the girls

The girls having a diva moment

Husband loves his girls.  They are turning 2 next month.  On St. Patrick's Day.  We brought them home from the hatchery in a box.  They made an incredible noise for such little fluff balls.  We had 27 of them and once they grew they produced a lot of eggs.  I was spending a lot of time selling eggs.  Not that it is ever a problem because people always want eggs.  The law of small farm chickens is that egg demand always outstrips supply.  It's just the way it is.  

A while back we decided to scale back the girls to just enough for us with a dozen or so a week extra.  We quickly found a farmer who wanted some more chickens for eggs.  The farmer came by and husband and I were busy stuffing the girls into crates for the short trip across the way and down the hill.  Husband knows his girls and had an idea which ones he wanted to keep.  One of the "give away" girls, a crafty and feisty bird, decided to make a run for the woods.  She totally took me by surprise, squeezed out of the crate and high-tailed it for the woods.  I thought she was a goner.  We have coyotes, and hawks, not to mention BEARS!  Husband wasn't worried.  Through the afternoon, we caught site of her a few times.  And sure enough, when dusk was beginning to fall, out of the woods came chicken little.  Ready to go in for the night and join the rest of her buddies.  Husband opened up the pen and in she ran.  Known as Lucky, she is the seventh hen in our flock.  Lucky number 7.  She works hard to prove her worth.  Sometimes she takes a long time sitting in the nest working away at laying her daily egg.  She adds much to a group of lovely, gifted egg layers who have been known to give us 8 eggs a day.  But husband has also been known to boil them up a pot of warm pasta on a cold and rainy day.  Just a little spoiled they are.  And to let them know how much we do appreciate what they give to us...