Spring Chickens

Earlier this winter, my girls were in trouble. When their combs faded from their usual red to a sickly pinkish-gray, I blamed the weather. It’s been a cold winter…much colder than usual…and two of my chickens are South American. I did what I could to winterize the henhouse, taking solace in the fact that their appetites were good. A couple of days later though, I found Pat, the “mother hen”, parading around naked from the wings down. Something was very wrong.

An internet search suggested mites or lice or some other microscopic vermin had invaded the henhouse. Several chemicals I couldn’t pronounce, much less afford, were suggested as treatment. I thought about the shaker can of Sevin dust sitting on a shelf in my utility room. When I was a kid, my mother used it to treat our dogs for fleas and they all turned out okay. It was worth a shot.

For the next two weeks I “winged it”. I dusted their roosts, the floor of their house and, despite their best efforts to the contrary, under their wings. Fortunately, Pat’s feathers seemed to reappear overnight, as temperatures at that time hovered around zero. Other than that, though, I saw little change. Their combs remained colorless.

Worrying would do no good. I resigned myself to the fact that I had done the best I could do, imagined for just a moment how distasteful the whole burying-a-dead-chicken-thing could be, and sent up a silent prayer to whoever might have been listening.

My dogs woke me early this morning. It wasn’t even seven am. Just a few minutes into our usual coffee/cuddle time, I realized the sky was brightening. The sun looked warm but I wasn’t fooled. I pulled my ugly, orange “chicken” coat on over my robe and set out towards the henhouse. As is their custom, all three dogs accompanied me to the gate before breaking off to chase each other around the perimeter of the fence, wreaking havoc with the azaleas.

As I approached the henhouse, I was greeted by the “thud”, “thud”, “thud” of chickens jumping from roost to floor in anticipation of my visit. A widening arc of light preceded me into the space, revealing a flurry of feathers moving chaotically in front of the door. The girls were eager to be outdoors. I followed them out and dumped a scoop of scratch over the side of their pen. Soon all four heads were bobbing in stereotypical fashion. And, that’s when I saw it. All four combs were red. No, not just red. They were a brilliant red, a gorgeous red, a healthy and happy red.

Filled with relief, I went back inside to clean house while they finished breakfast. As I reached down to grab a handful of straw, the ever-brightening morning light revealed an egg in a corner of the nesting box. It’s pale, pinkish-brown color told me it was courtesy of Pat. Only healthy hens lay eggs. Pat was going to be okay.

This morning, for the first time since November, I ate an egg that was in a chicken in my backyard yesterday. Forget that silly old groundhog. My girls tell me Spring is just around the corner!

Unintended Consequences

I’m not one to complain about the weather. Why would I? What difference would it make? It’s like when you ask someone…usually an older someone…and often a male someone…how he’s doing. Sometimes he’ll answer, “Can’t complain.”, and a voice inside my head adds, “And it wouldn’t do any good if you did.”

Despite my physical aversion to colder weather, I never complained when spring took her time getting here. I adapted instead. I looked upon the situation as an excuse to purchase a few more sweaters with three-quarter-length sleeves. I love sweaters with three-quarter-length sleeves. They are some of my favorite things. I especially love them if they are made from cashmere.

One of my friends was particularly irritated by people complaining about having to wear shoes in Atlanta in April. As it happens, she was born in South Dakota. I don’t think she’s lived in Georgia very long which would explain why she isn’t aware that, by April, most southerners are organizing their flip-flops according to outfit and/or occasion. She took to Facebook, warning anyone bemoaning cooler temperatures that they had better not complain about sweating in July or she’d be there to remind them they’d gotten just what they’d asked for. I’m guessing she hasn’t had to make good on that promise. Not because she’s a particularly scary person. And, not because people finally realized that complaining about the heat doesn’t cool things off.

My friend hasn’t had to remind anyone how they wished for Atlanta heat because Atlanta hasn’t gotten hot yet…not really hot…not Atlanta hot. Atlanta hasn’t gotten hot yet because during the month of June we received 9 1/2 inches of rain. And, since that time, it’s rained every day in July. So far this year we’ve accumulated almost 42 inches of rain which is more than we had for the entire year last year.

Sometime around the middle of June people began to complain. Often, mine was the lone voice of dissent. As the minder of a garden, I didn’t dare complain. For years I watched my garden literally burn to the ground because of lack of rain. There’s no way I would complain now…unless it is to bemoan missing melons. I planted melons, you see, and something ate them. I assumed the culprits to be rabbits until I spotted a pair of deer strolling casually through a neighbor’s yard. They stopped, on their way down the street, to nibble on roses.

Back then, in the middle of June, when only about 30 inches of rain had fallen, melons seemed like a good idea. Thirty inches of rain is enough water to fill lots of watermelons. Now though, some twelve inches later, I’ve begun to see that too much of a good thing really is too much. A melon, you see, begins as a blossom. A bee spies the blossom, and then he sees another one, and another one, and so on, and so on, and before you know it…mini-melons! But bees don’t like rain. Even in a light rain, a bee can’t leave its nest. And a blossom without a bee is just a flower.

So much water in such a short time changes things.

The chicken pen is under water. Seeing their ugly little toes disappear into the muck time after time as they rush to greet me reminded me of jungle rot, a podiatric malady soldiers in Vietnam often battled. Last weekend I put down boards for them to walk on. My chickens haven’t had as much as a sniffle in six years. Its bad enough they’ve had to learn to eat off a dinner plate. I can’t take a chance with jungle rot.

My flowers are drowning.

My floors are muddy.

My dogs are smelly.

And, don’t even get me started on my hair.

I’m willing to concede that, aside from the health of my hens, most of my worries are negligible.

And then I read about the snakes.

It makes perfect sense when you think it through, which I never would have done if I hadn’t read that a local newscaster was hospitalized with a snake bite. The sequence goes something like this: many bugs don’t do rain which means things that eat bugs are forced to forage. Foraging, as it happens, often requires travel outside of one’s usual hunting grounds and, thus, increased time outside of the nest. Guess what eats the things that would eat bugs but are now having to hunt?

Snakes.

And, here’s another twist. Just like my chickens who now spend ninety percent of their time inside the henhouse, snakes are tired of being wet. Only they don’t have a house of their own, so guess what? That’s right! They’re not picky! They’ll use yours. Right now, in Atlanta, the average wait time to have a pest control company out to your house to remove rain weary vermin is two weeks; two weeks of sharing your house with something that slithers. No. Way.

My seventh grade teacher, Mrs. White, marched with Martin Luther King. She played guitar and taught us folk songs and regaled us with stories from her past. One story involved a snake. It’s the one I remember.

She’d gotten up in the middle of the night to pee. For whatever reason, she didn’t turn on the light in the bathroom until after she’d done her business. That’s when she saw the snake, coiled around and around and around the inside of the toilet bowl. Having carried this image around in my head lo these many years, you can believe I toilet with the lights on, and only after careful inspection. And there’s no loitering. When I was a kid, my father’s bathroom always smelled like newsprint. He obviously hadn’t heard the story.

Yesterday the rain held off until rush hour. This is not unusual. In fact, yesterday was the second time I’ve sat in traffic and watched marble-sized hail gather on my windshield wipers before being swooshed off to ping the car in the lane next to mine.

By the time I arrived home, hail had given way to torrential rain and pounding thunder. My dogs don’t care for storms. Usually they’re too nervous to eat. But when it rains every day for weeks, something’s got to give. Murphy, my boxer, followed me into the sunroom willingly enough but minutes later, after I’d gone back inside, I heard his super-sized claws hit the industrial strength screen we installed to protect the French door from just that type of abuse. He gave a jerk of his head when I opened the door; our signal that he wanted company. I sank into one of the rocking chairs I’d drug in off the patio during an earlier storm, and immediately wished I’d grabbed my Iphone. For a few seconds, I considered going back in to get it. I could play a word, check in on Facebook, or read an email. The sound of rain hitting the roof called me back. I realized this was an opportunity to just be, and I don’t get enough of those.

I give the rocking chair a push and fold my arms over my lower abdomen, appreciating the softness of a little extra padding. Looking around, I realize I never really see this room. I’d forgotten, for example, about the funky wine bottles and vintage tin signs I sat on shelves next to the ceiling. I’ve downsized from a plethora of plants to a table covered in cactuses and hung, above them, twinkle lights encased in aluminum stars separated by wind chimes. I’ve left my mark here.

The sound of azalea branches scraping windowpanes turns my attention outside the room. The wind is blowing. The sky is unnaturally bright. Maybe the sun, too, has had to adjust; taking any opportunity to shine.

I wonder how the chickens are faring. It’s cooler now, after the hail.

When did my head tilt to one side…ever so slightly…the way it does just before a nap?

When did my eyes close?

The rocking has slowed.

Sleep could come.

Would he be disappointed if I slept through dinner?

What Did You Call Me?

Some will judge me sexist when I assert my belief that women, in particular, are called on to wear many hats, shoulder numerous titles, and play many roles. We are women first, of course. But depending upon our personality or the sway of our many moods, we may also be described as a sweetheart, a smart-ass, or a bitch. Many of us are mothers, and if we work outside the home, we are dubbed “working mothers”. In defense of my earlier statement, I can’t recall ever hearing the title “working father”.

Were we required to string our titles out behind our names; mine would never fit on a standardized form. You know the kind that provides tiny squares in which to write the letters? But, if possible, it would look something like this:

Stacye Carroll, Woman, Mother, Writer, Kennel Operator, Head Chef, Head Housekeeper, Head Laundress, Personal Shopper, Party Planner, Interior Decorator, Floral Designer, Chief Accountant, Groundskeeper, IT Director, Working Mother, Operations Manager, Hospice Volunteer, Team Manager, Chicken Farmer.

Yes, you read that right. Recently, I added a title. Last week I became a chicken farmer, adding two more words to an already overloaded string of descriptive jargon that in no way describes the person I really am. But today, I am a chicken farmer.

I now own ten chickens, brought to me by a friend who has successfully raised chickens in her suburban backyard for over a year now. Several months ago, she added turkeys to the mix, and she has already slaughtered several of them. Turkeys are aggressive and really, really stupid. This is not a good combination in humans or farm animals. I don’t intend to try my hand at turkeys.

But chickens…chickens are a whole different thing.

It all began when my friend brought me a carton of eggs laid by her suburban chickens. The eggs inside were smaller than those I purchase at the grocery store; and blue, the softest shade of baby blue. They were laid by Araucana chickens. She brought me two Araucana chicks..

She also brought me Red Stars, which haven’t a spot of red on them, and two Wyandottes, which are a black-and-white breed favored by artists using various mediums. Wyandottes are also uniquely American, my friend was proud to point out.

She told me, after I’d accepted my brood, that there may be a rooster or two in the mix. My horror must have shown, as she bent forward from the waist, placing her hand on my forearm as she assured me she would take the roosters back.

“Just bring them to me. We’ll eat them.”

Another friend, upon hearing of this exchange, reminded me of a passage in “Gone With The Wind” wherein Scarlet holds up the eating of rooster meat as a sure sign of the depths to which she had fallen. I just prefer not to think about it, and pray I have been blessed with ten broody hens.

My goal is eggs, enough eggs to feed my family and provide an occasional dozen to my closest friends. Observing and tasting the eggs my friend gave us made it very clear that the eggs we purchase at the local grocery store have been tampered with, and the end result is not an improvement. For one thing, the shells are thinner. It takes a couple of really good cracks against the edge of the bowl to break a “home-grown” egg. The yolks of the eggs my friend gave us were much larger and a bright, bright yellow. And they actually had a taste; a rich, mellow taste like grocery store eggs, only magnified.

I already buy organic, whenever possible. I never buy the grossly gigantic chickens most grocery stores offer, opting instead for locally grown, steroid- and antibiotic-free meat. Raising chickens for eggs is an extension of this decision.

But there is another aspect of this decision that motivates me. I recently read that as we age, we may spend our time in one of two ways; we can brood over past decisions, missed opportunities, and lost youth, or we can take on new adventures and continue to grow. I’ve never been a farmer before. I’ve never even considered being a farmer before, not even when I lived in a farmhouse across the street from a cow pasture! At the time, I was too busy raising children to consider cultivating farm animals. And, while I can’t say my life is any less busy than it was then, it is more my own. More of my time lies at my discretion, and for now, some of it will be spent farming chickens.

When I first began working as a hospice volunteer, I almost always found a way to insert that information into a conversation with everyone I knew, or met, or shared a queue with. I did take pride in my decision, as well as the work, but I think the constant mention of the fact had more to do with making it a reality inside my own head. I find myself doing the same thing now, with much different results.

The revelation that I work in hospice, is usually met with one of several different levels of disbelief. Some people can not fathom the idea, and really prefer not to hear any more about it. Some people find their morbid curiosity piqued and bubble over with questions about death, and a few get it, and express their appreciation accordingly.

I expected a similar sort of disbelief from those I tell about my decision to raise chickens, but so far, have received the opposite reaction. Everyone seems to have either raised chickens or know someone who has, and is eager to have someone to discuss it with. I have received countless tidbits of valuable information and many helpful tips. One friend assured me of the wisdom of my decision by telling me about his mother, who never fed her chickens anything but kitchen scraps, making the eggs she fed her family virtually free! Another suggested I keep the chickens in a mobile pen that can be moved from place to place about the yard. While, yet another, encouraged me to build a coop above ground, making it more difficult for predators to reach my flock.

For now, I house ten chickens inside an over-sized dog crate sitting in front of an unfettered window in my spare room. I visit twice a day, first thing in the morning and just after I get home from work. Last week I purchased a new feeder, a watering contraption, and a bale of hay. I went to a local convenience store to purchase newspapers. As I laid them on the counter, the proprietor suggested I check the date. When I explained it didn’t matter because I was only using them to line a chicken crate, he pushed the papers back at me asking, “Why you spend money?” He hurried to a back room and returned with a large bundle of newspapers secured with a length of twine.

“Here!” He dropped them on the counter. “I have bird, too. You don’t buy papers. If I have them, you have them.” He spoke with a force that brokered no argument.

We are a fraternity.