The Chicken Invasion

The country life was not originally my dream. It was my husband's. And even after I began to share the dream, I flatly refused to have chickens. Firstly, my dad grew up across the road from a chicken farm, and drilled it into me from a young age to live as far away from chickens as possible. And secondly, chickens creep me out. I would not call it an actual phobia, but chickens make me very uncomfortable. Consequently, we are getting the silliest, fuzziest, most docile chickens you can raise.

As I was reflecting on our life in preparation for this blog, I came to a monumental revelation. I have always considered myself to be a decisive person. And I have even come under a lot of criticism for pushing my husband around. But looking back, I realize that all my current plans started as dreams of my husband's. And thinking more, I realize there is nothing my husband declared he wanted that we have not done. Alex knew what he wanted, got me to want it too, then somehow got me to plan it all out and take the credit.

For example:

Alex said he wanted chickens.

I said, "I will live in the country, I will have a ton of kids, I will home school them, I will even raise animals... but I will NEVER have chickens!"

Now, Alex rarely argues anything, but he always gets what he wants. So, somehow, I ended up getting a small sporadic supply of fresh eggs and got totally hooked. Later, I heard that commercial eggs can sit in a warehouse for up to 2 years before being sent to the grocery store. Yuck!

Well, then Alex started showing me pictures of funny looking chickens. And anyone who knows my dog, knows I am a sucker for funny looking animals. So, I agreed to the chickens, as long as Alex did all the work. Alex wanted a dozen or so, I agreed to 6.

On our property, there is a decent sized shed in need of remodeling that we thought would be perfect for starting a chicken coop. The shed is a normal rectangle with double doors in the middle. The original idea was to build a chicken wire wall with a door, separating off a small area to the left of the shed door. We would put in a chicken door to an outside enclosed pen, and it would be perfect for about 6-8 chickens. And the rest of the shed could be used for all my gardening tools.

Well, then Alex suggested that rather than partitioning off the side, we do the back half. This would leave us room to have more chickens in the future if we wanted. This sounded like a good idea to me, so I agreed. Then, we ordered, not 6, but 10 chickens. By this time, I was excited about the chickens coming, and 10 seemed doable.

Last week, Alex told me that actually, he would like to do an L shape and do the left side AND the back of the shed.

My response?

"Well that leaves me just a tiny corner for my gardening stuff. If you want to do that, why not just make the whole shed into a coop? Then we could fit as many as 50 chickens. Lots of people have been asking if they can get in line to buy eggs. We could get more chickens this summer, and sell the extra eggs to pay for our chickens!"

I'd like to pause the replay of my life here for a moment, and ask... "How did I get here?!"

I'm beginning to realize that this is the way it has been since the beginning. Alex fell in love with me when we were 14. I was not interested in him, and not allowed to date. A few months later, I was his girlfriend with the approval of my parents. Everyone told us that we would never marry the person we fell in love with as children, but Alex always knew better. We dated nearly 7 years, have been married for 5, just had our 3rd child and are living our dream.

So we have now ordered 18 chickens, the first 7 of which are sitting in a package on my dining room table, waiting for Alex to get home so we can open them. Stay tuned for pictures! Alex and I are even reading a novel together called, "Love Among the Chickens," by P.G. Whodehouse. And we just finished "Coop," by Michael Perry. Because with Alex and me, there are no half hearted endeavors. Since we are doing the chicken thing, we dove in head first and are really doing it. I have not done any studies to support this theory with evidence, but it seems to me that this biting off more than you can chew and expanding plans to the extreme is a common trait amongst people who were the youngest child in their family. Alex and I are both the babies in our family. This is not supposed to make for an ideal marriage. But we happily jump into crazy plans together, and if anyone is driven nuts by our shenanigans, it's not us.