As you probably already know, I have been contemplating getting chickens for a while. Then, when I decided that chickens might be a good idea I planted the seed with my son (easy target) and husband (surprisingly easy target). I expected at least a little resistance, I got nothing. Then came the chicken class… a success! I wanted to get started right away. Then reality set in and I realized that next spring would be better. That would give us enough time to select a coop design, get the parts and pieces, build it, wire it, critter-proof it. We could ask for chicken stuff (lights, waterers, heaters, etc.) as gifts for birthdays and Christmas and finally, next spring, we could bring in baby chicks.
Then a curve ball. A friend-of-a-friend of my Dad’s has chickens needing a home. He asked if we’d be interested. Sure, why not? (I’m a sucker for taking in animals that need a home.) We went and met the chickens. They were cool. We saw their current coop and knew that while the coop worked great in their current location, it wouldn’t work so well in our yard. Backing up to the nature center means everything short of lions, tigers and bears (oh, my!). So, after going on the Twin Cities Chicken Coop Tour and scouring the web for coop designs we decided on this one, except ours will be blue and a mirror image (so we can see the chickens from the house) and got to building. That, was a month ago. We’re still building. Speaking of which, did you know that you can end a drought by simply building a chicken coop? It’s true! We literally were in a drought. Hadn’t had a drop of rain for months… until the day we started building the coop. Then the sky opened up and the rain started coming. And, it hasn’t stopped since. Okay, actually it has, on the days we are not building the coop. That aside, we’re getting there. And hopefully very soon (I don’t want to say when for fear of jinxing us again) we will actually have the chickens.
Back to my fears. As you may or may not have read in the first installment, Facing Our Fears, my first fear to face was writing. Now that I’ve worked through that, my fear is chickens. I outlined a few of my chicken fears in U is for Urban Farm (a.k.a. Contemplating Chickens), but there’s more. So why on earth would I want to build a chicken coop and get chickens? Well, okay, it’s not the chickens I fear. It’s the stuff that goes along with chickens.
I hate winter. Period. I love the snow. I think it’s beautiful. Beyond that, I avoid going outside on cold days. I hate cold fingers, cold toes, cold ears, cold noses… Although it is kind of cool when it’s so cold out, that when you sniff, your nostrils stick together. Oh, that and frosty eyelashes are kind of cool too… but other than that I hate cold bodies, cold cars and cold seats (car and toilet)! So what better plan to get over hating winter than to get chickens, right? Yea, I know. I’m not sure about that either, but I’m hoping it will help. If I have someone or in this case, chickens, to care for, I’m hoping I will come to ignore the rain, snow, sleet and cold and just enjoy the chickens. At least I’ll get to hold a warm egg in my hands, right?
Bird poop. I hate bird poop. I fear bird poop. As a kid, while in Seattle visiting my Aunts and Uncles, I was sitting with my feet up, stretched across to another chair and a flock of sea gulls, or was it pigeons, flew overhead and a moment later, I felt the warm splattering gush of goo in-between my toes. Um, yea, I cried. And then, one morning at the bus stop, a couple of years ago, I was chatting with a couple of other Mom’s on the block. It was a clear morning, not a cloud or a bird in the sky, we were busy chatting when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a huge blast of bird poop hit my arm. It splattered not only all over my entire forearm, but my clothes and all over my friends too. Talk about gross! We all scrambled, checking our pockets for a napkin, Kleenex, anything, to wipe it up. A friend of mine found a receipt in her pocket. I’ve never been so grateful for a receipt, ever. That, and my second shower of the morning. Anyway, I’ve got this fear of bird poop. So, you might ask, why would I even consider chickens? After all, they are poop factories, right? Right! But their poop is good stuff! Their poop will be combined with my compost, making my compost cook faster and make my garden soil even richer! So I’m hoping to get past my fear of bird poop for the good of the garden.
My other chicken fears? Chicken death. Chicken death-by-dog, death-by-fox, death-by-raccoon, death-by-hawk, death-by-eagle, death-by-owl and death-by-weasel. Until recently I wasn’t afraid of death-by-weasel, but my nephew just told me of chickens getting killed by weasels. I don’t even know if we have weasels here because I’ve never seen one, but I added death-by-weasel to the list because now it’s in the back of my mind. Thanks, Jeff. 😉 Hopefully our coop design will fend off all of these death-by-critter fears, and I will no longer need to fear chicken death, but time will tell.
Death-by-weather. Living in Minnesota you can’t help but worry about how the chickens are going to hold up in the cold. We are going to be getting cold-hardy chickens (I know, I didn’t know there was such a thing as cold hardy chickens either) so hopefully any mistakes we make will be offset by their hardy genes. Cold weather means making sure their drinking water doesn’t freeze, making sure they don’t freeze and did you know if they roost on too narrow of a board they can get frost bite on their feet!? I think I’ll make them recycled sweater mittens for their feet. Recycled sweater chicken booties. 🙂 Oh, and then there’s the heat. When it’s not too cold, it’s too hot and chickens don’t sweat. Like dogs, if they get too hot, they pant. Panting = chicken death. Not good. If anyone has a Barbie window a/c unit about 4 inches by 4 inches, let me know. We’re getting a Thermo Cube too, which is a temperature controlled outlet, so hopefully that will take some of the thinking and worry out of the of the death-by-weather scenarios.
Okay, all my fears aside, I’m hoping for a bond. The chickens we’ll be getting are over a year old, already producing eggs (bonus!). They haven’t been handled a lot, so I’m hoping my wanting to hold them won’t be offensive. I’ve heard that chickens LOVE kids. I’ve heard that they will follow them around and treat them like their own (which should be humorous). I’ve heard of them snuggling and watching TV, although we WON’T be having chickens inside the house. At least not yet. 😉 I’ve heard chickens are guaranteed entertainment. I’ve heard that you can train them to do tricks and that they like to be petted. I’ve heard that even on our worst days just watching them can make us laugh and smile.
Long term, I’m hoping to love the chickens. I love that they’ll be eating our kitchen scraps and converting it to good stuff for the garden. I’m looking forward to having fresh eggs and making custard pies. I’m looking forward to the challenges and fun the chickens will bring.
I’m also looking for a pair of rubber boots to wear in the coop.
Have you ever had something make you take notice but then once you realized what you are looking at, you disregarded it, only to find later that the information actually applied to you?
Take for example my wedding dress. When I first got engaged, years ago, I would flip through wedding magazines trying on dresses in my mind, picturing how they would look on me. I remember running across one dress, thinking to myself, “Wow! That’s really pretty… on the right person…” and then continued flipping pages. Later, after I purchased my dress, I found myself flipping through the same magazine, again stopping on the same page. I looked at the picture and thought, “Wow. That’s a pretty dress.” and then started laughing. That was a pretty dress. That was my dress. The dress I bought. Funny, I didn’t even remember the dress when I went out shopping because I had disregarded it so quickly as something that I “couldn’t wear”. Yet here I was, flipping through the bridal magazine, stopping on the same page and realizing that was the dress I ended up buying. Apparently I shouldn’t have disregarded it so quickly!
Well, a similar thing has happened again. A number of months ago while hanging out in Egg|Plant I found myself perusing their magazines. I grabbed a copy of Urban Farm magazine. I kind of scoffed at the concept of an Urban Farm. I was thinking about how people keep coming up with these names, titles, buckets for everything. New names for the same stuff. “Urban Farm is just a new name for gardening”, I thought to myself, but I bought the magazine anyway “because it had some cool articles”. A couple of months later I found myself back at Egg|Plant buying yet another copy of the magazine, still not thinking of myself as an “Urban Farmer”. Well, sometimes life has a funny way of working out. This morning, as I awoke to a white dusting of snow in the yard and heard reports of icy roads, I stood under the warm water of the shower trying to calm my nerves for my interview at the Permaculture Research Institute (PRI) to get into the Urban Farming Certification program. If someone had told me a year ago that I’d be doing this, I would have laughed. Yet today, as I made my way over to the interview, on icy roads, I could hardly contain my excitement.
The interview went great and yes, I was accepted into the program. (Woo hoo!) I think it will be a perfect fit for me and for what I want to do going forward. Plus, the people I met with were great! The next step is registration. Then the holidays and then I’ll be off and running. I’m so excited to get started! Actually, the only way I could be any more excited is if it started tomorrow! But alas, I must wait until January, January 5th to be exact. So, while some of you may be dreaming of a white Christmas and Jack Frost nipping at your nose, I’ll be dreaming of the new year and my future Urban Farm.