I devoured this book. I read it between knitting furiously, embroidering fervently, and doing other weekending stuff. And now I am sad it is all gone.

This book is written by Jenna Woginrich who has made great amazing strides toward self sustainability. The possible paradox is that she still works 9-5 for “the company” to pay her bills. But to fill her soul, she gardens, raises livestock, dog sleds, plays the fiddle, sews, knits, and continues to be obsessively interested in all things homesteading. She basically lives the life I’d love to live, eventually, minus a few parts. (I’ll explain those.)

I think it began when our family started raising chickens when I was a kid. Jenna also raises chickens. Hers are, and ours were, egg layers. Neither hers nor ours were “broilers” as they call them. (Aka, for eating.) As a kid, it was my sibling’s and my job to care for the hens. Harsh winters in New Hampshire meant turning on the heat lamp at night. Filling up their grain feed trough daily. Hauling hot water to pour on the icy, sometimes frozen, water feeder. And the best part of the job, collecting eggs in an antique round wire egg basket with handles.

The part about chicken farming I didn’t like was the close-up examination you get of the circle of life. Our chickens were almost like pets. Okay, they were like dumb pets. I remember the day we brought home that noisy box of little birds. (They were full grown, but still really young.) None of them wanted to exit that brown cardboard shelter of safety as we tried to tip them out into their new caged range run.

In short time we had names for them like “blackie”, and “whitie.” (You don’t go getting all esoteric when you are five years old.) We’d rattle the top of the chicken wire cage real loud and those girls would hop on out of their dust holes, or off their perches to come flying out to greet us. (I mean those chicken legs ran so fast those flightless birds were all most flying.) We hand fed them greens from the garden right through the chicken wire in the summers. We’d scold the bullies and console the girls getting plucked by the others. And then we’d lament when one would get sick and die.

The sick one would stop laying. She’d seem sluggish and not move out from behind the feed barrel. And then one day, you’d come through the door and she’d be head-bent over and not moving a stitch. My dad put them somewhere. I don’t know where. And I didn’t care to know. And it makes me feel kind of queasy to think of a death that up-close even as I type these words 30 years later.

Even though I’d say chickens are fairly dumb creatures, I can attest they are living and conscious nonetheless.  It is hard to not personify this feathered food source. Especially as a kid.

I know I can’t do what Jenna does on a daily basis. (Help out life and death that is.) She writes in her book about her animals and fine line between natural life and death. I admire deeply that she truly understands our clothing, household items, and food stuffs come from the living. But to get that close to the living and the dying isn’t something I’m prepared to do everyday.  Though I am certainly glad to have had that experience as a child.

Today our suburban family is removed. We don’t water and dig for our salad. We don’t help birth the animal that will help us make a sweater. We don’t talk with our steak. And we don’t name the mother of our omelet. We step into our car with our reusable grocery bags and use the gas pedal all the way to the air-conditioned, prepackaged, grocery store.  And I mostly like it that way.

But what is the down-side of missing out on the amazing natural progression of things? Do we exploit the environment more? Do we believe man-made is superior to what nature makes? Do we pollute more because we don’ t know where it all goes? By excusing ourselves from nature’s circle of life, by holding our being above the natural progression, aren’t we just shooting ourselves in the foot, so to speak? Even as someone who doesn’t like getting up close and personal with my scrambled egg supplier, I know if I don’t care about and support others who tend to those chickens humanely and sustainably, my breakfast staple is going to be no more pretty soon.