Dear Ferret Folks-

There are pleasures that city folks will simply never know.

I know from my FML correspondence that some of you have horses and
donkeys, cows and sheep, llamas and the like. You have turkeys and
Guinea fowl and chickens, even doves. It has been many years since
my husband and I have had the land for any of that. My husband keeps
making noise about how much fun it would be to have a cow again as
we did maybe ten years ago when we lived on my family farm. That's
honestly more work than I want to commit to. Me, I like chickens. I
have an acre and big back yard. That's fine for chickens.

This spring we got some baby Barred Rock chicks, the ones that grow up
to be black and white tweed with red combs. Ping is He sure tried to
make them part of his diet, but a few of them lived on despite him and
the raccoon and the skunk. A particularly skilled house cat made off
with a number of them one day. We have one Barred Rock left, and that
is Tina, named by my five year old nephew, Alex. Due to a bad night
with the aforementioned raccoon, she has a good limp, but is otherwise
hale and hearty. She is the smart chicken. When I want the flock to
come over, I call her by name. She comes, and the others go "Oh, look,
Tina thinks there's something good, let's follow her." Tina is the
boss.

I felt really bad for her when she became the last, and sole chicken.
It wasn't the time of year to get mail order chicks, so I went to a
neighbour and begged a little Buff Orpington hen. Her name is simply
Buff,and she and Tina spent all summer and fall together, exploring the
woods, roosting in or under trees as they pleased. Scratching at the
grass, chasing bugs. The neighborhood got used to seeing them take dust
baths in the middle of our dead end street. Everybody enjoyed watching
them strut around. At night we locked them into their coop so that they
would live another day.

But if you are going to go to all the trouble of having two chickens,
you may as well have *lots* of chickens. It's like ferret math. So come
fall the local Tractor Supply store (that's a chain, not a one-off) had
a chicken sale in the parking lot. These were mostly the spring hens
that were just on the edge of laying. But there were roosters, too.
Roosters are cheap. We bought one we call Three Bucks because, well,
he cost three bucks. We could have gotten some for two. There was one
for free. Roosters don't get much respect. They are mostly ornamental
or tasty, depending upon your preference.

My hubby and I picked up three more hens for ten apiece. A reasonable
price. That's what the market will bear here in New England. I don't
know what a prime layer hen goes for in say, Wyoming or New Mexico.
We got two white Longhorns and a Red Star. The white Longhorns are
all-over white with bright red combs. The Red Star is rusty with a
white underlay. We decided a mix and match flock all put together at
the same time was a good idea. You can't really just introduce one
chicken at a time, the others will gang up on it and beat it to death.
Chickens are very human in that regard.

But there was one more chicken that got my attention. He is the single
ugliest chicken that I have ever seen. He is the color of a gray
mushroom, and an all over ball of thread-like fluff. I can't tell you
what color his eyes are because they can't be seen. His head is a tuft
of fluff with two blue ear patches. He has two feathery feet, also
blue. I am told he is a bantam Silky. Whatever he is, he looks like
he sneezed too hard and blew himself inside out. His name is simply
"Gesundheit." He is the saddest looking chicken that I have ever seen.
So of course, I had to have him. Don't tell anybody that I paid five
dollars for him. Shhh.

So now I have flock of five hens and two roosters. One rooster is large
and elegant, with a full-throated morning call. The other looks like a
pint-sized Martian that runs about on two legs, trailing after Tina,
who ignores him every second of every day. They are a handsome flock,
indeed, very picturesque as they go about and fertilize my back yard.

My hubby decided we needed a bigger, more secure coop so he and my
nephew built one together. It is actually a chicken palace, what I call
the premiere chicken destination on the east coast. It comes complete
with a window, roosting bars inside, two levels of nesting boxes and a
J-feeder big enough to accommodate an entire bag of layer hen pellets.
We let the chickens free range during the day, but they come back into
their coop every night. We close a little door, and they are safe from
the creatures of the night. In the spring, I will pin a little flower
box beneath their window. Too cute for words.

One of the joys of having chickens is, of course, fresh eggs. This is a
slow time of year for laying, but that Buff Orpington gives me a very
round brown egg every day. I have to go collect it early on, or I risk
letting it freeze. Then the shell cracks, and it is usually not good
for anything. The Longhorns have given me one or two little white eggs.
Come spring, I will be giving them away.

But this morning I shooed everybody out of the coop so that I could
change over the hay. And in the Buff Orpington's favourite corner there
was one of her almost round brown eggs. I picked it up and it was warm
in my hand, still warm from the heat of her body. I held it in my hand
and I savored the moment, the simple pleasure of it. I had the smell
and sound of a gentle cold rain, a near silent rain as the leaves are
all gone from the trees. I could smell wet rocks and earth, the spice
of hemlocks and the summer's leaves, all in a blanket on the forest
floor. My wool hat gave off that wonderful lanolin scent. A crow called
from somewhere nearby. And in my hand, life. I didn't want to let the
moment go. Even in the midst of this cold gray time of year, there are
little miracles granted to us, if we are willing to stop and savor
them.

An egg. A simple egg, warm in my hand. What a gift.

Alexandra in MA

[Posted in FML 6175]