Jess grew up on a fake farm. It wasn’t a real farm where her summers consisted of waking up at 4:30 to milk the cows or something. But at different times she had chickens, goats, cows, pigs, turkeys, horses, etc. And she hated it. She hated feeding the animals. She feared the chickens because they’d chase her and try to attack her. The pigs stunk. Horses aren’t fun to ride. Canning makes her hot. Cooking is a hassle. She just wasn’t into the whole farming homemaker thing.

I didn’t grow up on farm (though occasionally as a jr. high kid I’d go to Jess’ house and torment the Turkeys so that their little turquoise blue neck dangly thing would grow until it hit the ground.) We did, however, always have chickens for whatever reason. I never liked them and tried to avoid them at all cost. Really my only memorable interaction with the chickens was when I got to cut the head off of one. I believe that the reason was that the “chicken” ended up being a rooster. You see, when chickens are just chicks its often easy to mistake a rooster for a hen. And then when they grow up and you realize that they’re a rooster you’ve got to get rid of them in some way (because it’s illegal to have a rooster within city limits).

With all that said…

Look at us now! What happened! We’ve got chickens in our back yard. Worms in our garage. Home made jellies and applesauce in our cupboard. What’s next? We’re becoming the dirty hippies that our parents always pretended that they weren’t!

And to top it all off, one of our hens turned out to be a rooster…or at least we thought it was…until it laid eggs this week! Turns out it’s just a butch chicken.