peace in the late ending, through plants and the fruits of land and labor
We all see what's happening around us, in the natural world. We feel it in our bones, in our very core. It is a knowing and knawing pit we bury further down just to keep moving forward with living. What are you gonna do, just surrender to despair? I sure as shit ain't.
I started gardening, (like for real gardening [with my hands]) around 2018. We had just purchased our home in Glen Ellyn, and tore up the bad plants. We tore them down to build up a garden that could feed us holistically through the spirit of labor and the potatoes that came to our plates after a good season of underground growth. It helped quell a lot of pain I've been carrying, even today, from my volunteered bit role in American Imperialism. It didn't neuter the tremens completely, but it helped enough that we moved forward and onward into hen keeping the following year.
The wife and I built ourselves a coop and bought ourselves some friends. We raised the babies into growns, and gave them the best chicken lifestyles we could muster out of our busy days. Over years, we learned Anita was an Arnie (thoughtfully, we gifted him to a farm), we lost one bird to a hawk and another to a heart condition. We were left with two, then four again during the intervening years and finally to our move to Glencoe. That's when we acquired two more younger hens to join the flock, and they acclimated well enough to be their own little hen pack.
We moved the Glencoe on the promises from a village board -- they wrote eloquently on sustainable practices for the home, advocating that folks keep the leaves on their yards and plant natives if they choose, but ought to choose. Turns out, those words may be rather empty and not quite shared among all residents.
I blame myself for moving us all the way over here. We hunted for a larger home closer to work for two years, and found one in Glencoe. We bought not knowing it's culture, how the folks here could actually be -- I blame myself for a failure in imagination, to be quite frank, and a silly idealism that all humans want to be good, that goodness is inherent, and cruelty is a deviation from the mean.
I now have my hens at risk of being culled due to a neighbor hellbent on not seeing a coop in her kitchen window. She doesn't want to see our working garden, our coop, our children's toys or our laundry clotheslines; while she can't affect the garden or the toys, she can get rid of the coop by ridding herself of our hens, and that is what she's aiming to do.
I have a meeting on October 17th, and I'm going to try and convince the board to spare our birds and our property from their oversight. I have folks on my side, but money talks and I don't walk with pockets and bank account credit sheets in my pockets.
I dunno why I'm shouting this into the void. I just want this stress and pain to go away. I feel so much better when I'm in my yard, surrounded by the natural island I built with my wife and my baby boys and my hens. I feel like it could be gone. I feel threatened. I'm so mad.