Yesterday I am over at Borders crusing the isles and I come to the Farm Section. You know the one..where there is Mary Jane's Farm, Hobby Farms Home, British Country Living, The Herb Companion,Culture..the one that shows you how to make your own cheese...more on that later....Mother Earth News..and then I see it. What is that? A magazine on Chickens? It is...I grab it and head to checkout. I know this is for me...
I told John the other day that this spring I want to get some chickens. Every spring over at Farm Supply they have the baby chicks. And every year I stand there and yearn. But with all the remodeling here at Farmhouse...a chicken coop was like the last thing on the list...but we MIGHT be getting close. It doesn't need to be the Rolls Royce of chicken coops..at least not for now..I have seen the ones that look like a cottage from Carmel set in a cherry tree orchard with the window boxes spilling over with red and yellow geraniums, shutters on the windows, a little peaky shingled wood roof and a gaslight lampost leading to the front door...but that's just not going to happen this year....we still need to do the bathroom.... I'll take the simplest I can get just to have the chickens.
So I opened it and what a whole new world. Did you know there is a yellow chicken?The last picture is of that variety. They even give sources for mail order. I am IN LOVE with her....and there is a variety called Buttercup...Oh, please...how much more belovedness can I take. Buttercup !
I have visions of the girls lazily pecking through the garden on a warm spring day. High white fluffy clouds in the sky...maybe a light drizzle for late in the afternoon. My clothes, sheets and yellow gingham tea towels are flapping in the March wind on the clothesline out back. I am gathering a small stack of wood to start the fire with tonight in the woodstove and am picking rhubarb to make into a small pie for after supper. A small bouquet of sweet peas that I picked this morning fills the kitchen with the fragrance of bubble gum and spice. A basket of straw filled with brown eggs from the girls sits on the drainboard ready to be made into a country quiche for supper. ...sigh...
I am thinking of naming them after my italian aunts that still farm up in Santa Cruz. Rose, Maria, and Diana...Hope they don't mind. Maybe I won't tell them.
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