Opinion : City boy vs. chickens, part 2

Ever since I first set foot on the sandy hill on my grandfather’s farm that became the site of our new home in 2004, there has been a constant battle that plays out in countless ways on an almost-daily basis. I love the farm, but I hate farming. I have great respect for my friends with tractors; I admire what they do, how well they do it and how much they have to teach us. But farming is not for me. I learned this at an early age, when I discovered allergies. My father would take me to various places where farming took place -- most of them involving pig pens and hay barns. There I discovered the one thing I cannot do when I go to such places: Breathe. Later in life -- although this change came way too late to change my relationship with farming -- I discovered Chlorpheniramine maleate. Those little yellow pills (which, by the way, are least expensive at our local La Grange Pharmacy) made a desperately-needed difference in my daily life. They could not, however, change the arrangement I had with farming -- which was to avoid it as much as possible. Living on a farm while avoiding farming is difficult, but not impossible. I love being outside. I’ve cleared paths in the woods, built a picnic shelter, planted trees, discovered plants and flowers I had never seen before, marveled at moonlight and sunsets. But I have not farmed. Oh, I have tried to garden, because some of our kids loved gardening with their grandfather. But their interest in gardening died with him. Also, important is the fact that my thumb is less than green; I planted strawberry plants and produced exactly one strawberry. We even bought a pony, thinking the children would love to learn to ride. Um, not so much. We now have one very big lawn mower that leaves messes in the pasture. These and many other farming failures inspired a complete surrender; I stopped doing anything that was farming-related. Despite a variety of setbacks -- getting stuck in the mud in my own driveway, dead trees falling on the fence that usually keeps the pony from joining the neighbor’s cattle, a variety of stings from bees and other flying nuisances, I had it mostly figured out. I was living well on a farm without actually having to do farming. Or so I thought. Then one day a friend called. He had heard that my wife and daughters were wanting to save money by raising chickens for eggs. They had heard that chickens eat very little, and can find enough nutrition by wandering the yards, eating insects and other naturally-occurring food items. My friend offered to bring us -- for free -- a chicken coop. Thus, I was doomed to a future as a chicken farmer. (See part one of my chicken story HERE.) It starts out so innocently. The chicks are cute; the daughters and granddaughters loved them. But two weeks later, those cute chicks morphed into ugly, loud roosters and hens. Even though the chicken coop was free, everything else came with a price tag. Chicks. The giant water bowl that served as their first home. Feed. Food bowls. Watering tanks. Heaters for the water in the winter. Fencing. Hardware for the fencing. Bedding. The basket for carrying the eggs that had not yet arrived. (On our farm, the chicken always comes before the egg -- long, long before.) And the coop, located just across the driveway from the house, serves as a reminder that those little yellow pills are not quite enough to fight all allergens. For months after the purchase of all of these items, I grumpily questioned the cost of this investment to anyone who would listen -- which, as it turned out, was: Nobody. A chicken coop is as bad on the allergies as those horrible hog barns of yesteryear. Our daughter, Abigail, does a good job of taking care of chicken chores, but the few occasions when I entered the coop, I realized that my escape from the physical misery of farming was over. Advised to let the chickens run (to save on food, get sunlight, etc.) we did so. Soon the chickens discovered the pleasure of coming to the front door, leaving a trail of droppings along our path. One hen even wandered in through the basement door. So, back to the store we went for more fencing material. And chickens are not the brightest of God’s creation. They don’t seem to mind using their food bowl and water tank as toilet facilities, even when they have acres of grass for that purpose. You can be sure that I was sure to provide the chicken-raising members of my household with constant updates of our chicken situation, along with observations about the money we were not yet saving. Finally, the eggs began to arrive. Just one or two at first, but then more and more. I estimated that those first eggs cost approximately $500 per dozen. Soon, we were up to a half-dozen per day; later we were averaging a dozen. Encouraged by this apparent success, the chicken raisers decided it was time to buy more chickens. At one point, we had 36 chickens and for a while, my daughter was gathering two dozen per day, even though at times the chickens seemed to be hiding them in various locations around the farm. For a while, it seemed that I would have to stop complaining about the $15 or so per week we pay for chicken food. Not anymore. We had been warned that chickens lay fewer eggs in the winter. We also were told that if something scares them, the laying of eggs stops (this could be an old wives’s tale, but by this point everything I heard about chickens seems like fiction). One day last spring, Abby looked out the window. “Hey, a chicken is attacking a cat!” she said. I looked out the window, to see that the “chicken” was actually a hawk, which had killed not a cat, but one of our chickens, right outside the coop door. We received fewer eggs after that incident, thus confirming among our chicken growers the above-mentioned scared-eggless theory. Recently, some other unseen creature -- most likely a winged one -- apparently enjoyed a similar chicken dinner. This time, some of the chickens were so scared they spent days hiding in the branches of the cedar trees in our yard. The laying of eggs has virtually stopped -- one per day is now considered a success. And yes, I do complain when we have to buy both chicken feed and eggs on the same day. That was not part of the deal they promised when the coop arrived. You can also be sure that whoever coined the phrase, “It ain’t chicken feed” never actually had to buy it. For a logical, farming non-enthusiast, there is one ratoinal option: Open the door of the coop, and let the hawks and eagles have lunch. Then scrape and bleach the coop and use it for a shed. Logic, however, does not rule in chicken farms. Soon the final days of winter will fade away, and the farm supply stores and post offices will be echoing with the irresistible sounds of chirping. Daughters and granddaughters will want to see the baby chickens, which means more will find a home at Allergy Central, which means more “savings.” But it could be worse. One of our friends just offered us a goat.