An Open Letter to the Neighbor who hates our Chicken Houses

Growing up in a tight-knit agricultural community I assumed besides the occasional smell, our neighbors had no problems with our chicken houses. I have begun to see differently recently!

So to the Neighbor who Hates our Chicken Houses, 

It would be very easy for me to be angry at you. I instantly feel hurt and anger and to be honest a bit of betrayal after the confrontation where you exposed your feelings about our farm. But instead of anger and hurt, I'm choosing grace and understanding and education. 

I know that like with so many other agriculture commodities, you honestly just don't understand. You see, and smell, all the things that come with farming and raising animals specifically. You see us hauling off dead birds to be incinerated or composted. You smell liter as we clean out houses to prepare for a new flock of birds. You see feed trucks driving past your house at all hours of the day and night, and every couple of months you see semi trucks carrying birds back to the processing plant in the middle of the night. You see my dad leave for work early in the morning and get home at 4 and you think he doesn't have time to work and farm at the same time. You see all these things going on at our farm and then you see Facebook posts about how cruel "factory farming" is towards the animal and how we pump our birds full of antibiotics and hormones just to make a profit. You see that there are over 20 poultry farms in the miles surrounding your house and you take all the negatives and multiply them. You see all these things and you get a bad taste in your mouth for our farm.

But let me explain to you all the things you never get to see. You don't see the hours put into walking houses to prevent disease and disposing of dead birds properly, or cleaning out houses after every flock to reduce the amount you smell our chicken houses. You don't see the paperwork and classes we keep up so we can move and spread the litter our houses produce off site to be used as fertilizer. You see my dad leave church when his phone rings but you don't realize that if he didn't respond immediately, no matter the time of day, every bird in that house could die within minutes. You don't see my dad work until after dark at the farm, fall asleep while eating his reheated dinner, or wake up at 2am to alarms at the farm. You don't see how much prayer goes into every flock of birds that come through our houses, or the tears when we lose birds due to sickness or heat. You don't see the summer days we walk the houses praying that the houses will stay cool enough to keep birds alive. These chicken house are our livelihood just like your occupation is yours. You see and love our little close knit community but you don't see how much of our community depends on these chicken houses. You don't see how much income chicken houses bring into our tiny community. You don't know that in the state of South Carolina the poultry industry alone brings in $1.5 billion a year. How that income directly contributes to your business.You don't see how we call upon each other on holidays and in the middle of the night when we need help because we are in crisis. 

While our community would be tight-knit without chicken houses I credit a lot of our sense of community on it's agricultural roots. We are a farming community through and through. You see that, I know you do. You see how much your child enjoys sledding down the hills of our pastures on the rare occasion we get snow, you see the joy in their face when they catch a fish out of our pond or get to hold a tiny new addition to the farm. You have smiled as you tasted figs from the trees in our yard and blueberries from the bushes lining the pasture and there is no doubt you have fond memories of the rows of strawberries that lined our fields in the past. You have gotten to see friendships grow and fellowship happen over dinner and playtime in our yard. You don't see how without our chicken houses, we wouldn't have any of those things to enjoy. Without these chicken houses we couldn't continue to live and work on the land that past generations of our family have farmed.  You don't see that it's nearly impossible to make a living off of farming in our part of the state, or that chicken houses are the only way we are able to maintain our acreage the way we are. You don't see the measures we take to keep our community the way it is!

You see our chicken houses as a problem but you don't see the problems America would face without them. You don't see the numbers, the huge numbers that represent the amount of poultry Americans consume every year. You don't know that according to the U.S Department of Agriculture the average American consumed a little over 54 pounds of poultry products in 2012. You don't know that in order to continue to produce enough poultry to feed the American population without large scale chicken farming such as ours each American would have to raise and process over 10 birds a year to feed themselves. You don't know about these numbers. Without poultry farms such as ours, America could not supply our country with the poultry products to support our food industry. 

So to you, our neighbor who opposes our chicken houses just know I will never blame you! I understand that you don't know all these things. I will continuously advocate for agriculture, and for the farmers of our community so that anyone who chooses to can understand the agriculture in our tiny community!