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Where Stories Begin
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Some of my experiences as a writer began long before I thought about writing. Many were simply part of farm life: animals to tend, vegetables to grow and preserve, and hard days that became memorable for reasons we couldn’t have predicted.
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Farm animals take a bit more tending than household pets. They have to be fenced, for example, and sometimes they get out. Many times I helped put cattle back in their field, and a few times I chased pigs. Pigs are harder to catch and harder to influence than cattle.
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Chasing pigs found its way into The Girl on the Mountain, where May Rose is both comforted and challenged by her pet sow, Nellie.
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Raising chickens supplied another useful bit of experience. After reading an early draft of the novel, a writer friend told me May Rose should be stewing a hen instead of a rooster for dinner because a flock would have only one rooster. But anyone who has raised chickens knows you end up with as many roosters as hens. I never tried to explain to my friend that the roosters go into the pot.
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Neighborhood hog butchering was more enjoyable than butchering and processing chickens at our own farm. We tried that only once. Two friends helped, and while it was rather exciting, it wasn’t fun. Once was enough for me—although I have to admit we loved the canned chicken. We loved every jar on the shelf but never wanted to repeat the work that put it there. From then on, we bought only pullets (female chicks) and let them live out their lives.
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When May Rose takes up residence in Hester’s boardinghouse, she participates in a hog butchering. Some of those details also came from experience. Many Novembers, we gathered at a neighbor’s farm for butchering day, when several farm families shared the work of turning pigs into chops, ribs, hams, bacon, sausage, and lard.
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The above photo from the 1970s includes our children with neighbors on one of our butchering days.
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Drawing on those experiences doesn’t mean my novels are full of events that happened to me. A remembered task, an expression, or the values of someone I knew will sometimes find a place in my fiction. I suspect many authors rely on pieces of their experience as well as research.
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Farm life gave us plenty of experiences that were more complicated than a fond look backward might suggest. There was hard work, there were neighbors, there were children watching and learning—and there were moments I’m happier remembering than repeating.
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And yes, there were pigs to chase. (Click the link in the video for a sense of that experience!)
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Did you ever participate in a butchering? What was an ordinary part of your childhood that would surprise children today?
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Click the image above to see the video on YouTube.
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