Last One

Meet Last One.

For years, we had chickens.  If I had to guess, I would say probably nine of the ten years Josh and I have been together, we had chickens free roaming around the yard.  We started with the minimum order of 25.  Every spring, we would either incubate our own eggs or order a fresh supply of chicks.  By the time we combined the chicks with the older chickens, sometimes we would have as many as 70-80 birds running around the yard!  We had several dozen laying hens and the roosters from when we incubated.  By the time the older hens started dying off, the chicks were old enough to start laying.  We sold several dozen eggs every week and had a pretty good clientele of people who routinely stopped to restock their fridge.  I must say, we had chicken raising down pat! 

But.

Times change.  As our road got busier, especially with motorcycles, the hazards of the occasional chicken crossing the road became more than we were willing to take.  And as our kids are getting older, they need the barn for their animals instead of having it filled with chickens.  And probably the most important, Josh really REALLY does not like chicken poop in his shop.  So we made the decision to let the chickens go by just not restocking the flock.  And now they're all gone except this one.  The one Caleb has affectionately named Last One.

I'm not sure how Last One has survived this long without becoming chicken dinner for a coon, hawk or owl, who were our constant battles all those years.  She no longer gets put up at night.  Instead, she roosts on the basketball hoop.  Or the hood of the tractor, which drives Josh nuts.  She no longer gets fed, but eats with the cats.  She has to be laying eggs somewhere, but we haven't found any yet.  She just wanders the yard all day, clucking and being her lovely self.

While I'm not egg-zactly (hee hee, see what I did there?!) thrilled with not having chickens, there are some things I'm looking forward to being able to do now that I couldn't do when they were here.  The egg money let us do many things that we wouldn't have normally done.  Like Josh getting his big screen T.V. and paying for our day away trips.  (Yeah, the egg market was that good.... and we sold them cheap for farm fresh eggs!)  But now I can mulch the bushes without having the chickens scratch it apart.  And I won't have my garden half eaten up after I plant it.  And we won't hear the semis come to a screeching halt and honk their horns anymore for them to get out of the road.  So, I guess it's all good.

So, in honor of Last One (who thinks she's a cat)....