Tip of the Week - The Egg and I

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens

-William Carlos Williams
 

Three or four summers ago, we became discouraged with all the grasshoppers attacking our raspberries.  It seemed like the little pests were coming down in swarms from the fields behind our house. We decided it might be a good idea to raise a few chickens to eat the grasshoppers before they could make their way into our garden.  So that next winter my husband bought some baby chicks and he and our son set up a little comfy cage for them with a heat lamp in our basement.  When spring came, the chicks had grown enough to go outside.  Six cute chickens in a variety of colors from white to black.  Our son, Dylan, gave them cute names like Barbeque, Drumstick, and Eggbert, and soon we had all fallen a bit in love with our new "pets."

My husband built them a little chicken coop with a "chicken run" and fenced in an area for them to enjoy pecking about.  They seemed so happy in their new home, and would run to greet us to the edge of the fenced enclosure whenever our car pulled into the driveway.  They were really loveable, but no one loved them quite so much as my husband, John.  This is one of my favorite photos of him with one of his little pals.

During this process, I never really thought about the fact that one day they would lay eggs. When the eggs started to appear, in the same variety of colors as the chickens, I was a little freaked out at the idea of eating them.  Brown eggs?  I am no farm girl, and had never eaten an egg that didn't come from the store. My husband and son were enthusiastic about using them from the start, but I wanted no part of it.  The idea of eating eggs from the Petersen's backyard didn't seem to bother our neighbors at all, so they helped take some off our hands in those early days.

As time went on, using the eggs started seeming a bit less weird to me.  I started allowing the occasional white egg (Eggbert's eggs were white) into a cake or batch of cookies--along with some "normal" store eggs.  I even sometimes ate the finished baked item along with the rest of the family.  I don't know when it exactly happened, but eventually I came around.  Maybe it was seeing those cute chickens in the backyard, looking so clean and healthy--and happy!

Now I love the chickens and their eggs.  The store eggs seem pale and and kind of flavorless to me.  I haven't bought eggs in several years, and we are on our second generation of chicken friends.  Sadly, Drumstick and Barbeque have now left us, which is another fact I've had to face--chickens don't live forever.  Even so, they have helped us progress a little further towards becoming self-sufficient, which is what provident living is all about.

To learn how to raise your own chickens, check out the following web sites:

http://urbanchickens.org/raising-baby-chicks/

http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/how-to-raise-baby-chicks-the-first-60-days-of-raising-baby-chickens

http://www.hobbyfarms.com/livestock-and-pets/healthy-chick-tips.aspx

See you next week!