Spring, The Season of Growing

I love Spring! I love my garden newly planted, before it looks like a weed jungle. I love my fruit trees in bloom, before I start worrying about bugs and canning. I love my Radiant Crab and my redbud. This year we've added chickens to our Spring Growing.

Now my husband has been begging for chickens for several years, but I have been reluctant. He's been involved with some busy responsibilites in our church and I told him I was busy enough managing six kids and was not about to manage a henhouse besides. He suggested that I wouldn't have to worry about it, but that the kids could manage the chickens, feeding them, collecting their eggs. Now I'm sure those of you who are parents, have children who cheerfully, happily and spontaneously (without being asked) complete their chores. But mine don't. So, that meant mean old Mom would have to make sure they did their chicken duties. So, we have not had chickens.

But now, Derek isn't so busy with church, and can manage the kids managing the chickens. So we bought 16 baby chickens. We are city folk, and weekend wannabe farmers, but we don't know the first thing about raising chickens. I talked to the 'chick lady' at IFA who told me that since we were novice chick raisers we'd lose a third of our chicks, so to buy extra. We were hoping for about 10, and so she encouraged us to buy 16. But she didn't know my kids would be praying for these little chicks to live, and you guessed it, three weeks later all sixteen chicks are alive, thriving, and stinking up the back bathroom. But they are cute, and my kids are loving them. We're in the process of building a chicken coop, for when our chicks get their feathers and can move outside (Wahoo!). Poor Derek, I told him I wanted it to look cute. A chicken coop cute? But he's doing a great job. I'll post pictures when we get it finished. So until the weeds flourish, and my plants wither, I'm enjoying Spring. Cyndie