The Chickens Are Coming Home: A Letter to Grandpa Barlie & Grandma Gladys

Dear Grandpa Barlie and Grandma Gladys,

The chickens are coming home.

Fifteen of them: Easter Eggers and Olive Eggers, Silkies and Black French Marans, Lavender Orpingtons and Bielefelders, Welsummers and Black Jersey Giants, Blue Australorps and Blue Stars. They will lay beautiful eggs in blue, green, olive, brown, terracotta, chocolate, and brown with spots. A whole egg rainbow from a piece of ground in the deep rural South that sits within the Gullah Geechee corridor. I can trace both sides of my family to Gullah Geechee roots and this land holds all of that history in its soil.

I thought about you both last week while Sashá and I were working on the coop together. We were sanding the floors, painting the inside, figuring out where the automatic door would go, and talking through the location of the run we still need to build. I’m blessed to say all my work is satisfying, but this work is slow and physical in a way that is different from everything else I do. This kind enters the body differently and creates a feeling of peace I once felt only when traveling. At some point, I stopped and looked out at the land and wondered what it looked like when you two worked side by side on it. What you talked about. What you were building toward. Whether you knew then what you were planting for the people who would come after you.

I think you did. I think that is why you bought it. You both saw the vision.

I also thought about my Nana Ardel, aka Della Mae, my great-grandmother. Before she passed last year, she used to talk about you both with so much love. She said you were the best parents she ever could have had. That even though you were poor, nobody in that house ever felt like it, because the home was so full of love. Nana grew up on this land, spending summers here with her siblings and the ancestors, all of whom sat under the magnolia tree still present at the front of our land. She loved Papa Mack, my great great great grandfather, who rode his horse and carriage along these roads, preaching at churches across the area. We come from a praying family. I feel that when I walk on this ground. Her daughter, my living grandmother Mariam, who was birthed on this land, carries that same spirit of prayer. I think about the generations this land has held and I am trying to carry that forward in everything we are planting here.

Grandma Gladys, they say you were known for your chickens. I did not know that when we started planning the flock. I found out later from one of our cousins who remembers you well. That felt like something.

The barn passed its final inspection. The trench we needed to minimize flooding made it possible, and we will finish it properly with a pipe that allows water to move through, especially because this farm's soil loves to hold moisture. I’m sure you’re aware of that. The barn is 65 feet long, and we are still figuring out the layout. It will be home for our future livestock pets and a gathering space for our community. A place where animals are tended and people come together. Both things at once, which feels right for this land.

The porch garden is bearing fruit. The tomatoes, collard greens, shishito peppers, banana peppers, and green peppers are coming in. Spearmint grows close to the door, where you can reach it without thinking. Yesterday, my mother came to harvest with us. Sashá made roasted shishito peppers,I made fresh spearmint and basil tea, and we sat together with what the land gave us. I want you to know this land is still feeding people. Family is still gathering on it, including your children. Uncle Bobby, Aunt Clara, and Aunt Bette are here weekly to see our homestead come to life and share their memories of growing up on this land.

Out on the land itself, I have been finding things I did not plant. Wild garlic pushing up through the ground. Cutleaf evening primrose. Bamboo at the edges. Dog fennel, which keeps the bugs away if you know how to use it. A saffron tree I am still learning. Lavender, oregano, basil.

Pennsylvania Everlasting is growing here too. Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium if you’re feeling fancy. What our people have called Rabbit Tobacco, Sweet Everlasting, and Old Field Balsam for as long as anyone can remember.

It was highly revered in Southern Black folk medicine, in Hoodoo, in Gullah Geechee healing traditions. Valued as a natural remedy, potent spiritual shield used for protection. and ancestral connection. Elders in rural Black communities used it for respiratory relief, cold and flu season, sweating out illness under heavy covers in the dark, topical compresses applied to swelling and insect bites, and spiritual cleansing and protection of our home. It gives off a scent like maple syrup when you crush the leaves.

I have it on my altar.

Finding it growing here is not a surprise once you know where you are standing. This land sits in the Gullah Geechee corridor. These roots go all the way down. Finding it growing on our land feels like being introduced to someone I already know. Like the land is handing me something it has been holding until I was ready to receive it.

The magnolia tree is starting to flower. Rabbits are moving through the property like they own it. Maybe they do. The land is doing what it has always done: holding life, offering medicine, making room for what comes next.

Thank you for the fullness you built out of very little. Thank you for the ground beneath all of it.

With love and in lineage,

Sabia

To my Common Grounders,

I shared this letter with you because I think most of us are carrying someone. An ancestor, a grandparent, an elder who passed something forward without knowing exactly who would receive it. Grandpa Barlie and Grandma Gladys bought this land, poor and full of love, and somehow both of those things made it to me. My Nana Ardel grew up on it. Papa Mack rode his horse and carriage along its roads, preaching the word. My grandmother Mariam was born on it. Now I am here, preparing for chickens, growing a harvest, and finding medicine in the ground they walked.

This land sits in the Gullah Geechee corridor. I can trace both sides of my family to Gullah Geechee roots. That knowledge changes how I understand every plant that grows here, every tradition that was practiced here, every meal that was cooked here. It is not background information. It is the whole story.

I urge you to sit with this question this week:

What did someone in your lineage build, grow, or hold onto so that you could have something they never did? Do they know you received it?

You do not need land to answer this. The inheritance might be a practice, a value, a way of feeding people, or a refusal to give up. It might be something you have not named yet.

Write it down if you can. Say their name out loud if you know it. Let them know the ground they laid is still holding.

The regular issue of Ground Work is coming soon. In the meantime, the chickens are almost here.