Death & Farming

The neighbours just came over to kill the baby roosters. I can't believe it. Baby and kill in the same sentence, and on my command. Well teenagers to be fair, but I'm on my period and we're feeling extra sensitive, so everyone is a baby until they're at least 25. I gave them some treats this afternoon, a last supper of sorts. Me, their own personal Judas, right there at the table. I wanted to hold them one by one and comfort them, but knew they would likely experience the opposite. The comfort was for me, not them. I decided to transcend my selfish desires this time. Just pop me on the cross at this point honestly.

I tried to separate them to put into the other hut, as they're much easier to yank out when they least expect it. One of them had gone in early to their usual sleeping quarters so I attempted a quick retrieval by shoving my giant hand into the hutch and hoping it would land on him. It did not. Squawking, flapping, shrieking (me), and much debris on the move. I gave up. The rooster ran out and straight next to Mumma. My heart.

I've put off this kill for a week now. They're turning on each other, drawing blood, raping their sisters, it's all a bit much to be honest. This is my first flock so the neighbours had to educate me on all of it and offered to do a humane kill. Legends. Partly for their own reasons (keeping the boys out of their henhouse), and partly for mine (basically the same).

It was to happen on Monday night. Sunday evening one of the roosters didn't go back into the house to sleep so I sat in a squat position, head in hands, for at least 45 minutes watching him in deep contemplation of the nature of life and death. My dinner let me know it was ready when the carcinogenic scent of burning chicken flesh interrupted my pondering. THE IRONY. The circle of life. Maybe this is fate, Mumma Quoll and her babies can eat tonight? I could hear everyone had settled in. I said a quiet prayer for him and went inside.

As I did, I recalled a night a month or so ago. It was 3:37am when I woke suddenly. I remembered the exact time because I immediately and strangely thought of the chickens. It was too late. A quoll had gotten into the hutch that I hadn't closed properly and violently devoured one of the chicks. In a bleary-eyed haze I grabbed the muddy shovel and scraped its corpse across all its siblings' excrements and onto the ground. An undignified exit into the afterlife that's for sure. The Mumma and surviving babies huddled in the grass, I shone the torch on them. A welcome respite from the horrors underfoot, and truly a testament to her.

When I tell you this broody gal is the broodiest of all the broods. I have watched her fight off a hawk with her bare claws, limp away with feathers askew and all 8 chicks in tow. Square off with my escapee cat, face to face, fluffed up and ready to brawl to the death if need be. She is a fierce queen, I love her.

Anyway, I was reading in bed that night and thinking about all the dangers that little rooster was facing out there. Suddenly, the sound of distress rang out across the small valley where my house is. It was Mumma Hen. I grabbed the torch, Uggs on, dressing gown flapping in the wind, and flung open the door. I am using dramatic language because that was exactly the amount of drama I was serving in that moment. So was nature though, to be fair I was matching her freak.

I opened the door to witness a large owl swooping the garden bed, a gigantic possum (I truly have never seen anything like it, a medium-sized pig is all I can think of right now to compare), and my little guy. In a complete stupor, out to it. Perched on the garden bed frame and mere moments from his demise. As I slipped down the hill in the pouring rain to grab his little sopping body and pop him inside I was truly cursing my conscience. Farm life ain't for the weak of heart mate, I thought.

Then of course, my brain sprung a leak and started forming multiple thought streams. One being that I do eventually have a dream to be in deeper relationship with the land, flora and fauna and in even truer symbiosis than I currently am. Part of my version of that includes the raising and killing animals for food sources. Ethically and humanely, knowingly. Being intimate with it all, the entire cycle, and with deep reverence and care. Being okay with the rawness of what that entails.

So I sent the text yesterday, "I'm ready". I watched as the cockerels were pulled out one by one and flipped upside down to go into some kind of freeze response. Within seconds it was over. No blood, no pain. Quick and gentle. If that's a word you can use for murder. I wondered if the peace I felt for them was caused by an emotional lobotomy of sorts from the Zoloft I went on last year when I got cancer. I don't think so, I am feeling A LOT. I do think the experience of getting scary sick as I call it, really widened my capacity to take in the spectrum of life. All of it, in big ways and small ways.

This one is big. I no longer fear death. Mine or anyone else's. I can and do grieve, I will and want to fully live too. But I feel a deeper shift. A kind of reckoning with the necessity of growth and decay, but, for real now. It's not some abstract concept for me to "wrap my head around". This truth is in my bones, mitochondria and blood that pumps through me. It's all part of it. It's a horny, messy, tragedy this life. It's glorious and foul, and I am feral for all of it.

Their short lives, as many of ours are, were filled with love and protection, of fear and threat. Days in the sun, glorious meals and cuddles with family. Nights fighting for their lives and sometimes losing. The gamble of waking up again, to see another day.

Living with nature, within its seasons and cycles, helps me stay close to my own. My days are chaos from dawn till dusk, yet I am more steady than ever. Content, falling into bed tired from a day in the garden, working outside on the laptop, seeing a client, playing with the animals and making food slowly. I have yearned for this life nearly all of mine, and I have finally given the little girl in me her dreams. I am whole, in this hectic simplicity. In the unpredictable truth of life that suspends us all, on the tightrope between here and there.

The veil is so thin here. Immersed in the wilderness, with all of its intensity, mystery, chaos and peace. Pulled down, inward, deeper. Understanding all that comes when we become quiet and listen. To the wind, the birds, a stomach growling, cement trucks, soft music, kids cackling and the yelling of goats. It's all holy here. We will all compost back into the earth. And it's a blessing to be reminded of that every single day.