Farming, Fields and Purring Hens

I had never seen a chicken purr. But when I visited Nick’s chicken coop, his “girls” started a purr-like clucking as soon as they saw him.

My own kids aren’t that excited to see me. Nick never said a word about how he treats his chickens, but they testified to his care without speaking.

I was raised in a small city, so I wasn’t often around farm animals. Although my first church was definitely rural (in the western Upper Peninsula), it was a logging community rather than agricultural.

This is the first time in my life I’ve been immersed in a farming community, and I find it endlessly fascinating. I see how the rural rhythms teach attentiveness and care, concepts that are often overlooked in urban areas.

It seems there are some lessons that can only be learned standing in a chicken coop at an unhurried hour and by the cadence of hard work in the fields.

To Nick’s chicken coop I brought an offering of mealworms which my daughter and I proffered in our gloved hands.

But the chickens were too chicken to peck them, so we set them down where they were promptly devoured.

But when Nick came by, the hens clustered around him and even sat on his lap. You can tell a lot about a person by how animals react to them.

Rita’s family worked in the muck field for decades. These days, from her chair by the window looking out at the gravel trucks rumbling past on Van Dyke, Rita describes the long, long summer days planting, weeding by hand, and selling the produce at the Eastern Market.

Ungodly early and late hours in the field, loads of laundry, making enormous meals– all the rhythm of rural life in the growing season.

Farther down the road, Williard describes his many years of farming, not just crops but cattle, sheep and chickens. I remember when my dad’s cousin bemoaned the workload that came with his 35 head of dairy cattle, but Williard had more than twice that, plus the huge acreage of farmland.

Vacations were non-existent. Summers were exceptionally busy. I’m not sure how anyone could accomplish as much in one day as Williard did.

He didn’t have the advantage of modern equipment, but he had an incredible work ethic and a vision.

From Nick and Rita and Williard and others, I see firsthand kindness, consistency, care, and conservation. These are the lessons of rural life, lived and learned day after day in gravel driveways, muck fields, muddy jeans, aching backs, and coops with purring chickens.

About the author: Rev. Sharon Smith is pastor at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. She enjoys observing ordinary life and turning it into newspaper columns. Her latest discovery: hens are apparently capable of affection and celebrity worship. Sharon was recently humbled after bringing mealworms to impress chickens and being completely ignored until Nick arrived.

Contact Sharon at dave@tri-citytimes.com