There is just something magical about farms, for me. Standing on farm soil is next to heaven for my soul. My anxieties melt away and I somehow find myself feeling both completely secure and completely free.

Every since I was a little girl, growing up on the west side of Chicago, I have dreamed of owning a farm, and somehow it seems a farm has always dreamed of me. Surrounded by concrete and rap music, I longed for something different. Perhaps it was my mother’s love of gardening and growing her own food on our little city square, in the front yard of our run down little farm house, displaced by the red brick bungalows built on every side. The noise, smells, and life of the city dwarfing that history of what was once a family farm on the outskirts of a big city.

The people might have forgotten that the ground they walked on once had more animals than people, but the animals never seemed to forget. If it was injured or lost, domestic or wild, it showed up at our door. My mother took in and cared for every breathing thing that crossed our door step, with no exception to the little yellow chick we found in the alley on spring. I must not have been more than six years old when we took in that petrified little fluff ball and care for it until he became a chicken that didn’t lay eggs, and then a rooster that replaced the need for an alarm clock. My mom named him Lucky, and he eventually had to go to a farm in the country, away from the angry city neighbors who didn’t appreciate his talent for recognizing the beauty of a new day and loudly proclaiming it to the world.

Somewhere between the front yard corn stalks and the indoor poultry, a seed was planted that keeps my heart strings tied to the dream of a farm life.

So, here I am again, living in an old farm house the middle of a city with a farm still in my soul. I’ve given up the farm dream a few times but have still held on to what I could. We have a coop in the back yard and a couple garden beds and fruit trees. And despite the fact that I don’t have acreage, a big red barn, or a tractor, I do have this strange way of attracting farm life to my door.

This past week the farm life on our little patch of city land has been thick with trial and unexpected surprises.

The first one came when one of our chickens got herself wedged in the wood fence. She somehow found herself on the other side of our wood fence that separates our side yard from the back yard, to her surprise there was a very large and easily excited dog waiting for her on the other side. In her panic to return to safety as quickly as possible she bolted strait for a hole in the fence that looked big enough but wasn’t quite. She made it half way into the back yard when she realized the hard way that perhaps she had been eating too many meal worms for dessert and they all went strait to her hips. She tried real hard to pull that sassy back side through the unforgiving fence, but it was no use. The only thing she managed to do was pull her wings forward. With her wings on one side of the fence and her rear end on the other, she was really stuck now. Now with the dog staring directly into the back end of a chicken just waiting for the invitation to literally ruffle her feathers, and the front end of the chicken attracting the attention of two lively toddlers always looking for the opportunity to do anything they shouldn’t.

Luckily my eldest daughter noticed the situation before either end of the chicken was plucked. Quickly I ran to one side of the fence and she stayed on the other. After a little push and pull it was quickly made clear that a stick of butter might be necessary. Now, I have never buttered a feathered chicken before and I was concerned as to what kind of bright ideas such a thing would present to both the dog and the children. Second option, break out the jaws of life and make the hole bigger, but then I’d have to fix the fence I broke and I don’t have time for that. Third option, put my military taught folding skills to good use and pray we can get her wings off her head and back at her sides where they belong. With my eldest’s eager help, option number three was a winner. Slowly and with what seemed like the intensity of a bomb squad disarming a potentially life threatening event, we worked it out. Folding each feather and tiny chicken bone back into place until both wings were back where God intended for them to be and I could pull her back through the fence by the hips like a cork in a bottle. Crisis averted, she will live to lay another egg.

It must have not been more than an hour later when my eldest comes in from the back yard to declare with great concern that she was hearing a faint but chaotic “mewing” coming from under the wood stack. I went out back and sure enough there was what sounded like a very small kitten under the wood pile. By the looks of things it seemed that Pinkerton our dog had recently jumped up on the stack of wood and knocked a portion of it between the stack and the fence behind.

So, I did what I had to do. Grabbed my gloves and started carefully pulling the wood pile apart, hoping not to let any logs fall back onto the kitten. Finally I moved enough wood that I could see a tiny newborn kitten wedged into a little cavity making it impossible for it to move and surrounded by fallen logs, making it impossible for the mom to get to it.

Poor little guy was covered in flies and in desperate need for help. We gently pulled the little guy out and tried to clean clean him up. He was a terrible mess and I quickly realized that I did not have the skills necessary to keep this little guy alive. I called a good friend of mine for animal/medical advice and she confirmed my thoughts.

Two toddlers and a sick kitten covered in fly larva in need of constant care for multiple days? Not a good combination for my current situation in life.

Get in the van, everyone get in the van! I packed up all three kids and we headed to the emergency vet clinic. It was a hard decision but we had to surrender him for his own best chance at survival. They took him in, checked him out and said they thought he would be just fine after some intensive TLC.

We drove home, tears in our eyes and broken hearted at having to leave him behind. Never to know what will happen with a little kitten named “Fly”.

When we did get home to our little farm house, plagued by the thoughts that perhaps I should have taken on the responsibility to care for little Fly myself; allowing my little girl to learn the valuable lessons my mother taught me every time we paused our lives to care for something that couldn’t care for itself, I was met with yet another surprise.

To close out a long day on the farm, our wild farm cat, Barney, must have sensed my sadness and was gracious enough to bring me a lovely grey field mouse as a gift.

It was then that I realized we are a farm, I’m living my dream. It might not be a traditional kind, with barns and pastures, but we are a farm. Where life happens and death happens. Where lessons are learned in big things and small and there is never a dull moment.

I could have spent the rest of my life longing for a farm, wondering if I’d ever get there, saddened by it’s absence, waiting for soil to plant my passion in. What a waste!

“Grow where your planted”, isn’t that the saying? We should put our passions to work where we are instead of storing them up for dreams yet realized. Trusting that where the Lord has us is where we need to be, if only for a moment or a season. If the Lord has given us a passion for something then we should be faithful to it, using it how and when we can, growing and learning in it until He asks us to bring it somewhere new.

Psalm 37: 3-5
“Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act.”

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