compost.
It is stinky and horrid and terrifying, filled with maggots and bugs and dark beetles, attracting possums and raccoons and rats and coyotes and feral cats and stray dogs.
But it grows the best garden, bright tomatoes and green okra, yellow squash and speckled zucchini.
I think of my life, of compost I have been handed in the form of people in charge of me, my safety, my comfort, my sense of self.
So much compost. Stinky, horrid compost. Fly blown and rotten.
But, here have I, in my garden now…my life…blooming with my husband and my children and their spouses. Blooming away. Bearing fruit. Rising up toward the sun, to feel it on our faces, all together, my family, laughing on Sunday afternoons after church, our plates sitting on the floor to be picked up after stories, giggles, teasing, and naps on the couch. Shhh. I’ll get those dishes later, I say. They’re asleep. Let them rest, my grown children, my handsome husband. Shhh. They are tired and comfortable, full bellies and cool fans beckon, they stretch out here and there on couches, on beds.
So, so much compost I’ve have shoveled my way. Oh, but dear reader. The compost I have had handed to me in my past has fertilized me like no clean, cushy former life could have.
And so, I leave this writing, to go to the chicken houses and check the water, check the power, check the chickens, check the temps, check the fogger pumps.
I’ll glance at the composter as I leave house 3, a few buzzards lighting there, confused. They can smell the death, the rotting chickens…but because of the compost, they cannot get to them.
The buzzards, always there, always circling, waiting for a spot that is uncovered and vulnerable. They best fly on.
I turn my face to the sun like a sunflower (oh, aren't we all sunflowers at heart?) and drive home.
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