Eggs, Chicks, and Chickens

Dear Folks -
Great-uncle Lee was an gentle old batch during the worst years of the Great Depression trying to turn a dime to live on, but never finding much more than a nickel.

For a while, one of his schemes was raising chickens which seemed a no-fail project because everyone needs eggs, right? But it was a vicious circle: chickens laid the eggs which were collected and taken to town and sold for just enough money to buy more feed to bring home to feed the chickens to lay more eggs to be collected and taken to town . . . well, you get the idea. His brother and family lived down the lane a ways and helped with the work in exchange for eggs and an occasional stewpot hen. Their share of the eggs, of course, were the ones that couldn't be sold for one reason on another: too old, brittle-shelled, no shell (yup, that happens), cracked, dirty, off color, or anything else. This was payment that didn't endear the project to the helpers, and 75 years later, the nieces still regard eggs with the sort of dark suspicion usually reserved for career politicians.

Well, we are in the egg business, too, but only by default. The eggs from our hens are a second order of business, actually. The hens were picked up as a pasture clean-up patrol which they have done amazing well for nearly a year now. Henny-Penny is a Barred Rock hen which, because of her black and white stripes, the grandchildren call "jailbird chickens." She and her crew came to us as a formed flock, and once they understood where they could get water and shelter, they have gone at the pasture with a vengeance . Our plan is to use the manure so amply provided by Daisy and her calf to fertilize the pasture, and what better way to do so than by having the chicken chain-gang go at it with beaks and feet. They scratch around through a pile of anything, gobble up everything that interests them and head on to the next scratching activity.

Good as the jailbirds and their friends have been, the pastures are large enough that we could really use more birds, and so this spring we have begun the creation of another, larger, flock. There was lots of planning and scheming last fall and looking at several hatchery websites to find just the right mix of birds. And then there was the need to create a larger nicer place for this flock to live than in a Craigs List dog run, and so we created the Coop 'de Ville. Yesterday all the little peepers began arriving by Express delivery to the local post office., and only the turkeys are left. It's, ah . . . "cheep" entertainment for the grandchildren to handle (oh so carefully) the little fluffballs and figure figure out new names for them. Ever wonder how a kid's mind works? Try these names on for size: there is a yellow and orange chick that was promptly christened "Cheese," and then the brown ones named "Toasty" and "Roasty," and a lovely golden one named "Nugget" -- which I hope is *gold* nugget, not *chicken* nugget. Hoppy is obvious, but Clod? Where did that come from? Since there are 40 chicks, there are lots of great possibilities ahead. And then we will get to the turkeys. But in the meantime, there are eggs to collect, feed to buy to bring home to the chickens who will make more eggs so that we can buy more feed to bring home . . . Well, you get the idea.

Thinking of ewe -
The Shepherd