5. Chickens

We decided to move out in to the country for a myriad of reasons.

1. Schools: We thought it would be nicer for the children to go to a smaller school. Especially when they got to middle school and kids tend to be hateful to one another. The sad thing is we left at exactly the same time that the city’s public schools were finally adding vegetarian options to their daily lunch menu. It may seem like a little thing, but I felt badly not being there to support it. Just picture the contrast between that and the fact that their new school has children in it whose parents actually slaughter their own food.

2. We run a dog rescue group. The city only allows you to have three dogs at any one time. Currently, I have 14. I doubt any of my previous neighbors would have condoned this.

3. Chickens. My husband, at the time, was a vegan. He very much felt that if he could raise his own chickens humanely it would be okay to consume the eggs. When he looked in to having chickens, in the city, there were too many restrictions to make that possible. Besides, I doubt any of my previous neighbors would have condoned this.

The children, Quinn and Caden, love their new school. Caden loves it mostly, I feel confident, because they have a large television set up in the cafeteria. This televisionshows a steady stream of Scooby Doo. This television blares non-stop through lunch. I think, my husband and I, are the only parents who hate this television. But, after all, we are from the city- where there would be a parental uprising over, not just the fact that educational programs are NOT being shown, but that there is this television in the first place.

Movies are also shown regularly in the place of recess, if the weather is a little bad. In the city, the teacher chooses the movie based on what has been deemed acceptable by the school board  or they simply play games. Here, the children bring movies. Quinn decided to take a 1966 Disney movie called “The Ugly Dachshund”, (If you hadn’t seen it, it is a cute little comedy about Great Dane that thinks he is a doxie.) 5 minutes in to the movie the teacher turned it off and said it wasn’t appropriate. Why? Because the two ADULTS in the movie were celebrating his birthday by drinking a glass of wine. I, being me, was incensed and wanted to drive up to the school and tell that teacher how ludicrous it was that a movie, in which a married couple is depicted sleeping in two separate beds, could ever be called inappropriate. However, my passive aggressive side got the better of me, so silently I fumed.

Our house, at the time of purchase, had a dilapidated chicken coop. I was excited to get it back up and running. Nick, my husband, took much pride in his first, real carpentry job. I didn’t think that the chickens would care if every rafter of their run was spaced perfectly and level. Nick did care though. With the placement of every board I was forced to endure the ritual of walking over to see that the bubble in the level was precisely in the middle. Our chicken palace, is sturdy and strong and above all else… it is straight.

After it’s reconstruction we set forth to find chickens, knowing nothing about chickens. A man, in a neighboring town, was selling some called Red Sex Links. Excitedly, we decided to make the drive. (Let it be said here, that in the country, if you pass the location you are attempting to get to, there is a good chance that it will take you several miles before you really realize it.) We didn’t make it to his house until dark. At that time, we decided that 5 hens and 1 rooster would make a fabulous flock. After all, every country home needs the crow of a rooster to get it started in the morning and 5 eggs a day would be more than enough to feed our family. We brought our chickens home and the first few flew out in a tizzy. Two remained, in the back of the crate, not moving. Nick pronounced them dead and in disbelief we stood staring in to the crate wondering how we could have killed two birds by simply transporting them. He reached his hand in to remove the poor creatures from their plastic tomb, when suddenly they sprang back to life and flew at his face in an attempt to escape. Unbeknownst to us at the time, chickens are heavy sleepers and as soon as the sun goes down so do they.

Chickens, I think, need the largest learning curve of all farm animals. The next morning, after getting them, I stood staring at their creepy, scaly feet, uncertain as to how to care for them. Yes, you can read magazine after magazine, and book after book on the subject but actually looking at a living one versus a picture is quite different. Besides, I had found all the magazines quite depressing from an animal lovers stand point. 1. They always addressed killing and eating them and 2. Chickens can catch a ton of gross diseases.  So, I will admit that I could have gone in to this venture a little bit more knowledgeable. Had I actually read more, I may have also known that winter is the worst time for egg production with chickens. So as Nick was warming up the pan for all of the eggs sandwiches he was planning to eat…. the chickens were only laying 1 egg a week.

We have lost many birds over the past year and a half. It took us a bit to learn about injecting the chickens with antibiotics, or proper worming and who the hell would have known that some chickens would sit on an egg until they were dead from dehydration or starvation?! The chicken farmers at the local market are a wealth of information. Decked in overalls and missing teeth you give the most limited description of what your animal is suffering from and they can quickly spit out a home remedy to fix it. One of our chickens legs was breaking out in bumps, they told us to soak it in vegetable oil and it would clear up. In two days, our little chicken was better. I know they think we are funny. They speak down to us in a way that lets me know that in the same way city people characterize country folks as dumb, they think the same of city people.

Before moving out here, I thought chickens only came in white and red. Those are factory birds and for all I knew the selection was limited to that. I was shocked to see the variety that there is. Our flock has now grown to 30 (give or take). Some of the birds are quite impressive. I don’t stare at them with uncertainty any longer. I love watching them and could sit among them for hours, not moving. The hierarchy among them is fascinating and their days are spent pleasantly clucking and pecking at the dirt. I find it very relaxing watching any living creature that is so content just being.

 

 

 

 

4. Winter

This is our house, as of today:

It is over 100 years old and has never been insulated. It has wonderful, old, wavy glass, single pane windows. It has 12 foot ceilings and original wooden floors. What this means is… in the winter it is freezing. In the country, there are no buildings to block the wind. The northern wind blows freely over the fields and through the grasses until it reaches the cracks and crevices of my home. To which, with no obstacles to keep it from coming in, it is allowed to roam unabated in to every living area within. Anyone who has ever come in to contact with me, knows because of my incessant complaining, that I hate cold weather. The first winter, my home, was my personal purgatory.

The men that we had purchased this place from had used it as a weekend house. Their sweet little country get away. Looking back though, it is quite possible that there is a distinct reason that they chose to sell the house after only owning it for a year… and that reason, my assumption would be, was WINTER.

One day, while on the couch of purgatory, I took notice that the furnace had not shut off in a considerable amount of time. Up until then I had ignored the fact that I could not only see my breath, the baby’s breath, but also the dog’s breath. With a multitude of blankets draped around me I waddled up to the thermostat to gaze in shocked amazement at the reading of 56 degrees. I am conservative in my temperature selection but not THAT conservative. The furnace stood little chance of warming this house up if it was a constant 10+ degrees cooler than what it was set at. My husband and I spent the next 48 hours in insulation mode. We took apart door jams to stuff it in. We bought 10 cans of that yellow foamy stuff and squirted it everywhere. We covered the windows with heavy fabric. We put down thick covering on the floor, under the stairs. Our conversation was limited to, “I feel air coming in here”, “where”, “right here”, “got it”. We caulked and covered every spot.

That winter we spent (without an iota of exaggeration) $2900 in utility bills towards heating.

This last year we did something about this:

We had two open living areas that we sectioned off. Thought being that I can hold up in the smallest living area with a space heater placed strategically between my legs. Hence, I would never be cold again. It was better… but purgatory was not one to release me from it’s icy grasp so easily.

Last year, my oldest son brought the flu home from school. In his usual fashion, he hardly fell victim to it while I was down for weeks. I was certain that death would claim me at any instant and whining that cetainty to anyone within ear shot. Everyone in the family became ill. However, everyone else seemed to recover within 24 hours. Not me. Texas rarely has snow or severe ice. During my infestation of the flu virus… Texas had both. One night, as I lay on the floor of my bedroom, incapable of making it all the way from the bathroom back to the bed, I realized that if I didn’t see a doctor I actually, really, would die. OF COURSE, on the day that I finally succumbed to the idea of getting medical help, the roads were completely frozen. Having dealt with the small town doctor previously, I was dead set on driving the 40 minutes to a “real” doctor. (My definition of a real doctor is simply a doctor that is willing to give painkillers.Which, for whatever reason, our town’s doctor is not).

Long story short: You can’t drive 70mph on ice. So what normally is a 40 minute drive became an hour and a half drive. I crawled in to the office wearing my pajamas and a coat and lay down in the waiting room. After an examination, blood tests, and x-rays, it was determined that I had pneumonia. He gave me injections, syrups, and best of all… painkillers.

Not much later, another ice storm hit Texas.My husband, who is wonderful beyond measure, is a thunder stealer. (Side note: One time when I was having to undergo a minor surgery he decided to fast in solidarity with me. As the nurse struggled to insert the IV in me, with lack of sustenance in his stomach, he fainted. As if in a ridiculous sitcom, every nurse fell to the floor to help him. I was left laying on the table, alone.) So it is little surprise that as I was still recovering from pneumonia he falls and splits his head open.  As he was letting out our pig, Lola, he rounded the corner and bumped in to her. He slipped on the ice and slammed his head on the concrete. We made the dangerous drive to the town doctor. He received 3 stitches and… no painkillers.

As the air outside starts to take on a chill, I can feel fear starting to set in. I don’t know what winter may hold for me this year but I feel certain that I won’t be able to escape purgatory any time soon.

3. Turtles

When you live in the city five acres seems like a lot of land. I can testify, I own more land than any other friend I have in the city. However, seeing as how I have met people out here that own a thousand acres… my five acres screams, “city slicker”. Land out here is willed from generation to generation. I find it amazing that they would have a fortune if they could sell the land. Yet they can only afford to put a double wide on it (and possibly several car’s worth of parts). It reminds me of the people in the city who buy the enormous houses but then have empty rooms because they can’t afford to furnish them.

When we originally came to see this house I marveled at the wildlife (dead coyote in front of the house) and the diversity of the insects. I remember distinctly walking around and staring at the brightly colored, extra large moths and the swarms of dragonflies. I took a deep breath of the air that seemed cleaner, based solely on the presence of such beauty, and walked through a spider web. This, of course, as it would most city girls, sent me running rubbing my hands through my hair in an attempt to dislodge any arachnids that might decide to suddenly take up residence. The thought that ran through my head at that moment, and every other moment after (that was prefaced with a face full of spider web) for that first month, was…. I am not cut out for country life.

When we moved in we made a few important purchases. Two of which topped the list. 1. A riding lawn mower. 2. Fencing to enclose the majority of the property. At this point of my country existence I had overcome the fear of spiderweb facials and thus was excited to mow the “vast kingdom” for my first time ever. “I am not cut out for country life” had not been a phrase that I had uttered in some time and as I sat on the lawnmower and took off, I sang, out loud, all of the lyrics to Green Acres that I knew. I felt positively chipper. Row after row I mowed, and the whole while I belted out various stanzas but by the 18th round of, “I get allergic smelling hay” I was now hot and unhappy plus there was a horrible stench in the air. I pushed on, now tired of singing Green Acres but having already sang the versus so many times; I couldn’t rid myself of the song, it was stuck. After an additional 15 minutes I finally stopped and stared, dumbfounded, at the mower. Why did it smell like death? I surveyed the land to no avail. I knew, something was laying in wait for me but I simply could not see where. More time went on, and I began to wonder if I couldn’t just leave the stinky section of the yard for later. If, by chance, my husband might not notice the corner, near the front was left unmowed. Then I saw it. A turtle. I was struck silent in the middle of, “Green acres is the place for me. Farm livin’ is the life for me. ”

You have to take a look at the most awesome version of Green Acres ever…

*Turtles, no matter how many friends they have, no matter how great the pond, no matter the food supply, or the free massages on Sundays…. they like to roam. (There is a fun fact for you.) Who would have known that with the installation of our new fence we would inadvertently kill off our entire turtle population.*

I once had a friend that wanted to make a calendar featuring “road kill”. Having since seen this idea on the internet. I know that there are at least two people in this world who think that it would be a funny. The reason she never seemed to follow through with it was, she couldn’t come up with 12 different animals that she could find splattered on the street. Now that I am a country dweller I see that it is all cyclical. There are times of the year that you see primarily skunks dead, a time of the year when it is primarily raccoons, etc.  Today, I started thinking and trying to come up with my own list of 12 different varieties of animals, I or my husband, has seen dead in the last year or two. The list includes: raccoon, armadillo, possum,  coyote, skunk, bird, dog, wild pig (three at the same time), snake, horse,  a cow and of course turtle. I was with my friend one time when she took a picture of a dead beaver. I have yet to see one of those out here.

2. The Chores, The Stores

As a side note, my husband took this picture today while we were waiting in line to pick the kids up from school.

Since that first day of school I have given some thought to the comment made by the woman in the office. The majority of the people out here have only lived in small towns. To them, it is all a matter of perspective. They can’t understand the convenience of 5 different grocery stores, gas stations, movie theaters, or retail shops in a 2 mile radius of their house. They don’t really understand variety or selection. A service man came recently to read the water meter. He told me that his wife wanted to move in to the city but he was happiest in the country. He had grown up in the big city and he never wanted to live there again. When I questioned which city he lived in, he responded Sherman. That “city” as of today has a total of 40,000 people living in it. He was 50ish years old. I can only fathom how many fewer people that “big city” had in his childhood. Like I said, though, it is a matter of perspective.

Once the children were settled in that first day we took off to explore the nearest town of Bonham, Texas. (You have to appreciate a town that feels there is no necessity to make yourself up, in any fashion, in order to go in to it.)  My husband and I used to play a game of going in to Walmart and trying to find someone that looked “normal”.  (Normal meaning someone that looked like they might be a transplant, like us.) I know what you are thinking. 1.  That the retail establishment automatically warrants the oddity of people who frequent it. 2. This sounds like a pretentious game. However, that wasn’t the intent and people in Bonham just have a different look and sound to them. Women seem to wear a superfluous amount of shiny  rhinestoned accessories and their hair always  poofs in odd places. Men all look like they just climbed off a tractor or finished hunting. . Plus,  this Walmart is the ONLY retail store (other than feed stores, hardware stores, or second hand shops) in the area. It is also the ONLY grocery store in miles and miles. It is an excellent gauge of all of the people that live in the vicinity.

On our first trip in to Walmart we saw this-

This man, clad in chaps, spurs, and a nice gray cardigan came jingling down the aisle that we were shopping on. (Take note of not only his apparel but also how short the shelving is in this store. Fewer people in an area obviously mandates less choices.) Angry that he couldn’t find the extra large jar of pickles that he regularly purchased, he took to berating an employee of the store about how the jar he bought always had the word CRISP printed on it. To this, without emotion, she turned the jar around, displaying the word crisp and proceeded to walk on. My husband, at this point, tells the crispy pickle loving cowperson, “All you need now is an extra large jar of mayonnaise to go with that”. (Obviously, a statement that would be amusing to us, because  of  the sheer volume of mayonnaise containers for sale at the store). His response? “I already have one”. Thus was our inauguration in to the area.

We have since lost interest in that game for a myriad of reasons. First being, I try to frequent that store as seldom as possible after hearing a mother and her young daughter screaming profanity at one another on aisle after aisle. It actually became so bad that with every, “fuck you” I found myself reciting gibberish to my children in an effort to distract them. It worked, and instead of hearing the oral assault, my daughter’s belief that I am insane was solidified. SECOND being, we simply became desensitized to it all and people blurting out, “Mmmm, I hadn’t had me no shake-n bake in a long time” didn’t seem so odd.

I didn’t have a clue that shake-n bake was even still around until I moved out to the country.

1. Good-bye, City Life

There are certain truths, when you live in the city, that you hold to be true everywhere. Little things such as a house that is missing windows and a roof should have no one inhabiting it. Horses shouldn’t be allowed through drive-thru windows. You should never have to use an entire tank of gas to get to the next gas station. Camo nor chaps should ever be all day/ everyday attire. Mayonnaise should never have an entire aisle to itself in a grocery store. Little things. When you move from the city to the country all of those truths are thrown out the window and you are left in a discombobulating trance. Up is down. Down is up. And the ground has an ever present state of shaky. Such was the case when we first moved from our beloved metroplex with a population of 6.5 million to a tiny town of 1700. (Just typing that makes me laugh.)

After having our third child, my husband and I, decided we needed a larger house. Since neither of us had a job that we felt committed to, the decision was made that we could move in any direction within 1.5 hours from our current location. I drew the circle on the map and started the hunt. After 6 months of searching I found the perfect house with the perfect school system for the children. I gave no regard to the size of the town it was located in or the financial demographics of the area. As a matter of fact, it is quite possible that instead of saying “I gave no regard” it would be more accurate to say I disregarded it completely. I noticed there was a hospital within 20 minutes and a Super Walmart within 10. Since Walmart owns the world already, what more would I need? (Never mind that a later drive to this Walmart would reveal that not all Super Walmarts are created equal and while Mayo ranked high in importance to their current clientele, healthy vegetarian options did not).

I will save you the drudgery of reading about the financing and the actual physical move and get to more interesting stories such as day two of our life in the middle of nowhere. The town we live in is an hour away from the most major city, Dallas. It is also, approximately, 20 minutes away from the closest Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonald’s or any other corporation that to most people resembles civilization. With the majority of my clothes packed away in boxes that reached to the top of the 12 foot ceilings, I grabbed the only thing I could reach. This so happened to be a wonderful vintage polyester dress that I adored. I feel that I looked quite chic walking in to the elementary school to enroll our two oldest children. However, in actuality, I am not sure that the school personnel understood my eclectic fashion sense. I swear they still hold it against me to this day.

We live exactly 10 miles from the school. This drive takes us 8 minutes, give or take. While distance could be foreseen as a concern in a move out in to the country, speed is not. The speed limit is 70 mph. Everywhere. Everywhere. When the receptionist asked where we lived and we explained the straight shot back to our house she replied with, “Oh, you do live out in the country.” I sat in stunned silence. These people, and I say that with much respect, these people have no clue that they live out in the middle of no where. The 10 additional minutes from my point A to their point B did not put me one bit closer to anywhere, in my mind, important.

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