Tag: Tom Petty

Last Dance with Mary Jane

~ Crystal Sands ~ 6 Comments

To the many of you who have followed Mary Jane’s story over the last nearly 8 years, I wanted to let you know that she passed the night before last. I found her in the coop yesterday morning, and my heart is broken, of course.

The night before, we had been out pretty late because our son had a performance in Portland. When we got home, I went out to close up the chickens and put away the food and found that Mary Jane was not in her usual spot. I went to her and touched her. She got up and was moving slowly, but she went to the food dish and started eating and eating. I thought this was unusual.

I went about doing everything else for the evening chores–closing up the ducks, dumping waters, busting ice, etc.–and came back and told her I was going to have to take away the food dish because it was bed time. Because she was so old and so wise, she understood a lot of language and understood I had to take the bowl. I gave her some pets and kept the flashlight on, so she could make her way over to her usual spot in the coop. She was moving so very slowly heading to her spot, but she has slow been all winter. At some point, I just quit worrying about her quite so much. I think I just thought she might live forever.

I said good night to her and told her she was a good girl. I wish I would have hugged her, though she was only sometimes in the mood for hugs. I keep thinking about seeing her slowly making her way in the coop in the light of the flashlight. That’s the last time I got to see her. I wish I would have said more, but I know in my bones she knew I loved her. I made it clear so, so many times.

When I went to the coop yesterday morning, she was in her spot and had passed sometime during the night. The flock wasn’t acting weird at all, as they sometimes will when someone dies in the coop, and Mary Jane just looked like she passed in her sleep. She looked peaceful. I think it must have been a quiet death, as the flock was not disturbed until later when I was holding her and crying. .

I held her for the longest time and angry cried a lot, though I do not know why I was angry–other than I am just angry at the world, I guess.

When I went to get Ron and let him know, Boudica found me. She had heard me crying and was so worried about me. She did all she could to make me feel better–and I did feel better. I was reminded that I still have Boudica, and that, as much as losing Mary Jane hurts, it will pale in comparison to losing Boudica. So I had better treasure my time with that amazing girl.

I picked a feather from Mary Jane to save forever. Ron said he took her by the coop to say goodbye to the flocks, and Rooster was visibly upset. That old boy is also moving very, very slowly himself. Ron took her about a half mile into the woods to feed a hungry someone, maybe a fox, maybe a hawk. He lay her at the base of a big, beautiful Ash tree and told her how much he loved her and how thankful he was to know her. He told her the story of the day she was pardoned from processing and why she stood out from the others. That trauma was a part of her story, and she always carried herself with the wisdom of having seen some things.

There are so many lessons there that I don’t know if I will ever learn them all in this lifetime, but I will try.

I am going to miss her terribly. It feels like the end of an era.

She would have been 8 years old at the first of June. She was a Freedom Ranger meat chicken and one of the most intelligent creatures I have ever met. And one of my dear friends reminded me of this important lyric in Tom Petty’s song:

“She said, ‘I dig you, baby, but I got to keep movin’ on, keep movin’ on'”

But I’ll see her again. I know I will.

A Mary Jane Update on the Anniversary of Tom Petty’s Death

~ Crystal Sands ~ 3 Comments

I have had three celebrity crushes in my adult life–a scientist (Neil deGrasse Tyson) and two musicians–YoYo Ma and Tom Petty. When I learned that Tom Petty died seven years ago today, I was devastated. His music had been so central in my life, and I adored his back story. He grew up abused and misunderstood and used his creativity and drive to change his life and the lives of so many others. His life and music just spoke to me.

I was already really down that day in 2017 because it was also the day of that terrible mass shooting in Las Vegas, and to top things off, it was meat bird processing day on our homestead. It was just a tough day, so when I asked Ron to please pardon one of the meat bird hens for me to keep and add to our flock, he agreed. He agreed that we needed something good on such a no-good, terrible day. I understood that, as a meat bird, the hen would likely just live a couple of years, but we needed a layer or two, and Freedom Ranger hens are pretty good layers. I would be happy just to have her for a couple of years.

The bird who was pardoned was named Mary Jane, in honor of Tom Petty’s famous song, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” Ron said she was the one who outsmarted him all day, so he knew she was a smart bird. We had no idea just how smart she was going to be or how long her dance would be.

I feel certain she must be at some kind of record for a Freedom Ranger meat bird, but Mary Jane turned seven this summer, and she’s still going strong. She is also one of the smartest, if not the smartest, hens I have ever met. Over the years, she and I have formed a powerful bond. She talks to me. She asks me for help when she needs it, and she lets me know when she is just fine by herself. She used to be about the size of a small turkey thanks to those meat bird genes, but in her older age, she is smaller. She’s still larger than our other hens, and she actually talks in a gobble.

Every morning, she waits in the coop for food while the other chickens run out the door for the outside food bowl. Mary Jane is patient and smart and waits for her food bowl. When she sees me coming, she almost always gobbles this cute little gobble talk. I realized this morning, as I was thinking about the anniversary of Tom Petty’s death and Mary Jane’s pardon, that I have to get a recording of her voice. I had another hen who was very vocal and talkative, and I regret that I never got a recording of her talking. I have to record Mary Jane.

The cutest thing is that Mary Jane has a daughter, Petty. Petty is also a fantastic hen and is so smart. She raised a clutch of babies last fall, and she was not just a magnificent mama but probably the most magnificent mama hen I have seen. She did so well. She was chill but loving and so good to her babies. She let me get involved too, so I was thankful to her. When Petty went broody in the late summer this year, I was sad we had decided to downsize our flock and couldn’t let her raise babies.

Interestingly, Petty has a voice similar to Mary Jane’s. Just the other morning, I heard a little gobble run across the yard, but it surprised me because I thought Mary Jane was still in the coop waiting for me. It turns out it was Petty. She doesn’t talk a lot like Mary Jane does, but she has a voice like her mama. How fantastic is that?

So far, both Mary Jane and Petty are doing great. Mary Jane’s health has its ups and downs, but right now, she seems to be in really good health. She quit laying somewhere around age four or five, so she’s retired but helps keep order in the flock. She’s so old for a meat bird that I have thought on more than one occasion that she was surely near her end, but that hen always pulls through. I know she has a heart condition, but it seems her will to live is stronger than her heart condition. I guess a better way to put it is that her heart is stronger than her heart condition.

She has not yet molted for the fall, so I definitely worry about that for her. The molt is hard on birds. Rooster is molting right now, and he’s so tired that I am having to help him off the top roost some mornings. He is also a very old bird.

But the winter before last, I thought surely he and Mary Jane would not make it through another winter. They showed me. I have learned to never underestimate Mary Jane, and though I always open the coop in the mornings with a little bit of worry that today might be the day that Mary Jane passes, so far, she’s always there, greeting me. Usually, she gives me her little gobble.

Every year on this day, October 2, I spend a little time thinking about how much Tom Petty meant to me, and then I turn my thoughts to Mary Jane and think about how much she continues to mean to me.

Mary Jane’s Long Dance: A Hen’s Story

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment

It seemed difficult for me to decide what to write about for my first blog post for Farmer-ish, but, today, as I work through my day, despite all that is going on in the world, my thoughts have turned to Tom Petty and a hen named Mary Jane in his honor.

I hesitated to write about Mary Jane for my first post, but what better example is there of the way my life has somehow managed to weave itself so deeply around both farming and the arts?

Here’s the background.

On the day Tom Petty died, which was three years ago this day, my husband and I were processing meat chickens. We had done it only a few times at this point, and the days of processing were always hard on both of us. First of all, it’s hard work, and though my husband always bears the brunt of it, I am his assistant in the endeavor. I work from sun up to well past sun down with him. Second of all, it’s a deeply emotional experience.

To not only know where your food comes from but to also know your food will change you. Over time, the experiences have led us down a path where we eat far less meat and eat vegetarian meals more and more. But that’s another story.

This story is about Mary Jane. And Tom Petty.

There was always something special to me about Tom Petty–the poetry in his lyrics, his deep understanding of those of us who are broken for our various reasons. It was only after his death that I learned about how he, too, had been broken by his childhood, which explained so much about that deep empathy and artistic soul.

My husband was outside processing when I came inside the house to take a break on October 2, 2017. I went online to skim the news. There, I saw the headline that Tom Petty had died. It had been a rough year for all of us, for our country, and losing Tom Petty hurt badly. I just sat and cried for a bit.

I went outside with my red face and hollered at my husband from our back porch, “Hey, Tom Petty died today.”

“What?” he asked, and then the understanding came. “No!” he said in sadness.

He stopped what he was doing, and we talked for a bit–about our disbelief and sadness. It was like losing a friend. Of course, we didn’t know Tom Petty at all, but I felt like he had been with me through his music my whole life.

Now, a little more background.

Every single time we processed meat chickens, I would always start asking to save a few, especially the hens. In my mind, it’s more than just an emotional appeal; it’s logic. A hen makes so much food for someone over her lifetime because of the eggs she lays, more food than someone can get from processing her.

“But these are meat birds,” my husband would always respond. “They don’t live very long.”

It was true. Meat chickens are bred for very short lives. They grow large quickly, and even though we have never purchased the kind that grows so quickly they struggle to walk, the reality is that meat chickens are definitely not meant for longevity. We both knew this.

But that evening in October, in the sadness of Tom Petty’s loss, my husband agreed to give the last hen a chance. She was smart. She had dodged him all day, and she would be reprieved.

“She has to be named Mary Jane,” he said. I agreed.

In the coming days and weeks and months, we would listen exclusively to Tom Petty’s music, and I was inspired to write. I wrote a short piece about Tom Petty’s impact on my life that was featured on the front page of Huff Post, only for a few hours, but there I was. I would later go on to publish a collection of essays about Tom Petty’s work. It was as if Tom Petty’s creativity was contagious to me. And, in my frenzy of writing, I also wrote about Mary Jane.

When I shared Mary Jane’s story, many Tom Petty fans reached out to me. “Here’s hoping Mary Jane lives a long and healthy life,” one person wrote to me. I didn’t have to heart to explain that Mary Jane was a meat bird and that “long” for her might be just 18 months.

But I really liked Mary Jane, and over the years, I came to love her. That’s right, I said years! Mary Jane is now just about 3 and 1/2 years old and is still with us; she is just a magnificent bird. She’s huge, like the size of a turkey, and she’s even smarter in her age. She knows her name and somehow knows exactly when to run and hide when I am coming for her for a health check.

Last year, she nearly died. I brought in a little hen who infected our whole flock with a respiratory illness. Mary Jane took it the hardest, as of course she would. She was an older meat bird. But we moved her into the garage, and I got on my hands and knees every night for weeks giving her medicine. She hated it all and fought me like crazy. Essentially, I had to fight with a turkey every night.

After a while, and in my exhaustion, I just decided to put remedies in her food and hope for the best. I thought, perhaps, my battle to get the meds in her was maybe causing her enough stress to hinder her recovery. So I took good care and waited and watched.

After nearly three full months of battling the illness, that hen fully recovered. Mary Jane has will.

Then, miraculously, this spring, Mary Jane even started laying again–and on the regular! We now have a Mary Jane baby on our little farm named Petty, and somehow, Mary Jane is, indeed, living a long and healthy life.

Much has changed in my life since the day Tom Petty died and Mary Jane got to live. We no longer listen to Tom Petty music exclusively. Our little boy is a cellist, so we listen almost exclusively to classical music. Interestingly, after a few years of listening to classical music all day every day, we can’t listen to popular music anymore–with one exception, of course–Tom Petty.

Sometimes, late at night, I go to our basement for quiet while I grade essays, and I listen to my Tom Petty favorites. I think about the impact a man I never met has had on my life. And, tonight, in the middle of writing this, I just went to the chicken coop and tucked in Mary Jane and gave her an extra pet. She didn’t even seem to mind.