What came first the chicken or the egg. Hmmm. . . always a challenging question. For us, it was the chickens. And these hens have put us through the wringer. You might remember a newsletter from earlier in the year where we had to put up a temporary fence to keep them out of the garden. That worked well, but then they wouldn’t get out of our landscape beds. I kind of wish we could train them to spread mulch, because as soon as I put out fresh pine bark, within 48 hours, they’ve kicked just about every bit of it out of the beds. We want to have nice landscaping around our house, so we finally decided to build them their own yard. This time a permanent one. Now they have a pretty good space to peck around in and we get both our garden and our landscape back.

So you’d think that would have solved our chicken-issues. Except we have a little hen that is a touch flighty. We actually got her in an exchange when one of our supposed-to-be hens (Amelia Egghart) ended up being a rooster (name changed to Amelio). She is a pretty chicken, grey in color and as she has gotten older she has a funny tuft of feathers on her head instead of a comb. She hasn’t started laying yet, but we’re hoping for blue-colored eggs. Her name is Berry Blue.

The first thing Berry Blue did when we finished the new chicken yard was to fly right over it (you see why we say she’s flighty). She isn’t easy to catch, so Kim and I dove and dashed around the yard and finally managed to wrangle her back in to the chicken yard. Then a few others started following. What good is a chicken yard if they keep leaving it! So our next step was to trim their flight feathers. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt them and it ended up being easier than we thought it would be (thanks youtube). So one evening, we made a list and one by one each of our biddies got a wing trim.

And that solved the flight issue. Until yesterday, when none other than Berry Blue made it over the fence again. We quickly trimmed her flight feathers that had grown back and now we are back to peace betwen the chicken coop and the yard. And we are getting some great eggs. Most of our younger flock has started laying and the colors of the eggs are so cool. If you have a great egg recipe, send it to me, because we need to get creative with how we use our eggs. We always say there is nothing like harvesting from your backyard. You know tomatoes and peppers, fresh and homegrown. But it’s really fun going out and checking the egg box. We may live in the city, but it gives us and our girls a taste of country living. And hey they taste amazing too!