SIX

The Simple Life:

An Ecological Misnomer

The simple life should not involve getting locked in a chicken house by
an ox. Such a predicament may, however, involve simplemindedness on
the part of the homesteader and a rather complex strategy on the part of
the ox.
I’d stepped up into our henhouse, mounted on an old hay wagon chas-
sis, and reached into the battered military-green Civil Defense metal
barrel to scoop out several buckets of chicken feed to put into the hang-
ing feeder. I’d finished chores and had put our oxen, Pet and Troll, into
the lush pasture surrounding the henhouse. More eager to scratch than
eat at that point, Pet had followed me over as I fed and watered the
layers and promptly cocked his flank up against the wooden sides of the
structure, working out the itches with his rhythmic rubbing. The fifty
chickens and I seemed to share the sensation of mild seasickness as the
mobile coop swayed and squeaked with his hip undulations. “Pet—cut
it out!” I yelled through the hexagonal chicken wire, punctuating my
irritation with the exclamation point of a sharp bang on the plywood
wall right beside his head.
Nonplussed, he looked up with half a glance and slowly meandered to
the end of the coop with the door. Deciding to shift to a few other itches,
he rubbed the right side of his face and his horn up against the door. As
the swaying of his thick neck increased in velocity, the scraping of his
horn against the door increased in volume until the Dominique chick-
ens all bolted to the farthest corner in one black-and-white blur, with
the exhaust cloud of fecal dust seemingly aimed right at me. I sharply
pounded my fist at the wall just opposite the scraping sounds: “Pet, go
find a tree to scratch on!” Determined to remind me who was boss—or
at least Bos—Pet gave a final scrape and meandered over into the early-
morning shade, leaving me on my own.

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 The Simple Life: An Ecological Misnomer

I finished filling the feeder and pushed on the door to get out. It didn’t
budge. Huh? I pushed again with my shoulder. The door gave just a bit
at my shoulder but not at all near my hip, where the rotating wooden
latch was located. Nooooo, I thought, he couldn’t have . . .
Turns out that he did. I was locked inside the chicken house by a
cloven-hooved prankster. In the middle of the pasture in front of the
cabin. I somehow doubted the likelihood of Pet returning to end the
joke—it seemed that he had already delivered the punch line and was in
the shade ruminating on the genius of its delivery. It was the first time I’d
ever envisioned cattle snickering—they’re just not that prone to being
self-congratulatory, in my experience.
How am I going to get out of this one with both my dignity and the
henhouse intact? I wondered. I knew that I could definitely push hard
and break the latch, but I hated to tear up the new exterior siding on
the coop. On the other hand, it beat telling anyone what had happened,
much less calling for help from inside a chicken coop. Besides, there was
only one person available to call, and she already had enough dirt on me
without adding this story to the collection.
About that time, Erin stepped out of the cabin to visit the outhouse.
I let her go in and take care of business while I decided whether I really
wanted her help. By the time she slammed the outhouse door shut, I’d
decided that I would rather bear the brief humiliation to follow than
spend time fixing the latch. Plus, I knew I’d still have to tell her what had
happened at some point. It was just one more unexpected incident in our
growing litany of homesteading adventures.
“Erin,” I shouted, “could you please come over here?”
“Come over where? Where are you?” she asked, looking down
toward the vacant pasture, seeing Pet but not me.
“Here—in the chicken house.”
“What do you need me in the chicken house for?” She was mildly
irritated, since it meant changing from her clogs to her boots.
“Ummm, to let me out,” I replied, somewhat cowed.
“What do you mean, let you out?”
“Pet locked me in.” I was wishing that I could mumble it instead of
saying it loudly enough for any stray hikers to hear.
Erin doesn’t burst out laughing that often, but this time her laughter
bolted out and echoed back—any pride I had disappearing with its brief
reverberation.

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 Up Tunket Road

She put on her boots and walked bemusedly down the path and into
the pasture. “You need something?” I could hear from her tone that her
smirk was fully intact.
“Yes. Out. I could’ve broken the latch, but I didn’t want to have to
fix it.” I needed to make it clear that I had some authority in the whole
situation.
“Yeah, and it wouldn’t have been as much fun for me if you had. So,
how soon do you want out?” she teased.
“How about right now? My feathers are getting a little ruffled.”

I’m not sure who coined the phrase the simple life, but I wish it were one
that we could buck. Homesteading is quite the opposite. It’s far from
simple. It may mean minimizing luxuries, but the counterpoint is that it
also means maximizing necessities—all in stark contrast to global trends
in the opposite directions.
Perhaps the notion of the simple life came from the idea that the
elements involved are relatively simple, either in function or in number.
While that may be true, it is the relationships and the interactions among
those things that are far from simple, not to mention the choices of which
ones to utilize and which ones to reject.
For years, I’ve struggled with whether I can define homesteading or
even whether it’s a good idea to try, at the risk of creating a definition
that is, by nature, exclusive. However, I think I can begin to distinguish
between homesteading and not homesteading. Homesteading is about
purpose, intent, action, observation, and reflection, and then determin-
ing the best subsequent course of action. It is not about accepting things
as they are and simply riding the cultural wave. It is about determin-
ing one’s place in the world and then constantly crafting and recrafting
a life that seems more appropriate—ecologically, ethically, emotionally,
aesthetically, economically. It is simultaneously a juxtaposed act of ascetic
detachment and of spirited engagement. It is about taking control of
decisions while also accepting the unanticipated, whether it comes by
way of social circumstance, economic shift, Mother Nature, a culmina-
tion of personal choices, or even a cow.

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