Chicken Love

We've had chickens for many years now, but mostly they're John's chickens. I like to watch them, and occasionally throw some corn at them, and (of course) eat the eggs. But John has always been the one who takes care of them. 

But this winter, I was home without him for about a week, and so, for the first time, I took charge of the daily chicken chores: feeding them, letting them out, collecting and washing the eggs, locking them up each night, and with the freezing temperatures, replacing the frozen water in their jug each day. 

Each morning, they clucked wildly around their frozen water dish until I came to replace it. And when I let them out of the hen house, they charged me like a pack of feathery velociraptors hungry for cracked corn. At night, I'd slog out through the dark and the freezing mud to lock them in away from predators. I woke up in the night to google chickens in freezing temperatures to make sure they'd be okay.

These aren't difficult chores, but they are absolutely vital to the dear little chickens. And there is a rhythm to these chores, that settles you and softens you, and re-connects you to the external world that central-heat-and-air so often hides from us. I have been grateful that John did all the work... but now I wonder if I wasn't missing out on something?

Love begets love, and today I love these chickens.