I’ve wanted chickens for a long time, but didn’t see any way to make it happen.
But necessity is the mother of invention, and there’s nothing like four growing boys and a limit on eggs at the grocery store (if there are any on the shelves at all) to force one to throw their shoe over the fence and figure it out. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was thinking in this direction, because baby chicks were sold out everywhere I called. Mail order chicks from reputable places were back ordered until May and I didn’t think the chicken dream was going to happen until a friend found a mail order place that had some.
I am not one for fancy chicken breeds, I’ve tried to be the chicken whisperer in the past, but I don’t do well trying to keep up with Silkies or Polish breeds. I’ve played wet nurse, vet and undertaker to more “fancy” chickens over the years than I care to recollect, so I just wanted plain hardy Rhode Island Reds. …During this coronapocalypse I might as well have wished for the moon.
We learned the hard way that California doesn’t allow mail order chickens in the state, and it looked like all was lost. While I was trying to figure out a way to smuggle them across the Arizona border, my network of chicken spies alerted me that the local ranch & feed store received a new shipment of 200 New Hampshire chicks...first come first serve. I jumped in the car faster than you could say “but where will we put them” and high tailed it down there and came home like a rain boot wearing, spring version of Santa Claus, shouting “Merry Easter everyone, I’ve got presents!” and dumping out a cardboard box full of cheeping yellow fluff. Thankfully we’ve got a giant snake terrarium (empty!) that’s been appropriated and turned into a chick brooder...which is kind of funny in a circle of life kinda way.
The kids couldn’t be more thrilled, and it’s like having our own YouTube channel running 24/7. Being quarantined with chicks, children and a worm farm while it rains for 40 days and 40 nights has got me feeling like a modern day Noah. Do you think he grew microgreens? Surely they didn’t live off of dried goods the whole time? Maybe he had a green house somewhere in the ark.
I was listening to a gardening podcast that talked about how seeds learn from the climate and soil they’re put in and then pass on that information genetically to their offspring. So if you have heirloom seeds that don’t do well the first year, gather the seeds and try again anyway because they probably “learned” to deal with whatever curveball you’re throwing at it. I feel like my plants this year though are getting a false sense of reality. I keep telling them not to expect rain like this next year and not to tell their children or grandchildren about it because it doesn’t happen very often.
And yes, I am now talking to my plants. I haven’t quite succumbed to playing classical music for them yet or laying hands on them, so clearly I have retained some of my sanity. ...maybe.
