We called her as we saw her and so her name, the name we gave her, was Big Girl. And she was. Big. At least in comparison to the Prissies, the first 16 chickens to live on The Quarry Farm. Big, too, in that she eventually made this place her own.
She came to us through Nature’s Nursery, but our understanding of her life started in a depressed and battered neighborhood near downtown Toledo. A gang of kids was harassing her with sticks and stones and fists and feet until a man we never met, never heard more about than to know the part he played in Big Girl’s life, stepped out of his house and drove them off. He called the people we know, who called us and here she came.
Not surprisingly, she was suspicious of us; kept her distance. Literally. She maintained a space of roughly 30 feet between her and any human being in the yard. If you took a step toward her, she took a step away. As evenings would wear on, we’d have to wait until full dark, then go out and find where she’d perched for the night, catch her up and put her in the coop, safe from every big and little thing that goes bump in the night.
And so it went, until one day it didn’t. It wasn’t a gradual acceptance, but an all-in sort of thing. One day she was meticulously guarding her personal space and the next she was standing on my foot, looking up at me and wanting food. It took about three months, but she’d finally made up her mind.
That was in 2009. Yesterday, she crossed the water. She’d been fading for months and when we opened the coop door in the morning, we knew. She eased herself out into the sun and, after a bit, lay down. She stayed there for the remainder of the day with the three of us checking on her every little bit. Then, with afternoon slipping into evening, she simply went with it, followed the westering sun.
I suspect I’ll always look for her, perched in the crabapple tree or up in a pine, bullying one hen or another out of her way as they all race to the coop for a treat. And in some sense, I’ll always find her.
This is home, hers and ours, in spirit or in flesh, and that much more solidly established for her having made it so.
Big Girl
Stained glass artist Martha Erchenbrecher created the gorgeous work of art pictured above. The piece is stained glass mosaic or glass-on-glass mosaic. After trying for a few months, we were able to take a decent photo of it today with the winter afternoon sun shining through. We’ve hung it here for farm animal sanctuary visitors to see. One day, we hope to display it in a nature center here.
Last summer, Sandy and Doug visited Mister Bill here on The Quarry Farm. They brought him treats, delectable items that he unwillingly shared with most of the other goats. While walking the gardens and sharing a human lunch outside Red Fox Cabin, we told Sandy about our intent to hang paintings around the perimeter of the sanctuary. The package that came in the mail was the size and shape of just such a painting.
There’s a lot of history in and around The Quarry Farm, not to mention up the road.
North on the same road and across Riley Creek is Bridenbaugh Schoolhouse. Imagine a one-room schoolhouse on every country mile and you will picture the education system as it once was in rural Ohio. In 1997, Dale Bridenbaugh restored the schoolhouse on his farm to what could have been its original 1889 glory.
Cross the Riley on the c. 1876 M-6 bridge, itself listed in the Historic American Engineer Record as an example of “Morrison’s Patent Wrought Iron Arch Truss Bridge,” travel about a mile and a half north on 7L and sit in the stillness and peace of Riley Creek United Methodist Church. The church was founded in 1850 and is still active in one large, lofted room. Sun and moonlight filter through etched and stain-glass windows to pool on handmade wooden pews. The long upright-backed benches glow with the hand polish and years of congregational sitting, but the names of former youth break the smooth surfaces here and there.
Saturday broke records for December warmth and, although we could use some rain or snow to soften the dry bed of the quarry, the weather was perfect for the first Old Time Riley Creek Christmas Tour. All of the above were stops on the route. All were decorated for the holidays, most as they may have been long ago. Riley and Pleasant Township saw plenty of driving tourists as a result. One of the visitors was Pandora’s Dr. Darrell Garmon. He walked up the path through the Red Fox Cabin gardens and introduced himself as Dr. Garmon and as the person who poses as Sea Captain James Riley.
Next door, Carlton, Beatrice and the other potbellies, a speckling of chickens and Johnny Goose gathered at the farm animal sanctuary fence corner closest to the hubbub. Lucy’s foghorn bray paused more than one conversation. Two tourists left the cabin and stopped at the gate where the turkeys were on full display. Buddy took issue with the attention the boys were getting, so he grabbed a mouthful of tail feathers, spit them out and smiled. True story – the couple took a photo and promised to share it with us.
