Dùthchas: Developing a Hen's Grit

 

For this instalment of Dùthchas: Learning from the Land, I want to tell you a bit about our very social croft hens. Hens are lovely to keep as they come to greet you each day, will blether away to you as you work in the yard, and they contribute as a group, providing you with fresh eggs each day. They work as a family too.

The eggshells the hens produce are hard or soft because of their environment. A hen who is in a yard with gravel and shell grit may have very hard eggshells, difficult to break even. While a hen who doesn't have access to calcium or D3 or hard bits of grit, have soft shells that predators may eat, or that break before the egg can develop or hatch. If the environment is too hard, too traumatic, the chick cannot hatch, cannot break out of their shell into the world and they die inside the shell. Likewise, if it is too soft, the chick does not develop at all because they cannot survive exposure to predators when they come.

As humans, we have a shell that develops as a result of our environments too. We need a bit of 'grit in our yard', in our diet, to learn how to cope with problems. Every life, every road, has rocky bits. We are bound to encounter failures and trauma along our life's pathways. If we are never exposed to small setbacks or issues we need to confront and solve, we don't develop the resilient shell we need to survive and thrive. On the other hand, if all we know is hardness, trouble and tragedy, the weight and layers of our shells paralyse us, cement us to where we are, and we cannot truly live and expand our world either.

As hens know: we all need a bit of grit in life. It enables our shells to flourish.