Life On The Farm

Dave: "You know, we purposefully bought a house in the city."

Me:  "Yes."

Dave: "And then we turned it into a farm."

Me:  "Yes.  Yes, indeed."

Dave made this comment while he was working on our new chicken coop.  Yes, a chicken coop.  For these chicks that we got in the mail.

who have grown into these "teenaged" chicks.

We are pretty dadgummed excited about our chickens.  (When you live on a farm, you used words like "dadgummed;" it doesn't matter how many advanced degrees you have.)

And I find it very amusing that the same chick who is about to hop out of the box at two days old is the same the same one about to walk through the open door at 4 weeks of age.  I study individual behavior in  groups and influenced by the environment, but I have to admit that some traits are in-born, even in chickens.

So let me introduce our chickens:  the black one with the white spots on her head in both the box and the crate is Spike.  She is an Australorp.  The fluffy light one near her in the box is Buffy.  She is a Buff Orpington, and the inspiration for the the theme of most of their names.  Angel, who is a Rhode Island Red, is beside Buffy in the box and behind Spike in the crate.  Willow is not easily seen in either picture, but is a silver laced wyandotte.  Bunny is the light one beside Spike in the crate, and she is an Ameircauna and will lay blue and green eggs (deviating slightly from the Vampire Slayer theme, although wasn't Anya afraid of bunnies?).  Our final chicken is named Minky.  She is a  speckled Sussex (I think).  Her name comes from what Bridget calls her binky/pacifier. And although we cannot in any reasonable way make a Buffy connection to that, I'm just going to go ahead and say that Bridget is the next generation's slayer, so there.

I whole heartedly recommend that everyone gets chickens.  They eat nearly everything, thus making composting (for the urban farm!) a lot quicker.  The kids love them and they love the kids. Conor likes to put them in his cars and trucks and they apparently like it, too.  They (both Conor and the chickens) only get spooked when I walk in and "catch" them playing with each other.  So not only they have personalities, they have different norms of behavior for interacting with different people?  Really??

No, we are not going to eat them.  But we are going to eat their eggs, which they should start laying in August.

What a hoot.  What a crazy life to have this little piece of land in the city of Charl0tte and do so many crazy things on it.