From city girl to chicken farmer and doctor of nursing to mother, Middlesboro native and LMU faculty member Robin Wilson has a long, colorful resume.
Wilson’s husband of 37 years, William, grew up on a 240-acre farm in the Hutch community. She was raised within city limits and wanted to “get back to nature.”
A few years ago, she bought a few chicks and has learned by researching, experimenting and teaching herself about the right and wrong ways to keep chickens. Wilson now considers her flock to be pets that can make her breakfast.
“We’d talked about it a lot — wanting to have chickens and eggs and wanting to be a little bit more natural, and I think it’s pretty common now that people are wanting that. I guess we decided together, but he still calls them ‘my chickens’ but he really enjoys it, too,” laughed Wilson.
She has learned that she chose an expensive hobby, but one of her favorite things is to be able to hug her birds on a stressful day. Through her experiences raising chickens, Wilson has wise words for beginners.
“If you think about why you want to get into it before you do it — natural eggs, healthier things to eat — then that’s good, but it can get expensive for the feed. They’re great to watch and they each kind of have their own personality, but there’s a lot of work associated with it,” said Wilson.
For her daytime job Wilson is a registered nurse, with a specialty in obstetrics, and a nursing teacher at Lincoln Memorial University where she has been teaching for 18 years. She also has a doctorate in education, which also allows her to teach leadership and nursing research classes.
“With my chickens, with the teaching, you can probably see that I just like taking care of things. I like bossing things, being in charge of things and making sure that they — chickens and students — are getting what they need. There’s a lot of cheerleading, hand holding, encouragement and empowering and that’s really important,” said Wilson.
She belongs to several nursing and professional organizations and committees. She is a member of the Tri-State Trails Committee and Pump Springs Baptist Church, where she has participated as a speaker for their Biggest Loser weight loss challenge. She is proud of her personal weight loss journey and has lost 118 pounds since Dec. of 2014.
Together, Wilson and her husband have three daughters — Becky, Amy and Kimberley.
Reach Kelsey Gerhardt at 606-302-9093 or on Twitter @kgerhardtmbdn.
