Coming home to Roost

Back in my Peirce Community College days I discovered a sever disdain for chickens.  Stupid creatures that made a ridiculous amount of noise and filth.  Every evening as I finished up my classes in the AG department I would hear those noisy chickens clucking up a racket.   I decreeded that I could easily end the life of a chicken  and then eat it because I would never have an attachment to a chicken.   But then came the 30acres..... and the idea of farm fresh eggs every morning.  I stubbornly held onto the fact I could Kentucky fry a chicken without remorse.  So I seriously started researching laying chickens and after much deliberation with myself decided on adding chicks to our budding farm.  I asked for a chicken coop for my 34th birthday and then ordered 20 baby chicks from an online website called efowl.  5 Easter Eggers for their beautifully colored eggs and 15 winter strong, friendly and reliable egg layers.  This morning all 20 arrived in a box at our tiny local post office and it's really hard to feel nothing, but the warm and fuzzes for these little peeps.  I'm now calling them my fuzzy babies and checking on them obsessively in their homemade brooder that occupies a corner of my husbands office....which is in our house.  The coop doesn't arrive till next week, but it doesn't matter because those little chicks are quite content for the time being underneath their heat lamp.

Chicks enjoying their first meal after joining the Johnson farm.

(I've been told that this picture looks like the chicks are in a microwave, but rest assured that it's just the heat lamp that gives that impression.)

A Dream finally realized

After much conversation during our courtship and then marriage, our family finally has settled in Northwestern Pennsylvania.  It all started 7years ago when my husband and I met thanks to my sister and now BIL.  Tom and I easily connected because we both had grown up in Ohio and had a great desire to return to the Pennsylvania/Ohio area to live.  When we married in 2008 that joint dream became our five year plan and moving was a frequent topic of conversation with our family.  In all honesty it didn't really ever seem like it would be a reality...too much had to happen and fall into place.   But then this winter a series of unfortunate events in our extended family lead to our dream finally becoming a reality.   I can't ever thank the person whose misfortune helped finally push us out of California, but I am sure she is looking down from above.  

Thank you Aunt Doreen.