HOME

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Robert Frost wrote that line in his Death of the Hired Man piece, one of my personal favorites. I thought of that sentence as I walked back to the house from the garden this week. I love the picture I see of the cherry, apple, and ornamental trees and the flower gardens on the walk up to the porch.. I love coming up to the back porch through the winding, flower lined sidewalk and then sitting in my rocker, after I retrieve a glass of sweet tea from the old enameled table. As I look out across the Chicken Ranch I think “ Home.”

Home is where you hang your hat every night at the back door. Where boots and mud shoes are lined up ready for use, and where chore jackets, sweaters, and gloves hang on winter days. It’s the place where your key fits the door if you have to lock it, and your closest relatives and friends know where to find the spare if they need in. It’s the place where your most precious material possessions are grouped together under one roof. But home is much more than something you can reach out and touch.

 Home is your sanctuary. It’s the place where your most private thoughts are expressed, uninhibited. You’re free to sob in sorrow unashamed, or laugh hysterically without embarrassment. Home is the safe place for your most intimate thoughts and actions. You sleep, eat, and convalesce here. Home is where you feel completely at ease just  being you.

 In sincerity and kindness folks often say “Our home is your home”, “Make yourself at home” or “You are at home here”. While well meaning I’m sure, the reality of what is being said most often is, ‘Be at home here… to a point’. Your own home is uniquely and wholly yours. What we love, what we hate, what we desire, what we fear, are all expressed in what we surround ourselves with, in the most personal of settings…home. And home is people.

Home is where your family is. Family, by definition, is typically two parents and their offspring, and for us that is the case. We have our children and grandchildren here very often, and Patty and I feel blessed to have a place for all of us to call home. But, all of us also have friends, dear friends, that make up part of our family. Friends, who share in our joys and sorrows, our elevations and devastations. Friends, who know where the spare key is hid and are welcomed anytime, with gladness. Folks that are not part of our DNA but who are connected to us in a spiritual, personal way.

Home is all of these things. 

I think it would be a terrible thing to be truly ‘homeless’. How sad if there is no place, when you have no place left to go, that folks will take you in. Home can be where you reside or where you grew up. Home is, after all, wherever you feel it is.
The Chicken Ranch. Home sweet Home.

I’m grateful for this patch of dirt, house and sky that is unique to Patty and me. This place where all that we are, and all that we love… is. There isn’t anywhere else like it. Dorothy said it best in the Wizard of Oz. Clicking her heels together, longing for the place where she felt the most loved, and the most secure, she repeated over and over “ There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…” And there isn’t, really, any place like home. 

The Hollow Gate
K.L. Dennie 2005

Spring

Winter is reluctant to relinquish its hold on the Chicken Ranch. The nights are chilly, and the rain that falls on me, as I feed the animals this day, is cold. Each drop is like a touch of ice, and the wind causes me to raise the collar on my slicker and tighten up my hat. Briefly, the sun burns through the mists; then the clouds curtain it off, and gray reigns again. But, the sun is warm in the times when it wins the struggle, and the soil responds to it. The stored up energy of spring is a kinetic bundle of color just ready to burst forth. The season of change will not be denied its rightful place.

The chilly wetness is welcomed, after a year of one the worst droughts in history. And the moisture has encouraged the Forsythia to adorn its branches in yellow splendor. The plum trees are glowing pink, and dogwoods compete for attention with their white and dusty rose blossoms.

The grass that lay brown and wiry last year is renewed. Alive and green-filled, the blades are a rich with chlorophyll. Pastures and lawns promise food and beauty in the summer ahead. Winter wheat rises, reaching for the sky, in the promise of heads full of grain, and a bountiful harvest.

Farmers wait patiently for the sun. The much needed rains are a blessing, and there is time yet to be in the fields. Ranchers feel the relief of lush pastures, after a year of struggling to find adequate hay. Many herds of cattle were sold off or greatly reduced during the worst of the 18month drought. Now herds are being rebuilt cautiously, and optimism slowly filters into the conversations at the restaurants and feed stores.

Corn has come down in price, so we have added more hens here at the Chicken Ranch. I used to order the stock and have them shipped, but my grandsons love to pick them out at the feed store, so it’s how we restock now. It’s like a holiday for us. The boys always call to tell me “Grandad, the sign is in the store windows, the chicks are coming”. Then we pick a day where all of us can go, and we head to town together.

We buy good brown egg layers, usually Plymouth Rocks or Rhode Island Reds, and sometimes the black and white Barred Rocks. But, each boy gets to pick a special chick that day. They examine the Top Hats with their Jimmy Hendrix afros, the naked necks, the fluffy footed Cochins and the colorful, scrappy little Bantams. Each one wants a unique chicken that will stand out among the others, so they can easily find them and say, “That’s my chicken right there.”

We have been fishing a time or two in between rains, without much success, but we enjoyed being together outdoors. The spring sunlight, lighting up the lake as the winds runs its fingers over the surface, and the welcome music of the returning songbirds makes the time well spent. The frogs proclaim the entry of spring with chirps, peeps and harrumphs. They make a splash as we amble along the banks. 

Male turkeys spread wide their tail feathers, and strut their ritual dances to attract a mate. Spring is a time of procreation, as well as a time of rebirth. The season is living up to its potential this year. April showers will bring May flowers. Happy will be the animal kingdom, and humankind as well, when sunny skies and warm days are the norm.

Another winter has come and gone, and sunny days are ahead. The cycle continues as Mother Earth has planned, and we are all the happy beneficiaries. Don't we all love Spring?

Well I must go now; I have lettuces and onions to plant, a woodshed to clean, and ashes to remove from the fireplace. It’s great to be outside and working, even in the dampness.

 The sun is a little higher these early spring days, and along with it, so are the spirits of the inhabitants here… especially mine.