Get Thee Some Chicks

Something took hold of me this spring, I know not exactly what.

Perhaps it was the knowledge that the Midwest is going to be my place for a season, and I felt a yearning to put in a few roots.

Perhaps, it was as Arwen said, "we were practically empty nesters"

Whatever the reason it blossomed into a dream, an idea, a scheme, if you will.

After five years we were going to get chicks again. 

Hence, below are some things you need to know about getting chicks.

 

Choosing a breed will be far harder than you expect.

i.e. beware of the google vortex (when isn't that a warning?)

Just get some chickens, you say? Very well, I'll simply pop a few Rhode Island Reds in my virtual cart and be merrily on my way. 

This is where Google steps in:

HA! Not so fast, my friend-

You wish for docile, heat-tolerant, good egg laying chickens? Well... What about the best of all world Production Reds (are they a hybrid breed or not? I haven't yet been able to quite find that out?)

What of the exotic Easter Eggers,

the classically elegant Black Laced Wyandottes 

or the ultra snazzy Blue Laced Red Wyandottes? 

This last road was denied us this season, but will you simply look at this creature? Speak of the magic and artistry of a Creator who created little genes and whatnot that can result in art such as this.

 

I mean can you even?

 

They will bring out the "mother" instinct in you

This may start happening sooner than one might reasonably expect. You may frequently find yourself exclaiming in the waiting period between ordering them from the hatchery (if that is the route you go to chicken husbandry) and the appointment for when you meet: "It's only [add your length of time]" or "I just can't believe it's actually happening!!!"

 

They great day arrived. 

Everyone was excited, including my Element who had not gone on an adventure for awhile. Rainy and cool with a few random daffodils scattered here and there along the roadsides it was the ideal spring day. We went to the hatchery and there were DUCKLINGS. I almost lost self-control there, they were just so cute, but Arwen kept her iron nerve, we had come for our chicks alone. Then The Man came out bearing a cheeping little cardboard box. He had very much the same air as the nurses in the old movies who carry out the baby to the harried father with the disordered tie and say you have "A strong healthy son" or whatnot to the father except our man just said: "The rooster has the green paint on his head, and we put in an extra Production Red hen" (so much for my careful calculations!)  He also looked more like a jockey who had been riding all day than a nurse, but he was altogether nice. 

So we get to my next point...

They will be every bit as cute as all the farm-store ads

 They will be fluffy, with the most perfect little wings and long legs. They will also sleep until you go distracted (are they simply growing their brains or are they the dreaded lethargic?) only to then wake up and jump around like mad-hatters. Soon they will start sprouting little feathers behind their wings and nibbling bits of grass like they are the ones to invent the pastime, even though you know chickens have been doing it since Adam's day. 

Most of all their total adorableness will work it's way into your heart.

Because, like all things,

they will be a gift.

They will be a reminder -a connection- to the dust from which you came, and to which you are still so intricately connected;

Their bright eyes, a reminder to keep yours also wide and keen to the things above you and curious to what's around; 

To set roots deep in your soil even as it might not be the soil that you would have chosen. 

We all have a chance at soil somewhere, and that's a gift to be relished with a passion.

 

The other day we took them outside for the first time and they weren't very impressed.

Today, Arwen made a larger fenced area in the soft clover of the pasture.

Let out, they huddled close together before fanning out ever so slightly to feel the moist dirt with their feet, but they looked very cautiously at the expanse of air above them;

  even a peaceful blue sky can be a very scary thing.   

 

And that my friends, is one of the greatest things about this life. We don't need to be afraid;

in fact, it's been out right forbidden.

The sky IS a huge place, and whatever the meteorologists say, we can't know what the sky will look like tomorrow. 

We can know the One beyond the sky, and yet who walked this earth with us, who is with us everyday, and that's all we need to know.

 Embrace your patch of earth, find some friends, equines... cattle... chickens to enjoy it with. 

Dig your feet into that soil, and joy in it.