This is part 3 in a longer series of how we are taking 7 months to assess our lifestyles & try to be more intentional with our time and resources. If you are just joining us, you can start your binge here and this will all make more sense.Day Two of our eating Local Experiment:

This morning when I woke up, a horrible thought crossed my mind and I rushed outside in my nightgown & mud boots. In my hurry to get to the farmer’s market yesterday, I realized I never put the chickens away after free ranging! Unfortunately, someone had already let the dogs out this morning and the yard was strangely quiet. When I ran around the corner of the house, much to my dismay, Moxie had climbed the tiny ramp and was in the chicken house!!

As much as I don’t want to admit it, I have to confess that my second thought after worrying about the chickens’ safety was, “Shit! Those eggs are our only saving grace in our eating local month!” Just the day before, we had a serious discussion while looking at our small harvest that if all else failed & we ran out of money on organic veggies, we could eat fresh eggs for 30 days straight. So as I ran outside in my pink nightgown, I kept muttering, “If the chickens are dead, what will we do?!”

The poor hens were huddle together, scared shitless—literally there was poo everywhere! Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough in realizing our mistake and RubyMae was injured by the overeager puppy. Fortunately, both chickens made it, so we treated the wounds and scolded the dogs. They’ll all be okay and after a few days of chicken peace, we’ll have fresh eggs again.

What a chaotic morning! In the middle of the events, we forgot to eat breakfast and were hungry by the time we both finished church. As per usual on Sundays, our friends asked us to go out to eat and I was desperate to say yes. Reluctantly, we told them about our experiment and went home to eat leftover lasagna (totally not local, but I can’t justify wasting perfectly good food.)

To fill the void of not being with our friends, we decided to go on a bike ride on the Beltline in our neighborhood. As we passed by Aluma Farm, I thought about how dependent I felt on our chickens this morning. Any other month, they are just glorified pets, as our garden is a productive hobby. Typically we have an abundance of eggs and vegetables which we share with neighbors and friends. But in a month of volunteered dependence, I am vastly aware of how different the dog attack would be if we relied on our flock for eggs, meat, and income as so many farming families do across the globe. Families who do not have the option to go to a nearby grocery store and buy supplement eggs if needed.

It is not a lot, but we recently started giving money to Heifer Foundation and our monthly gift supplies a flock of chickens to a family. When choosing our gift, there was something significant to me about both of our families raising chickens--something that connected us across so many miles. Yet after this morning, I was reminded again of how great the divide is between privileged and not; how far removed we in the developed world are from being reliant on circumstances out of our control, and the even greater responsibility we have to equip & empower others when we find ourselves in abundance*.

(Note: My original sentence said “season of abundance” but on second thought, if we have used indoor plumbing today, are not worried about our next meal, have consistent electricity, and are able to read this on the internet, “abundance” is more than a mark upon our lives. It is not merely a season for us. The ability to even do an experiment like this and use our grocery money as a way to make a change in our society is a gift so many do not have.)