The Life and Times of the Plume

We sent our meat chickens to poultry heaven this weekend where they are perpetually pecking at organic non-GMO corn, napping in warm sunshine, eating baby grasshoppers, and dust bathing with the spirit in the sky. Bless their little hearts.

It was hard. I loved these little chickens. They came to us yellow, fuzzy, and one day old and I got to know them over the 8 weeks they were alive and called this farm home. We started three breeds of meat chickens this spring because we dearly love a roasted and spatchcocked chicken once a week and we didn’t know which breed we would prefer — cornish-x, turken, and rhode island reds is what we wound up with. We would have loved a batch of freedom rangers but sometimes we order chicks and we get what we are able to get. This batch of birds was cornish-X, notorious for being a wonderful broiler bird. These chickens grow fast and pack on the muscle and fat right quick like. Some people say they are vacant and while they are less agile and less clever than the average chicken, I found them to be really chickeny chickens once I allowed them to free range outside of their chicken tractor. These were lovely little birds to raise and we’ll probably always raise a few, every year. The only thing I didn’t like about them is the way they ate us out of house and home. These birds WANT THEIR SCRATCH AND THEY WANT IT NOW — demanding little buggers. They’ll chase you across your farm inyard if they think you have grain for them and they’ll trip you and gather around you like a wild pack of feathered vampires ready to feast.

Setting these guys in the killing cone was quite sad for me and watching them bleed out was tragic but I think our food shouldn’t come easy. Why should it? It doesn’t come easy for the wild ones. Why should it be effortless for me? I took my time while we were butchering. It felt important to me that each bird went into the killing cone feeling peaceful and calm. I held each one until they were quiet and comfortable and placed them gently in. People ask me all the time how I can reconcile myself with this work, with animal husbandry and with the killing, with hunting wild game, with the realities of the harvest, and the most simple answer I can give is that I don’t want to survive, I WANT TO THRIVE.

I never talk about this and maybe I should talk about it more (or maybe not) but I have a thyroid disease that I manage with medication. I also manage it to a large degree with my diet. I eat meat and vegetables. I eat some fruit when it is in season in my own orchards and gardens. On rare occasions I eat grains in the form of rice or quinoa, I consider it a treat. I can tolerate some legumes but not all. I do not consume any soy products. I avoid corn like the plague. I eat whole foods, never processed foods. I do not consume any dairy — though I believe I could tolerate dairy if I had my own milk goats or a milk cow which I am thinking about acquiring. Milking every day is a tremendous commitment.

If I were to cut animal proteins and fats out of my diet there would be hardly anything left for me to eat. I’m not sharing this because I feel a need to justify how I live and how I eat. I do what I want. But I do want to convey that this is not easy for me. It is not easy to care for and love my livestock, to make sure it lives well and dies well. It is satisfying work and it is difficult work and it is important work for me. At the root of it is primitiveness (the trueness) of my humanity, the thread that ties me to all my ancestors, the thread that ties me to the long lineage of farmers I come from. I feel like this work, the work of growing, raising, and hunting my food is what keeps me human.

I am proud to farm. I come from a long line of farmers. Farming is in my blood. One of the greatest tragedies of my life is not owning a piece of the family homestead in Saskatchewan which was sold off and absorbed into a megafarm instead of staying in the family — my grandparents raised six daughters in that glorious dirt beneath that living sky and none of them wanted to grow wheat. My younger sister and I lament this as we lean towards middle-age and feel our souls yearn for more topsoil, more space, more autonomy.

And maybe that is at the root of all of this. Autonomy. The right to live my life fully, to answer to nobody but my own conscience and the God I place my faith in, to eat what I need to eat to nourish my body, mind, and soul, to move beyond surviving and to thrive. To thrive.

We had a great weekend here. We thrived. Every Sunday in the summer months around five o’clock I suffer a small trauma when Robbie loads his gear in the truck and heads back to McCall for work. These 36 hours we have together on the weekends before he starts actively jumping fire are so damn sweet, so damn fleet. Absence truly makes the heart grow fonder. As the growing season continues here I’m spending more of my life out on the land, on my land, tending to it, coaxing life from it, intertwining myself with the beauty that rises up from decay and death. My hands are dirty and I feel no guilt. My belly is full and I feel no shame. I know who I am and I know my place.

I gather and dry flowers and herbs all summer long but my favorite to pick is the chamomile. The patch is fragrant and joyful in the breeze. The way a hot cup of chamomile tea feels in the belly is similar to how it feels to harvest the flower: tranquil, calming. The evening cool comes as a relief after hours of sunshine and wind. My livestock, dogs, and cats come to settle around the herb garden, chattering amongst themselves in beeps, cheeps, squeals, snorts, barks, meows, sipping water from the puddle that formed beneath the leaky garden hose joint (note to self, fix the leaky hose). It’s a version of heaven. Peaceful. As the evening turns to gold, I bend at the waist, reach out with one hand and rake my fingertips through the chamomile stalks — the flower heads pop off easily into my hand. I do this over and over again, rhythmically, until each blossom in the patch has been collected. Then I’ll wait two days and do it all over again. One cannot appreciate how much effort goes into a cup of chamomile tea until they have grown, gathered, and dried the blossom themself. I never take my tea for granted, I never leave a cup of home harvested tisane unfinished. After collecting the blossoms, I dry them until they’re slightly crumbly and store them in large mason jars in my pantry for winter brewing. My harvests and preserving efforts have begun here with garlic scape pickles in the pantry fridge and racks of raspberry leaf, oregano, chive, and chamomile drying in the kitchen. It’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all I’ll put up this summer. One of the best views in the world is watching the pantry shelves slowly fill with the exquisite treasures of the growing season (another great view is a happy goose in the oregano).