Outside this window, the chickens sit silent in a big cooler, covered in ice fetched from the bin outside Cheeseman's store. When I went in to pay yesterday afternoon, on the way to Mary's farm, Tony had been "fryin' all day," the young cashier told me, when I said how good it smelled in there. "Tony is a good fryer," said her taller, thinner, clearly pregnant friend, also behind the worn wooden counter, a curiously absent look in her eyes.
Yesterday morning, those chickens were out in the sunshine running and pecking for food, unaware that this was The Day. The day that by afternoon would find them upside down in the cone in the temporary tent, their heads chopped off, then feet, then swirled around in the plucker before their insides left them and they were plunged into a cool bath.
I get a stab of remorse when my hand trowel accidentally cuts through an earthworm, prematurely ending a little earthworm career. But I know if chickens born to be food can lead a charmed life, these chickens did. Their feed was specially ground for them, organic, no GMOs. They hung out on the Chicken Riviera, North Carolina branch, in their moveable house, granted all manner of tasty morsels in the fields the beef cows had just helped fertilize.
Mary is nearly eighty. She and her daughter Sarah have run their 350-acre farm for decades with the kind of pure intentions that are finally catching on. They believe in raw milk, Jesus Christ and the government minding its own damn business. When her late husband took to drink long ago, five-foot-two-inch Mary climbed up into the cab of a big rig and started driving for hire. She saved the farm and here they are.
Sarah was married, once, but that didn't work out too well either, so when her house on the fifty acres across the road burned down, she moved in with Mama, temporarily at first, then time just moved on. She supplements the farm income with an administrative job. "I come home from work, and I go to work," Sarah said yesterday, putting more chickens on the scale, smiling a little bit, Mary sitting on the stool.
Besides the chickens for eggs and meat and the beef cows, there are Jerseys for milking and occasionally pigs in the woods rooting around for acorns. Everything pays its way, has to. That's when those of us privileged enough to be on the list get the call. The chickens were up to eating 85 pounds a food a day, Sarah said, "be here Saturday between 3 and 5."
Everything but the chickens ends up in the little market building, equipped with second-hand refrigerators and freezers, hand-made signs taped to the fronts as to what's where, and exclamatory warnings about not fully closing the doors. It's all run by the honor system, with a ticket book and a cashbox, wide open.
Money has never disappeared, as far as I know, although being fans of the Old Testament, neither Mary nor Sarah has much faith in man or beast. Jesus's job, in the family theology, is neither to help us realize how fabulous we are and how deserving of gold faucets, nor to help us realize the inner light that is an inherent part of each of our fellow creatures. No, Jesus came here, under duress, against his better judgment, and suffered disproportionately, just so each of us could have the tiniest chance of dragging ourselves out of the Devil-ridden gutter.
I can't really explain how the honor system fits in here, except that when I show up each season to pick up those plump birds, beautiful in a Dead Chicken kind of way, I feel privileged to be a small part of it all. The amount of work, the dedication is nothing short of astounding. Over the years, sitting on their porch with watery coffee and egg-and-cream rich cake, I've heard the stories: rain and cold and darkness and obstinate cows; emergency vet visits, broken fencing and water mains.
It seems impossible, but the big news is that they've just installed air conditioning in the house, an old cabin. The first time. Ever. Here in the Piedmont, where 100-plus degree and high humidity summer days are just another in a long list of just-the-way-it-is. Probably only because Jane had a stroke this past year and is "not worth nuthin' " she told me, when I called her in May to wish her Happy Birthday, the first I'd heard of the stroke. Last year, with her surprise chocolate birthday cake already packed, I got a call canceling my visit because I was taking too long and she needed to bush hog the back field before it started to rain.
That I can write a check to help support these two women feels like dues. That I get chickens too - well that's just good fortune.
