We have moved swiftly into spring. Maple Syrup has been such a life saver for me in that it carries me through the worst of winter. I always come out of the holidays feeling like I’ve got nowhere to land. By the time the sap has stopped running suddenly I am waking up so much earlier and my day is filled with chores. I feel right where I am supposed to be come April. Our chicks came today, they were a 10 pack of variety breeds. I was worried about one but everyone seems to have adjusted after their long night in the mail.

We have eggs and syrup for sale from a tiny cooler in our driveway. We also expanded the chicken yard today as they have aggressively scratched all the grass up and it’s soon to be a mud pit. Unfortunately this has somehow encouraged one of our chickens to routinely fly out of the yard. Her name is Puff (one of our few hens with a name) and she used to escape their brooder as a chick and I would catch her flying around the basement. So I guess she is staying true to herself at the ripe age of 4. We have to open the coop then so she isn’t alone and can get back in easily. I don’t like to open the coop because Flower (my favorite) has fused bones in a leg due to it breaking when she was a chick. She gets around just fine with one leg being like the Hulk from all it’s exercise. Flower sort of does a jig to run and does not appear to be in any pain. It does mean that she occasionally gets stranded when the other chickens have moved on to scratch elsewhere, leaving her alone and therefore vulnerable. It has been incredibly frustrating to keep the chickens together and keep our younger dog, Yushi, from eating them. (She is very sneaky and just stands at a distance wagging her tail and slowly approaches, then gently pins them down licking them incessantly and the second they panic she goes for them.) We have lost multiple chickens to her and even training with a shock collar was not successful in deterring her.

I think most homesteaders would’ve killed a disabled chicken a long time ago but that is not us. She is the only chicken I have an emotional attachment to. She was not thriving as a chick and spent most of her time sitting in a corner alone (hence her name wallFLOWER). I spent a lot of time holding her and she came through. We wouldn’t find out until she was four years old that she had probably broken her leg and that’s why she didn’t move much. She is not afraid of us, unlike the other hens, and used to come when she was called like a dog would. She has survived multiple hawk attacks and outrun the dogs. I really feel like this girl wants to live and we need to honor that.

Flower has me thinking about ableism a lot and what actually works best for animals (humans included.) Free range sounds great until you consider all the risks. The chickens are more susceptible to predators and injuring themselves. They also must exist in groups to survive physically and emotionally. Every chicken’s needs should be accounted for. If it doesn’t work for one, it doesn’t work for any.

My physical limitations due to disability have me pounding my fists on a metaphorical wall everyday. Trying to clean out a chicken coop is hard work. Trying to clean out a coop with unsteady footing and arthritis is really hard work. Trying to clean out a coop with a two and a half year old on top of that is near impossible work. The work isn’t optional to me, though. I feel called to be here for every part of it. I cannot imagine another life for myself, even if it meant my body might be given a bit of a break. My daughter might receive more patience from me if I had a different “job.”

However, I think something we forget as parents is that rage is part of raising young. Pure, white hot rage that eclipses whatever we are trying to accomplish as our toddler insists on touching something unsafe, standing right where we need to be, undressing from their winter gear we just worked so hard to put on them. It is ok for my child to see how exasperated I am as I tell her for the seventh time to “watch out” or “back up” so she doesn’t get hit in the face with the handle of a shovel. Even trying to work through the noise is rage inducing. Why must she loudly whine that I am shoveling more dirty bedding into the pile as she tries to pull out every single chicken feather? Of course there is the incessant “doing mama? doing mama? doing doing??” as I tell her once again that I am “raking” or “shoveling” or “cleaning.”

I know she needs to ask those questions not to have the same answer again but to know I am still caring for her. She needs that reassurance that although I am red in the face and breathless and frowning that I am still unconditionally there for her. It is no surprise to me simply because it was only two years ago when she still needed to cry simply so I would look at her and she would know she hadn’t been abandoned. At 25 I still needed reassurance and validation which makes sense considering human brains are still technically in childhood development at that time. It is hard to watch a baby horse only minutes old get up and walk, or a chick get its own sip of water while my child is still completely helpless and will be for the most part for several years to come. But that animal mothering brings me back to rage and allowing your children to see that. We hide our tears, our fighting words, our depression but share videos all the time on social media of wild animal mothers attempting to keep their children safe which sometimes means head-butting, clawing, biting, etc.

Rage isn’t always the right word. I have to stop and ask myself “am I angry or am I tired?” Sometimes I am extremely mad that my child won’t stay out of my way, my body is limited, and I am on a time crunch until my child is tired/hungry or my joints quit. Most of the time it isn’t anything a pause and a super deep breath and forced therapeutic laugh can’t fix. The rage is mostly at my body for not being enough. I want to work harder, faster, more efficiently. I want to be able to pound those fence posts in on my own, to lift the soil bags, to twist wires tightly without my fingers cramping up. But I think the greatest lesson I can teach my daughter is that she does not come from women who suffer silently. She comes from women who work through feelings of helplessness.

Accepting that homesteading isn’t the cure is tough. I really want it to be all I need to get better. However much like an ecosystem thrives on variety, so does the human body. Recovery feels like a layering of resources. Staying away from white flour, regularly seeing a doctor, using both pharmaceuticals and herbal medicine, somatic therapy, reading in bed at 9:30 instead of watching tv and staying up too late, even taking a Zumba class have all played a part in how to thrive with an autoimmune disease. Homesteading is where I feel the most grounded, the most worthy, the most talented and knowledgeable, but it isn’t everything. Emotional recovery from moments or even hours of rage has looked like leaning hard into the really good moments. When my daughter wants to sit in my lap I hug her a little tighter, I pet the dogs a little longer, I deeply inhale the smell of spring and savor the moments of peace and comfort.