So we have hens, four of them. I haven’t told you about them before, have I? We got them last July. We have always wanted to have some, but you know how it goes, you buy a house, get a couple of cats, have a couple of kids and then all of a sudden your dream for having chickens just seems like yet one more responsibility. But after a handful of hard learned reminders that life is short last year, Scott woke up one morning, went outside and built us a chicken coop and about a week later we had a box full of chicks to call our own.
When I told a friend that we now had chickens he thought that sounded pretty ‘yee-haw’ of us. You know, country bumpkin. I had never thought of it that way. Being a visual person, I always thought a life with a handful of chickens sounded romantic: a lovely little garden with blooming fruit trees, a quaint farmhouse and a few chickens roaming around. That’s how I’ve always thought of our ventures out into gardening, canning, and overall eating off the land. But now as I start this blog and I’m meeting people via blogland who I’ve never met face to face, I wonder how other people view all our talk of gardening. Are people seeing us ‘yee-haw’ country bumpkins? Crazy environmental idealists? Or two people who love good food searching for a grounded, authentic life? Which is what we are.
We first talked of having chickens almost seven years ago, on one of our first dates sitting on my front porch in San Anselmo. I think that conversation pretty much sealed the deal that we were meant for each other. Not because we both really wanted chickens, although, obviously we did, but because chickens defined a sort of life that we were both seeking. A simple, real life with occasional indulgent splurges. For a dot-com techie and a designer living in an area not really known for it’s chickens, to have found each other was pretty lucky. After many years of working towards the dream, we are pretty close to having what we set out for. And now we also get four eggs a day on top of it all. Like a cherry on the sunday.
I have chickens too, and although people will laugh, I think they are the best pets and first pets you should own and find that when you send people away with a few eggs they soon stop harassing you and start asking for eggs.
There was an ad for giving away layer hens in our paper last week and this week they did a story on chickens because the family had over 600 requests for the chickens!!! And this was in just a moderately sized town (about 30,000) Probably about 3-5% of households responded to that! Chickens are back in fashion
So…. jealous….
I would love to have the courage to have chickens. When I think about what it means to be trying to augment what we eat via a simple backyard garden, I can’t help but extend it into a dream of chickens. And a few pigs.
Fresh eggs, right off the farm, are one of the great joys in life I think. Especially when it’s from hens that enjoy a great pasture. Those eggs are incomparable.
I am certain that my neighbors would only take note of my chickens when I had a rooster. But that’s enough to make me not extend my gardening into.. chickening.
But man… I wish I had the courage to do it. It must be wonderful.
Chickens are quite charming. I have 8 hens and they are as sweet as can be. They will follow me all over the yard when I’m working in the garden. They will hop up next to me when I’m sitting on the hay bale out in the garden.
They make great pets and I wish there were more people out in the world like you keeping happy healthy hens, rather than those poor creatures that spend their short lives stacked in cages.
Now if you can figure out how to train them to discriminate between eating only the weeds rather than tender young vegetable seedlings you’ll have to let me know
Yee Haw! You know my feelings on chickens- love ’em! We talked this weekend about getting 2 this summer. I too am like you- I think it’s very romantic, the chickens, the beautiful garden, eating off the land. Oh how I dream to have a small farm one day- with many animals and my children and I tending the land and eating what we grow. For now I will be happy with our little garden (which we must get to this weekend- we are rebuilding the front beds) and enjoy everything we do in it.
And there’s nothing wrong with “country bumpkin” – I think I may have married one- at least we always laugh about it.