Even though Annie Jones is laying leetle eggs now, she really needs work on her bock-bock-bocking after she lays them.
God, she’s terrible. It sounds like someone’s trying to kill her out there.
Bock-bock-bock-AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHGGGGGGGHHHH!
I bet the neighbors hate me.
Posted by jen | 1 comments
Annie Jones, the Bearded Lady of My Backyard! Thank you to Jen Hansen of Eden for the name suggestion. For those of you just tuning in, I name my chickens once they start laying. Annie earned her name last week, with the help of blog readers.
Though Annie’s eggs may be tiny, her heart is quite large, and she never gets crabby when we want to hold her. The other chickens seem to pick on Annie a little, maybe because she’s just a little bit smaller than the rest. Shy ones always get the brunt of it.
And to think that Annie nearly ended up in a stew pot because she just couldn’t seem to get those ovaries moving. (Even now, Fried Eggs Annie in my mind means fried eggs that are the circumference of golf balls.) But we’re so glad we did not eat her now.
I’ve got six laying hens in my yard.
Sometimes the thought of it still makes me laugh.
Annie's namesake.
She's a layer, folks.
Well, it’s finally happened. After about nine months of chicken ownership, I have six fully productive layers. Woot!
The first to lay an egg was Muffy, the artsy little Araucana who has pumped out a pretty blue-green pastel egg pretty much every day since.
The last to lay is also an Araucana.
We first called her Cleopatra, because of her dramatic eyeliner.
Her so cute.
As she grew into an adolescent with a thick black ruff who didn’t lay a damned thing, we called her Beardsley. She’s the smallest in the flock. She contributed very little from what I could tell, except as a pecking post for the other birds.
When I considered stewing her, Jim and the kids started covering for her. “I think that egg is from Beardsley!” Zadie would announce when I’d bring in a blue egg from the coop.
“Nope. It’s a Muffy,” I’d reply while sending my friends Eve and Eric at Salt Fork Farms another text asking if it’s ethical to cut a chicken from the flock if it’s not pulling its weight.
Jim would pretend to speak in a Beardsley voice out by the coop: “Oh geez! I just laid an egg! Oh, it’s such a beautiful egg! But I’m going to hide it because I don’t want to be braggy!”
“She’s not laying,” I’d say. “There’s nowhere to hide an egg in that coop anyway.”
Then, one spring day, on my birthday to be exact, I found in the laying box a teeny tiny blue egg, bright as a robin’s. Beardsley had started her engine at last.
But I didn’t get another egg for a few more weeks. Another tiny one. And a few more weeks: tiny again.
I promised Beardsley that I’d give her a lady name if she got on board with the program.
She must have listened, because she lays every other day now as the days heat up. The eggs are still really small, but they’re vibrant in color, and I kind of like them for decorative purposes.
So I’ve got some options for Beardsley’s new lady name. And I could use your help in choosing.
Option 1: FERNANDA
Option 2: HILLARY CLINTON
Option 3: BLANCHE
Option 4: ANNIE JONES (named after the famed bearded lady, suggested by Jen Hansen over at Eden).
Annie Jones, the Bearded Lady!
Vote on your favorite in the comments section below. Or torpedo all my suggestions and write in your own pick for Beardsley’s updated name.
Whichever gets the most votes wins. Let’s give this little layer a good one!
Posted by jen | 11 comments
What is this space machine you point in my general direction?
Well hello! How’s this lukewarm winter treating everyone? Here, it’s a chance to do a little more tinkering with the chicken set-up and rake up those leaves we didn’t get to this fall, when Running Away to Home first came out and I was internally FREAKING OUT instead of raking leaves. All better now!
So we’ve tried to avoid naming the chickens, because there is still an outside chance we will eat them someday. I know, I know. I’ve wavered on this one. But if we’re going for the full farming experience, I can’t skip the hard part of the circle of life, right? Maybe. The jury is still out. Sam gets pale every time I mention that one of the Ameraucanas still isn’t laying, and she should eventually be useful in some way. Sam points out that Willa, our schnoodle, is also not very useful, but we don’t eat her.
We all know Muffy has a name, because she has shared her coop experience here on this blog. But recently, we’ve named another chicken, in honor of a powerhouse of a woman. The kind of woman who will change how you see things. Do you know someone like that?
Meet Beverly.
I first met this whirling dervish of activity (also known as my best friend Amy’s mom) on a small farm just outside of Colfax. I was a fourth grader.
Beverly had waist-length white hair, and she was a lawyer, a farmer, and a former social worker. Her idea of casualwear was (and is) Carhartt work pants. She was also a screamin’ feminist in a small town where such things weren’t so much appreciated. She pinned an ERA button onto my jean jacket, and away we went.
Beverly and I have been friends ever since. She’s always shown by example that a woman can do whatever she wants to do, as long as she doesn’t much care what others think. Bev also taught me that you can gain momentum as you age, also as long as you don’t much care what people think. Thus, I bought my first flock of chickens just as I’ve begun to sprout a few gray hairs. (Only a few. Like maybe ten so far.)
Bev went to law school in the 1970s when she was raising twin babies, largely alone. She ran her farm, which had goats that she occasionally kept indoors because she liked them very much. She also kept bees, harvested her own grapes to make preserves, and did not prohibit me from swearing in her presence, which was one of my favorite pastimes as a fourth-grader. She laughed at my Mr. Bill jokes, called me a writer from the time that we met, and, like the women in Mrkopalj, Bev taught me that herbal remedies and eating your own food (grown in your presence) are the first line of defense in living a healthy life.
And so, this fiesty and gorgeous Rhode Island Red, a layer so prolific and so efficient that she’s in and out of the laying box before most of the chickens have even gotten off the roost, is Beverly.
A poultry powerhouse. May she live up to her honorable name. Do you know someone who changed your perceptions of how things should be? Yes? You should tell them. You really should.
Because I’m a mother, and because I’ve worked on farms, I know that caring for creatures makes a mess. All that input, all that output, not to mention the emotional blow-outs along the way … You work with the end goal in mind: life, well-being, sustenance.
When Jim finally agreed to chickens, I knew it would be a mess. Taking care of living beings, as we’ve established, is not a tidy process. On that first day in August when the chickens moved in, I gazed in wonder at the perfectly tidy little coop in my yard. Teeny chickens who hadn’t even made teeny poops yet, in a nice cedar box on a green grassy zone in my yard. I knew it would not last.
Here it is:
Look how neat and clean that thing is. I think the chickens were mitten-sized, tops.
Ahh, isn’t that nice? It looked that way for maybe a few weeks.
The chickens are now giant beasts. I tacked a haphazard chicken run onto that nice little coop, because they gack up the yard so bad that the kids had to wear muck boots just to play on the swing. Because I suck at building things, it looks terrible and the chickens get out all the time. I think it’s the writing gods’ way of making me get up from my desk and stretch, all the chicken escapes I have to tend to. I haven’t clipped their wings, and they’re probably bored, so there are maybe 4 jailbreaks a day. They’ve even untied garden wire to get out of the coop. God knows how that happened. Sometimes all I can do is drag a spare window or piece of fencing out of the garage to block an escape hatch until I can figure out something better.
A few months ago, Jim moved the coop, because it made our yard look like a refugee camp (he said behind the garden was a better place for it, but I know the truth).
Due to all these mutations, plus insulating for winter, here is the coop now:
I think I've seen this same design under a bridge downtown.
So yeah, my coop is a mess. But those chickens are big, happy beastie girls and I like them. Though only one of them lays eggs (get on it, ladies!), they make me get dirty. I think getting dirty is a good thing.
I spend all day running words through my head. Not very tangible work, and a very clean pursuit. It can make a woman feel fairly batty. So when I get my hands nice and muddy with actual physical labor, it levels me out. I muck out the hay. I feed and water. I patch the chicken run (over and over and over). When the chickens waddle up to me, mooching for food, I pick them up and listen to their little harrumphs and clucks, and their chicken feet get my coat muddy. It can be a pain, but it’s a good balance to that clean, quiet desk. And in the end, I get to eat eggs because of them, which is one of my favorite things to do.
Life. Well-being. Sustenance.
If I wanted a clean version of chickens, suppose I’d just make them out of paper, like these totally cute desktop free-range chickens from the blog How About Orange, that my friend Kelly just sent me. I might make them anyway, just to have auxiliary chickens. As far as I can tell, they don’t get you dirty.
Then again, they don’t lay eggs either (GET ON IT, LADIES!).
Posted by jen | 6 commentsToday, I have created my best work yet: Behold!
Posted by jen | 7 comments
[Editor's Note: The Secret Lives of 19th Street Hens is an occasional series on this blog. No chickens were harmed during the making of this story. Unless you count an accidental stepping-upon, which just happens sometimes.]
It all began with four tan walls and a bright light. Consciousness was abrupt, jarring. We all hail from Texas, and just two days after the egg cracked en route to a feed store up north, I was cracking, too. There was the press of all that peeping fluff. The uncertainty of our ultimate destination. Giant hands grabbing, always grabbing. We arrived at a post office in Iowa: a box of terrorized chicks, compulsively eating. Some of us were lost in the mail. The trip to the feed and garden store where we’d be sold like chattel was grim.
In this whirl of chaos and uncertainty, my art spirit was born. From the first moment I could form thought, this one never faded: I am a painter.
I calmed when I understood my calling. I remained steady but watchful until one hand grabbed, and it did not let go. This, I have come to know, is The Main Hand. The Main Hand set me inside the tan walls. I was chosen for this life. The light came later.
My prison is my emancipation.
I was joined by five others. They know my work, but they don’t necessarily get it. But as Sherwood Anderson wrote in his masterpiece, Winesburg, Ohio: “You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream. From this time on you must shut your ears to the roaring of the voices.”
And so I shut them. So tightly, in fact, that black tufts of feathers have grown from the sides of my head, and it would appear to the ill-informed that I am wearing earmuffs. I am not. But I am painting. Every day. Using the only medium that is amply available to me: Poop, spread with a piece of straw, upon any surface I can reach. That usually means under the walkway to the laying area. I can think there. Plus, the other chickens are usually on the roost above me, and they leave a great deal of “medium” within easy reach.
Walking the yard and seeking inspiration. If you ever meet my mother, please show her this photo and assure her I am fine.
I do live in fear that The Main Hand will discover what I do. Each morning, before we are allowed out of the coop, I erase evidence of my toils. These paintings are so utterly private, only for us, and we view each piece quietly right after dawn. It’s easy to view, discuss, and erase before the day begins to warm—The Main Hand is not an early riser. I paint so that the others can make sense of our existence here. I know they need it, as much as they misinterpret it. I try to act natural as we hustle into the yard.
They'll never know my demons.
What would happen if The Main Hand discovered this subversion? I hope she will understand. I feel that she would: The Main Hand does not peck me like the others do. She throws me sweet things to eat: vegetables, corn, avocado husks. The different foods color the medium, and allow my paintings the depth I seek. So she’s in on it, in a way.
Still, I am careful. Every movement outside the coop causes me to fret quietly. If it’s not The Main Hand that causes my apprehension, it’s the other creatures I’ve come to know through her names for them: That Damned Cat, The Fucking Squirrel, How Can You Not Love Them Jim.
When the strain becomes too much to bear, I turn to my straw brushes.
A true artist endures.
Dance like no one's watching. Because they probably aren't.
So I bet you’re wondering about the chickens.
The chickens are doing great!
All six of those big girls are hale and hearty, though a chickenhawk did try to fly off with the Rhode Island Red last week. She fought the good fight and won, and came away with only a little blood on her comb. I made a few adjustments on the chicken run that Jim and I built, and they’ve been safely cooped up since.
The black ones are smartest. Red is lucky to be alive.
Yes, you heard that right. Jim is now down with the chickens. The man who swore he had no interest in raising layers was caught last week hand-feeding them his own homemade bread. I am not embellishing this story. I think Jim finally realized they weren’t going anywhere, and gave in.
In the past month, we moved the coop to a better windbreak in the yard, put up winter insulation, and built that chicken run. My dad just built some laying boxes for us, because those birds will be laying within the next month (if they know what’s good for them). This is the only thing that Zadie has consistently included on her Christmas list. “For the chickens to lay eggs!” in 7-year-old scrawl. Let’s hope Santa (and all 6 chickens) deliver soon.
Zadie models Grandpa's laying boxes.
In case they don’t get the picture of what they’re supposed to do with the laying box, I put a few golf balls in there.
Mother: Just trying to be helpful
I hope it’s not a bad sign that this morning, one of those golf balls was all the way across the chicken run, as if it had been physically thrown out of the coop.
Posted by jen | 0 comments
What, what, WHAT?
Today is the first snow of the new winter. It’s all sparkly and sunny, and the fresh coat of white makes me think of how nice it’ll be to kick back and enjoy the holidays. Unlike last year, when I was sweating the deadline for Running Away to Home, among other things.
In addition, today is the very first snow of the chickens’ lives.
And they are freaking out.
I let them roam the yard during the day, so they’re used to getting out in the morning after I drop off the kids. I like them outside rather than in the coop, though it means I spend a significant portion of each afternoon hosing off things the chickens have pooped upon. My theory: Happy chickens, yummy eggs. We’ll see if this theory holds true when they start producing within the next few months.
So anyway, yesterday it was all rainy and gross and I didn’t let them out. They really complained when I closed the coop after freshening the food and water, rather than standing back so they can show off for me and fly a few feet on their way out for the day. Chicken bitching sounds a little like saying the word “berk” in a really low voice, without moving your lips.
Try it now.
Yeah, kind of like that.
Today, it was snowy, but my friend Eve assured me that chickens can walk in snow. I did the food and water and stood back. They started to fly out, then, upon landing in snow, they began screaming. Chicken screaming sounds like saying the word “mack” in a really high-pitched voice, without moving your lips.
Uh huh. Like that.
The Ameraucanas, who are by far the biggest show-offs (though a little standoffish), flew too far and got stranded by the fence.
Save us from the white devil carpet!
They were so frozen in fear that they even let me pick them up and return them to the flock, which had returned to the coop in a panic.
They’ve been standing at the coop’s threshold ever since.
I felt pretty bad for them, because try as I might, I can’t talk to the chickens and explain snow. So I tossed them a bunch of old bread from the book-signing at Eden the other night. Carbs are soothing, right?
Plus, I know how they feel. Everything involved with this first book experience feels so fresh and fascinating (and sometimes terrifying). I’m kinda standing here at the threshold, too, digesting the past month.
Thanks to you, my earliest and best readers, for tossing out those soothing carbs—the many private notes of encouragement and shared excitement, the public words of affection for the book and me. It’s all made this brand-new experience less intimidating and more like a monthlong party.
Hey, I’m going to go see if the chickens are still standing in the same spot. It’s been 3 hours now.
Yep. They are. I’m sure they’ll get used to it all soon enough, and barrel into the next new thing.
Posted by jen | 0 comments
El Presidente on the hunt.
Tomorrow morning I leave for the Austin City Limits Music Festival, where my friend Holli and I will be rocking out for a few days.
There’s an unadulterated joy in this idea, that my only job for the weekend will be to catch all the bands I can (and avoid Coldplay). That’s some awesome blossoms. Is that a phrase? It should be a phrase.
But here’s the part that always blows my mind: Part of me will also remain here, with my family, in spirit. Hoping the kids have fun at their soccer games, worrying that they’ll not have their mom to talk to at night, hoping I got all the logistics in order before I left. It’s like the umbilical cords were never fully severed or something. I’m gone, but I’m not.
It makes me think of the cat, actually. I tried to get Bill Clinton (a/k/a El Presidente) to acclimate to the chickens. He should like them, after all, because they keep Willa busy, as she is staring at them all the time. This means Willa spends significantly less time chasing El Presidente, tackling him, and pretend-killing him.
Though the cat acted all cool for awhile, the minute I’m not paying attention, he literally pounces on a chicken. It’s happened twice now, and so he has to go inside when the chickens are out. I can try all I want to foster a friendly, Disney version of animal life in my yard, but that business ain’t happening. El Presidente wants to eat him a chicken. It’s just his nature. He’s part housecat, part jaguar from way back.
And though Austin (and its 98-degree heat) will be a fantatic weekend, no doubt, there’s still going to be a part of me that never leaves the ground here in Iowa. I can take a little break, but I’ll always be the mom. It’s just my nature.
Posted by jen | 0 comments
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