Parkplace farm was the home for many furry & feathered friends. Indeed, so many of the siblings’ day to day stories focused on the goofy, glorious, troubling or tragic experience of these feline, bovine, canine or avian residents.
As Cathy, Stevie, Kenny & Patti-Jo grew into full farm participants, one of their greatest joys was the arrival of a flock of thousands of baby chickens.
For weeks, one of the two long barns on the west side of Parkplace Farm, was cleaned, reset, equipped, tested & heated into a warm home for little yellow chicks.
And then the day arrived. If it was a school day, the siblings begged their parents to stay home, and were typically obliged. Although their mother often had to teach herself on these days, the siblings were allowed to help out with other hired helpers, their grandpa. They waited eagerly, helping their dad with last preparations – filling watering jars, laying out trays of feed, putting up cardboard corrals for the chicks while waiting for the hatchery delivery to arrive.
And then they heard the sound. A truck on the sideroad… downshifting… turning onto the gravel of the laneway… It was here!
The barn temperature was set in the mid 90’s, with brooder heaters glowing radiant heat onto the slatted surfaces – the new living rooms, dining spaces, bedrooms… and washrooms for the new chicks. The gas-fueled summer heat in the barn was met with the expectant feeling of new life in the brothers and sisters hearts.
The truck driver and the farmer would exchange a greeting and the official handoff of papers. Then the back door was opened to the sound of 10000 peeping chicken babies. Boxes stacked from floor to ceiling temporarily housed the chicks – born that day, and they were carefully handed down to each of the waiting siblings and farm help.
They carefully carried the boxes some length of the 300 foot barn to begin setting the chicks into their new home, on one quarter of the barn’s raised slats. Carefully scooping up the dazed, happily-chirping chicks they set them close to the water jugs to find a drink.
And so the race began – 9000 chicks, 1000 baby roosters – the boldest among them jumping from the hands of their caretakers and skittering around their – new, and only home.
With every scoopful of fuzzy warm balls of life, Cathy, Stevie, Kenny & Patti-jo would speak various versions of welcome, introduction and naming, seeking that every one of their new pets would find water, get some food for their tiny bellies, and sleep.
With eyes keenly looking over their work the siblings scanned for weaker chicks – who in the siblings minds were in trauma from cracking through their eggs, homesick, or bullied by stronger chicks. These chicks were given special care, placed near the water jugs, heads dipped in the water, or placed on the feed trays. With these efforts many – at least in the siblings minds, were saved.
When the truck was empty and the chick corrals filled with peeping new residents the four were allowed to walk through the barn and excitedly share with each other their experience of the last few hours.
It was one of the great arrival moments of the siblings’ lives, and the start of countless new avian adventures. Of course, the four sensed some level of the responsibility, cost and workload which weighed heavily on the Farmer & his wife, and so they offered help to care for this huge flock in the days that came. The constant monitoring of heat, water & feed wasn’t always fun, but the chicks were of great entertainment.
In time automatic water & feeding systems, fodder, nests and run of the whole barn was introduced, as the chickens grew, dated and formed harems.
The roosters became tougher, full of bravado, the hens more fixed on motherhood. Four months after arrival, an egg arrived the first of thousands of healthy fertilized eggs on their way to the hatchery and new life in a barn somewhere else.
The Point: All of life has its own powerful essence; moments of glory, need & tragedy. We ourselves are invited to be life, to exchange life, and to celebrate the wonder, willfulness & ways of our brilliant world.
Farming Faith 