Lessons Learned on the Farm:  Leon’s Story

Happy National Agriculture Week! 

We’ve all probably heard of the 3 R’s of recycling (reduce, reuse, recycle) and the 3 R’s of education (Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic), but have you heard of the 3 R’s of Agriculture?  Coined by Aaron Alejandro, Executive Director of the Texas FFA Foundation, these three attributes - Respect, Responsibility, and Resiliency – are often learned through hands on participation in agriculture.  Today I’d like to share with you Leon’s story, an example of how these 3 R’s take center stage on our farm.  Leon (or Neon Leon, as he was first called) was a cute, white, fluffy feathered, poofy-headed, six-toed little Silkie rooster we got with our very first batch of chicks.  Three years into the laying hen lifestyle, we’ve gained a lot of chicken experience, but no other chicken will ever be as remembered as Leon. 

The First R:  Respect – Chicks NEED it.  If you’ve ever tried raising baby chicks with a 4, 6, and 8-year old, you can probably relate to the challenges of teaching young children how to handle and care for chicks.  You can’t squeeze them, dunk them, bathe them, drop them or step on them.  Chicks are fragile.  They need to be treated carefully and respectfully.  Respect is simply recognizing and understanding what makes others who they are, and being considerate of their needs.  When the kids understand that those cute little fluffy “cheep cheeps” are fragile, then they know how to treat them appropriately.  There are LOTS more examples we could pull from the day-to-day workings of a farm or ranch, but to keep things short, we’ll focus on the chickens.  Leon was a funny little fluffy chick and an instant kid favorite, so he got lots of love…and respect. 

The Second R:  Responsibility – “If We Don’t Do Our Job, Something Dies”.  While a guest on the Mission Matters podcast (link to the interview below) Mr. Alejandro made the comment that “in the world of agriculture…if we don’t do our job [something] dies.”  That is quite often the truth on the farm, and a lesson my kids had to learn the hard way.  You see, a few weeks after these pictures were taken, our family neglected our responsibility, and Leon died.  He was the low rooster in the pecking order, so he would never go up into the coop at night. Instead, he would huddle on the ground at the bottom of the ramp and every evening one of us would have to go out, pick him up, set him in the coop box, close the ramp, and then lock the outside door of the pen.  We did that for over a year, every night, faithfully “putting Leon to bed” as we called it.  But one week we were really busy with VBS and baseball and we came home and forgot to put Leon to bed.  Something snuck in the pen (under guard dog Spot’s nose) and that was the end of our good buddy Leon. 

There were lots of tears, but I guarantee we learned our lesson, because now, every night, I don’t have to remind the kids to go put the chickens away (and we have thirty-four of them, in two different pens).  Whenever the sun starts to go down, they take the initiative to go shoo the hens into the pens and count to make sure we have them all before closing the doors for the night. 

The Third R:  Resiliency – Get back up again.  When Nathan and I were planning to move to the
farm we talked about how you can be the best farmer in the world, make all the right decisions, and still have nothing to show for it at the end of the year due to a weather disaster, market collapse, or other unpredictable, uncontrollable circumstance.  While farmers and ranchers certainly try to manage their risk, at some point everyone has a failure.  At that point you have two choices:  either you throw in the towel, or you bounce back and figure out how to stay in the game.  The traumatic loss of our favorite chicken didn’t make my children want to quit the chicken business.  Instead, they eagerly look for new breeds to try, dream about building elaborate chicken tunnels, hold chickens on their laps while reading books and do their dedicated best to collect eggs and reap a few dollar of profit for their efforts.  And, as it happens, this year there are THREE fluffy little Silkie chicks hanging out under the heat lamp in the garage:  a grey one, a brown one, and a silly, fluffy little white one whose name is…Leon.  😊

Find the full link to the Mission Matters podcast episode here:  Mission Matters with Adam Torres and Aaron Alejandro