Dead Chicken Alley or The Futility of Farming

Farming can break your heart. This is something I've written about before and that my husband has emphasized on various occasions. But today is the first time I've experienced this heartbreak first hand.

My husband gives his heart, energy, body and often sleep to this breathing thing called farming. He bends toward it, fighting to keep alive and help grow. He returns in the evening bleeding, stung, shocked, sun-burned, sweaty, dirty, dusty. But there is life in his blood-letting and wounds. And there is often life that grows from his labor, sprouting and green.

But sometimes his work is in vain. Sometimes the rain won't let up and the soil isn't dry enough to plant. Sometimes three queen bees die in a row and you can't save a hive you spent all winter nurturing. Sometimes the weeds are too many for the workers and a large crop that took days and days to plant is lost. Sometimes bugs and blight and deer eat their fill of your labor.

Sometimes we can't hold the fruit in our hands and it falls. This bitter humility teaches us that we can't ultimately control this thing that steals our sleep.

How did I feel this today for the first time?

A raccoon ripped its way into our coop last night killing four adult chickens and the last four of our chicks that cowered in a wire-enforced dog cage. EM discovered them. I had to clean up their mutilated bodies that buzzed and droned with flies in the manner of a terrifying discovery only reserved for horror movie soundtracks.

All of our labor and care over the past few months, all the daily feeding, watering, moving, opening up and shutting in, all of this was for naught. All of it was futile.

Now we have eight chickens left to keep alive. After that, I'm not sure that either of us has the heart to bring another poor creature into this den of death, this Dead Chicken Alley.