The Chicken Project

For many years I have wanted chickens. I’m not entirely sure why. There is, of course, the appeal of fresh eggs, which are perhaps one of my favorite foods. And there’s the imagined joy of watching my own lovely hens wander around, happily pecking bugs out of the yard. I can’t quite put my finger on the source of the desire. All I know is that I have always been drawn to birds.

Here are some other things I know: I know that when I get an idea in my head that takes root, which usually doesn’t take very long, it occupies my mind until I can bring it to fruition. A recent example: Buddy. It took me about five minutes after news of lockdown to decide it was the right time to get a puppy, and then a relentless week or two to find him, then 12 hours later a dawn blitz over to Maine to retrieve him, and three hours more to drive him home. It took only a moment to fall in love.

What I should say, right away, is that at this point in my life while many of my decisions continue to be made independently, none of the projects are completed that way. Sam was up at 5am that morning we drove to Maine too. In fact, he did all the driving. And when Buddy, as puppies do, woke up in the night needing to go out, often it was Sam who got up with him, not me. Not always, but often. 

When we found out our neighbors Doug & Kathy were moving this summer, our neighbors from whom we’ve been buying a dozen eggs weekly for years, for $5 a dozen, my wheels started turning. “I wonder what they’re going to do with their chickens?” I imagine Sam heard that question with a sense of dread. And yet, because he is the generous person he is, he never uttered any skepticism, nor any warnings about the dangerous nature of such a question.

We have been storing our canoe in the top of the neighbors’ barn for the past few years, so we went to retrieve it before their move. As we stood around in their farmyard, with all those beautiful birds clucking and pecking happily around us, unfazed by the new faces, the truck, the yapping dogs, I asked the question out loud: “What are you going to do with your chickens?” That was the critical moment right there. Thinking back, I can see their faces lighting up. “We’d love to not take the chickens with us…Do you want some chickens?” 

It’s hard to stop the momentum when a long held dream is on the verge of becoming a reality. Why, yes, I did want some chickens! I had always wanted some chickens, at least in the “always” that I’ve lived on this hill, and more each year as woods have turned to meadow, and gardens have grown with berry bushes and fruit trees. Chickens were the natural next step! “I would love to take two or three,” I said, “if you’re looking for a home for them.”

Here was another critical moment: “Oh, you’d need to take at least six or seven! That way they’d have a little flock.” Knowing I would be well advised to at least make the appearance of consulting with my own “little flock,” I told our neighbors we would think about it and let them know. In my mind, I was already making plans to inquire with Richard, our other neighbor, about his currently unused coop. Still, on the way up the hill, I feigned a casual indifference and asked Sam and Quinn what they thought. To be honest, I don’t even remember their specific replies, even though that was only a month ago. I seem to remember Quinn saying both “Yes!” and “No way! You’re crazy.” And I seem to remember Sam not saying much.

But it didn’t matter that much because the idea was taking root as soon as we drove back down their driveway. And when I stopped by Richard’s one day soon after, and told him I had a question about his coop, and he responded with an eagerness, “Why? Do you want it?” Well, by that point the wheels were in motion.

I told Doug we’d take the chickens, and somehow managed to agree to take all fourteen of them. And I told Richard I would like to buy his coop, even though he refused to sell it to me and insisted he just wanted to see it in use (though not in his own yard!). And then we went on vacation and it became a happy thought that occupied a point in the near future. I talked about the chickens a lot in the following two weeks, and I noticed, with only a little concern, that no one else really wanted to talk about them. That became even more true after the weekend that Sam and Quinn spent borrowing a trailer, driving it, and then our tractor, down to Richard’s house, where he and Richard both spent most of a day, with the help of two tractors, and the curious audience of Quinn and our other neighbor, also Richard, watching their progress as they slowly, and not without some calamity, managed to move half of the coop from Richard’s driveway to ours. The other half of the coop stayed at Richard’s, in a crumpled heap, and I stayed at the lake blissfully unaware.

By the time I got home that night, and saw just how huge Richard’s old coop was, when seen up close (14 x 4 x 4), Sam did not want to talk about the chickens…at least not with words. His face said quite a lot. And all Quinn wanted to talk about was what a big to-do it all was, and how she couldn’t believe I was lounging around at the lake all day. Well, one contribution I was able to make, thanks to having been at the lake all day, was that on the drive to the Adirondacks I spotted what appeared to be a perfectly sized trailer for sale on the side of the road…the kind of trailer that would make for a perfect base to the very heavy, currently impossible to move coop.

Still, it was Sam who went to the Tractor Supply store to price out wheels and axels and other various parts—a necessary step for me to feel that the $600 trailer was actually a good deal. And one that made me feel especially good when the seller accepted my offer of $500, a small price to pay to avoid what would surely be a disastrous and lengthy experience had we bought all the parts and tried to build a trailer ourselves. And while I imagined driving over with Sam to pick it up, it worked out that I had to be in a meeting the afternoon when the seller was available to meet us, and Sam and Quinn went to do the work alone, again.

At this point, I should just add, in my own defense, that we are in the middle of a pandemic and I’ve spent the summer in meetings trying to figure out how to open school in person this fall. It’s not like I’ve been lounging around all the time.

The trailer came home on Monday night, which was also the night that Kathy informed me the chicken transfer would have to happen on Tuesday, the very next night. So, I stayed home Tuesday and set to work cleaning the coop—a dirty job that I knew I needed to do to begin the process of redeeming myself and salvaging this project that was my idea in the first place. “The work is the joy,” I reminded myself and with that I spent hours shoveling, sweeping, scraping and even vacuuming out the ten year old chicken and mouse poop and wood shavings and cobwebs. 

By the time I was done, it was like new. Sam removed the roosts, covered as they were in a thick layer of poop that was beyond scraping, and he cut and I sanded two new ones. I round the edges to protect the girls’ feet. And then we spent hours in the moving process—lifting, propping, lifting and pivoting, lifting and propping some more—trying to get that beast up on the trailer. And once we did, and once it was secured, it was a joy to look at with its big window, fresh wood shavings, clean nesting box and lovely new roosts. 

We were exhausted by the time we were done, and filthy. It had started to rain. It was 7pm and we hadn’t eaten. Still trying to redeem myself, I sent Sam to take a hot shower and I ordered pizzas. I ran out to pick up dinner and all I could think about was being desperate for food, beer and a shower. When I got home I decided there was no way we could go get the birds and as I started to send Kathy and Doug an email to say we’d have to pick them up the next day, they called. And Quinn, at this point, was excited to have all this chicken talk end, and the chicken fun begin. And Sam was eager to just get it over with. So we put the pizza down and our boots back on and we gathered up plastic bins and coolers and we went down to the neighbors’ barn to collect the now-sleeping chickens. 

Because we didn’t have any idea what we were doing, the neighbors, and their son Hale, came out to help. Here was another critical moment: the Boydens were working fast, with confidence, gathering up birds, in the dark, and placing them in the various boxes. There was some wild flapping, some chasing, some swearing, and Sam and Quinn in the mix. And somehow I managed to create for myself the job of receiving the already-boxed birds and putting them in the truck. It was a good gig. I stood there in the yard listening to the owls, feeling a mix of excitement and worry. And when they told us it turned out there were sixteen chickens instead of the fourteen we thought we were picking up, I just laughed and thought, nervously, “here we go!”

We got them home and found ourselves on our own lifting the sleepy, but not sleeping, birds out of their various bins, and placing them in their new coop. It was the first time I’d ever touched a chicken. I was struck by how beautiful they were, and how they managed to be both solid and delicate at the same time. Their feathers were a silky miracle. With the coop locked up, and the hour late, we left them and went to shower and sleep ourselves. It was exhausting and exciting and a little disorienting…in a way that bringing home a puppy never was.

When the dogs woke me up the next morning, I woke Quinn up too so we could go see the birds. And I woke Sam up too so we could move the coop from the driveway to the spot we imagined them hanging out for the fall—on the other side of Quinn’s swing set, in the exact place, ironically, that Sam has been talking about building his dream stone patio and fire pit—the spot with one of the best views in the whole yard.

Driving the truck, with trailer and coop in tow, across our uneven ground was nerve-wracking. Well, it was nerve-wracking to watch…I didn’t actually do the driving. It took a while to get it into position, relatively level, and then surrounded by some fencing—a security measure until the girls got used to their new home. Eventually we opened the coop door and watched as they came cautiously, but curiously out. We fed them, and brought them water. And we watched the fog move up the valleys below. And we felt autumn in the air. And we admired how pretty they were. And Quinn and I stayed and watched them, and tried to reach out carefully to sneak a gentle touch as they passed by us, and we identified our favorites. And after some time we let them be and we went in to have our breakfast. 

It was Wednesday morning and I had to get on a Zoom meeting with a few others from school, and one of our students, and her family, in China. While I tried to shift my focus from the chickens in the yard to making coffee and my day ahead, I saw some movement out the side window that caught my eye…within a few short minutes one of the birds had flown out of the fence and was walking around the yard. And because we weren’t sure how our dogs would handle them, and we weren’t sure they wouldn’t wander off, I grabbed my boots, and Quinn, and headed back outside to try to catch her and return her to the flock. 

Of course I’ve read the stories about how hard it is to catch a chicken, and of course Quinn and I tried and failed. And of course I sent her to the house to call to Sam and tell him we needed his help. All of this was inevitable. What I hadn’t anticipated was the way his chicken-project-fatigue would combine with his competitive nature, and what that would look like on wet grass. Quinn named the escaped chicken “Rogue,” and for a while we continued trying to corner her, but Rogue was remarkably quick to pivot and regain open ground. 

Sam’s strategy, once he arrived, was more physical than strategic. He walked, then jogged, then ran after her with increasing determination. With each quick turn, each slip on the wet grass, his fury seemed to build. At the same time, for those of us watching the chase, Quinn and me, and Buddy from the living room window, and the other fifteen chickens from behind their fence, the scene was hilarious. Even though I knew I was risking a reprimand, I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, a lot. Quinn and I were hysterical. Sam caught the bird, dropped her over the fence, said “This is going to drive me fucking nuts!” and stormed back to the house without another word. Quinn and I exchanged a glance and followed him back. I was ten minutes late to my meeting, still wearing some of my chicken clothes and I could barely follow the conversation. When the call finally ended, I looked out the window and saw a number of birds happily exploring the yard, outside the fence.

From the beginning, when we contemplated the number of chickens we were getting, Sam said that it would be our “margin of error.” While we brought home sixteen, we only originally wanted two or three. We resigned ourselves to the fact that there would probably be some mishaps. I read all about the predators and as I did so I flipped back through the many scenes and sounds of our spot on the hill…the red fox that we’ve watched cross the meadow multiple times, the bears, the many owls, the coyotes we’ve heard in the night, and most recently the hawk who stalked and then attacked the robin’s nest in the maple tree just next to the house. With all those neighbors in mind, on Wednesday at dinnertime I decided I would get the girls back in their coop, before dark, so I could stop worrying about them and we could have a peaceful family dinner. I hadn’t stopped thinking about chickens for more than a few minutes since Monday and I knew I needed to bring some normalcy back to our world. 

I tried everything to shoo them in, coax them in, bribe them in, but all of it to no avail. Ultimately Sam came out and suggested we just eat dinner and let it get a bit darker. I was trying too hard, as I often do—chickens are going to do what they want to do, including find all the mulched garden beds in the yard to scratch about in, including hang out in the bushes next to the house, including lay eggs in the ferns. The list goes on. 

Buddy was the one who found the secret laying nest in the ferns. As Quinn and I checked the nest boxes that afternoon, gathering the three eggs we found there, we noticed Buddy prancing and bouncing around the yard with what we thought was a lacrosse ball. When he tossed it up in the air, we noticed it was smaller and thought it was a golf ball. But, on closer inspection realized it wasn’t round. He had found an egg! Amazingly it didn’t crack it hit the ground. I took it from him and went back to my chores, only to see him come out of the ferns, again, with another egg. When we looked, we could see the little rounded mound of ferns and grass the girls had made for laying in. There were more there the next day and so we learned to check there as well as the nest boxes.

After dinner that first night I looked out the window, with dusk settling in, and I saw chickens roosting on the swing set and on the roof of the coop. They were ready, finally, to settle down. We all suited up and went out to gather the girls and get them in the coop. Sleepy as they were, they allowed us to pick them up. And holding those warm birds close was a thrill. And in a strange way, it felt like a privilege. 

When they were all in the coop, I did a head count—with a view from only one end, it was hard to see them clearly, but I felt sure they were all safely in, so we closed the door and headed inside feeling relieved. The next morning, making my coffee as I waited for the sun to come up a bit more, I saw one of my favorite hens, a Barred Plymouth Rock that we called Speckles, walking around the yard. I couldn’t believe it! She had spent the night outside the coop—I had clearly missed her in my head count—and she survived! I went out with some pellets and she followed me back and I let the rest of the girls out to join her. I imagined she must be exhausted.

Thursday was day two and it went pretty smoothly. I spent time in the morning feeding and watering them, and time in the afternoon doing the same. I found myself worrying about them all the time, and noticing the messes they were making. I asked about them on the phone when I called from work. And when I arrived home, as soon as I opened my car door, I smelled that farmyard smell and it triggered a list of things to do. It also, it so happens, made me lose my taste for eggs. I hard-boiled eggs on the first night, pealed them, salted them and took my first bite—imagining it to be a divine experience, but I will confess they tasted off. The smell of animals wafting in the window is more than I can handle.

All of it was proving more than I could handle. And just as I am the type of person to pursue a goal with relentless determination, I’m also someone who knows myself well enough to identify quickly when I’ve made a mistake. And in the same way that I’ve made the thing come true, I can also work to make a thing go away—I am single-minded, and relentless, and I can’t rest until the whole mess has been cleaned up and disappeared. So, even though Thursday went smoothly, it was clear to me that we didn’t really want sixteen chickens, right before school started, in an unpredictable year, and right before they all molt and stop laying, and right before winter sets in. How were we going to keep them far enough away from the house to not be in the way and smellable, and at the same time close enough to trudge to through thigh deep snow? And how were we going to fill up the water when the hose is turned off? And keep it from freezing when the extension cord is frozen under many feet of snow and ice? 

Having not answered those questions, and having reflected on the fact that other people I know who have a lot of chickens often also have other animals, to protect them and help them keep warm, and usually a member of the household who is home all the time. These chickens in particular lived on an organic farm with Icelandic sheep, dogs, and a guard llama, not to mention Kathy and Doug and their four home-schooled kids. As I thought about how “easy” it is to care for chickens, something Kathy and Doug said again and again, and I thought about the morning and evening chores that would inevitably have to happen when I was at work, I started to think about the fact that this latest idea of mine might put me in a position where I was forced to choose: chickens or husband? The answer was pretty obvious.

Within forty-eight hours of their arrival it was clear to me they had to go. The neighbors who gave them to us didn’t want them back. The neighbor whose coop they were living in didn’t want them either. The neighbor up the road, who once told me she’d had her “eye on Richard’s coop for years” also didn’t want them. Still, I had to move them quickly. School would be starting on Monday, and more pressing: we were all starting to fall for them a little bit. Sam might not admit it, but when one of them was squawking one day, he went hustling out across the yard barefoot, “What’s the matter girls? Are you okay,” I heard him ask this with my own two ears.

Friday evening, after meeting a friend for a walk, I called home to see if we needed anything at the store. Sam answered the phone: “We have a problem. I can only find two live birds. And one that isn’t quite dead but is almost dead.” The urgency in his voice was intense. I stepped on the gas. Quinn was in the shower and didn’t know. I told him I’d come right home. When I arrived, he was trying to find the others. They had scattered in the ferns and woods all around. I had been worried about that hawk from the start, and from the scene we found, it seems that’s what struck. And not surprisingly the hen that was caught was the one chicken that seemed smaller than the others. Sam went to deal with her before Quinn came out, and I set to work finding the other hens in their hiding places. The big one called Plumpy was nearly paralyzed with fear; she seemed to growl at me as I came close. Eventually, talking to them, walking near them, coaxing them gently, they all emerged and sprinted back to the coop. It seemed like a miracle to still have fifteen.

The next morning I posted two ads, one on Front Page Forum and one on Craigslist. Within an hour I had five requests for my free hens. At the same time, a colleague at work, who has a farm, said she wanted them. So, knowing hers would be a good home for them, with other layers, and meat birds, and turkeys, and horses, and dogs, and goats and barns and kids, on an organic farm with a beautiful view, similar to the home they left, we made arrangements for her to come and pick them up Saturday night. When she saw the coop, she marveled over it. She opened the doors to look in and she and her two daughters oohed and aaahed over the nesting boxes. It was a labor of love, I told her; Richard had pampered his own chickens. In that moment, she asked if we wanted to part with the coop too and, just as quickly as I committed to the whole project, I let it go.  

Instead of pulling the birds out, we decided we’d move the trailer in the daylight. The next morning Sam hooked it up to his hitch again, and drove the coop back across the yard, back down the driveway, past Richard’s house and down the road. At the bottom of the hill, by the school track, the new owners were waiting. Quinn was sad and so was I, but I was also relieved and it was clear as day that this was the right thing to do. I recouped the money I spent on the project, trailer included, and stuck half of it in an envelope for Richard. I had checked with him before selling and he insisted he didn’t want it back and was glad to be rid of it. That said, I think he is glad to know it went to someone who appreciated it and that it will be put to good use.

In the week since then, Quinn admits she hasn’t thought about them much. I know Sam hasn’t missed them, and I’ve felt immense relief. Home is the place I return to to rest. It is a peaceful and beautiful place of solitude in my busy life. And in the brief time the birds were here, I was constantly worried, feeling guilty, and neglecting the two dogs and two people I love. 

It was a crazy thing to do, but it was something I had always wanted to do. I am not afraid to admit that I feel proud to be the kind of person who goes after what she wants, and that I’m also the kind of person who isn’t afraid to admit she’s made a mistake. I think those two things—confidence and humility—should go hand in hand. Those, I think, are the takeaways of the chicken project. Those reminders, and a renewed sense of wonder that I managed to marry a man who continues to humor me and help me accomplish the things I set out to do. And in the nearly twenty years we’ve been together, he has never once said (not out loud at least): that was a stupid idea. Though this was a close one, I’m sure.

Postscript November 7th: As Sam worked to light a bonfire, (more than two months after the chickens have come and gone) Buddy delivered the remains of the dead chicken that Sam had disposed of in the woods, like the good and gentle retriever that he is. The chickens haunt us still!