Hens

My morning routine these December days is to let open my chicken coop door by the time I pour my second cup of coffee.  I've usually read my overnight emails, checkout my three or four favorite websites for the news by this time.

My five ladies always greet me with their quiet low tone clucking and pacing along the fence, once they figure out it is not a food drop but the opening of the coop door they run inside the coop and out to freedom.  Their release follows one of two routines.  The first what I call the slow dance.  It is the deliberate three scratch across the yard.  They prefer open soil so they tend to circle the back yard along the fence and espaliered apple trees.   Occasionally they hopping up on one of the raised beds where three remaining permacultured kale plants survive.  I allow that this time of the year because the bed are covered with decaying Japanese maple leaves and old straw/bedding of theirs.  I have two raised beds that are covered with plastic hoop house for my kale, lettuce and chard that I grow all winter. Another newly planted strawberry bed that has re bar wire on it and they do like that bed.

The other manner in which they exit the coop is a fast four steps out and a long low flight across the lawn to the other side of the yard near my grape arbor.  This is the perfect picture of freedom to me.  In a total of 30 seconds they has expressed the total joy of life without a fence or enclosure.  One of them gets the idea and the others follow with wings spread and flopping barely two feet off the ground.  The area over there offers them the opportunity to scratch along what was last years strawberry patch and what will be my potato patch next year. 

Their routine is to be out until they get bored and then they all come to my back door and sit, drop feathers (sometimes we track into the house).  Patiently  they waiting for me to come out and walk them back to the coop.   They always follow immediately and go in gladly.

I shocked myself when I decided to get hens.  It was the last thing in the world that would have crossed by mind.  But with the encouragement of friends I did it and now I have to say these birds added only positive notes to my life.