Hello Bloggy friends!
I hope you are well and hearty 
Today something delicious happened to me. Yes, delicious. I have to tell you!
But first, do you recall back in January, the very dear Heidi ( alias: Super Secret Agent Chicken Little), surprised the BB household with four chickens?
Chickens generate an enormous amount of fun. Chickens make great pets (here’s Bloss having a ball with them..)
They are relaxing to watch, they keep down weeds in the lawn, they eat your left over veggie scraps and if all that weren’t enough for you, they also lay eggs.
But friends, there is a dark side to chicken ownership. At least, there is if you believe every thing you read about the purported benefits of chickens. I have read times without number that chickens will keep down pests in your garden. That they will help fulfil your permaculture dreams. (Yes, I can hear everyone who has ever owned chickens, snickering.) And I am going to expose that claim for what it is: chicken propaganda.
Let me tell you the truth.
Chickens, those dear, sweet, relaxing-to-watch creatures, will wait until you are out, and they will EAT your garden. They will DIG in your garden. They will DESTROY your garden.
Yessssirrreee.
Those sneaky girls will betray you. If they survive that, they will openly defy you, and right under your very nose, will waltz up to your lettuce and eat it clean up. Just. like. that.
And if that isn’t insult enough, they will abscond to your neighbour’s yard, the neighbours who haven’t given you a moments grief in all the years you’ve been neighbours, and decimate their pride and joy flower garden. It will happen. You can take it to the bank.
So, what’s a chicken owner to do? WELL. Cue the joy of having The Best Friends in the Whole World. And I do. And two of them came over today, and, in an act of something between mercy and insanity, they undertook to fence my chickens in.
With the help of five members of the BB household, I’m sure you can imagine what a task it was to achieve. As a bit of a hint… we are so accustomed to doing useful jobs such as fencing, that three of our number were wearing ankle length skirts. (Yes. We have never put up fences before. You live and learn!)
Not only did my very dear friends fence in my chickens and in many other ways improve my yard, but they came bearing gifts.. There were little butterfly cupcakes baked fresh this morning, and enough cut jasmine that every room in my house is perfumed.
I may have mentioned once or twice before, but it bears saying again…
I have the best friends in the world! ♥
Aug 22, 2012 @ 10:31:46
So glad you had a happy ending to the story. Hope the grizzly neighbours weren’t too put out. You have a very interesting life dear niece.
Aug 23, 2012 @ 11:26:10
Thanks, Aunty Carol! The neighbours were graciousness personified. When we asked if they minded that our chickens kept wandering into their yard, (this was before we knew how much havoc they were wreaking!) they replied very kindly that the chickens would eat the pests… They really are the best neighbours, and don’t deserve to have to live next to a house full of noisy musicians who keep odd hours, and chickens!
Aug 22, 2012 @ 16:20:57
hahaha….such memories! My job was to let the chooks out when I was a girl. The chook pen was about 100m from the house and they had many acres to dig, peck, scratch and chew in. But of course, they would scrabble like mad things to get into mum’s garden. How she would dash outside apron or tea towel flapping, yelling the worst things she could think of at those wretched chooks!
I have great friends too. Aren’t we blessed! Have a great day!
Aug 23, 2012 @ 11:32:10
Ruby… I laughed so at the mental picture of your Ma flapping her apron at the chickens… I do it too!!
It’s not so much when they are in my garden, (though I certainly did when the rogues got in there!) but it’s more about them waiting on the mat at the backdoor for someone to come out and give them a treat.
Now, they are cute as buttons sitting there at the backdoor, looking in and doing it so hopefully and making dear little chicken noises.
BUT…. they leave chicken surprises there. And then someone comes to wipe their shoes on the mat before coming in to my kitchen….
So it took a very small number of incidences of finding chicken surprise on my KITCHEN floor, before I would race out and shoo them with my apron flapping.
Yes.. the glamour!
Aug 26, 2012 @ 22:55:24
Ohhh Jasmine – my absolutely favourite. Naughty, naughty chooks! But very cute all the same. And how BIG is your Bloss getting? Goodness me, time does fly!
Sep 04, 2012 @ 09:44:42
Fee, yes, she’s so proudly just turned 5.
Sep 03, 2012 @ 20:12:08
Perhaps poultry providers are people probably prone to paltry poultry propaganda?
Sep 04, 2012 @ 09:50:20
Ahem.
Yes. One ponders such profundities.
I spent yesterday building the chooky girls a cubby from hay bales. Super Secret Agent Chicken Little, hay is not pleasant to work with. Those stories you read about weary travellers being grateful to sleep in soft hay.. all lies. I’m not sure how much more disillusionment one girl can take. People are so inclined to make the most outlandish claims about things. Chickens are good for your garden, hay is soft and sweet smelling (it’s not. It’s prickly and dusty!) what next… I ask you?!?
Sep 04, 2012 @ 11:19:30
The other fabulous fib is… “its just as easy to look after (X) children as it is (X+1) children.
As far as the hay goes… DH bought a bale of straw for stable bedding last week. The Clydesdales ate it all overnight!
Please continue posting your disillusionment with the rural lifestyle, it will serve you well if you ever think you want to move to the country in later life!
Also, I have PLENTY of new baby chicks for your girls… really, its just as easy to keep four chickens as it is eight! By the time we catch up next, I will be able to give you pullets. So no cockadoodledooing in suburbia!
Although… you know, come to think of it, roosters aren’t that noisy really (baha ha ha!)
Heidi
Sep 25, 2012 @ 13:00:01
Although… you know, come to think of it, roosters aren’t that noisy really (baha ha ha!)
Heidi, the expression ” liar, liar, pants on fire” springs to mind. I may, may have been green enough to believe you, had I not stayed at Someone’s farm and been serenaded by no less than five, FIVE roosters all night, and then witnessed the demise of said FIVE roosters the next morning.
Yes.. quiet roosters.. chickens are good for your garden.. I am slowly losing my innocence of farm life and coming hard up against the brutal reality that is rural culture. Sigh.
Oct 14, 2012 @ 01:35:04
lucky you.
Nov 16, 2012 @ 09:57:44
Ahhhh, the life of a family with chickens! Ain’t it grand?
And chickens are good for your garden – as long as you can work out a way to keep them out of your garden when you don’t want them there. Good job on the fencing by the way – interested in doing some chicken fencing with us, now that you are pro’s? 
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the lovely, leafy, full of worms garden of the neighbour across the road – of course!