I used to run a few miles every morning. On the rare days I didn’t run, I swam laps, played tennis, hiked in the woods, or went on a bike ride. And I owned a library of yoga and pilates DVDs. These days I hardly even think about exercise, and the tennis rackets and workout…
If you’ve been following the Hen Diaries, you’ve watched our four sweet little chicks turn into garden-devouring hens. Well, today was a big day for our little flock. Emily laid our first egg! I’ll tell you all the details in the next installment of the Hen Diaries, but for now, look how much these girls…
Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, is a backyard chicken enthusiast. Her article about her poultry-keeping passion, “The It Bird”, appears in this week’s New Yorker. “Chickens seem to be a perfect convergence of the economic, environmental, gastronomic, and emotional matters of the moment,” Orlean writes, “plus, in the past few years, they have…
Sometime in late July, I become smug about chicken keeping. It’s just like everyone said – easy, peasy. Much easier than taking care of our three spoiled cats, and, an absolute breeze compared to chasing after our toddler. Gertrude, Virginia, Charlotte, and Emily get along, they entertain themselves with all their pecking and scratching, and…
My husband’s mom is visiting, and she graciously agrees to watch our one-year-old son while my husband and I get some work done. “You only have three chickens today,” she says when I get home at 6:30. “I haven’t seen the other one since lunch.” The brown hen who’s missing strays from the flock more…
I bolt upright. My eyes fly to the clock. It’s five a.m. A scream pierces the silence … then growling. Someone or something is getting hurt. Is it the cats? No. The sound’s coming from outside, from the backyard … from the hen house. I shake my husband. “The chicks…” I sputter. He’s already out…