Another day on Pooh Acres

What a year this has been already. We are certainly newby chicken farmers .. but I didn’t think we would be such BAD chicken farmers. We have tried to follow all the rules, as far as we understood them.


Since bringing chickens to our home last summer we have learned a lot. I thought I knew so much (being raised by farmers and around farm animals) but the longer we have animals the less I realize I know. I had no idea that chickens can catch a cold that will turn into pnemonia. We lost quite a few chickens….. I didn’t count and I don’t want to know. We not only lost the chickens, we lost all the eggs from ALL of the chickens for a minimum of a month. Last weekend was the climax of the illness. Our favorite hen, our only Rhode Island Red got sick and died in Phil’s arms. It appears that the worst is over, we have two hens that are still suffering, the rest seem to be much better. In a couple of weeks the medicine will be out of their system and we will once again get back to selling eggs. My customers are understanding and anxious to get back to production.

I have been getting up at 3:45 every (weekday) morning and going to the gym before work. Although it is good for my body, it makes me very tired and probably cranky. Phil says I pretty much fade out after dinner. I try to sleep in on the weekends to “catch up”. Sleeping in for me is 7 AM!! I had planned to get up at 7 because we have some things to do this morning but at 6:45 I was awakened by a loud Cock a doodle doo from the barn area.

I am amazed to see Phil becoming more and more like my dad. They never met so this is kind of crazy. Phil was a city boy. He used to pay his guys to take care of his garden! He had never lived in the country, never taken care of machinery etc he paid his workers to do all of that. (He owned a sprinkler business) Now, living out here he is maintaining all of the machinery. He builds whatever needs to be built, and he keeps this place running. He will take some scrap wood and make a chicken “hospital” or fix something that I would have thought unfixable. Every day he is growing more like dad in all the good ways.