On Thursday morning, my farmer husband John and I woke up to a foreign sound: an alarm clock, bleating and beeping in the near dawn.

He had to take his daughter, Kira, to the airport for a 7 am flight. And I stayed home to feed the chickens, after a little more sleep.

Most days, the chickens are our morning announcers, with squawks that shatter the morning stillness and bring an abrupt end to my dreams. (If I’m lucky, I can catch a few images and write them down in my journal!) They live in two bright green, hand-built, rolling chicken houses (“Coops da Villa”) on our five-acre farm. These days, the houses are positioned right under our bedroom windows. In a few days, John will roll them to another spot on the farm, where they can forage for a fresh supply of bugs, adding protein to their diet of organic grains, fresh vegetables and fruit scraps from the kitchen. They see many parts of the farm in a season, wheeled around like that, leaving a trail of chicken manure on our soil.

Chick de Villa

All our chickens are hens. Our five-month-old gentleman-rooster, Roger, was killed near sunset on Tuesday by something–either a raccoon or a dog, suggests John, because foxes do something different when they take a chicken for a meal. John thinks he may have been defending one of the girls just before they climbed back into their house for the night. Good guy, that Roger. It’s only been a few days, but I miss him, with his glossy, black plumage and high-arching tail feathers, and those white circles on his face, like moon-shaped cheeks. He was just starting to enjoy life with his girls, and he never attacked any of us. So, now the girls live a sort of convent existence, in community, sharing resources, up at dawn singing the praises of their creator, or maybe, just calling for their breakfast.

For those who choose not to eat chickens or their eggs, it may be eye-opening to know that chickens and people can live together in a kind of lovely balance, if it’s done right. New Earth Farm is not a factory farm. We are one family on one healthy piece of land with about 60 hens in two houses. We mainly grow vegetables for several markets and our small CSA. Right now we don’t harvest our chickens for meat, but if we had a larger farm, we’d follow the model of Joel Salatin, the enthusiastic Virginia farmer in the movie FOOD, INC. For nearly eight years, we been keeping a variety of heirloom breeds of laying hens. They get top-of-the-line organic layer feed in every kind of weather. On some rainy days or in the winter, we put their feeder in the house or under the eaves so it stays dry and fresh.

Chicken Vs. Cat!

John and I change the bedding in the girls’ nesting boxes where they lay eggs and occasionally leave their waste products. It’s become a kind of rustic ritual, a farm date. Two Sundays ago, on one of the more sweltering days this summer, we cleaned out the boxes. Being hot and dry, the chicken deposits were full of dust, flying all over our faces and arms. “This is true love,” I said to my spouse, turning my face, trying not to breathe it in. But at least, we were outdoors, in the fresh, summer air. I felt absolutely born again in the shower that followed!

The first year we had chickens, I sang to them every night, accompanied by my banjo, because I read that chickens enjoy the sound of pleasant voices. Some evenings, if I’m outside when they climb the little ramp up to their houses, I still offer them a lullaby. They have an electric fence circling their house, powered by a solar battery, but it’s only turned on at night. The chickens can get in and out all through the day, wandering where they will, locating new places to sit in the shade, visiting with the cats, greeting people who drive up to the house.

When members of our CSA come to the farm to pick up their produce on Saturdays, the kids will generally wander off to visit the chickens. Two years ago, our friend Sam from Virginia Beach Friends School (AKA “The Chicken Whisperer”) sat on the ground with the pullets–chickens less than a year old–patiently awaiting interactions. This summer, 13-year-old Sarah spent hours with the girls, and even held Roger in his early months–maybe that explains his gentle nature. One of our chickens, a Buff Orpington named Eileen, appeared in a commercial this year when Terry McAuliffe was seeking the Democratic nomination for Governor. Though Terry didn’t get the nomination, everyone got to hold Eileen.

This summer, the young flock–born in March and raised in a straw-filled space in a finished room in the barn–were such free rangers that we had to remind them not to eat with the six outdoor cats on the back porch, and that my flower box (now decimated) was not another play space. I am still chasing one golden girl who bounces up to the porch–was she a cat in her former life?

Before the second chicken house was finished, they slept in the trees near a smaller, starter house. One chicken decided to perch on a stack of screens leaning against a window in our downstairs den. We think she really wanted to watch TV with us, since that window faces the “home entertainment center,” as it were. It may have been the allure of NCIS or Royal Pains, Kira’s favorite shows!

Pure beauty.

The night John completed the new house, which we call the “Coop da Villa, Mach II,” he climbed a ladder to fetch roosting hens out of the branches, passed them down to me, and we transferred them one by one into  their lovely new abode. It only took three nights. By the fourth night, the girls found their own way, following each other in the dim evening.

Yes, they do poop on the sidewalk, and yes, they can be a little noisy in the morning, and yes, we have to make arrangements for them to be fed and watered if we go away for a few days (maybe this fall!). But the gifts our chickens give are worth it. Their eggs are wonderful, full of the nutrition that is part of our farm life–the bugs in the soil, the good whole grains, fresh air, sunshine, rain, evening breezes and swaying trees.

Remember: Chickens in the wild lay eggs anyway, they perch in trees, they hide from predators. Chickens on our farm are held and fed and watered. We don’t enslave them or keep them in cages like the thousands of chickens in commercial poultry operations. And we try to keep them safe from harm. We name the distinctive, recognizable chickens, like our two White Brahmas, named for hobbits: “Belladonna Took” and “Rosie”. The rest, I call “Irene” or “Rosemary” or even “Betty”, depending on their moods and my inclination.

Being a city girl did not prepare me for this life on a farm, and marrying John didn’t prepare me for living with chickens. It’s a learning curve, to be sure. But every morning, when John feeds the hens, gives them fresh water and collects the eggs, I am thankful. And I know that beyond my morning lemon water and breakfast, there’s a chore waiting. I wash a batch of eggs, one by one, lay them on a clean, kitchen towel, and after they dry, place them into clean, recycled egg cartons, and store them in our refrigerator. Some eggs, we eat, most, we sell. And without a rooster, none of them are fertilized; none of them are potential chickens.

Thank you chickens, for your eggs, for your lives, your beautiful feathers, and for the bok-bok sounds and squawking songs that start our day. I’ll sleep in another morning.