Clucking Nuts!

Zombies, Hawks, Minks and Other Chicken Molesters  There are many arts that do not receive their deserved credit. Some of the finer more delicate things in life are looked down on by those who are ignorant and inexperienced with the intricate and careful balance of, oh let's say the art of keeping a flock of chickens alive. Forget happy, healthy and clean, just alive is a difficult goal that requires vigilance and finesse. Upon moving out to the county I discovered how glorified my idea of nature was, and I was disillusioned as the cold, harsh truth of reality set in. Nature is mean. Nature is messy. Nature is infested with all sorts of irritating pests. The bugs alone, would make a less stubborn person pack up and move back to the city.  Raising chickens is an enlightening and enriching experience, but it is also horrifying. The excrement I was prepared for. The disposal of dead bodies is something I learned to deal with. And by "deal with," I mean deny the existence...

Over the last year, a handful of people have commented that they really missed my blogs. I was touched. I never considered my blog to be anything more than me practicing writing stories for the entertainment of a few of my friends. To have people saying a year later that they really miss those stories, was a huge surprise. My response when people have asked me why I stopped blogging, has been, "this just hasn't been a funny year." And it is true. 2013 was a very difficult year for me. Leading into 2013, I had a dream that my house burnt down. In the dream, I heard God's voice, and he said to me, "this is going to bless you." When I woke up, I packed up the kids, took them to Target and bought the biggest fire safe the store had. I thought the only way a fire could be a blessing to me was if I secured everything irreplaceable. So I put all my journals, everything I've written to my children, every important document and an external hard drive with all ...

After my most recent injury, my husband declared, "Chickens are hazardous to your health!" First to experience this was Alex's mom, who has a small coop with a handful of chickens in it. One dark and rainy night was making her way out to her coop to close the ladies up for the night. It was cold and wet, and she was in a hurry. Zipping through the gate into the chickens' fenced run, she slipped. Her feet flew out in front of her, and the flashlight she was carrying swung up and smote her forehead. As she fell, she reached out and grabbed hold of the fence, which had a loose wire poking out. The wire sliced open her finger. In a bedraggled and humiliated state, she presented herself to her husband (who had thought this chicken scheme a ridiculous business in the first place), he had a little laugh and then took her to get stitches. A few weeks after his mother's injury, Alex went out after dark to close up our chicken coop. It was another very dark, cold,...

I find myself having little patience with people who think something is gross or beneath them, when they are simply coming from a place of ignorance. Sure, it is easier for people to not think about where their food comes from. But it is absurd to believe they are somehow better because they refuse to think about these things. I have even had people act disturbed by our eggs, because they did not like being brought to the realization that the eggs they eat were once inside an animal. Thanks to Disney movies and a consumerist lifestyle, we can have this distorted and glorified view of nature, without ever touching it. Not my family, we touch it, plant it, grow it, eat it, raise it, feed it, scoop its poop, butcher it, and eat it. From my high horse I like to pretend this does not phase me at all. We are connected with our food and the natural world around us, and I like to act like this is a higher plane of existence. But I have to confess, there are times that the city girl in me...

I am learning that a crude sense of humor may not necessarily be learned, but can also be genetic. Eden, my 3 year old daughter, has every ounce of her father's appreciation for rude humor. And we have been pretty careful to not teach her any of it. She is fascinated with certain body parts as was mentioned earlier in this blog. She likes to add the word butt to other words, and then laugh hysterically. She does these things to entertain herself, not to get a reaction out of other people. When she was "cleaning" her room one day, Alex looked in to see how it was going. She was pulling things out of her drawer, singing, "Naked Butt, Naked Butt, NAY-ked... BUUUUUTT!" One day we made the mistake of laughing when she pulled her pants down, stuck her butt in her brother's face and started chanting, "Booh-ut, booh-ut, booh-ut..." In our defense, it was hilarious, unfortunately she thought so too, and many serious conversations about privacy hav...

Today I got 15 eggs out of the coop. Beautiful eggs that taste like nothing you can buy in the store. I love fresh eggs. And I love to bake, and baking with fresh eggs makes everything taste amazing. Here's a little useful information for you. Did you know that, typically, fresh eggs from chickens raised in someone's backyard have half the cholesterol of most store bought eggs? Not only that, they have twice as much vitamin E, 6 times as much vitamin A, and 4-6 times the amount of omega-3's. And it doesn't end there, those are just some measurements using the popular buzz words. The differences in health benefits are beyond measure. It seemed like it would take forever for our chickens to start laying eggs. We put a lot of money into building a secure coop and run for our birds. We brooded several sets of chickens in our house. All in all, it has been a lot of work. My birthday is August 24th, and I went out to the coop thinking, "I can feel it. T...

This is an infamous week in our house. The week that any parent of a teenager wanting to convince them of the importance of abstinence, should have sent their kid to our place. One evening this past summer, Alex and I were hanging out watching a movie together after the kids went to bed. We do this on the weekends, get some grownup pretentious snacks, rent a movie, and have a date at home. We were not very far into our movie, John Carter , as I remember (a movie that will forever be ruined for us), when Micah came running out of his room looking scared. "I swallowed a piece of metal!" We sat there shell shocked. Our four-year-old, first-born, Mister Responsible, Mister Never-puts-things-in-his-mouth... We reeled for a second, then simultaneously realized that we needed to stay calm if we wanted him to tell us what happened. I asked him to draw me a picture of what he swallowed. He very neatly drew a bolt, with rounded head, threaded shaft and flat bottom. Alex drew ...