Meet Honey and Matilda....

I have a habit/fault of talking about things way before I ever actually do them. My mind, it seems, works much faster than my body and my motivation. This is precisely the case with the idea we had 18 months ago to delve into the backyard chicken movement that is currently sweeping across the country. (If you don't believe me that this is an actual trend see this article and this one. Chickens, as Susan Orlean in the New Yorker article puts it, are the "it bird".)

Jaren and I were excited from the outset about the idea of keeping chickens. Having our own fresh eggs, getting to experience raising an animal that actually produces a useful edible thing, and watching the effect taking care of our chickens would have on our children--especially since our household is cursed with animal allergies and some deep running cleanliness issues that pretty much rule out our ever having a conventional indoor pet-- these all played into the desire. So did the fact that I am so eager these days to reconnect with traditions of domesticity that are useful and have needlessly fallen by the wayside of modernized culture. Chickens have only NOT been a part of most people's home life for about 50 years. Before that, they were a commonplace and utilitarian feature of the domestic landscape, albeit the more pastoral landscape of the past. And unlike bigger livestock, chicken raising was normally relegated to the realm of women and children, something that makes me love it all the more in this current phase of my life as a stay at home mama.

So anyway, there I was broadcasting our plan to have chickens to one and all, collecting scrap wood for the coop, looking at online sites like Backyard Chicken and Urban Chicken and then we just sat on the idea...til now! This spring has found us finally ready to catch up to our talk. Jaren has been working on the coop this past week and it will be completed whenever this infernal fickle Spring decides to really become itself. Yesterday we went to IFA and just bit the bullet and bought ourselves 2 fuzzy little balls of peeping cuteness: one Buff Orpington which will lay gorgeous pale brown eggs and 1 Ameraucana the famed "Easter Egg" chicken which lays lovely aqua colored eggs. We will probably add one more to the mix this weekend. Does 3 make a flock?

I'm very excited about the whole adventure. I worry about my neighbors; I worry about pests and critters and predators; I worry about odor and chicken shit; I worry about the fact that all birds have the capacity to weird me out with their non blinking and darty movements and strange scaly feet. But it is funny the way mother nature puts potentially difficult and tedious things in perfectly manageable and cute packages. Babies and chicks, who can resist them? And just like with parenting, I know that if I devote myself to caring for these little somethings, in the end the shit and the worry and the weirdness end up being such a small piece that can't hold a candle to the overall joy. I'm counting on that. I'm also figuring that if I ever start to doubt the decision, Cleo will come to the rescue and be the chicken cheer leader. In the less than 24 hours we've had the chicks, Cleo has already told me "now our family's bigger!" and made a card "introducing" the chickens to the world, and said "Mom, it's not about the eggs, it's about them!" She's in love. Let's hope I will be too.