Fatherly Advice

When it comes to herding chickens, I’m fairly certain my father would have known what to do.

I didn’t grow up on a farm. In fact, I grew up directly beside one—my father would head next door during hay season or whenever it was time for either a) shearing or b) slaughtering. I never took interest in these things, as I was a bit of a bookworm, although he did manage to get me on the hay wagon a couple of times—which I’m fairly certain may have been a punishment for some sort of trouble that I may have gotten into (of course, like an idiot, I wore shorts).

I bring this up because these days I’m learning the ins and outs of farming, and I really wish I had paid more attention to what he was saying. It’s the small issues—like how I can’t get the laying hens to understand that they have a new coop that they need to go into at night, and to stop piling up around the old door—that make me miss him. I’ll be herding three stubborn hens around the lawn in my pyjamas with my toddler in tow (trying to chase them in the opposite direction) and I’m overcome with a sense of loss. I wish I could call him. I wish I could hear him laugh at me. And then tell me what the heck to do.

Unfortunately, my father passed away at a very young age, before I was able to realize that I should have paid more attention—that I should have appreciated his knowledge, and well, him. But that’s the thing, right? We don’t appreciate what we have when we have it and hindsight is useless until we’re able to apply it to the present—but you can’t tell that to the people who have left this world. But I do still hear him sometimes, a voice rattling around my subconscious, having a good laugh at me every time I scratch my leg on a hay bale, or tip over a wheelbarrow. Thanks, Dad. Now if only my subconscious could tell me how to get my chickens the heck inside.