We have a broody hen! I am so excited about this I can hardly express it. It is a wonderful amazing thing to care for something its whole life and then see it prepare to care for its own young.

She is a Dark Cornish, one of two in our flock, she is not one of our friendlier or prettier birds but she has a very likable quality. The description of her breed in the Murray McMurray Hatchery catalog (from where we have ordered all of our chicks with great satisfaction) says they are "good setters and mothers" obviously I cannot attest to the latter but with the former I certainly agree. She has only left her small clutch of eggs for short periods once or twice a day, since going broody the end of last week. She seems prepared to fiercely protect her precious eggs, even giving me the chicken equivalent of a snap every time I hint at reaching my hand into her nesting box.

In a life of off and on chicken raising something I have never experienced is the natural incubation and hatching of chicks. When I was a kid we had some disastrous experiences with home incubators and as an adult have only purchased baby chicks. I do know, roughly, the process a mother hen goes through to incubate her own eggs but I suspect there is a lot that I have yet to learn.

One of the boys' favorite foods to make is fresh pasta. It is a super easy, inexpensive meal and a lot of fun to make.

There are many different methods for making great pasta, this is what I do:

Put three cups flour in a medium bowl, make a well in the center, add four eggs and about 1/4 teaspoon salt. Use a fork to stir the eggs, incorporating the flour slowly until you've mixed as much as you can. The dough should be dry but if it won't form a ball at all add water just a few drops at a time. I always end up using my hands at this point to incorporate that last bit of flour.

Turn the dough out and knead it until it is smooth. Divide in four equal parts, shape each part into a disc, then cover and let it rest for twenty to thirty minutes.

Feed each piece through a pasta maker (this is Seltz's favorite part) once for each setting beginning with largest and ending with smallest (obviously). Lay the finished sheet aside and repeat with the remaining disks of dough.

Using the cutting attachment feed sheets of pasta back through and hang over a dowel (or on the counter but it will take longer) to dry while you cut the remaining sheets.

I have never rolled pasta by hand but I know it can be done. If I found myself stranded without my pasta maker I would probably divide the dough into eight pieces instead of four and use plenty of flour to roll each piece as thin as possible before cutting with a knife.

Cook the pasta in rapidly boiling, salted water for two to three minutes. Drain, toss with olive oil and top with whatever you like!

Reminiscing

A few days ago I found out that my neighbors have ordered their first batch of baby chicks and it has caused me to think back to my own experiences with the tiny little fluff balls.

It has been nearly a year since my last order of day old baby chicks and right at two years since my first. This year we are hoping that our flock will hatch and care for the next generation on their own (last year this wasn't an option since we didn't have any roosters) and even though the prospect of letting the chicken ladies do all the work is pretty exciting there is a lot I will miss as well.

My first order was of Black Australorps and Americanas with a "free mystery chick" thrown in by the hatchery. When I made the order my twins were a little more than a year, by the time the twenty six arrived at the post office Mack and Seltz were fifteen months and I was in the middle of my first trimester with Henry. I was colossally unprepared and more than a little overwhelmed.

I kept the chicks in a box under a heat lamp in a corner of the living room until they got so big that they began to fly out, at which point we moved them into an old dog kennel I set up in the garage. The never ending amount of mess (and smell) that they produced was killer on my morning sickness but they were so incredibly endearing that it was all totally worth it.

Before long all twenty six were ready to graduate to the barn and not long after that we suffered our first casualty. It was our mystery chick, a White Crested Black Polish. I was devastated and immediately began planning my next order.

At six in the morning on the first of June last year I got the call from the post office that our fifty one chicks had arrived. The boys and I hurried in to get them. Mack and Seltz were old enough to be excited and I felt wise, confident, and more than a little excited myself. Then we got them home and found that one had died in transit and one had an injury it couldn't recover from. All of a sudden reality hit, I had a six month old playing in the nursery, two toddlers bouncing off the walls, anxious to see the chicks, a dead chick and one I had to kill. It was a really rough morning and more than once I wondered what on earth I had gotten myself into but by that evening the survivors had settled into their new home in the garage and were all doing well.

I delighted in doting on them, took pictures of each of them, and counted them nightly. After a few weeks I found that I could tell how they were doing by the pitch and frequency of their cheeping. There was a universal cheep for an escaped chick, and another for when they were running low on feed and yet another for waking up in the morning.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that the grown birds in our flock started off so tiny and fragile. They have each developed into such lovable animals with distinct personalities and I am thankful for each one of them.

My desire for a clothesline has occupied the majority of my thoughts today. Sadly, that desire, and all those thoughts aren't materializing into anything on their own.

There are a few things that have been slowing me down, not the least of which is where it should go. My initial idea was to put it in the backyard where we had one when I was a child.  It would get good sun and there are no trees in the way, but I think the animals would pose a significant problem. 

The goats are rather easily contained in their own yard, a sizable subdivision of the backyard, but to take advantage of their weeding abilities and to fill their bellies, we often let them graze in the acres behind the house. I am certain that given the chance they would do their best to tear clothes from the line and who knows what else.

I do not really want to shuffle goats from yard to yard every time a load comes out of the wash, but I can.  What I cannot do, nor do I care to, is control the movement of my dear chickens. They are truly free range and that means that all corners of the property (and some of the neighbors' as well) are theirs for the roaming. I am quite confident that my sweet birds would think a clothesline was the perfect place to take a rest in the afternoon, and where they rest they poop. That is not an environment I care to hang clean clothes in.

At this point somewhere in the front yard is seeming like my best option. The chickens are able to get in the front yard but they do it rarely. Our neighbor's flock spends more time there than ours do but I'm not too concerned with them, they pretty much only come over to eat and generally keep to themselves.

I don't typically get too bothered with appearances but something about something so conspicuous in the front yard kind of troubles me. I did some light reading about setting up a clothes line today and stumbled upon the idea of a removable pole. Making it possible to quickly dismantle and stash in the garage in the event that I am overcome with vanity or some other such emergency, makes the front yard locale much easier for me to stomach.  I think this would be significantly more work but also well worth it. 

So now, I think I know where it should be and the manner in which it should be installed, leaving just one last stumbling block. Am I at all capable of such a project?

I'll keep you posted.