Soooooo.....yeah. We have chickens. Let me back up just a bit. I'm just your average everyday 40-year-old American woman. I have lived in Oklahoma for most of my life. When most people think of Oklahoma, I am sure they picture plains as far as the eye can see and most of its inhabitants working dawn to dusk on their farms. Is that a large portion of the state? You bet. Is that how I grew up? Not even close. When I was younger, the desire to own and care for any type of barnyard animal had not even skipped through my brain. But as I got older and realized how much relying on fluctuating grocery prices, not to mention periodic food and supply shortages, just plain 'ol sucks, I wondered if it was an avenue I should explore. After I had my first daughter and got the opportunity to have a small backyard vegetable garden, the possibilities of supplying my own food free of who knows what kind of chemicals commercial farms use began to seem attainable. The problem? The time and energy to do it myself. After a move to a more urban area, starting my life-long dream of becoming an elementary school teacher, making it through a pandemic, and adding another little girl to our lives, the hope of beginning a flock of backyard chickens didn't seem like it would ever come to fruition. What changed all that you might wonder? An unplanned opportunity presented by an old high school friend. This school year I decided I wanted to try to hatch chicks for my 2nd graders to experience. My former teaching partner did it every year courtesy of her daughter (aforementioned high school friend) providing her fertilized eggs from her personal flock each year. The plan was to incubate, hatch, and love on some baby chicks with my students before returning them to the farm we borrowed them from. So how are they now sitting in a box in my very own dining room? A wonderful man who provided me with two beautiful daughters finally caved into my want of becoming a chicken lady and gifted me a beautiful chicken coop for Mother's Day. Am I overwhelmed with the task of raising these sweet, fluffy babies and keeping my girls from losing their minds over our new family members? ABSOLUTELY!!!! But I thought maybe, just maybe, I could accomplish yet another dream of mine while sharing it with my family and the rest of you. I am sure there's going to be plenty of "oh, crap" and "what the cluck was I thinking?"moments. But hopefully I can do it all with a little bit of class, a lot of learning, and building a community of chicken loving moms along the way. So here's to week 1, and a whole new way of living!!!

Mother Hen out.