Building the Chicken Run

The chicken coop was finished but it was by no means ready for the chickens to move into. Before that could happen i would need to erect the kennel around the coop, add a roof, dig a trench around the kennel, cut wire fencing to fit the trench, and fasten it to the bottom of the kennel, then bury it. Having gotten the chicken coop built the day before i sensed a light at the end of the tunnel. The green house was built. The chicken coop was erected. The last big project i had to do in the middle of my symptoms and my hourly regiment of herbal medications was to get the kennel up. Once it was finished i could sit down in the house and breathe for a minute, without the crushing weight of all these do or die projects on my chest. Things would be done for a bit.

So, i woke up early and tied on my bandana. I went to the shed and got out all the panels. I wasn’t doing things methodically that day. I had panels scattered all over the yard and i nearly flipped them many times while trying to carry them against my shoulder because i didn’t have the weight balanced right and was moving too quickly. Gone was my usual calm demeanor and carefully calculated plan. Truthfully, it was fear that was behind my behavior. I could taste it in the back of my throat but hadn’t stopped to name it until that moment. This whole time i had somehow neglected to realize that i was incredibly fearful that i couldn’t get this done. I had been fearful that i wouldn’t recover, fearful that there would be lasting damage to my heart or lungs, and fearful that i would not be able to run the homestead myself anymore. I was immensely fearful that i would falter and not be able to do these 3 giant projects i had in the docket because if i couldn’t, it spoke to my ability to run things in the future. In my mind the mortgage police showed up and slapped the handcuffs on me, brandishing some kind of loophole paper that indicated the property would be transferred back over to the bank since i clearly wasn’t up to running it anymore.

Now, with the finish line looming so close ahead of me, i wanted it. I wanted that feeling of having finished this chapter more than anything i’d ever wanted before. I thought about how good it would feel to know that i had done it and all 3 projects were finished; done. So, instead of calmly going about my last project of the three, i ran about the yard feverishly measuring things, reading instructions, gathering pieces, and shoving tools in my apron pockets.

Right off the bat there was a problem. I wasn’t sure how to hold the fence panels in order to secure them in an upright position. I knew my best bet was starting with a corner. Once fastened together the panels would then hold themselves up and i could go about attaching each new panel to the already existing cluster. However, getting those first two panels together without a second person to help would be a challenge. I had a very heavy ladder which i used to prop one of the kennel panels against. However, i didn’t have anything tall and heavy to prop the second panel against. The two panels had to be fastened together with additional pieces of metal and nuts and bolts, so i couldn’t be holding a panel up while also fastening the pieces; i needed both hands to work on the nut, bolt, and two curved metal pieces around the bars. So, i decided to get creative. There was a sign zip tied to the front of one of the panel pieces. It had a picture of the finished product and the written dimensions of the kennel on it. I placed a wooden chair against a plant in front of my work area. Then i tipped it until it was wedged firmly underneath the laminated cardboard sign which was zip tied to the panel. This proved to be the wrong decision. Everything was going swimmingly and i had the bolt half way through the hole in the middle of the curved metal fastener when the zip tie tore through the cardboard sign all the way to the corner, freeing itself. The sign moved, freeing the chair, which fell to the ground. Then in slow motion the panel began to tip. Still holding the panel i had pulled away from the ladder to fasten to the other one, i reached out with my free hand, intending to recover the panel, to catch it or stop it from falling into the dog run fence that it was headed for. On a good day i would have had the strength to do so. On a good day i could have used my biceps and abdominal muscles to strain and pull the panel back into an upright position. But, this was not a good day. I was stupidly operating as if i had the strength in my body to do anything to keep that panel from going where it was already headed with building momentum. The slow motion effect vanished and i watched as the panel yanked itself free of my grasp, the metal tearing through my shoulder on its way down. It hit the dog run fence with a crash and landed with a thud on the ground. I examined the dog run fence quickly. It seemed to have taken the blow well and remained standing and intact. Then i turned to look at my shoulder. The blood was already running down my arm and staining my shirt. I ripped the shirt off in an attempt to save it and for a while was walking around the yard in nothing but pants. I was looking for the gauze pads. I cleared out everything under the sink in the kitchen and the bathroom. I moved everything from under the bed. There were no gauze pads present. I wondered where i had put them. I went to the extension shed. I threw everything on the floor, looking in this bin and that, toy box after toy box….none of them held the gauze pads. At this point i was angry and covered in blood. I wanted to put the flap of skin back where it should be and i wanted to hurry up and get back to my project. I had a very real problem to solve and i couldn’t get it done until i had some kind of bandage and a shirt on. I ripped open one of the toy boxes full of clothes. I grabbed a tank top and laid it on the porch. I held it down with the elbow of my bleeding arm and cut it with my knife. Once i had a rather rectangular piece of the garment i used my teeth and my free hand to tie it around my bleeding shoulder. The edge of the panel had gone across my chest, to my arm pit, and down the side of my shoulder as it flipped top to bottom. I tightened my tank top bandage, double knotted it, and threw the lids to the toy boxes together in a heap on the shed floor. I locked the shed and went back over to my project. As best as i could tell, i was going to have to hold the panels up while also fastening the metal pieces around them. I couldn’t use my hands to hold the panels so i would have to use my body. I would have to use my hip, my torso, and my elbow to hold each panel upright while using my fingers to fasten the pieces of metal around the bars of the panels, locking them together. If i failed to hold them upright, they would either fall inwards, crushing the chicken coop that i had just painstakingly built, or outwards, flipping up and grazing the chicken coop with the bottom of the panel and probably the dog run fence again. I wiped the thought from my mind and hoisted the first panel up, leaning it against the ladder. I hoisted the second panel up, resting it against my hip. I reached for the panel against the ladder while still holding the other one against my hip. I felt the weight of the panel i was holding shift as the metal lifted from my hip and i released the panel i was grasping for, knocking it back against the ladder, just in time to grab the panel and mash it down against my hip before it flipped into the chicken coop. I sighed, arms numb and legs shaking. My body was tired. The panels were heavy. Really heavy. I didn’t see a logical way that i could do this. There wasn’t one. So i stopped thinking and just decided to do. I began balancing the first panel against my body while reaching for the second only to find that i was losing control of the first and abort. I did this 6 or 7 times, until i was getting tired. I was getting tired but with each new attempt i was getting angry, until i was furious and gunning for a fight with the panel that had maimed me. When i felt the weight of the panel shift as it lifted its bottom off the ground to flip i shouted, “Oh no you don’t you little ******. You ****** ****** you stay right the **** there! Don’t you ******* move!” As it tried to shift and lean away from me i threw all my weight into pulling it back while still holding the other panel upright. I was shouting profanities at it and using every muscle in my body. I was channeling rage into energy somehow, and i pulled the panels both upright to a point where gravity was doing the work for me for a split second. I could feel that the weight from each of the two panels was not against me. They were perfectly upright. As long as there were no slight breezes everything would be fine. I jammed my hand into my apron pocket and swiftly produced the little rounded pieces of metal. I carefully held them against the panel bars. With shaking fingers i threaded the bolt through the hole. I began fastening the nut on the other side. By the time i felt the weight of one of the panels shift the fastener was on. The weight shift pushed the metal against the nut and…the nut held. The panels were upright at a 90 degree angle from each other. I stepped back from the panels and threw my hands up, “Woooooooooo! It’s on there. It’s ****ing on there ****** ******! We did it!!” I ran into the dog run and grabbed up Sili’s paws. She danced with me as i jumped around in the grass. Cashew wanted to join in the excitement too. She jumped and flipped in the air as i danced holding onto her sister’s paws. I let go of Sili and ran about until i couldn’t breathe and collapsed on the ground. The dogs came over to me and sat in the mulch nearby as i struggled to catch my breath. I could reach out and touch both of their warm fur. I was in the ants but i didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything in that moment except the sight i was looking at from where i lay; Two upright kennel panels standing in the yard. What a sight.

Once i got the first two kennel panels fastened together the rest was just a matter of lifting and carrying each panel to where it needed to be to connect it to the others. One by one i fastened each panel into place until i had the chicken coop completely surrounded. At this point i believed i was almost done. I had forgotten about the trench i had to dig and i figured putting the roof together would be a little like assembling tinker toys. I figured i’d just snap the pieces into place and lift it up on top.

As soon as i had the roof piece assembled i knew i was in trouble. It was a lot heavier than i had anticipated. The frame of the roof was heavy enough that i could barely lift it to my waist. There was no physical way i was going to lift it above my head. I sighed. Somehow i had to get the roof piece up on top of the panels. I tried and tried and tried. I tried from the ladder. I tried from the ground. I tried holding it from the middle. I tried holding it from the edge and pushing the roof frame up the side of the panels until it made it on top. The problem i was running into was that the roof frame was the exact size of the top of the panels, so, if i didn’t have it lined up exactly right, one side of the roof frame fell in. I needed a surface that was larger than the roof frame to slide the roof frame up atop the kennel panels. I wracked my brain. I couldn’t think of anything i had in the house or the sheds that would be large and flat enough for the task and light enough to hoist in place above my head. Finally i remembered that the day bed i slept on had come with a trundle bed to slide beneath it. The metal trundle frame was still somewhere in the tool shed. I tore through the tool shed in an effort to find this bed frame i hadn’t thought of for over a year. Then, against the west wall, behind the scrap wood; there it was. I hoisted it against my hip and tried to carry it across the yard. It was heavy and i was tired and i eventually resorted to dragging it through the yard while i scooted backwards on my butt in the grass, determined to move this thing forward, to finish the project.

I filled my apron pockets with zip ties and climbed up onto the wooden chair. I hoisted the trundle bed frame against the panels and slid it up on top of the kennel frame. I stood on my tippy toes and zip tied the trundle bed frame to the top of the kennel. Then i climbed down and had a look. I was pretty sure i was on the right track to something here. I was pretty sure it was doable now. With the trundle bed secured in place i was pretty sure i could slide the roof frame right up on top of it without it going through. So i did.

The trundle bed frame and the zip ties held as i hoisted the roof frame up the front of the kennel and tipped it until it was sliding onto the bed frame and all the way into place. There was still the issue of the trundle frame where the trundle frame couldn’t be. I had to get it out somehow, but how? How could i disturb the trundle bed frame without having the roof fall into the kennel? It became clear to me as i hurried about the yard, filling my apron pockets with metal pieces, nuts, bolts, scissors, and a wrench. It would have to be done one fastener at a time. I placed the fasteners on at the back of the kennel, securing the roof frame to the panels beneath it. Then as i put a fastener in place towards the middle of the kennel frame i cut a zip tie off of the trundle frame towards the middle of the kennel frame. As i kept adding fasteners, inching towards the front of the kennel, i kept cutting zip ties, inching towards the front of the kennel. Finally, the back and middle fasteners were on, but the front were not. There was a trundle bed frame in the way. I stood on the chair and slid the trundle bed frame out from the side of the kennel. Once it was out i hurried to put the remaining fasteners on. The fasteners at the back and middle of the roof held until i could get the front fasteners on. Finally, the roof was exactly where it was supposed to be and completely fastened in place.

Now there was another problem. With the roof frame in place i could see exactly how close it was to a major branch of the cedar tree i used to hold the laundry line. The kennel was placed where it was because there was a plant in front of it whose roots wouldn’t allow me to move it forwards. The chicken coop was already built where it was. The panels were already erected. The thing weighed a ton now. There was no moving it. The tree branch would have to come off.

It was a bad idea. I was in no condition to cut any part of a tree. Sawing off tree limbs took stamina, precision, safety…none of which i had on my person that day, and i knew it. I was going to do it anyway. It was not a good time to need a hospital either. Hospitals were only taking covid patients and recommended everything else be treated at home. Even at work the doctors were shipping us supplies for procedures that would normally be performed in hospital and expecting the rehab facility nurses to figure it out. To their credit, they did. It was a strange time for the country, and again, not a good time to do something that might land you in the hospital. But here i go. I went to the shed and got my saw. I pulled the chair up to the branch. I made my plan.

The plan was to cut the branch from top to bottom until it seemed like it was ready to go, then push it sideways so it would land next to the chicken pen rather than on it. It was a good plan for someone who was up to using a saw. I wasn’t. I soon found that out. Half way through the tree limb my arms were like jelly. My energy was spent. My eyelids were drooping and i was out of breath. I could feel the branch squeezing against the saw blade. It was pinching it between the branch and the tree. That meant two things. One, the branch had shifted from where it was and was now unstable. Two, i had done something wrong, as the branch was not supposed to be falling in towards the tree. With each passing second, each new gust of wind, the branch was trapping the saw blade tighter and tighter between the two pieces of branch. It was probably partly due to my weakened state but eventually, i couldn’t move the saw blade. The tree branch had shifted all it was gonna shift before it would break. It was now or never. I had to make my decision on what i was going to do to try to control the next phase. I abandoned the saw blade, still stuck in the tree branch. I thanked the lord for steel toed boots. Then i used all of my might to lift the tree branch up for a second, until it cleared the frame of the chicken pen roof, then threw it hard to the left with all the strength i could muster. I heard the wood crack and the tree branch split free from the main piece, falling so close to the left of the chicken pen that it grazed the panels on the way down. It landed with a flop. I breathed a sigh of relief and went to retrieve my saw. That was not how i had envisioned doing things but, i didn’t have the stamina to pull the blade back and forth quick enough to get the job done in a timely manner and i let the branch hang too long where gravity started taking over and the tree branch decided things for me. It was a mess. The important thing was that the branch was down, nobody needed the hospital, and no structures were broken in the process.

As i dragged the tree branch through the yard to the brush pile i realized, it was longer than the car. it was also quite a bit heavier than i had imagined.

With the branch gone and all that out of the way i set about putting the canvas roof on. I stood up on the chair and threw the canvas atop the frame, pulling at each side one at a time as i traveled around, dragging my chair behind me. When i had each corner of the canvas roof where it was supposed to be i began fastening the velcro straps and the buckle straps around the bars to tie the canvas down.

I was so close to being done but not quite yet. I still had to dig a trench. It had been raining and the ground was muddy. Because of this it wasn’t as hard a dig as it could have been. I used my pickaxe to dig a six inch trench, going down until i hit limestone, and i dug all the way around the kennel. As the day stretched on and my time was running out i pressed forward. I hadn’t eaten, had a drink, or gone to the bathroom since i woke up. I was a woman possessed. My eyes were bloodshot. My skin was burned. The ripped up shirt had dried to my skin in the old blood and it was somehow glued to me and pulled when i moved. It was difficult to wield the pickaxe and i was out of breath early on in the digging. I began the process standing, swinging the thing with precision and making a straight line with my trench. By the time i got from the side, around the back of the kennel, i was squatting, holding the pickaxe midway down the handle, and hitting the ground with these mini swings, which was all i could muster. I was in a continuous state of breathlessness, i was covered in sweat, drool hung from my lips, and my trench was now jagged and sloppy. When i missed with the pickaxe i scraped my knuckles on the edges of the fence panels and the metal wires i had threaded through the bars to attach to buried fencing later. Soon my knuckles were bloody and raw. My palms were blistered and beads of moisture formed where i had torn the blisters off to keep going. The moisture made the handle of the pickaxe slippery, which made me even less precise. I crawled in the dirt on my knees, screaming about finishing, finishing, finishing the trench. Finishing the chicken pen. Finishing the projects. Finish, finish, finish!!! I rummaged around in the dirt with that pickaxe, limping to the finish line. Once the trench was dug i had to cut the wire fencing into 6 inch tall pieces, fit it down in the trench, and fasten it to the bottom of each panel in several places with metal wire and pliers. When i was done my hands looked like they’d had a cheese grater taken to them but there was a six inch trench dug all the way around the chicken pen, clear down to the limestone sheet beneath the soil and there was metal fencing in it, fastened to the bottom of each panel, all the way around. I laughed as i suddenly realized the meaning of the saying “blood, sweat, and tears”. All three were in the dirt surrounding this project.

Unfortunately, i literally didn’t have it in me to stand up after digging that trench. I left the pickaxe hidden in the grass next to the house and crawled to the dog run where i let the dogs out and crawled behind them up the porch steps. i left the ladder, the wheelbarrow, and the trundle bed frame in the yard. I called it a night. I made it up the stairs and onto the floor of the house. There i lay while the dogs sniffed and licked me, wondering when dinner would be in their bowls. It wouldn’t be until the following weekend when i would fill the wheelbarrow with mulch and bring it to the chicken pen, that i would finish the project. I shoveled the mulch all around the chicken pen to conceal the buried fencing. Once i was done shoveling the mulch in place i covered the floor of the chicken coop and the nesting boxes with cedar shavings. I was finally done. The greenhouse was done. The chicken coop was done. Now the chicken pen was done. All 3 big projects were finished and i had finished them smack dab in the middle of my 7 weeks of illness. I no longer worried whether i could run the homestead while physically compromised…the answer was yes.

Building the Chicken Coop

I wouldn’t say my 2020 posts are out of order. I would say rather that my posts at times encompass events that took place before and after the post that follows. I began planting the new additions to the homestead before i was sick and by the time the last tree was in the ground, i had pretty much recovered. However, the chicken coop was built smack dab in the middle of my 7 week window of symptoms. If it seems like a mess, its because it is. The timeline is really blurred together in my head, both because i was trying to move quickly, i didn’t feel well, and i had a lot of irons in the fire at once, all in different stages of completion.

The next time i had two consecutive days off i knew i needed to build a chicken coop and a chicken pen. I figured the best thing to do would be to build the coop first and then erect the pen around it. Out on the homestead there was an abundance of foxes. They would walk across the yard in broad daylight sometimes. At night i would occasionally hear raccoons chittering away on my porch and i often saw them crossing the road on my way to work. They looked like little masked bandits with beer guts. There were owls and a steady supply of hawks. The hawks had even tried to take Cashew on numerous occasions when she was only 5 lbs as a little pup. Not to mention, the coyotes and mountain lions that might find a chicken dinner interesting as well. I knew what i had, and that was an abundance of predatory animals that considered chicken to be on the menu year-round. I had to build something heavy, that couldn’t be dug under, with a roof. I decided to put the chicken coop in a dog kennel. Ultimately, the kennel i chose didn’t end up being very big. It was 5 x 10 feet. There was a larger one available but i rightly assessed that in my physical condition with the time-line looming over my head and a bathroom full of too-big chickens, i was not up to building the bigger kennel. Also, the panels to the smaller kennel were secured with a sturdier system of rounded pieces of metal secured around the edge of each panel with nuts and bolts, as compared to the larger dog kennel whose panels were secured with wire that resembled the chain link of each panel. The smaller kennel had cross-hatched metal bars. It appealed to me and it felt like the better choice for the situation so i bought it. The problem was, the chicken coop was a tad bit bigger than 5 ft…probably 5 ft 2 inches on the side that was supposed to measure at 5 ft. I finally figured out where the discrepancy came from. The bottom of the coop measures at 5 ft exactly but the roof stuck out over the coop an extra inch on each side to keep rain out. So, if one were to erect a pen around the coop, the measurement of the roof dimensions would be more pertinent to the situation than the measurement of the base of the chicken coop. I was sick, i was tired, and i was running out of time. I had to figure out what i was doing to make this coop fit inside the pen i was set to erect around it. Eventually i decided to begin erecting the chicken coop and figure out which pieces i could take off as i went along until i managed to shave the thing down to 5 ft on the narrower side of the kennel. So i began.

I got to about here in the assembly process before i began to realize what was what. The side with the giant horizontal window in it would be the place where the nesting boxes jutted out. Then there was the window with the wire fence on it. The next side with a little chicken door in it would open into the wire pen area with a roof.

It was at this point that i realized the solution to my problem with the kennel dimensions and the two extra inches of coop roof. I would take off the wire panels and not even put them on the coop at all. The kennel would be bigger than the yard set to attach to the coop anyway. Then i would turn the coop so that the side with the wired window faced the narrow side of the kennel. Suddenly things were looking doable again.

I got my drill, switched it over to the setting that would pull the screws out, and began taking the wire panels off.

I get tired of talking about it because it was the running theme of my life for nearly two months and now that i’ve recovered i’m tempted to bury the memory that i was ever weak or unable to do something. I’m tempted to wipe it from my memory/reality all together and never speak of it again, but, in the interest of documenting life on the homestead honestly, i will leave it in.

Building the chicken coop with step-by-step tractor supply instructions and all screws provided in labeled baggies should have been a cinch. I should have been able to knock it out with a power drill and a hammer in a couple hours but it took all day. It took all day because i lacked the strength to lift the pieces and most frustrating to me, i lacked the strength to push the drill with enough force to utilize a screw to draw two pieces of wood together. Instead, the screw kept going through the first piece of wood and pushing the second piece of wood out of my fingers, further away from the piece i was trying to attach it to. I was furious. I kept having to reverse the drill and pull the screw out only to do the exact same thing. The two pieces of wood would separate, the end of the screw between them, and i would turn my face to the sky and do one of three things; cry, beg and plead with God to let the screw go through both pieces of wood, or demand answers as to why this was happening to me (with not so pg-13 language peppered in there). Both the crying and the screaming made me breathless and further unable to operate the drill with any kind of real force or precision. I went through stages of sadness, optimism, defeat, and unchecked anger. Throughout my entire ongoing conversation with God he was silent. I was not ready to hear anything that might be taught to me at that time. I was not open to instruction. I was pretty much rage-filled, vengeful, and desperate to finish my project. I was a hot mess and God would give me some time to get myself together before speaking. Instead of answering my pleas and accusations God let me rage and rant for a couple weeks. I was given enough time to build the green house, the chicken coop, the chicken pen, and plant a couple trees before i had to answer for my words and my actions, sitting in the mud outside blubbering like a tantrumming child about strength and a power drill and some ******, ****ing screws.

Every piece assembled was a battle. I lacked the strength to push the pieces of wood together with one hand while pushing the drill into the screw with the other hand. I sat in the dirt, tears streaming down my face, occasionally screaming at God, asking “why…why…why…why” repeatedly, and begging “come on, come on, come on” with each new attempt. Ultimately, when it didn’t work and the screw pushed the second piece of wood away from the first yet again and i had to reverse the drill and pull the screw out one more time i would throw my fists into the dirt and scream at the heavens. I was so frustrated. I couldn’t make my body do what i wanted to do; what i needed to do in order to run the homestead by myself. I was utterly defeated but also having an identity crisis. I had always been strong. I was 5 ft 0 in. I was 100 lbs. i was a woman. Nobody took me seriously. Nobody viewed me as much. But when the shit hit the fan, i could lift my weight in bags of feed, human beings with gait belts at work, i could haul, build, chop down, erect, construct, and lift with the best of them, because i wanted it more. I would push my body to the limits to get the job done because i wanted it more than the 215 lb guy that occasionally worked out once in a while but looked like the better choice when assembling a crew to get something done. Others may have been born with more mass to work with but i had a fierce desire to be independent and able, and i was, until this moment. I was weak and out of breath and no matter how much i swore, tried, or pushed myself, i could not access the strength required to put the screws through both pieces of wood. I was having an identity crisis in the middle of all other things going on because i didn’t know who i was if not strong.

As the pictures demonstrate, i did figure it out. My lack of strength was directly connected to my lack of breath. My muscles needed oxygen to work. Pushing myself towards a deadline was not going to yield results here. I had to change my methods if i wanted to finish this. I stopped looking at the big picture and said “**** it i don’t care.” I focused on one task at a time and looked at nothing beyond that task. I rested for a good three minutes before attempting to drive in each screw. Sometimes i took a break and watched a little 3 to 5 minute cartoon skit on my phone via youtube just to keep myself from physical activity for a few minutes. Then, when i was fresh and not breathless, i grabbed the drill and drove in a screw. It wasn’t perfect. The perfectionist in me was angry that not all the screws were perfectly straight, but with at least 3 minutes of rest time needed to gather enough strength to operate the drill effectively to push in one screw, i couldn’t afford to be unscrewing screws that actually went through both pieces of wood. The progress was slow going but it was coming together. It was starting to look like a structure, and at least now i had a strategy that was yielding results.

From this point on it was just a matter of pacing myself and resting before each use of the drill, something i was not used to and didn’t come by naturally. I hated every remaining step of this process because it required a discipline that i didn’t want to have. I wanted to travel at break-neck speed, forgo food breaks and bathroom breaks and just hurry up and get it done. Life does not always give us what we want.

So i trudged forwards.

Piece by piece

The roof going on was a real moment of relief. I knew i was close to being done now. I wanted to be done with my 3 minute rest increments and that blasted drill. I did not enjoy this project. I just wanted to be done.

It was not until the roof was on and the floor was slid into place that i allowed myself to open the door and imagine what the chickens, who had only ever known the environment of a stock tank in the bathroom, would think of their new home. It seemed cozy.

There were bars for the chickens to perch on. I imagined them as full-grown chickens, big and fluffy, sitting on those bars, flapping their wings to try to balance before settling down.

I cried when it was finished. I sat on the porch steps and looked at it from the house. It was done. That was all i had wanted for the last 3 or 4 hours of the project. I just wanted it done.

It was beautiful. I had no idea how i’d done it and i didn’t want to think about it again. I would strike the experience from my memory and move on. the beginning of 2020 had not been a pleasant experience for me. If i was going to live through it, the homestead would need to be maintained and projects would need to go on, whether i was up to it or not, because if i lived but didn’t maintain the homestead, there would be nothing to return to when i did recover.

The chicken coop was built.

Seeds

When i ordered the greenhouse it was at the back end of my spending spree. I had already sprung for ppe, medicine, food supplies, a chicken pen, a chicken coop, chickens, dog and chicken feed, and many other things. I didn’t have money left to buy vegetable plants at the nursery. So i decided to buy seeds instead. I didn’t have a good history with seeds. Anything grown from a seed in my house usually died shortly after the first two leaves appeared. However, this time around, the stakes were higher. Maybe out of sheer desperation i would find a way to keep the sprouts alive.

In the tiny house there were only 384 square feet to work with. So, not a lot of shelf space to sprout vegetable seeds on. Originally i had them sitting in the window sills but when the sun hit the cups it turned the water to bath water and ended up boiling some of the seeds. It was no good. I needed a different setup. So, i used the dog crates as a counter space. I did so often when it came to cooking. I would set the cutting board or the pots and pans on top of the dog crates. I mean, they were the only flat counter-like surface i had in the kitchen and it wasn’t like the top of each crate was being used for something else. So, i repurposed the tops of the dog crates as a kitchen counter and placed up-turned toy box lids on top of them. I placed the sprouting cups on the toy box lids and filled them with well water. Then i placed a wad of paper towel in each cup, placing a few seeds on top of the paper towel in each cup. It was a modified method of sprouting seeds that my friend Luke’s mother had taught me as a child. She had placed an egg carton over a cup of water and cut a hole in the middle of the egg carton. The paper towel carpeted the egg carton and laid atop a paper towel that hung down from the egg carton into the cup. The paper towel drew up the water, spreading it along the length of the egg carton and keeping the seeds continuously moist without drowning them. Luke and i used to sprout beans in this way and watch them grow. However, we were city kids so back then we were just doing it for fun. Now it was a matter of sustenance. I needed food other than rice gruel and lentils. I didn’t have any egg cartons so i made do with the cups. I had taken one of each packet that was left at the dollar general, gotten carrot seeds at the walmart, and ordered a few seed packets online. It was a struggle to find seeds as they were all on back order because the whole country had the same idea. The grocery stores were empty so they’d make their own. I was late to the party. By the time i obtained all my seeds it was nearly summer. I could only sprout a few of the seeds i obtained because i had missed the planting season for the rest. I read the backs of the packages and sprouted whatever had an extended growing season.

Peas

Okra

Apple seeds

Cucumber

Squash

Rhubarb (one of my favorites)!

Fava beans

Our Favorite She is a He!

Iris had long been my favorite chick. She was smaller and more docile than the others. She was sickly in the beginning and had nearly died several times so i had pretty much raised her on my chest. I had spent a considerable amount of effort keeping her alive and neither she nor i had seemed to forget it. I was showing someone a picture of the chickens at my workplace when she said, “Oh you have a rooster!” I said, “no, no rooster, just 6 chickens.” She said, “5 chickens and a rooster.” I asked, “where?!” She pointed. As i followed her finger to the indicated chicken in the photo i said, “That’s iris.” She laughed, “Well, Iris is a he.” I gasped. Could it be? Over the next few weeks “iris would grow differently than the others. Her comb would become larger and floppier and she had little appendages that hung down from her neck while the others’ were thin and stretched tighter. Her feathers were also coming in differently around the neck and tail. I began to realize, my friend was right. It was confirmed for me when i heard a large amount of commotion coming from the chicken pen and peered in to see Iris trying to hump the other hens. It was settled. Iris was a boy.

He couldn’t really be having a name like “Iris the rooster”. So “Iris” became “Ira”. Ira the rooster. I would finally get to have a rooster and hear it crow on the regular, the one true sound that reminded people they weren’t in the city anymore. If any of the hens died or went missing i could put a couple eggs under the remaining hens and hatch out the chicks. But most importantly, a rooster would protect his flock from predators such as hawks, foxes, and raccoons. An adult rooster would act as a lookout, scanning the environment for trouble and alerting the hens to any lurking danger when spotted. What good news! I had a rooster.

The Plant Boxes

I didn’t have the money to buy proper plant boxes with all the dough i was spending on obtaining my own ppe, food, medicine, feed for the animals, and tylenol. Everything was more expensive than it should have been. Produce was marked up so much a potato was a dollar. You could spend 50 bucks buying a bottle of Tylenol because everything was on back order and only the poor sobs that actually needed the stuff to keep them out of the ER and at the job site once a month would pay the mark-up criminals that amount of money for 1 bottle on ebay or amazon. Masks were similarly available, for a pretty penny.

The financial toll wasn’t the only reason i didn’t want to buy proper planter boxes. I had a gazillion termites and carpenter ants spread across the 2 acre property. I knew wood would be consumed quickly by the little pests. I went to the dollar general and picked out some plastic toy boxes. They wouldn’t be tasty to the termites and they were much less expensive than real planter boxes would have been. i drilled numerous holes in the bottom of each box for water drainage and vwalah! Once i was done making my boxes i had to fill them. I cringed at the cost of filling each box with potting soil. The boxes held more soil than i anticipated and the amount of bags i would have to buy was rising. Instead of buying the proposed mountain of potting soil i cheated a bit. I filled half of each box from the mulch pile on my property and only shelled out for enough dirt to cover the top third of the toy boxes. As i watered the plants, the nutrients from the soil would move down amongst some of the mulch layered underneath it. It wasn’t ideal but then, what was ideal at this point? 2020 wasn’t really shaping up to be a marathon of perfection if you know what i mean.

After each box was filled i set it inside the greenhouse.

It was finally coming together. Oh! I skipped a huge bit! I let the chickens loose in the greenhouse before i filled it with boxes. It was their first outing and at first they didn’t know what to make of the grass. They huddled together and stood absolutely still. Pretty soon natural instinct took over and they began to scratch and peck as all grown chickens do. I was so proud of them. They were engaging in real chicken behavior. As i had hoped, they went after all the grasshoppers that had been hiding in the greenhouse and after a couple hours there wasn’t a bug in sight. I shuttled the chickens back indoors and continued to set up the greenhouse. The chickens had done me a huge favor since i could never have rid the greenhouse of the little chompers so thoroughly.

In went my onion (sprouted in the pantry)

Chives and dill

The potato corner

These were really hard to sprout in the tiny house but, more on that later.

The Plants

Fortunately, i dug the hole for the loquat tree back before i got sick. The ground on my property was mostly limestone with a thin layer of clay on top of it. So, digging involved a large metal stick more than it did a shovel. The shovel was just present to lift the broken pieces of rock from the hole after the stick was used.

When the hole was deep enough to my satisfaction i lifted the loquat tree into it and began to bury it with the limestone rock powder i had made.

The poor loquat tree had been kept in the house until the freezing temperatures were gone and its leaves had wilted and turned crunchy. It needed to be outside. I put it in the ground but it was touch and go for a couple months afterwards. I was unsure whether it would survive. It dropped most of its leaves and then finally sprouted new ones at the tips of the branches. That’s when i knew it would live. It liked to be watered a lot less than the other trees and had a more difficult time recovering from overwatering than the others as well. I tried to remember that when examining the weather forecast. I watered the loquat sparsely every 3 days and if there was a chance of rain i skipped it all together.

I bought a little aloe vera plant at walmart. i intended to use it for medicinal purposes.

Barbecue rosemary (fenced so josie couldn’t make a snack of it)

To pinch off some leaves and rub them on one’s skin was to have a very effective and natural mosquito repellant.

The best rosemary for mosquito repellant purposes was native rosemary. Its leaves held more oil and were more fragrant than its softer more edible cousin cultivated for cooking purposes. However, the native rosemary was small and wilted so i bought the barbecue rosemary as a back-up in case the wilted rosemary didn’t perk up and survive.

I also bought a chocolate mint plant. When i was a child my mother planted one mint plant in our front garden and for nearly a decade after we could not beat back the invaders as they took over everything in sight and choked the other plants for resources. I planted the chocolate mint behind the house in the hope that this type of invasive pattern mint was known for would repeat. I wanted chocolate mint everywhere back there. I could use it in sweets and drinks or just chew the leaves, it would smell like chocolate at the back of the house, and if it choked out the other plants back there perhaps i wouldn’t have to mow that patch of weeds.

I saw a muscat grape vine at the tractor supply one day (before i swore that store off for good) and i suddenly remembered picking muscat grapes on the way back from the bus stop in the old apartment i used to live in back when i was in Austin. The vine had climbed some tree trunks and hung down from the trees in a wall of grape leaves. During the summer grapes would appear. The outside of each grape was leathery and the first bite burned a little bit on the tongue, but then the gel on the inside of the leathery casing would ooze out and be sweet as pie. They had seeds you kind of had to roll around in your teeth and spit out or swallow but the little bit of sweet gel in the middle was well worth the effort. I bought the muscat grape vine and buried the twig with leaves next to two old oak trees standing together. Then i fenced around it to keep the deer off. I hoped the vine would grow up the trees and hang down so i could pick the grapes in the summers.

One day my neighbor sent me a message that she had left some plants hanging on the fence for me. I hurried out to my gate but there was nothing there. Then i started thinking…there was a little white rock road on one side of my property that was the only way for some of the ranchers to get from their property to the main road. It ran between my property and the neighbor next to me. As far as i understood, when it fell into disrepair, it was the responsibility of all those whose land touched against it to pitch in to maintain it. I was okay with this when i bought the property because upon examining it, it was hard packed and level and white rock instead of mud or pavement. It would hold up pretty good without much fuss. Now i walked along the fence against this white rock road until i found it. There was a plastic grocery bag hooked on the barbed wire of my fence next to the road. In it were some decorative plants that i planted and the deer promptly ate. However, beneath those were four little aloe vera plants. They were very dry and wilted. All the plants were. There was no telling how long they’d been on the fence. I cut the bag down and set to digging holes immediately. I had to get the thirsty plants in the ground and water them. The little aloe vera were all together with their roots tangled in one big mess. I set to separating them as carefully as i could. They would have more room to grow if i could get them separated and they’d do better. Initially the aloe vera went into shock. It took them a couple weeks to get their green color back and perk up, but they did. When it became apparent that all four of them were going to live i breathed a sigh of relief. Aloe vera was antibacterial, good for wounds, burns, sunburns, infections, and stomach ailments. The gift my neighbor had left me on the fence was priceless! If i could nurse them into big plants i could have 4 big aloe vera on top of the one i had bought at the store. The spiky aloe vera plants did better than the finicky smooth one i had bought at the store. They were less picky about water and sun. They took whatever conditions came. They would more likely survive than the plant i’d bought at walmart, though it didn’t stop me trying to nurse it along.

There was one last blackberry bush at the walmart store parking lot when i went there for groceries that day. I snatched it up and set it in the basket. It was scrawny and dry and i had to pull off the broken branches but i saw potential. It had a few unripe berries on it and the leaves that were present were green. It was salvageable. I bought it, planted it, and enjoyed the berries when they ripened.

Now, right before i got sick i had gone to the plant nursery and bought a pear tree, a mulberry tree, an orange tree, an avocado tree, and a pecan tree. I bought them during the two days before they closed the city, determined to carry as many food trees home in the suv before they declared only essential businesses could remain open and shut down our economy. What i didn’t realize was that i was going to spend 7 weeks struggling to overcome symptoms and i was going to be in no shape to plant the trees. By May i had overcome all of my symptoms except the tachycardia and i was at a point where the trees needed to go in the ground if i planned on keeping them. I donned my apron full of useful pockets to hold keys and tools, put on my 1 dollar denim walmart clearance hat, and laced up my steel-toed boots. It was time to see if i could still do this, if i could still lift the heavy metal stick and dig a hole as i always had.

The answer was yes. I could still dig a hole.

It took twice as long as it should have because i had to keep stopping to rest to allow my heart rate to settle and i had grown weaker than i was when i was used to a daily diet of manual labor. My muscles lacked their former strength and reserves. I very well could have managed 3 holes in one day if it’d been the same time last year but i managed two this time around and that was good enough. I had feared that i wouldn’t be able to dig a hole at all so when i dug two i was plenty satisfied with that. It did however take every last drop of energy i had and by the end of the day my arms were jelly and my legs threatened to buckle beneath me.

The mulberry tree went in first. I cut some fencing off the roll, dragged it across the property, used the wire cutters to bend the edges of the fencing around each other, and hammered rebar into the ground at an angle around the bottom of the fencing to keep the wind from lifting it up.

The day was getting hotter and i was feeling it. The prickly pear were starting to open their flowers towards the sun. The bees were loving it.

The beautiful flower of a true survivor of drought, the cactus.

The second hole was twice as hard to dig, both because i was tired already and i picked a spot that was solid limestone instead of broken limestone pieces laying on top of one another. I really had to work for that hole because there were no air pockets for the rock to crack into. When i brought the stick down it wasn’t a big dramatic shatter. It cracked in small isolated pieces and the going was slow, but i got it done.

The pear tree was in. All i could think about was getting these trees that were such a resource and a valuable treasure if kept alive, into the ground before they died. I didn’t want the money spent to be in vain. I didn’t want these young cuttings to be wasted. They had such potential if only i could get them all in the ground and fenced with rebar.

By now the cactus flowers were completely open. The sun was high and the grasshoppers were clicking and buzzing through the grass. It was hot.

At this moment my orange tree, avocado tree, and pecan tree still aren’t planted. It is imperative that i get them into the ground before cold weather this year. It looks like they may go in during autumn. I’ve missed my spring window to get them planted. I tell myself im going to do it on my day off each week, and then something always comes up that takes precedence. The dog needed a rabies shot. All the appliances broke at once. We had a microburst that knocked out the power for 6 hours and downed trees and signs all over town. The chiggers became a huge problem and i had to get the grass mowed (an all day event with the 5 blade reel mower). I am behind and the trees are not settled. At some point i will have to remedy this. I just cant do it right now.

The Wasps

We were having an unusually warm spring. The highs were already in the high 80s and low 90s and frost seemed like a thing of the past. It was time to take the winter boxes off of the fruit trees. They had been nursed along in there, hidden away from the sun in an attempt to keep them from frosting until warmer weather arrived, but now they needed the sun if they were to be salvaged. Without thinking i grabbed hold of one of the boxes and leaned it to its side with the intent of freeing the tree housed beneath it. An angry wasp emerged and flew about my head. I set the box carefully back down and took a few brisk steps towards the shed. The wasp returned to its nest. Upon further inspection there was a wasp nest hanging from the interior ceiling of each box. This, i decided, had to be remedied before i could get back to removing the boxes from the trees. I knew i had a can of spray under the sink in the kitchen. I retreated to the house to weaponize. My brain told me it would be best to wait for sun down when the wasps would not be moving and spray them in their sleep to avoid being stung. My brain also detailed a mile-long list of chores that needed to be done and “remove boxes” was one of those that was listed to be done today. The can read, “kills on contact”. I slipped my keys in my apron pocket in case i needed to run and said, “I hope you’re right.” I shook the can, held it up to the first nest, sprayed, and ran.

The wasp was hit directly with the foamy poison and it wriggled and writhed on its back in the grass. Eventually it stopped twitching. I kicked it with my boot. It was dead. I turned to the next one. I sprayed each wasp’s nest in each box and then set the can down next to the tool shed.

With the wasps dead and the nests knocked free i could tip the boxes on their sides, at which point a little fruit tree sprang forth from each one and i redid the fencing around it to keep the deer out. I then corner-walked each box over to the cedars in front of the fence line and stood them there, to be used next winter if the termites didn’t get them first.

The lemon tree flowered WAY early this year, probably due to the unusually warm weather. It flowered when i hadn’t taken the frost box off yet and the bees completely missed the blossoms. I didn’t get a single lemon.

There was my beautiful brown turkey fig tree. I hoped it would grow as big as the one i remembered from my childhood, eventually dwarfing our old house.

Finally, the little 11 dollar twig i had planted the year before; the pomegranate tree. I was ecstatic to see it had grown taller and sprouted more leaves. All winter it had lost all but three little leaves, the last sign of life that clung to the tops of the twigs. Now it appeared healthy and thriving. All 3 of the fruit trees had survived the winter. The question was, what fruit trees would be joining them on the property this year? What gems would the nursery offer, how much money would i have to spare, and how many holes would i find time to dig through the limestone in between working and running the operations i already had going on the property? Only time would tell.

Building the Greenhouse

As i said before, i had my eye on a super fancy super huge greenhouse with solar powered vents and fans. It would have been larger than the tiny house itself. However, when Covid-19 took the stage the money i was saving for the greenhouse had to go straight into buying my own ppe and getting a 6 month supply of meds for me and the dogs. Then there was the rice. I had hoped to buy these large buckets of rice to keep on hand so the dogs and the chickens always had something to eat. I didn’t want to watch them go hungry or skinny while i rationed what we did have. I tried to fatten them up with supplemental insects i found on the property. They would charge me for the rice immediately but it was on back order until late spring. Late spring would come and go and i’d never hear from the people again but they still took the $800 they wanted for the rice. It was just one of those things. You had to let it go. You had to try. And then when it failed, you had to let it go and keep walking.

Anyways, the stores were cleaned out good by the time i got off work. People lined up in the parking lot of the local grocery store every morning, waiting for the doors to open like race horses listening for the gunshot on the track. When those doors unlocked it was a full-on stampede.

I couldn’t get my hands on any food. My first thought was that i ought to purchase a greenhouse, though i was saving that for another year. It seemed now had become the time. I knew i couldn’t buy my dream greenhouse so i went the other way. I bought a 500 dollar greenhouse from walmart. It arrived in pieces with an instruction packet that read, “Takes 2 to 4 people for assembly.” I thought, “Here we go.” I tied on my bandana and tucked in.

The going was slow from the very beginning. There was not a single word to the instructions. It was all pictures, and some of the parts were labeled wrong. The picture showed an L shaped piece that said 893 while clearly the long metal sticks lying in my yard bore the stickers that read “893” and the bag of L shaped ones said “992”. Though i looked through all the pages of the packet, i couldn’t find “992” mentioned anywhere. Then there was the problem of the picture angles. You could only see what was going on from one side of the picture. It was unclear what the opposite side looked like. Frequently i’d get 3 steps in and realize one piece was turned in the wrong direction and i would have to undo all 3 of the steps just to go back and set it straight so it would connect to something else properly later.

Some pieces, like the bolt that was supposed to go through the door handle, were too short to fit in the place the diagram swore they were supposed to be. I was so frustrated with the cryptic asinine instruction diagrams that i was stomping round the yard in my steel-toed boots, shaking the instruction packet at the heavens while pointing emphatically and telling all the wildlife that would listen, “This is clearly not 893!!! That there is 893! This here is 992! Where the **** does 992 go? Nobody knows! Nobody knows! But we got 16 of those 713 pieces over there. 16 of them! And it says here there should be 4.” “****ing Walmart.” I was at a loss as to how i was going to turn those instructions into some sort of roadmap i could follow in any way.

I had 2 days blocked out to get this project done before my work week in healthcare resumed its wicked pace. It was now or never. **** the instructions. I was going to have to do this, trial and error, until all the steps were run through, all things were assembled, disassembled, turned, and reassembled…i was going to have to construct this greenhouse one way or another.

Right from the beginning i noticed a design flaw. Instead of using nuts and bolts as they were intended to be used, the company in their infinite wisdom said, “let’s make the heads of the bolts square and then we’ll slide them in a loose track and the track will grab the square head of the bolt and hold the thing together. That way, if the wind blows or the foundation shifts, the client can have the fun of scrambling around trying to get all the square heads of the bolts back in the tracks they popped out of before the whole thing falls apart.” I could not believe it but the whole greenhouse was to be held together by tracks sitting precariously balanced on the ends of square bolt heads. I pulled at my face. This was not going to last. But, what was there to do? I had already spent the money. It was already here. I couldn’t afford a different one. This was it. This was what we had to work with. The dogs eyed me cautiously from a distance, wondering if the swear words were just in general or directed at them.

As i began to put pieces together the wind was blowing something fierce. It was howling through the trees and the rustling branches were bent back towards the ground only to be thrown the other way with the next violent gust. I was shouting at God. “Please, *** ****** please! Just wait, WAIT! Wait!! Wait!! Lord please, PLEASE!!! Just let me get the frame up first! Not yet, don’t blow it down yet Lord. Wait, no, no, no, no, no; OH COME ON!!!”

“2 to 4 for assembly” meant i had to get creative about who was going to be holding the pieces in play for me. Meet “Mr ladder” and “Mrs wheelbarrow”. He was a pretty good helper but she was lacking in the height department.

The thing was flimsy as could be and i tried frantically to hold it all together long enough to get to the next step and the next one while the wind whipped my clothes around and threw dust into my eyes, bent the trees and threatened to tear down all my progress at any second with a mighty gust.

Finally i reached the stage where i could start putting the panels in. That was a dangerous endeavor as they caught the force of the wind pretty good and having one side up without the other side anchored in threatened disaster with random gusts of wind slamming into the barely standing half-wall.

The edges of the panels were sharp and as i carried them the wind threatened to rip them out of my hands or bend them, twisting them this way and that as i walked through the yard. I held tight to the panels, determined not to let the wind carry them away from me. The edges of the panels dug into my fingers and the palms of my hands and drew blood.

It was a little bit better balanced against the wind once i got the panels in on both sides but not by much.

As the sun set on day 1, i had the base erected but still lacked a roof.

I hoped it would still be there in the morning and reluctantly quit for the night.

In the morning i set about adding a roof.

Getting that middle bar on was quite the task! It was one long piece, bolted together. I had to maneuver the ladder in through the greenhouse doorway while still folded, open it, stand it up, climb on top of it, and balance the majority of the bar on my shoulder while bolting one side down to the frame. I then scooted the ladder to the middle of the greenhouse and laid the other end of the bar carefully against the top ladder step. I then hurried to the other side of the greenhouse frame and hoisted the bar onto my shoulder once more so i could bolt it to the frame on the other side as well. When the bar was bolted in place i dropped to my knees and sighed in relief. I had done it. The part that REALLY required 2 to 4 people to assemble was over.

I erected more bars and slid the roof panels in. At this point process of elimination was helping me figure out which pieces the diagram was referring to. There weren’t many left to choose from so i was piecing the puzzle together.

When all the roof panels were in i began to feel as if maybe i could see the finish line.

As the sun set on day 2 i began work on the door.

I installed and uninstalled the sky light when it became apparent that the plastic arm that was supposed to hold it open had a tendency to drift back to its original position; closed. Also it was catching wind pretty effectively and i was worried it would be torn off by the first rain storm.

Then i mulched around the bottom of the frame so the grasshoppers couldn’t slide under. It was dark when i finished the project. I finished by lamp light, alone, fiddling with nuts and bolts and trying to whisper my disdain for Walmart because the neighbors were sleeping. I had to wait until the next day for a final picture. In the end it took 19.5 hours to complete the project. I had to zip tie the door handle in place because the bolt ended up being too short to poke through the other side to catch the nut. I was so thrilled to be done with it but i had an uneasy anxious feeling growing in the pit of my stomach. I worried that the slightest wind could probably leave all that work i’d just done in vain.

Rain Water

Before the world was in the throes of a pandemic i got my water from a dispenser plugged in outside the gas station near my property. When that was out of order there was another one sitting outside the grocery store in town. When they came down with the decree that everyone should stand 6 feet apart from each other they took the dispensers. They loaded them up on trucks and drove away. They said they didn’t want to have to send store employees to supervise the cueing of people in the parking lot to get water. So i had no choice but to buy bottled water. Well, that was difficult. People were panicking. People who were hooked up to city water were buying up all the bottled water in mass quantity as soon as the trucks arrived. I lived in the country with a well; a sulfur well. The water was good to give to thirsty plants but no good for humans and animals to drink. It would cause epic diarrhea and eventually lead to death via dehydration. However, when the supply trucks arrived at the grocery i was at work caring for my patients. By the time i made it to the grocery in the afternoon there wasn’t any water left. When there was they were single bottles, usually Dasani, and every customer was only allowed one. So, i could buy 1 single serve bottle of water (if it existed on the shelf that day) for myself, 2 dogs, and 6 chickens to split. I watched as my six 3-gallon containers of reserve water were gradually emptied by my little family. I was without water. I didn’t know what to do. There was no fire station you could report to during this time where you could say, “Please, i’m out of water.” Especially if you were a healthcare worker; no one wanted to be near you. You could be infected. I thought about going to the river, collecting water in my 3-gallon jugs, hauling it back to the property, and boiling it to make it drinkable. The problem was, boiling the river water would kill the algae and bacteria but it wouldn’t filter out the chemical waste that i knew was in there. The river water had long been contaminated and i had never in my life lived some place where the rate of cancer was so high in the population. High school students and even toddlers were fighting and sometimes losing their battle with cancer. To drink the river water would be a slower death than to drink sulfur water but a death just the same in the end. I wracked my brain for what to do. In the end, it was God that solved the problem, not me. I began buying as much coconut water as i could. There was no purchasing limit on coconut water because nobody really knew what it was. They usually had it in stock because it wasn’t an item on peoples radar to stock pile. I lived on coconut water alone as a hydration source for a few weeks. My dogs and chickens needed something to drink as well. It was then that the rains began. God gave me rain daily for two straight weeks while i was waiting for the filter my grandmother had ordered me to arrive. Every day it rained and every day i nestled my four glass cookware containers in the sticks of my fire pit outside. Every day i dragged my horse-feed bucket that i had used the last of the bleach to sanitize onto the concrete driveway of the toolshed and left it. When the rain died down in the evening i would scurry out to the fire pit and the shed driveway to pick the leaves and twigs out of the water collected. Then i would pour it into my two plastic pitchers that i kept in the refrigerator and replenish the dogs’ water bowl and the chickens’ water dispenser with the rain; gifted from the heavens.

My grandmother saved us in the end. The filter arrived in the mail; a small, life-sustaining tool that rendered undrinkable water drinkable. It could filter half a gallon at a time. It took the raw water from the well, removed the sulfur, and 30 minutes to 2 hours later, depending on how recently i had changed the little cylindrical filter insert, the water had moved from the top to the bottom compartment and was now perfectly safe. I was determined to make the filter inserts last as long as i could so even when it took 2 hours to filter water i didn’t throw the insert out and put in a new one. I kept using it and just made sure that i was always in some stage of filtering water to keep the jugs filled. I began to recognize that i was becoming possessive of things like the water filter. Even after i had received it i still put the collection containers out and filled the pitchers whenever it rained. I was becoming like my patients who had lived through the great depression. I remembered the uncertainty of not having a water source for any of my animals and there would be no wasting of anything that could be rendered drinkable. In some ways, i became a different person and i didn’t always recognize her.

Josie

Around early spring i noticed i was being followed by a jack rabbit wherever i went. She would follow me around the yard as i did my chores. She always stayed just far enough that i couldn’t reach her. 10 to 20 feet. She would sit near me and chew the grass, wriggling her little nose as she ate, ears alert and glassy eyes watching me. I went about my chores. I never tried to pet her or chase her. I simply went about my business and she kept me company while she went about hers. We had an agreement for a long time. She would eat all of the grass and dandelion flowers she wanted from the property as long as she left my cultivated plants alone. Sometimes she would come up to the house and sit in front of the porch. I wouldn’t know she was there and the dogs would chase her when they were let out to use the bathroom. I worried they would catch her but they never did, and it didn’t sway her from coming around. I became accustomed to the sight of her veiny ears sticking out of the grass in the late evening sun and her glassy dark eyes and wiggly nose. I became used to watching her chew and hop around looking for more things to eat while i watered the plants and built things in the yard. I decided my new friend needed a name. I settled on Josie. She became a regular fixture on the homestead and pretty much came to hang out with me as i wandered the property with a watering can every other night. I did my thing and she did hers. There didn’t need to be any talking, obligation, or social niceties. She was the perfect hang. Sometimes i don’t wonder why i prefer the company of animals to humans. Sometimes i wonder why not.