baybeasts

Last weekend, we made a chicken run, with the help of our friends S and K and Az. We fox-proofed the coop (bought off ebay), made a path, and put up a fence around their territory. It looks like this:

(The green bits are frames for covering up seedlings when we let the chickens out into the wider yard.)

Last night, we drove down the highway out of the city, to one of those housing developments with big houses and tiny yards. We drove around roundabouts and through gates that said something like ‘Fairlea Village’, and eventually found the house of the daughter of the farmer whose wife had brought four Australorp pullets all the way down from their farm (2hrs away). The cardboard boxes they were in were too dark to see inside, but they were warm, and on the way home they emitted a series of gentle boks and a rather sad keening sound. We put them in their coop, lifting their soft, heavy bodies out of the boxes, and went inside. Later we went out with a torch but they were wild-eyed and huddled in the corner, and it didn’t feel right to have a good look at them.

The next morning we took them warm bran mash and silverbeet and other treats, and they seemed much happier:

In the daylight they are stunning - huge and black with the faintest sheen of green, with bright red engorged combs and shiny eyes. They have the funniest fringing of black fluff on their bottoms, like layers of tulle underskirts, and the most incongruous, dinosaur-like feet. We’ve decided to call them ‘the girls’.

To our surprise, two of them lay eggs today.

We ate them soft-boiled for lunch with salt and slices of toasted Norwegian Mountain Bread (the next bread in bean’s Nigella journey).

Home grown eggs and home-made bread - it was a glorious day indeed.