Lately, I've been watching some of
the goings-on as a handful of people have been setting themselves up to
live in the country, many for the first time.
I think it's
interesting to watch people dealing with things they've never encountered
before. Never having bought a seventeen-ton-truckload of gravel, or hired
a well-drilling crew doesn't exactly classify you as a babe-in-the-woods,
but that's the feeling you get.
To establish a home
where once there was only woods requires quite a bit of planning and
foresight, as you have to make decisions that you may have to live with
for a long time.
Watching all this
take place always reminds me of when we moved here to Exclamation Pointe
back in '77.
When we came here, the farm had a
few sheds, two big wooden barns and a large chicken house. You’ll notice
that I didn't mention any dwelling - for humans, that is - I'd always wanted
to design my own house.
I grew up not far
from here. At the time we moved back, I hadn't lived in the country for
several years, and that had been long enough to develop a strong distaste
for dealing with traffic and of having neighbors right on the edge of my
lawn. The year before, I'd bought an acreage on the other side of town
that was surrounded by the National Forest, but the government dudes had
finally made it clear that they weren't going to let me bring in
electricity, and we decided we weren't willing to get by without it.
I'd picked a
beautiful spot that was one of the more scenic locations in the Mark Twain
National Forest that the government didn't already own. They have
since been able to correct that situation, having gotten rid of me.
Trying to squeeze a little
compassion out of the state had wasted several months, and we were already
a year behind our schedule for moving to the country. We decided that we
could get out of town quicker if we were to convert the chicken house, the
best of the buildings, into living quarters.
Funny, how easy it is
to use those words, "living quarters". They just sort of roll off
your tongue, and if you're anything like I was, maybe you don't spend
enough time thinking about exactly what they mean.
This was the summer
of 1977. I was still married to my first wife at the time, and Christi and
Lori were about ten and five.
I was so anxious to
move out of town that I'd have lived in a tent. My wife and I negotiated
that she'd go along with my scheme if "reasonable living quarters" could
be provided, and in this instance, that would mean indoor plumbing and
electricity.
When I say this was a
chicken house, I don't mean a little 4 x 8 wire and wooden shed. This was
what is known to poultry aficionados as a broiler-house, because it's
intended use was to rear young chickens, in fairly large quantities, to
the appropriate age when one would want to broil said birds, whenever that
might be.
Inside the bleak
exterior, there was a cold and unforgiving concrete floor, a few dull
windows that you had to stoop to see out of, and lots of bare wood.
We put batts of fiberglass
insulation between the wall studs, and in late summer it seemed as if it
would be plenty cozy in the winter. We hired a neighbor to do a
nearly-competent job of wiring the place, and a couple of were-plumbers to
install a genuine bathroom with its very own septic tank just behind the
building.
The building itself
was about sixteen feet wide, and maybe sixty feet long. Not unlike a
typical mobile home configuration. Beyond that, the comparison
becomes strained because mobile homes are primarily designed for humans,
whereas chicken-houses are designed, as one might suppose, for chickens.
This one was built of rough-sawn oak and someone had replaced the
chicken-wire on the south side with casement windows of the sort more
preferred by humans and the higher primates.
Perhaps you have
never taken a moment to reflect on the essential differences between man
and chicken, but I assure you that they are substantial.
First, there is the
matter of lifestyle. Chickens get to party all day long, spending their
lives cackling with their friends and relatives while gorging themselves
in front of troughs of food, their every whim (be it alfalfa pellets,
water, or more alfalfa pellets, or more water) is catered to them by the
doting and benevolent chicken farmer.
