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7-year-old uses farm-fresh eggs to help others
her family’s farm so they can free range. The chickens also
have a fenced run attached to the hen house.
Heroes come in all sizes. Seven-year-old Sailor Summers is the pint-sized variety who easily makes ruffles and rain boots work.
More than a year ago, Sailor learned a neighbor near her family’s rural Geneva County farm was struggling to put food on his table. She didn’t have any money, but she did have chickens and eggs. So, she gave eggs to her neighbor and afterward wanted to do more for others. She started Sailor’s Helping Hen House, providing farm-fresh eggs to Wiregrass families in need.
Her logic on the importance of helping others is simple.
“It makes me feel really happy because I love helping other people,” Sailor says. “When they’re having a bad day, and we don’t know what actually is happening, we should always make sure to be nice.”
Helping Hen House more than a year ago after learning
a neighbor was struggling.
Sailor was recently honored as one of the Silent Heroes of the Wiregrass. As a partnership between Wiregrass Electric Cooperative and WTVY, Silent Heroes recipients receive $1,000 for their efforts to make their communities better.
There are now 78 chickens in Sailor’s flock, which her parents and older sister, Aralyn, help her with. As her flock grew, so did Sailor’s mission. Sailor, the reigning Little Miss Geneva County, started making what she calls Blessing Bags filled with items to brighten someone’s day. She also makes Happy Hatchday Bags, which provide children with ingredients for their very own birthday cake — candles, cake mix, frosting and eggs. The bags also include a note from Sailor.
including her sister, Aralyn Summers, left.
Sailor has given nearly 60 Blessing Bags and Happy Hatchday Bags to children throughout Geneva County in addition to providing local families with farm-fresh eggs. She has even provided eggs to the Geneva Baptist Association’s food pantry and collected, washed and distributed nearly 350 eggs during the Slocomb Tomato Festival. Sailor also partners with an organization to provide bags to children in foster care throughout the Wiregrass.
Sailor says if she could, she would reach the “whole entire world” with Sailor’s Helping Hen House.
“I love to see other people smile and make me smile,” Sailor says.
Her parents, Glenn and Piper Summers, help Sailor with the logistics of making deliveries since she can’t drive yet.
“She recognized the need both here in the neighborhood and at school, and instead of just having an idea and letting it die, she ran with it,” Glenn Summers says. “She didn’t let the fact that she’s 7 and without a lot of resources bother her. She just found something that she could do to reach out to other people, and she does it every day.”