chicks

I never in my life thought I would be living on a farm with farm animals and a barn and a real tractor. Life is one big beautiful adventure. Especially with my husband, who does things that I would never in my sanest moments consider. Usually I wouldn't consider them for well thought out reasons. But I do need to give him some credit because in general his wild ideas end up blessing and enlightening our little family.

Like his latest foray into the dark to rescue chickens.

A house in an apple orchard down the street was abandoned by a rather large family. More specifically, it was a 2 bedroom dilapidated shack with at least 3 families living in it. They left behind quite a few chickens and a rooster, along with a lot of unsalvagable junk. Christian thought it would be a good idea to "adopt" some of their chickens since quite a few of ours have been consumed by the coyotes, foxes, hawks, you name it. These chickens were young and fast, and Christian couldn't catch them in the daytime. So my determined husband sneaked down to that old house in the dark on at least 3 different occasions with flashlight to bag us some chickens. Yep, we are real country folks now.

Unexpectedly, in the dead of the night, Christian found a mama chicken sitting on a nest of 7 eggs well hidden in a cluster of banana plants. He has always been good at looking for things. There was a good chance those eggs were duds, but he took the eggs along with the hen just in case. Three days later we found 7 baby chicks in our barn!

The girls are in love.

Karsten isn't quite sure what to think. You can't tell from the picture, but he got pooped on. Farm boy in the making.

Once upon a time we had a lot of baby chicks on our property when we were crazy enough to lease some of our land to the chicken farmers (see the initially shocking story HERE), but we haven't been a part of that for a few years now.

You can bet that I will never find myself in the dark on a strange property covered in trash hunting for chickens. But sometimes I think that we get used to playing life a little too safely. We can get away with being squeamish about things our ancestors would have had to face boldly. I am glad my husband seeks to bring new life to our little farm in whatever way seems practical to him. It reminds me that the big or little things in life don't always have to be played safely. A little dirt and a little determination can birth the next adventure.