chicken update

so it's been adventure all summer raising these chickens! matt tells me that we can take them all to a local farm and he won't make any comments such as I told you so! it's been a learning process. it was all pretty easy until i sprained my ankle late in my pregnancy and after that, well, i was pretty darn pregnant w/ my big baby girl and struggled to get up the hill to the coop. then the poop everywhere just started to annoy the heck out of me. we were hosing down the patios twice a day and apologizing to our guests when we had to wipe to poop off their chair before they sat down. so grandpa bob arrived and i pleaded with him to build me a fence to keep the chickens up on the hill by the coop. he was so kind to comply and spent a whole day of his visit putting it up for us. i couldn't ask matt to do it because he wasn't so thrilled about us having chickens in the first place-- this was my project. I guess one needs to have a bit more practical knowledge to be a farmer--lesson learned and a big reason to unschool. unfortunately matt is the one w/ the practical skills, but not the one who wants to undertake my little projects. so then our next dilemma was how to keep them up on the hill once our short 3 foot fence was in place. we clipped their wings several times, but they still managed to fly out. so matt clipped them very short and yay, they were contained! this happened over a period of several weeks. unfortunately on the day he last clipped them, a fox came into our yard in the middle of the day and grabbed our Americauna and had a nice feast for himself. then i realized, oh my gosh, i have totally disabled these poor chickens and now they are sitting ducks for neighborhood predators. so i decided to give guinness a job--after all the poor dog has been completely ignored since the boys were born until just recently when he has become the tormented--let's chase guinness around the house and grab his tail, let's pretend he is a bear and spear him, let's ride him like a horse--you get the picture. anyhow, i put him on duty up on our hill. the poor dog. he sat there all day staring at our house. this seemed worse then being tormented by those twin boys in the house. like the chickens, he found ways to escape. so now i have relieved guinness of his duties. we just try to keep an eye on the yard while we are here and don't let them out of the coop if we are gone for the day. it actually allowed my dad to live out a "real cops" fantasy last weekend when John Reali very quietly and calmly said, "the fox is back" after he saw it grab a chicken and start to run across our yard. he didn't want to alarm the kids because he envisioned them looking up at the same moment the fox was feasting. So my dad jumps up and races out the door heading for the fox. he runs up the hill, trips on our stepping stones and nearly falls hard--thank god that didn't happened-- and chase the fox into the next yard. what was he going to do? yell at the fox? tell him to never return? break out his bow and arrow? not sure, but it was hysterical! thankfully, the sight of big jim running at him convinced the fox to drop our chicken, who was thankfully unhurt.

I also must add that I say thankfully only because i want those eggs! i have to say that I have really developed no affection for these chickens. i know, i am a bad person. I am thankful for those eggs and the chickens for laying them, but the girls are by no means pets to me. they were when they were cute baby chicks, but now they are scary large birds. i say scary because they are so skittish and squawk and fuss when i try to pick them up and it does creep me out a bit. i inherited my dads phobia of birds apparently. plus they are strange looking animals. thank goodness for our chicken whisperer!

but, really having these chickens has been worth it for the joy they bring to liam and patrick, especially patrick. what a wonderful learning experience it has been to raise them-- from building the coop, caring for the chicks, feeding them, checking for eggs, eating the eggs every morning, sharing the eggs w/ friends, accidentally killing a chick, discovering we had a rooster and needing to find it another home, running around the yard trying to catch them at night, etc.

i have posted a picture of my favorite chicken, a favorelle, who is so funky looking!