It may be old news, but i had to add this story to my blog as i wanted to remember it for the kids' sake. I had great laying hens. They laid white, brown and green eggs. I never knew what i was going to get and i loved the beauty of the little pile of varying eggs that the kids would bring me each morning or evening. I would wash them, put them in a carton and they would usually be used before the case was filled. This is all in the past tense. There is perhaps a little bit of history that needs to be filled in. The last group of laying hens we got were "rescued" from an industrial egg farm and they looked like they'd lived 100 years in the 1 year they had survived their cramped quarters
at the farm they came from. We let them roam free in the summer and they laid where they wanted. The kids would go out every day to find the favourite spots and bring in the eggs. We had roosters too and the kids always hoped that one of the "rescued" hens would miraculously decide to go against all they had lived up to that point and actually
lay on her prize and become a "cluck" (mother hen). None of them ever did. We hatched out two more batches of laying hens in the living room incubator and bought some fancier varieties to mix up the hen yard, so ended up with more roosters than we wanted. Curt took all the roosters over to his dad's place. (I'm sure he appreciated
that cacophony!) Eventually we took a big bunch of them to the auction and sold them to the thrill of the kids. Well, this spring i was enjoying my little handful of daily eggs. It was perfect. Not the HUGE bucket loads we used to get that i had to clean, but about 5 a day, all different. Suddenly though, the eggs quit coming in. The answer was always, "There aren't any out there." or "No eggs today!" I wondered what was going on and finally was informed that my husband and children had conspired against me, had taken the lot of my hens over to Grandpas place where they had access to roosters and were determined to get one of the laying hens to hatch out her own batch of chicks. Not long after that confession, there was excitement. Something had hatched over at Grandpas. Fresh chicks. No incubators with artificial heat and humidity set to the absolute perfect mix, rocking the eggs day and night in my living room, just mama hen, papa rooster and the perfect design of God. Life contained within that shell, sustained by the life of their mother sitting patiently and waiting. New life is so shockingly complex and yet so simply beautiful.
It may be old news, but i had to add this story to my blog as i wanted to remember it for the kids' sake. I had great laying hens. They laid white, brown and green eggs. I never knew what i was going to get and i loved the beauty of the little pile of varying eggs that the kids would bring me each morning or evening. I would wash them, put them in a carton and they would usually be used before the case was filled. This is all in the past tense. There is perhaps a little bit of history that needs to be filled in. The last group of laying hens we got were "rescued" from an industrial egg farm and they looked like they'd lived 100 years in the 1 year they had survived their cramped quarters
at the farm they came from. We let them roam free in the summer and they laid where they wanted. The kids would go out every day to find the favourite spots and bring in the eggs. We had roosters too and the kids always hoped that one of the "rescued" hens would miraculously decide to go against all they had lived up to that point and actually lay on her prize and become a "cluck" (mother hen). None of them ever did. We hatched out two more batches of laying hens in the living room incubator and bought some fancier varieties to mix up the hen yard, so ended up with more roosters than we wanted. Curt took all the roosters over to his dad's place. (I'm sure he appreciated that cacophony!) Eventually we took a big bunch of them to the auction and sold them to the thrill of the kids. Well, this spring i was enjoying my little handful of daily eggs. It was perfect. Not the HUGE bucket loads we used to get that i had to clean, but about 5 a day, all different. Suddenly though, the eggs quit coming in. The answer was always, "There aren't any out there." or "No eggs today!" I wondered what was going on and finally was informed that my husband and children had conspired against me, had taken the lot of my hens over to Grandpas place where they had access to roosters and were determined to get one of the laying hens to hatch out her own batch of chicks. Not long after that confession, there was excitement. Something had hatched over at Grandpas. Fresh chicks. No incubators with artificial heat and humidity set to the absolute perfect mix, rocking the eggs day and night in my living room, just mama hen, papa rooster and the perfect design of God. Life contained within that shell, sustained by the life of their mother sitting patiently and waiting. New life is so shockingly complex and yet so simply beautiful.
2 comments:
I love the gentleness in little Sadies look and hands.
me too. :) -j
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