What was I thinking? Do we really need another laying hen?
Our new neighbor, Peter, wants to give us yet another hen from his brood. The chicken house we built when he first offered to give us a couple of backyard chickens for eggs suffices nicely for the five birds he has already given us—Henrietta and Heloise (the small Mediterranean hens), Click and Clack (the two docile New Hampshire Reds), and Nervous Nellie (the elegant white hen who resembles a flighty Leghorn but hasn’t laid any white eggs as Leghorns do). The hens currently have a dry and safe coop with a half acre to roam.
California dreaming
I enjoy the daily ritual of caring for the hens and collecting the eggs, but without a kitchen in which to cook the eggs, well . . . that’s the problem. When my architect husband and I bought the place last summer as a bank-owned foreclosure, we barely contained our excitement at the prospect of moving from Miami back to the Bay Area, a short drive away from California wine country. We’d plant a vineyard and live the good life.
Henrietta & Heloise
Farmette eggs
Get real
The walls of our 1,000 square foot cottage are
still open and the floors are rough concrete slabs. The previous owner
took everything he could remove, including the bathroom sink. Our
remodel got derailed when the chickens began to show up, thanks to the
generosity of our lovely new neighbors, Peter and Jill, who welcomed us
as family. They shared with us some lovely California wine, bounty from
their backyard garden, and the gift of laying hens. We want the
chickens. But maybe before we build that designer chicken house, we
should get our own house in order.
