My lovely girls..

I am very smitten with my chickens. (No, Chef Nick, Willie, and HWB, I do not mean "I love you, hens, and you are going in my stewpot!" ) Today the girls got carrots and cucumbers as treats, and I let them out to run around the barn for a few hours.

Steppin' out!

Stampede for the open door!

"Hmmm, what should I peck? Juicy carrot or shiny camera? Juicy carrot or shiny camera. Well, I do SO love the shiny things!"

Henrietta looking totally, chickenly gorgeous! The big comb and floppy wattles = good layer. She may even be the one behind the 107-gram egg!

Gordon has a waiting list of co-workers who want some of our eggs. I like to add a little value to our eggs by putting something on the cartons each week. Right now I'm doing a hen-of-the-week thing, which evolved from the Art Trading Cards I made a while back featuring hen haiku. Every week, I highlight a different hen. I need to finish assigning names! I can tell about half the chickens apart now and am studying them carefully to figure out the rest. A few of the black hens are particularly hard to distinguish!

The lovely Anastasia, named after my dear Irish grandmother who died when I was 12. She had a great sense of humour and I hope she'd get a kick out of having a beloved chicken named in her honour. It's not like I have any human kids to bestow names upon!

Charlotte, probably my cuddliest hen.

Buffy, the first hen I could reliably identify because of her smooth,buffy plumage.

Gordon's co-workers and our friends are all getting really good about sending home empty egg cartons. A couple of weeks ago, I opened a carton that still had Buffy's "Hen of the Week" card on it. Inside I found this sticky note:

Gordon's co-worker John put a big smile on my face by sending this home to me.

And then last week I gave some eggs to my friend Ronna as a "hostess" gift, and I got this in my inbox, with the subject line "Message for Charlotte c/o Natalie"

Dear Charlotte:
I had two of your most delicious brown eggs this morning for breakfast and I must tell you that your creations were superb. I had them fried in a small pat of butter, sunny side up, no salt. I don't want anything to impede their delicious flavour.
Many thanks for laying such beauties and may we meet someday so that I can compliment you in person...er, in chicken.
Cheers, A Fan

I love my chickens! I have been calling them my "budgies", because they are getting so tame that when I want to put them in their coop at night, they will step off the woodpile (where they like to congregate in the barn) onto my arm and perch there as I carry them back.

Meanwhile, we've had a messy January thaw going on, but the temps are dropping again. The creek that runs through our farm is running with quite a bit of water right now:

I have a strange craving for an omelette.