The Social Chain of Rural Life -

In the beginning of just about every version of Anne of Green Gables, there is a scene where Rachel Lind sees Mathew driving out in his Sunday best and she goes running over to Marilla’s to find out what he is up to, knowing that her neighbor never wears his Sunday best. Turns out this is exactly how living in rural Vermont is like. Nothing happens around here that the neighbors don’t all know about. In fact, there is an unwritten chain of contact, making sure they are all in the know. See someone new walking, let your neighbor know. Something shady going on, let your neighbor know and the entire neighborhood will be out to make sure nothing gets shadier. Get a new car, Joe from down the road knows about it before you even drive home.

So it didn’t surprise me in the least when word got out pretty quick about the tree that fell across the street. Today, neighbors came one by one, all day long, gathering wood from the tree for free firewood. We would have done the same, but we aren’t Vermont enough to have a chainsaw yet. Working on it.

In the meantime, our search for a carpenter isn’t going well. It appears it’s going to be awhile before we can start updates on the house. So, for the month of April, we are focusing on the outside of our homestead. This includes cleaning up our garden areas to be ready for planting our sprouts when it warms up and delving into the world of chickens. Including building our chicken area.

Last month we ordered our chickens. We found a chicken farm called Sugar Feather Farm (because how cute is that name?) owned by the self proclaimed “Chicken Guru”. I mean, who can beat chickens from a chicken guru, right? She had dozens of unique breeds of chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, quails and guineas. It was like a fowl melting pot. We saw and learned many things about raising chickens. Donovan even learned that the roosters like to “wrestle” with the hens every spring. Yep, super informative.

We ended up preordering 6 different types of chickens which we picked for their friendliness and laying abilities. We were sure to ask if they would cohabitant nicely together.

I picked an Easter Egger. Docile, fun Personality and lays eggs in colors of pink, blue, green, and aqua

For Tyler we picked a Chocolate Maran. Calm and quiet and known to lay eggs of a milk – dark chocolate color.

Calvin picked and Ayam Cemani or what he calls a “goth chicken” because it is entirely black. feathers, beak, face, legs, comb, all black. Apparently even their blood, bones, and organs are black. However, their eggs are white. It is a rare breed and thought to be good luck charms and have magical powers and can facilitate communication between the living and the dead. They are also intelligent, gentle and docile.

Donovan wanted something a little fluffier and picked out a Russian Pavloskaja. Another rare breed as at one point it was almost completely extinct. Known for their fluffy hair and legs. Sweet natured and social with white to pink eggs.

It took some convincing Tyler, but we also threw in a Serema which is the smallest chicken in the world. Because it was just so adorable. It’s friendly and likes human interaction but it’s eggs are so small, it takes 5 of their eggs to equal one regular egg.

So, to even it out, we got a Cream Legbar because it lays a large production of eggs which are robin’s egg blue. They are also friendly and good at foraging ticks.

The thing is, according to the “guru”, most of these breeds you can’t tell if they are roosters or hens until they are older. So, we have no idea how many hens we are actually getting. Which could be interesting.

Also, many people keep suggesting we allow them to be free range chickens because they greatly reduce the ticks in the area. However, we are very confused how to keep them on the land and safe from predators if they are roaming everywhere. Any advice would be great!

The chicks won’t be here until around mother’s day, so we have some time to prepare. But we are super excited about them.