I talk a lot about rural life. It's personal for me because it's something I never really saw in magazines or anywhere growing up; like people living somewhere quiet and rural but still having a creative job. Living alongside farms but not being a farmer and originally for me it blew my mind that I could live somewhere rural and still dress how I found interesting. Like, nice clothes are just for people in cities with executive jobs?! These days I focus less on how I gained confidence dressing how I wanted to in my bucolic college landscape and more just on how I enjoy being "settled" somewhere so pastoral. I enjoy living alongside farms, picking fresh fruit off the branch in harvest season, cooing over baby lambs in spring, and sighting the occasional fox in the fields near our house. But make no mistake, I'm still so far from a farmer or anyone actually adept at living in this rustic scene. I mean, I have been forced to help shoo the occasional cow out of the road, but it's not a process I enjoy or am particularly skilled at (I usually feel like the cow takes one look at me and knows I will back down). Point being: when we came to this really darling farmyard I was looking forward to feeding some chickens, but also a bit nervous that I was going to get pecked. Those chickens knew you had feed on you the second you stepped forward; my strategy was to throw the feed rather far away from myself in hopes of creating a few feet of safe space between me and the chickens, but those guys had no fear and wanted to be as close to the food source as possible regardless of where the seed was falling! I did get a lot more comfortable being surrounded by a hoard of hungry chickens after one ate some seeds straight from my hand and I realized it wasn't going to hurt at all. They were quite the posers too; one even hopped up on the bench next to me (after I ran out of seed) and started modeling with my handbag--look at how well they matched.
*my face when I felt like the chickens were getting too close*
CONVERSATION