Chickens

For those that remember, when we lived in Millington New Jersey, Dad had built a shed in the backyard and the side of it was attached a small fenced in vegetable garden. Fencing the garden to keep the deer and rabbits out, that’s rich. I can’t believe he had to do that. Up here neither of those critters poses a problem. Well, at one point during this time we had a goose. Her name was Suzy. To this day I don’t know what possessed Dad to bring her home but he did. All of a sudden the vegetable garden was her pen, part of the shed her coop. We had the smallest of ponds in the backyard and Lucy would sometimes venture out and go swimming in the pond. She could fly, but never really that high (to be honest I don’t know if her wings were clipped or not). Occasionally she would lay these monstrously large eggs that we would eat. A season or two is all we had with her before she went to live on a farm (and not a farm in the sky, a legit farm). I suppose in the end she was too overwhelming an animal to deal with. When you’re a kid you don’t know the why and how of much. All I knew was one day she was there, the next she wasn’t and our families somewhat bizarre foray into raising a goose was over.

Fast forward 25 plus years later. Part hobby, part moving towards some kind of sustainable living, part just me being similar to Dad, I’ve built a chicken coop inside Mom and Dad’s garage to house roughly half a dozen chickens. Honestly I think the cabin fever I had at the tail end of this winter made me delusional and I needed something to plan, design, build. If I had my way I would actually be on a small farm by now with a pig, chickens and a couple of goats. Clearly that isn’t going to happen for quite some years, so starting out with chickens is the best I can do for now and that’s ok by me.  

I’ve heard chickens are the gateway drug to farming and I have friends that hatch their own crazy varieties of chickens.  They love everything about it and they keep growing their flock by leaps and bounds. Heck, everyone I talk to says it is so much fun to raise chickens and we aren’t even talking about the fact that I could eat chicken eggs for breakfast, lunch, dinner and cooked every way imaginable. Needless to say I’m very excited for this new hobby. I showed Dad the progress I made on the coop over the weekend. To be honest I don’t think he thought I was really going to do it. Anyone who knows me knows when I put my mind to something I will do it. Always the perfectionist, Dad actually said it was coming along very well and looked good, which made me happy.

I’m hoping to get my chicks in the next week or so and hoping they are able to start laying eggs sometime late this summer. He won’t admit it, but I can guarantee Dad is going to enjoy having these chickens around as much as I will.

Below are a couple of photos of the coop. Still have a few more things to do to it, but I have a little bit of time before the chicks are big enough to be in it. I will add photos of them after I pick them up. Until then…

Loki is very excited about the chickens