They're Here!!

Chickens.

Lovely, red wattled, brown feathered chickens.

The girls are so excited. I am so excited! And Archie just doesn't know what to do with himself. He spent the afternoon trying to warn me that they were in the backyard, and guarding the backdoor in case one tries to sneak in.

Not that they would. They refuse to leave their coop. I can relate. 

I'm sure they will venture out tomorrow. Peanut saved her dinner scraps as an enticement. We tucked them in to sleep tonight, and as I was bathing the kids we heard them bok-boking as they went off to sleep. It was such a lovely sound.

We collected the chickens this afternoon from Bellchambers Produce. It is THE quaintest shop I could ever imagine. 

It has a totally unassuming entrance, way back from the road in an industrial area. Inside, there are huge bins of grain, sacks layered on pallets and a couple of cats lazing around to keep the mice down. The calenders on the wall date from the 1940s. The floor is covered in wisps of straw, and your bill is totaled on scrap paper by an elderly country gent who knows everything there is to know about chickens.  (He was very kind to me when he realised I had no practical experience with chickens. I chided Peanut for playing with some stuff in a tub, while asking him if he had shell grit. He did. It was in the tub... There is only so far books and internet videos will take you!)

So we loaded the hens up into a box and brought them home. Bug and her best mate Archibald were desperate to get into the pen and have a poke and a sniff, respectively, but after a quick meet and greet they were banished outside the fence so the hens could settle in. Bug kept tapping the gate and saying "knock knock Mama! Knock?"

The really nice thing about the chicken pen location is I can sit and watch them from my sewing room window. You know, if they ever come out of the damn coop!