14 May 2012

My secret fantasy


Have you ever tried to photograph chickens?!
Do you have a dream, a wish, something you’d really like to do with your life? Travel the world, climb a mountain, become a rock star?

Mine: I’d own chickens.

I’d have a chicken house – nothing fancy, just solid and safe from the weather and predators – and plenty of room for the chickens to scratch and forage and have dust baths to their hearts’ content.
I’d wander down on a sunny day (not a cloud in the blue sky) and collect a rustic-basketful of fresh eggs – maybe daubed with a little poo, a-flutter with a downy feather – for the morning’s baking or my evening omelette. I’d feed the girls – only half a dozen or so; some chocolate brown in colour, some speckled ginger, others pristine white with black necklaces – I’d feed them wheat and silverbeet and fruit and table scraps. Talk to them and listen to their cackles and calls, and feel calm
and contented.

I would love chickens but I have a suburban backyard that I don’t think has the space chickens deserve. My vegie garden takes up probably 40-50% of the land; I cannot conceive of a good area for them.  Also, there are neighbourhood cats; I’d have to build a huge protective enclosure for them, and where’s the romance (or freedom) in that? It would be like Alcatraz; depressing.

Finally, I get rats every autumn – I don’t want to further entice these nasty vermin in with a year-round supply of chicken feed.

I went to a chicken show with mum and dad recently and my fantasy chicken life flared up again as I wistfully admired the pretty hens and fierce roosters. I picked up brochures on how to keep chickens in suburbia.

But I realised later that night it was just not practicable.

So I content myself with chicken shows, and visiting mum and dad’s chickens (as I did this weekend), saying hi to the girls and collecting their adorned eggs. And thinking, one day.
My mum's chickens. And mum.


4 comments:

  1. Chickens. Sigh. I would also love them. We've got enough room (just) but we share that room with a boisterous border collie, and given half an inch she'd happily tear a chicken apart.

    So, it's not going to happen anytime soon sadly. One day. Loving your blog by the way! I grew up in Hobart but live now in Brisbane. Nice to get a hit of home.

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  2. Hello and nice to meet you! it's so lovely to have a 'stranger' read (and for following, thank you) especially as i am brand new to this. i laughed when you mentioned the 'hit of home' - i bet at this time of year, you don't miss tassie winters! see you round :-)

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  3. Seems like so many people have chicken dreams! Princess Leia is an awesome chicken name by the way :)

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