I had no intention of falling in love with the chickens. I try to be a good person, but I have to tell you that I think chickens are weird. If I’m totally honest, I think I was partly scornful of them because they are my shadow selves running around freely: easily frightened, scared of new things, mean to one another.
Chickens are so chicken.
And yet.
When I’m walking down the driveway and call out Want breakfast or Want bugs? (they get dried mealworms as an afternoon snack—more on this later) they run to the gate. There is something so wonderful about a running chicken. They have so much body and so little leg. If I were to draw a caricature of a chicken, I would draw a dinosaur on stilts.
Or maybe just myself.
I also come running when anyone mentions food. I also have an awkward gait. I also peck at food all day. I also am sometimes mean to people when they are down (aaaah! That’s hard to write!). My feathers also get ruffled.
I, however, am not a common sandwich ingredient or a frequent part of dinner.
So this has been a thing. On more than one occasion I have gone into the coop to feed the chickens having just eaten one of their brethren.
This is something I have considered.
Mostly I just felt bigger than they are. Like, Sorry, but I’m the boss of you and that means I can have you in sausage form for breakfast. I’m a farmer-in-training! I need to eat! I burn through calories!
The bug thing started because the white chicken flew the coop a couple of times. I think she must have been an Olympic athlete in a past life because the fence is tall. I certainly couldn’t jump over it. Once she was out, she had no plans of returning. It would take two people to corral her back inside.
That all changed when I found the dried mealworms at the feed store. Now, when she flies the coop, all I have to say is Want bugs? and she runs through the open door. I call her the Notorious RBG because nothing holds her back, but she also knows when to come home and have a snack.
I didn’t make a decision not to eat chicken, but I realized yesterday I can’t remember the last time I ate it. It doesn’t occur to me to buy it when I am shopping. Truth be told, it doesn’t occur to me to buy any meat. For one thing, Spirit Hill is a walking humungous salad these days: so many kinds of greens, tomatoes, beans, zucchini, and I forget what else, and then there are the apples and the pears and the peaches, not to mention the eggs!
I do not consider myself a vegetarian. I’m just not, at the moment, eating meat.
Spirit Hill changes you in the most unexpected ways. In the eight months since I’ve been here, I feel like I’ve become a different person. I am more rooted, happier, closer to spirit.
I see what happens to people when they come for a weekend or a week or two. It’s amazing. I call it the glow. It’s like the heaviness of their habitual selves falls off in the face of all this beauty and the pace of the growing plants and breathing animals and birds (even the gophers and moles who seem to be plotting how to take over the world, one tunnel at a time).
I am grateful I get to experience this daily. It feels like a miracle.