Whitetail deer becomes part of family at Good Earth Farm

Whitetail deer aren’t supposed to chase chickens.

They aren’t supposed to clean the cat.

And they aren’t supposed to hang out with people like a dog.

But Pearl does.

Pearl the whitetail deer is as much a member of The Good Earth Farm family as Charlie and Weird Harold, Buck and T-Bone.

And if that sounds like something out of Pixar screenplay, that’s understandable.

Jeff and Nancy Kirstein’s small farm sometimes feels like a gritty TV series with a bit of Midwestern magic mixed in.

There’s an unruly order to the place, a collection of homestead buildings in various states of restoration. The 19th century house has new floors and a modern kitchen. The massive old barn was recently revamped into a majestic event space.

Two pigs, two donkeys, a pony and one crooked-horned miniature bull serve no purpose other than to be animals.

The creek bank is a perfect primitive camping site. The vegetables are organic. And the sunsets are a smidge more stunning than elsewhere.

The Kirsteins have been building this oasis of sustainability in Lincoln Country for about 10 years. While things haven’t always gone as planned – and sometimes there wasn’t an actual plan – they’ve gone pretty well.

Then, about a year ago, everything took an inexplicable turn.

A year ago this month, an orphaned fawn captured the Good Earth spirit in one bounding, joyous, sinewy form.

And things haven’t been the same since.

Or, and this is a theory, this is how it was meant to be all the time.

***

Jeff and Nancy don’t set out in search of any of the residents who call The Good Earth Farm home.

They don’t shop for breeds or breeders or pedigree, like the latest whatever-a-doo.

They come by happenstance or necessity or mercy.

It’s refuge.

“All these animals are here for reasons other than why animals are on a farm,” Jeff said. “They all have a story. They are all interesting, unwanted.”

T-Bone came from a friend who knew a woman who raises Dexter cattle. They are a very small breed, but the males don’t have much value.

The same connection led to Rex, the pony.

One of the shareholders in the vegetable operation rescued a bunch of neglected donkeys. The Kirsteins agreed to take one. It turned out she was pregnant, so now they have two.

Somebody dropped off a couple of ducks, which as it turns out have, shall we say, behavior issues.

The Kirsteins try to keep the cat population under control with regular spaying and neutering. But cats being cats, there are always kittens.

Dogs Buck and Sydney are the resident peacekeepers.

The long-term stars of Good Earth though, are probably the pigs.

That started with Harriet, perhaps the luckiest pig in the Upper Midwest.

Harriet fell off a livestock truck somewhere near Brookings and was found running down Interstate 29 by a passing motorist. The woman who rescued her heard about Good Earth through friends.

She was small – only about 8 pounds – when she came to the farm in a cat carrier.

Pigs are social creatures. They just don’t get the opportunity to show it very often. Harriet took to the role immediately, following Jeff and Nancy into the field, irritating Buck like a little sister and generally ingratiating herself into whatever parts of the farm she wanted.

That led to Charlie, the runt of a litter of heritage pigs raised by another friend.

Charlie and Harriet bonded immediately, as you might expect a couple of castoff pigs to do.

Then, tragedy hit The Good Earth.

A cold rain led to a respiratory problem for Harriet. Despite the best efforts of veterinary medicine, she died.

Pigs have expressive eyes, similar to people. They develop personalities and welcome you like a faithful pet.

Charlie, now 800-plus pounds, will flop over and let you scratch his belly.

Losing Harriet – even though she’d lived just over a year – was heartbreaking.

“She’s probably the closest that I’ve ever been to animal,” Jeff said.

Still, Charlie was accustomed to companionship.

Enter Weird Harold, a cousin from the same heritage pig breeder.

The pair are the featured attraction, like two mammoth puppies playing in the mud.

Which all begs the question: Why?

“I’ve been through a lot in life,” Jeff said.

“We were almost broke 10 years ago. And so, I’m proud that we try not to have pride, as goofy as that sounds. I’m happy when people are happy. I’m happy that we have this place. It’s not us, it’s this place. We knew it when we first came down the driveway, but it was a dump. There’s something about the land here and the property. I don’t know what it is that is just special to us. So it makes us really happy when other people recognize that.”

***

Pearl isn’t a pet.

Jeff and Nancy know that’s not how the world works. It is, in fact, not a Pixar movie.

Her journey to The Good Earth Farm was, like the rest of the animals, not a straight line. A friend of friend found her being led by a string down the sidewalk by a group of kids. A bit of investigation revealed the mother had been killed.

An urban pet didn’t seem like the best idea. Working back through the friend chain, they learned about The Good Earth Farm. The connections were texted, and Pearl was dropped off by her rescuers.

Jeff and Nancy admit that early on the lines were a bit blurred. After a few days of staying in the house and then watching and making sure the speckled little creature was OK, could find food and generally fend for herself among the barnyard chickens and cats, Pearl has been free to come and go as she wants.

And she does go.

Then, she comes back, even returning to her old haunts in the kitchen or the living room when there is an opportunity.

The Kirsteins also will admit they aren’t dispassionate about it either.

Which is probably why they bought a radio collar, just to see where she is, that she’s still going and that she may come back.

Pick up the cellphone and hit the app, like she was a teenager out on her first date.

“It’s probably what other people experience when their kids leave the house,” Jeff said. “You hold your breath and cross your fingers, that I raised them right and they like me, and they will come back. It feels great when they do.”

***

Whitetail deer can live into their teens, though in the wild most don’t make it beyond five or six years.

Females may stay with their mothers up to two years and can reproduce after a year.

Which is to say that Pearl is a bit like a high school graduate considering college or a year abroad – Pearl may not be that pretentious a deer, it’s hard to tell.

And not to stretch the metaphor, but she has begun behaving like a college freshman – running around all crazy-like and sometimes staying out all night.

Every once in awhile, she’ll go into a full sprint in that low-to-the-ground way that deer can do.

“A couple times a day she has to show off,” Jeff said. “She’ll do these huge laps around … she runs right by you. She wants to make sure that you’re watching.”

Lately though, the laps are getting bigger, as in miles bigger.

“She has found other deer and been with other deer,” he said.

And she’s staying out longer.

Nancy came home one day a few months ago and realized Pearl wasn’t around.

She looked her up on the app. Pearl was about 5 miles away, so Nancy drove down the gravel back roads until she found her.

There she was, mingling with the herd.

Nancy started crying.

“I was like, ‘That’s it, she’s gone,’” Nancy said. “It was happy sad, that she’s found her other deer people.”

***

Dr. Jonathan Jenks is the distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Natural Resources Management at South Dakota State University.

The man has spent a lot of time studying the behavior of whitetail deer in eastern South Dakota.

The research shows that deer wander, but to varying degrees.

Some migrate depending on seasons and resources, Jenks said. Male deer will disappear during the rut – the breeding season – traveling miles in search of does.

But if a female deer can find what she needs and is successful producing young, she often will stay in a home area.

“Let’s say she loses a fawn two years in a row,” Jenks said. “Then it’s not working out. But if the fawn lives, there’s a really good chance she will hang out there.”

It’s not uncommon for fawns to imprint on people, to attach to them when their mother is killed, he said. There are lot of stories about deer commingling with humans over long periods of time, revisiting for years.

Jenks raised a lot of deer for research during his graduate work and at SDSU.

“The males, during the rut, really aren’t interested in you. They have one thing on their mind at that time,” he said. “The females are really easy to work with and do imprint on people.”

***

Nancy drove home after spotting Pearl with her own kind, uncertain whether she’d see her again.

The collar wasn’t going to ping forever, and things happen. Cars, coyotes, hunters, disease. They happen.

When she checked the app the next morning, Pearl was still out there.

“Then, at about 6:30, she started running home for breakfast,” Jeff said. “She covered 5 miles in about 35 minutes and was on the doorstep, a little after seven, for her tomatoes and Wheat Thins.”

Then she started staying out for a full day.

Then two.

One recent Friday evening, after the sun was long past the horizon and while the warmth still hung in the air, Jeff and Nancy were entertaining friends.

Pearl had been gone for more than a day.

Kids played in the yard.

Adults laughed, told stories and sipped rye whiskey in the barn, where freshly varnished floors glimmered beneath string lighting.

The scene was bucolic – magical even – a “why we live here” kind of night.

Looking north, the sky had a domed glow from the city lights.

Somewhere, a chicken clucked.

And out of the darkness came Pearl, strolling toward the barn as if this was a totally normal and natural thing to do.

She crossed the yard and stepped into the barn, hooves clicking on hardwood.

A little cheer went up from the adults, as if another friend came in carrying more beer.

Pearl paused, assessed the moment and then clicked over to where Jeff sat in a camp chair.

She sniffed him.

Then nuzzled his neck.

***

When a pickup from the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department pulls into your driveway, it’s probably not good news.

It’s not that the GF&P are bad people.

But if you own an organic vegetable farm with a collection of misfit animals, it’s unusual.

Jeff and Nancy have never been shy about Pearl. She’s on Facebook.

The fact that word got back to the state’s official wildlife managers wasn’t a surprise. The officers asked about Pearl and if they had a collar on her.

Nancy said yes.

They said you can’t do that.

“They were very kind about it,” Nancy said. “They said, ‘We get it, just take the collar off her the next time she comes around.’”

Jenks, the deer expert at SDSU, said that’s because, technically, the state’s wildlife “belong” to the people, to all of us.

“By putting a collar on it, they are taking ownership of that deer, and they can’t do that,” he said.

There was some anxiety the day the collar came off and Pearl could no longer be tracked.

“Now I’m OK with it,” Nancy said. “I feel better knowing that she has space to roam, that we have enough property to do that.”

***

So the collar came off, which is just as well, Jeff said.

When Pearl slips into the night, they won’t know where she is or when, or if, she’ll be there for tomatoes and Wheat Thins at daybreak.

“She’s the missing link,” Jeff said. “Kind of between what’s wild and what we’ve tamed. She’s always going to be wild, yeah, but she wants to be a part of our world too. That to me is the magic part of it. She can go away, go anywhere she wants, but she wants to come back and see us.”

Let’s be clear, Jeff and Nancy understand what is wild and what is not.

They also believe that what happened in those early days wasn’t wrong. The rules of ecology and wildlife management say that you should never touch baby animals when you find them in the wild.

Leave them alone. It’s not your place to decide what happens. Mom may just be in the trees watching you from a distance.

Or if the animal is truly abandoned, there are registered rehabilitation experts who care for it and return it to the wild, Jenks said.

Jeff and Nancy weren’t the humans who breached that barrier – Pearl was delivered to them by someone who was worried, and they don’t blame that person for that.

They just took her in and accepted what may come.

Technically, by the book, they were supposed to euthanize the speckled, orphaned fawn or turn her in.

“Her home is the wild,” Jeff said. “At some point, she’s going to go off into it. And that’s OK.”

***

Jeff and Nancy can no longer peek in on Pearl’s life.

Female deer commonly stay with their mothers for up to two years.

The boys split off much earlier.

It’s also common for offspring to live, mate and produce fawns in the same area they were born.

And so on and so on.

If Jeff is Pearl’s surrogate mother, then maybe this stretch of the relationship is coming to an end.

Once the tie is broken, they’ll never know for sure when a whitetail bounds across a fence in the distance, “Was that Pearl? Was she checking in on them?”

Or maybe her daughter, or granddaughter.

And so on and so on.

That gives Jeff and Nancy some peace too. They consider themselves stewards and guests of the farm, allowed to keep it magical and share that with others.

Pearl is part of that.

She doesn’t belong to anybody but the Good Earth.