Chickens on the brain is better than egg on your face, but I might have some of that soon, too.

My friend has me dreaming about chickens. And eggs. As I hope I have inflicted her with guity pangs every time she discards paper and plastic, she has invaded my thoughts every time I crack an egg (which we do a lot in my happy-homemade-baking house). I think I'm going to get on the chicken wagon.

The only thing that keeps me from being completely "Yay, chickens!" is the memory of my mother telling her chicken story: She was romanced by the thought of free, effortless eggs with chickens running playfully about the yard with her children. Until, she discovered all the chicken poop everywhere and one of them pecked at my oldest sister which commenced the shooting of the chickens. I have always had this image of a poultry blood bath in the backyard in defense of her baby. Probably not the way it happened, but at the very least it gives me a bit of grounding on the idea of chickens and that it might not be as care free and wonderful as it seems.

That said, I'm a girl that likes to find out things for herself even if I, too, end up shooting chickens. I've asked the Freecycle world for scrap building supplies, and I've been stalking backyardchickens.com for coop ideas. I really like the look of this coop. It's just tidy and seems so intentional. I figure if I'm going to have chickens, I want to do them justice and give them a nice home- the nicer you treat your chickens, the nicer they will treat you.

I've even put my higher conscience to work in my sleep. Seriously. I came up with a great idea the other night to remedy the "chickens pecked my baby" problem my mother encountered: In my dream, I built a run for the chickens using 4x4 posts and wired not only the outside, but the inside of the frame work so there was a good 4" or dead space between my darling, innocent children (who wouldn't dream of taunting a chicken) and the fowl beasts. I also attached hardware cloth to the bottom of the frame before I sunk it about a foot so Mr. Fox couldn't dig under for a midnight snack. I'm pretty smart in my sleep.

I plan to gather my supplies and build a coop and run this summer for a fun project with Sterling (first summer vacation ever) and actually get the shickens, as Royal calls them, in the spring. I'm thinking 6-8 birds so I can have about a dozen eggs a week. Tasty eggs, from birds we know, cage and cruelty free, right in our back yard- either that or a whole lot of chicken in the freezer. I'm sure there will be updates on my future chicken-farmer status.