Arrival of the Chickens

One of Steve’s favorite stories about his daughter Julia is about getting chickens. They drove out to the hatchery one spring morning and picked up a small box packed with baby chicks. A few years at the beginning they got as many as 50 chicks a season.

Steve remembers coming up the drive and Julia spotting her cousin Paul and leaning out the car window yelling: “Paul! We got the chickens!”

I feel every bit as excited as Julia with my first chickens. I went to the Cold Spring Country Store as soon as the coop was built and ordered them to arrive today. Four for me and four for our family farm neighbors Annie and Tim. I read the descriptions in the booklet and chose Silver Laced Wyandotte. One, they are beautiful. Two, they are good layers. They will lay brown eggs, which to my mind is better than white but not quite as good as blue. The blue and green eggs tend to be smaller.

They are in the basement in a box lined with hay and hopefully will figure out the water and food situation soon. They have a warm light and that’s made them settle down and stop cheeping quite a bit.

Saturday we had a burn of the prairie. It was very well attended, as burns go. The ground is still frozen but it was still and the foliage is dry so the burn went well. It was like a mobile bonfire, with people walking around on the edge where it was warm. There were a few areas that they didn’t get to before full dark. Last night it snowed, so now we wait for it to dry out and get another permit and hopefully have another window for burning the rest.

Although it’s cold and we’re mostly feeling out of sorts, waiting and waiting to get on with things, there is no question that spring will be here soon. And when it does, there will be chickens.