Goshen | June 8

Recently my oldest daughter moved out of the house, for good this time I'm told, and so we celebrated by inviting 26 young women to come live with us. Twenty five of them are a chocolate brown and one lone white girl. Jane named her Cracker.


(click on the image to enlarge)

We've had chickens ever since we moved to The Tavern House, ten years ago. It started with just six. I wrote a story about it called Chickens In The Brothel. A month or two ago, we were woken to blood-curdling screams coming from the chickens. It just goes to show just how well I sleep that instead of being alarmed and getting up to check out the commotion, I rolled over and went back to sleep.

As it turned out, some small varmint, possibly a fox, weasel or some such animal, got into the chicken coop and promptly carried every chicken off we had except one small hen and the rooster who was able to fend off the attack, mostly unharmed.

I can't tell you how disconcerting it is to buy and eat eggs from the grocery store once you're used to eating fresh eggs. It's almost not worth the trouble.

So we have new girls. We don't need, nor do we really have room for, 26 chickens. But that's the minimum you can order. They need to travel in packs to stay warm or they die. So we have the word out for friends who might want a few hens of their own.

We still have to decide what to do with Warren, our current rooster. He's beautiful but we've been a little off hatching our own chicks and if you don't need your eggs to be fertilized for hatching, there's really no point in having a rooster other than the crowing, which in my opinion is kind of nice. On top of which you only need one rooster for something like every 50 chickens, so if we end up with 15 or so, even one rooster is a little much. His favorite girls end up a little abused and after awhile have no feathers on their backs where he rides them in the act of love. It might be the end of the road for old Warren.

It will take about six months before they start laying eggs, so until then, it's either no eggs or store bought.

Seamus, our dog, turns into Nana (Jane's name for him taken from the dog in Peter Pan) as soon as the chicks arrive. He quivers and dances in excitement and licks each one. He believes they are his personal charge until they grow up and then he likes to terrorize them by running around the chicken coop and sending them into a frenzy.

For now, they're living in a tub full of pine shavings in the screen house. They have food, water and a heat lamp. And they have Cracker to pick on. Life is good in the country.