Pleasant as Well as Challenging*

I went to a small high school. Really small. There were 23 kids in my graduating class. Compared to Adam’s high school yearbook, mine looks like a brochure.

My perception of big high schools is that there were types of people that did different types of things. That’s not how life was at Wells High School. My older sister Marianne played basketball then ran from the court after the game, red faced and panting and took up her drum sticks for the pep band which played during the boys’ game. She had it good as a drum player though. Our cousin Margaret had to hit the high notes with her trumpet playing the Star Spangled Banner after playing basketball.

FFA was a big deal in our school. Mostly because of Digger. He was the teacher. Digger was short for Mr. Digenon. For a variety of reasons that are neither here nor there, I didn’t end up being his biggest fan but he knew how to run an FFA program. At least a winning one. He courted the smart kids. The ones with good grades and supportive parents and the same ones that ran off the basketball court to play in the pep band and brought a sack lunch because play practice was during the lunch hour.

You may have guessed that Marianne was one of his sought after prizes. It mattered not that she wasn’t really an agriculturalist. She was smart. He wanted her. Now, don’t get me wrong, some FFA kids really did walk the walk. People like my brother Enoch and my friends Marie and Wyatt. They actually raised animals, or crops, or both. Marianne only talked the talk (literally—she won state speech and parliamentary procedure contests). That was all OK with Digger and they could fudge their record books to a point.

There finally came a time that Marianne needed a “project” though. For some indeterminable reason, she decided on chickens.

My dad built her a chicken coop and my mom picked up a box of chicks at IFA (Intermountain Farmer’s Association).

Everything was humming along except Marianne hated the chickens. Detested them. They outgrew their baby chick cuteness with alarming speed and were soon ugly. And they pecked at her when she had to deal with them. Now you will remember Marianne was a smart girl (the reason Digger wanted her in the first place) and she quickly outsourced the chickens to our little brothers.

It turns out no one in our family was much good at the chickens and they all met a sad ending, with the last one finally being shot in our yard on a Sunday afternoon by Enoch. That was 5-10 years later and since no one liked or wanted the chickens, my brothers had finally set them free to fend for themselves. One tenacious one held on and when I came for a weekend from college and found it pecking in our yard, I said it looked like a slum and Enoch shot it before my parents knew what had happened. I think he’d been just waiting for the chance. That’s another story entirely and don’t tell PETA.

Now fast forward several years to Marianne’s adorable daughter Deseret.

Emma and Deseret

She loves animals in a way that must seem very foreign to her mother. As luck would have it, Marianne’s husband, Robert also has agricultural urges. He very rightly wants to teach his kids to work. I think it’s a great idea but I’m glad I haven’t had to deal with sheep or pigs like Marianne occasionally has. (Granted their 30 acres are more accommodating to such pursuits than my suburban flower-pot sized yard.)

Robert built Deseret a chicken coop and they got chickens. (Probably at IFA?) Deseret has the charge to care for the chickens and I think does very well with the duty.

One day, a chicken got out and somehow, their dog got a hold of it. Marianne sent Deseret running to save the chicken. The poor bird got away from the dog and ran right into the house.

We were in no way raised in a house that lodged animals and my sisters and I have persisted in a no animal policy for our homes. I think I can understand the horror of having a chicken in the house.

Two of Marianne’s daughters (much like their mother and aunts would have) ran to a bedroom and the top of the bunk beds. Marianne instructed Hyrum, the-five-year-old-man-of-the-house, that he needed to get the chicken because he was a boy. (Exactly what my mom told Enoch once when he was about the same age and a snake was in our house. Sure we’re feminists…to a point.) Hyrum wisely positioned himself on the other side of the room and said he’d get the chicken if it came over to that side. Marianne told Desi she had to get it. It was her chicken after all. Desi tried but to no avail. The ill-fated bird jumped into a cupboard that happened to be open. Marianne donned one of Robert’s gloves and grabbed the bird and threw it out the door.

Unlucky bird! Marianne threw it straight back to the dog. They chased the dog off again and this time had the good idea to put the dog in the garage. As for the chicken, it got back into the house through the door that had (again) been left open in all of the excitement. The chicken was in the pantry. Marianne again used the glove and took the chicken outside.

I can only imagine the story the bird had to tell that night in the chicken coop.

Now I have to brag a little. I have had my own brush with agriculture and I am a proud mama.

Look what I picked in my garden today.



Zucchini are notorious for being prolific, and that’s what I needed with my fledgling food growing efforts. I’m considering putting balloons out and throwing a party for my new arrival. The problem is, I don’t know if I should get pink or blue balloons…

*This is taken from the FFA Creed which Digger made us all learn as high school freshmen in his class and which my mom would quote (tongue in cheek) to Marianne when the chickens were getting her down.

I believe that to live and work on a good farm, or to be engaged in other agricultural pursuits, is pleasant as well as challenging; for I know the joys and discomforts of agricultural life and hold an inborn fondness for those associations which, even in hours of discouragement, I cannot deny.