"I’m A Farmer Again. Rejoice!"

From all directions – the garden, the woods, the logging road, the pastures, the very night sky itself – deer wander through the snow to the center of the Something Wilds. At the dormant stump of the felled double-trunked elm, the deer dig down into the snow and sit for their council. Ungrazed grass and clover wait for them, still green beneath the icy crust, just a few hoof scrapes and nose nuzzles away. The astral deer nibble their frozen salads and sit beneath Ursa Major.

“We have much to discuss,” says the chief deer. The other deer nod with that solemn, quiet knowing of wild beings. The new moon winks. The stars shimmer, frozen forever. But we don't know what the deer discuss, for we are sleeping. We only know they come back often and enough to entertain the curious farmer and his two dogs, who love to dig into the snow and eat as many deer poops as they can before the farmer yells at them. We snowshoe at dusk, when the snow turns pink, and we follow the deer tracks to the fence line, ‘til they disappear into the hemlocks.

Sometimes I wake up at two in the morning and I wander to the windows facing the pastures and I look out under the waning moon. I see shadows and rocks and stumps and moonglow snow, but I never see the astral deer. Their tracks wait with the sunrise….

Eggs. Or as our beloved Golem says, “Eggses!” We love ‘em, we eat ‘em, we scramble ‘em and ramble tamble ‘em. Maybe I need to host a farm poker night and we can gamble ‘em. Any takers?

I took a gamble in May and re-homed all my critters, thinking I might sell the farm after a divorce. I had a fleeting desire to live in a cabin somewhere up north – on the edge of a mountain, the only way down achievable by llama. I decided before taking a decision from the judgment of the great-robed figure in the sky, I would strip everything down and wait. I needed that break from the farm chores; I needed play, rest, novelty, travel, ego death. The sheep, they went south. So did the chickshaw, the purple farm stand. The chickens flew off in four different directions, scattered like the wind. With adventures, though, come rewards – new meaning, new friends, new purpose. Egos, like eggos, come and go – and we grow and grow.

We grow in our ecosystems. If the soil is rich, Rich sprouts happily. Once I realized I preferred to stay on the farm, that I could afford it, and when I finally figured it all out, I hit up the hatchery and put in my order for 22 baby chicks. They would be born in October – little chaotic Libra cheeps – late for chicks, but that sounded like a poem to me, so I waited for my little box of poetry to arrive. When I arrived at the Center Harbor post office to grab my chirpy cheeps, a patron in the lobby was enamoured by my singing parcel and had to let me know. The birds sang their feisty song of wildness. We don’t know what they sang; we only heard their song.

My favorite joy as a farmer is showing folks the birds on pasture. From my casual egg customers who want a glimpse at the operation to my 9-year-old city-boy nephew who needs to step in poop once or twice a year to feel like a human, we need to hear the Egg Song. We need to see the birds bounce and float and two-step across this curved and beautiful Earth. As farmer folk hero Joel Salatin says, he loves to make the earthworms dance. We make our critters dance, and we dance along. And I shimmied and shaked that short ride home to the farm as the chicks sang strong cheepy songs from their little box.

Alas, I opened the box. Two dead. Their chick-shapes were hardly there. Not fluffs, but mush. Two more dead before dark. One didn’t make it ‘til morning and the next evening I did the unthinkable and dunked one in a bowl of water and held her there. Her wing was damaged and she couldn’t move. She wanted to live, but couldn’t find a way. She dances with the earthworms now, and they are happy to have her. She will be kale; she will be a carrot.

I debated how I’d acquire enough birds to bring back the enterprise of selling eggs in the spring. I figured I’d put in an order for 25 more chicks in the spring – with eggs for the fall of ‘26 – but then my co-worker informed me his family was moving and…. would I like to take his flock? It’s a nice mixed batch of birds – every year they buy six chicks and phase out six. Pretty soon I was backing into his driveway. I peeked into the coop and saw some fat and happy hens. And one big honkin’ goober – a guinea hen. “Oh yeah,” my co-worker, Ed, laughed. “My wife asked me this morning if I mentioned there was a guinea in the flock.”

They used to have six guineas, but the birds are a bit more wild than chickens and they like to roam. Unfortunately over time, five of the guineas were taken out by predators. This one, however, survived and bonded with the flock. I loved her immediately. Guineas are butt-ugly, but beautiful. I named her Goober before I even tried grab her. We entered the coop and captured a few easy hens and tossed them in a dog crate in the back of my pickup. Then I grabbed Goober. I waited for Ed to catch a hen, but in a moment of chaos, Goober broke free from me and smashed through the door of the coop out to the farm. I saw her hiding under a trailer, I blinked, and then she was gone.

No guinea prints anywhere. Ed and I finished collecting the birds. 3 roosters, 30 hens, loaded into two dog crates and a U-Haul box with duct tape over it, strapped into the bed of my truck. We looked in the trees, we peeked at the treeline, we looked under the rafters in the barn – Ed's kids, his German Shepherd, we all looked for the Guinea hen….. she was gone.

Shrug! I drove the birds home and tossed them into their new coop. Three eggs appeared magically on the barn floor – the first eggs laid on this farm since May! I scrambled them up with some microgreens and sourdough and put on the Pats game. Drake “Drake Maye” Maye carved up the Jets like the delicious birds they are. Yum! Around 4 pm, Ed texted me and told me the Guinea hen returned to the coop and he would drive it over shortly. By dusk, I had a cardboard box in my hands full of Goober. I released her wild bundle of chaos into the coop. Shut the door and sigh! She stares at me from the collective. The collective is calm, though. Collective calm. I’m a farmer again. Rejoice!

The birds eat and drink and let me pet them – their little chicken death stares are my reward. They lay the occasional egg in the doldrums of this subzero January. The cheeps in the next stall over sing their little worried winter songs. Ed’s wife gave me a big bag of dried peppermint to supplement the chickens’ feed and we all enjoy the springy smells while we look out the old cobwebbed window to the glazy, frosty, glassy pastures.

I wish the chickens a good night and walk back to the house. Something glows in my headlamp across the street. Two eyes. Green dots in the snow, beneath the shadows of the forest. Staring. I think about my twelve gauge rifle, my love for chaos, the coyote shot in my dresser drawer.

I’m not scared of predators. I’ve chased down bears bare-handed, I’ve shot my rifle at bobcats. I stared for minutes at these green eyes. Staring, staring. Adamant. My patience thinned. I rolled my pant legs up. I muck bootsed right into the snow and marched into the woods. A big fat ruminant deer body lolled up and danced off into the woods. I laughed, I danced, I felt the snow spill down into my boots, freezing my ankles. I felt the call for the woodstove. Before long, I’m a warm-footed, sleepy farm boy, dozing face in palm, doggies dozing at my feet. White pine flame dreams….

The astral deer know things. Gosh, that farmer thinks he's so clever. They come out of hiding; they cross their roads and their ravines. They find their meeting place; they hunker down. They talk. The moon provides the barest silver, and they dance.