“Egg production may be down this year,” Justin announced when he came back in to the ChicFinn Cottage. Justin and his boyfriend Brian were visiting from the Twin Cities and one of their first stops was the chicken coop Vaimo and I constructed with the help of many friends. The chickens were a source of both pride and despair for me. I like to think the chickens were the catalyst for my quest for a rural home; I rationalized that I could make it anywhere if I could have chickens. Living in Moorhead meant no chickens, well, at least until about the time I left. The city council had a no chickens in town law on the books from back in the day when Moorhead wanted to distinguish itself as a city from the neighboring rural communities where roosters may crow. Plenty of folks had chickens on the outskirts of town near where I grew up in Albuquerque– chickens, burros, goats, horses in nearby Corrales or Bernalillo found by easy drives from the city in a largely rural state. But my family never had chickens. A dog who lived outside, but never anything as special as a chicken. Justin’s mom, my Aunt Lilly, had chickens on her farm in rural Kansas, outside Emporia. Oh how I loved to visit and hold those chickens. Chickens aren’t exactly the kind of animal that’s always into cuddling, but I made it work. Mostly, I have fond memories of chasing them around Aunt Lilly’s farm. I learned recently that the chickens were my cousin’s not my aunt’s. Or maybe I knew it once but just forgot, childhood memories are sometimes unreliable. Brian grew up with his own set of chicken and confirmed it, “we think you have five roosters.” These were some of the joys of my chickens: knowing I had a little corner of earth to support them, and the light in my spirit I feel when I bring them treats. I had eight in my brood at the time, down from a baker’s dozen earlier in the spring.

My brood was missing five chicken souls because of our good deed in rehoming our new friend Louie. He returned the favor by killing and consuming five of our chickens. Five of my original seven chicks who I selected from the galvanized steel tub they were living in, and lovingly chose from dozens of options at the Virginia, Minnesota Feed and Seed. Five of my original seven chicks who lived in our home, who we kept warm with a heat lamp, who we built roosting ramps for, who we named after our favorite women poets silently whispering messages to the universe that we chose hens so we could have too many eggs we wouldn’t know what to do with them. La Prieta (in honor of Gloria Anzaldúa) and Sor Juana were my Ameraucanas. Maya and Marge were my California Whites. Audre and Adrienne were my Mille Fleurs. And Emily was this cutie Cochin with feathers on her feet and crows in her throat as she grew into a rooster in our basement utility room. We call it the chicken massacre of 2017. A few days after Louie came to live with us human error and free-range chickens meant we lost Sor Juana, Emily, Marge, Audre and Adrienne one evening. The humans kept thinking they’d come back. Unbeknownst to the humans, Louie the dog, had helped himself to their friends. I have never cried so hard over the loss of a chicken. Sor Juana was my favorite, she actually liked to be cuddled. This chicken tale is one of sadness and hard lessons learned.  La Prieta and Maya remain and were joined by six newer chicks who I special ordered, which meant I selected their breeds. Though, because of a mix up I ended up with two Golden Lace Wyandottes instead of my two Barred Plymouth Rocks. But they joined my two Rhode Island Reds and two Buff Orpingtons to round out our brood. They too lived in our basement utility room. They were too young to be outside during the chicken massacre, thankfully. But, because of the harsh lessons they also weren’t snuggled, they weren’t named, they weren’t cooed over, they weren’t stars of my Snap Stories. They are my brood I fear to get to close to because they may not be here for long, and I may be on to something. Five roosters out of eight chickens does mean egg production will be down this year. Perhaps roasted chickens are in our future – I’m not sure I can butcher one of those chickens, but life on the rural homostead has pushed me beyond many of my comfort zones and is constantly teaching me new ways of being.

Vaimo and I closed on the homostead mid-February and six months in, living in rural for me is:

• shopping at Costco more and being grateful for a large pantry,
• learning that going anywhere takes longer,
• slowing down, which accompanies
• letting go of perfectionist tendencies,
• investing more in protecting the environment,
• inspiring a “can-do” spirit for tackling projects and problems,
• getting to know our surroundings in purposeful ways, seeing new small towns/communities and knowing where the lake we live on is in relation to other lakes,
• recognizing bird calls in daylight and frog croaks at night,
• honoring the full moon in a sky brightly lit by stars not often seen in the light of a cityscape,
• strolling with Vaimo on her freshly mowed trails,
• swimming in weeds,
• researching back up generators,
• harvesting apples prematurely because a branch broke off of the apple tree,
• knowing death more intimately, and
• forging deeper community relations with current friends and neighbors not yet met.

This last point underscores one major challenge for me as an extreme extrovert. Twenty acres with a gorgeous lakeshore is a private retreat, great for a recharge, and a lovely space to feel the anxiety slip away, but that private retreat feel can sometimes feel like isolation. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an introvert’s dream (or so I’ve heard) to have paths to roam alone, places in a large house to sneak away to when others are busy to take a minute to oneself. The eight chickens and dog and two kittens help keep me company, and the multitude of home projects to accomplish often take my mind off of being alone. I also continue my journey to find joys and pleasures during my alone time. We have been fortunate to have many friends and family visit our place, we want folks to always feel comfortable to just stop by, drop in, spend a night or two, retreat, relax, recharge. But I am also trying to find new ways to engage my community. To make friends in my third decade of this life as a Xicana femme feminist means bringing my authentic self to interactions. Sometimes guarded, I am yearning for ways to embrace my extrovert skills of chit chat, and engage strangers when I find their open to it. And today, that feels even more important than yesterday.

Today, marks the first Monday following a deadly clash with white supremacy over the weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia. As I’ve turned to Twitter for the writing of brilliant activists to try to make sense of the rise of gatherings of white men so firmly holding on to violent ideologies of superiority based on the color of their skin, I am starkly aware of how far away I feel from the responses to the rise of racism, fascism, and other “isms” here in the rural context. It is not feasible to convene a solidarity rally here, nor would I advocate this as the best strategy to address the violent hatred in the hearts of many nor to push back against the resurgent explicit demonstration of that hatred through actions in 2017. But I also (currently) don’t have a space beyond my home to engage others in my community about what this means for us as a community. I have so many questions I would love to process in community today – while thinking through and sharing resources on Twitter meets a need, there is something missing for me when I only internally process alongside my Twitter feed. The state of Virginia may be far from Minnesota geographically but we experience the realities of white supremacist and settler colonial legacies here too. We must find means to discuss, dismantle, and build new ways of being in their place. The events in Charlottesville are not that far removed from GOP sponsored legislation at the Minnesota State Legislature last session that attempted to decrease people’s right to protest and freely assemble (Bills to Crack Down on Protests). The events in Charlottesville touch close to home when one thinks about the possibility of addressing white supremacy on one’s college/university campus. The white supremacist rally in Charlottesville travelled through the University of Virginia on Friday night (White Nationalists Rally at University of Virginia) prompting student counter-protest and the president of the university to make statements/address this issue. What would any Minnesota college/university do if faced with such terror of hate groups on our campuses? The campus at which I work seems barely equipped to address small instances of hate speech let alone a large scale, organized white supremacist gathering. And lastly, how in our current socio-political moment can one reconcile the spirit of rural living where neighbors help each other in the shadow of polarizing differences in political perspectives? Where we may believe there are different ways to achieve strong, and healthy communities can we still come together to support one another out here? Vaimo and I are two queer women living by ourselves in a rural space, I am Mexican American. The people we have met have been nothing but nice and friendly to us so far, and homophobes and racists live in all parts of the country rural/urban/suburban and elsewhere. But the painful place I find myself right now, is looking for the ways to have these difficult conversations while also protecting my family. It’s a real shame that one has to consider these tensions when one moves to a new space. In a city or town one has the luxury of not having to know one’s neighbors because if you need something you can call a friend who lives nearby to come out and help you. In rural, the luxury may be not needing to call upon your neighbors when you’re snowed in, or need to borrow a chainsaw because a storm took down some trees in your drive, or without another set of hands to put up the fourth wall of your converted shed design for the chicken coop the project just won’t move forward.

These are the sorts of things I’m grappling with today as I look out onto my lavender painted chicken coop that is standing but not quite finished. I now worry about world affairs alongside new homeowner concerns on these twenty acres. I reach for words as I grapple with my role in it all and my place in the struggle. A friend recently mused while he was visiting that Vaimo and my mere presence at this place is resistance, is something beautiful and necessary that challenges the status quo. All I know is that today, rural feels like home and the promise of a freshly laid egg from one of the hens one day. We make investments and commitments to our communities in hopes that change means more room for everyone. And even if you have five roosters when your goal was to have all the eggs there’s a solution there, even if we can’t yet see it at the moment.