A Year In Review

Three hundred and sixty four days ago I turned forty-nine and started this blog. The whole aim of the blog was to set myself a challenge that, while doing, would prevent me from slipping into a 'woe is me--I'm so old' mentality. And on that, I can say I succeeded. No, I didn't hit the magical number of fifty in all my categories. And I'm okay with that. My challenge, my grading scale.

To summarize:

I read way beyond my targeted fifty books, although I nowhere near hit twenty-five classics. Classics are time consuming. Sometimes very beautifully descriptive, but not a quick read. It can take them a whole chapter describing what a meadow looks like, and I must admit my mind wanders a bit to my grocery list, or some other task that needs doing. I also discovered speed reading the Bible is probably not likely to confer upon one wisdom and spiritual enlightenment. I proceed along with this at a more prayerful and respectful pace.

I have truly enjoyed visiting new places. The sense of curiosity I felt as I ventured into a new place was, in a way, childlike. And it didn't matter if it was a gift store or a restaurant or a hiking trail. It was new to me and I delighted in the discovery.

In the foods eaten category--I did my best. The difficulty came in trying to find something new to try. I wanted to try foie gras, but couldn't find a restaurant nearby that served it. I have to admit, in my kitchen right now is tofu (no I've never eaten it), seaweed (had sushi maybe once) and sake. Even if I went right now and sampled those three, I still would not reach the fifty. But hey, I tried. And I know that in the future, I will say yes to weird foods, as long as they are gluten free. And not too stomach turning. I mean, really, there's a sense of adventure and then there's just plain disgusting.

The things learned category was actually the hardest to quantify. I suppose I could go to the dictionary right now and find a handful of words I didn't know and top off the list, but what's the point? What I discovered is that as long as you push yourself into uncharted territory, learning happens. I didn't know last October that I would be a chicken owner. All the learning involved with that alone I feel allows me to say sure, I've learned fifty things.

And now onto contests. I see these contests in magazines and hear about them on the radio, and
wonder, does anyone ever really win any of those? And the answer to that is YES. I have known people who have entered and won contests. I haven't personally, but I have come close. And so it is with great humility that I announce that I was a finalist in the Vlasic Pickle contest. And the winner of $100. I found out this morning, and what a fitting and slightly weird way to end this year.

For those of you who have stuck it out with me on this journey, I thank you and ask you to check back to this site in the future. I haven't yet determined what direction to take the blog, but you all will be the first to know. Till then keep dancing.

Dashing Toward the Finish Line

Birthday countdown is rushing toward single digits and I am scrambling to complete the lists. I may not be successful but I'm going down fighting.

I have recently sampled Arugula and some Trader Joe's baby greens. How did I miss the Arugula craze? I must have spent the last decade in a cave. I liked it okay, no big drum roll, though. The baby greens made for a cute salad, and really, don't we love it when our food is cute?

We journeyed over the mountain to the far eastern side of the state to visit family and along the way went to quite a few places I have never been.

We went rollerskating and I channeled my inner fifteen year old. What a blast to feel the breeze in my face as I gained confidence and sped up. It was possible I looked like a fool, but guess what? One of the few things that is good about getting older is the worry about what people will think of me is practically nonexistent. I had fun and that's all that mattered.

We spent the next morning across the state line in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. We walked the longest floating boardwalk, browsed some of the cool shops, and ate lunch at the Bonsai Bistro. Thank you Bonsai for the extensive gluten free choices. Eating out can truly be a pain when you're gluten free, and having a restaurant understand this is a blessing. On the way back, we spotted a nut factory and zipped off the freeway to check it out. This was my kind of day. No real schedule, no plan, just wander where you want and go into any place that catches your eye. Perfect.

The next day our daughter-in-law took me to one of the best places on the planet. Greenbluff. It is an area of around thirty farms in an easy driving loop, that feature gift shops, U-pick orchards and farmstands. I could have spent the entire day or even week exploring and spreading my oh-so-endless stack of cash around to as many of them as possible. Thank you, Sarah. This may have been a new place visited for me, but I guarantee I will be back.

Vlasic Pickle Anyone?

I have spent the last eleven months attempting to check off fifty things on several different lists. A silly feat I set myself on my forty ninth birthday so as to have something to occupy my time in the twelve months leading up to this momentous and somewhat depressing birthday.

As is evident from the lists, some things are easier to accomplish than others. I have been entering contests as I find them trying desperately to get to fifty. I initially included this category because I was interested to see if anyone actually ever wins one of these. I had always had a sneaking suspicion that I never won anything because I just wasn't diligent enough. So I figured that if I at least entered fifty of them, then I upped my chances somewhat. So far I still haven't won anything. Maybe I'd be better off buying a lottery ticket. Who knows?

I do rather have my hopes up today as I entered the Vlasic pickle contest. Now I know I might be spoiling my chances by talking about it before the deadline passes, but that's the kind of person I am. I love living on the edge.

Along with the pickle contest, I managed to check off a few more things today by going to the Chehalis garlic festival where I sampled garlic ice cream and garlic peanut brittle. Both of which were very tasty and not at all odd, surprisingly enough. All in all a successful day.

A View From the Clouds

I have always wanted to live the road less traveled kind of life, but have never really done it. Last night, however, I got a little closer. For my husband's fiftieth birthday I surprised him with a night in a treehouse. It was a taste of childhood magic, high up in a cedar tree. Our own eagle's aerie for a night. A trickling creek sung us to sleep and the foggy morning light coming in the skylight gently woke us up.

The man who built this treehouse and the even higher observation tower is truly living the road less traveled kind of life. He actually lived in the treehouse for a couple of years, and although he lives on the ground now, he has more treehouse projects underway. He explained some of the planned construction then guided us up and around the many stairs and across the bridge to heaven and finally into the tower. The only thing that gave me pause was a hint of motion sickness as you feel a definite swaying as a breeze hits.

I may usually travel the well beaten path of life, but every now and then I plan on veering off, because the thrill of the unknown cannot be beat.

Is This Candid Camera?

Life happens while you're waiting for life to happen. Ever notice that? We spend a lot of time waiting for something big to happen and we actually miss out on all the little things that make up the fabric of our lives.

I've been trying for quite some time to be more aware of just being present in my life. Not waiting for something. And it's funny, when you are in that heightened sense of awareness, things stand out at you. You notice the feel of the sun on your skin--not unusual for me as I move my lawn chair clear across the grass or driveway to continue to be in the path of the setting sun--or the smell of someone down the street setting off their leftover fireworks.

Then there are things that even a totally dense person would notice. Like coming home from having your hair cut in the morning and seeing your husband in the backyard with livestock. Oh, not the livestock that you know you own, like chickens. But much bigger livestock that you had never in your wildest dreams thought you'd see in your backyard. Like COWS!! But such is the fabric of my life.

We are at full on wedding central mode at my house with ribbons and ring bearing pillows and cases of wine, and we have cows in our backyard!! An hour or so of munching and a couple of phone calls to neighbors (who really do you call when you have cows in your backyard?) and one extremely large pile of cowpie, and the intruders were off from whence they came.

And in all the hullabaloo I almost forgot to mention that one of our lovely ladies came of age on Monday the 12th and left us a fine gift. Our very first egg. And that's our life, folks. Crazy and a bit surreal, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

When Life Hands You Mint--Make Mojitos!

Five years ago we moved into our house and one of the things that swayed our purchase decision was the size of the property--nine-tenths of an acre. There are times when I suspect we bit off more than we can chew.

These grounds have a life of their own. Oh, we attempt to show them who is the boss and whip them into order, but they laugh at us and go right on proliferating their weeds and dropping their leaves and sending their thorny shoots everywhere.

And then there is the mint. At first I loved the mint, but then it took over a little garden plot and I was forced to do fierce battle with it. I ruthlessly cleared the whole lot of it. For a few moments I felt guilty, and I bore the smell of my murderous assault with shame.

Well. Do not spend too much time mourning the loss of the mint, as it has had the last laugh. This year it has sneakily sprung up from between the cracks of a brick landing around our deck. It stands tall and proud, and vibrantly healthy. And I did what any reasonably sane person would do. I surrendered; then plucked a few leaves and made mojitos.

A word about mojitos. I had had one once and hated it. It tasted like a very sweet toothpasty medicine. But I had a bunch of mint and a bunch of limes and a desire to make a beautiful marriage between the two. And I discovered it's like all marriages--the key is balance. You must achieve the perfect blend between the intensely sweet simple syrup, the sour limes and the, well, minty mint. And then, like all marriages, it takes some muddling. But it's worth the effort.

Playing Catch Up

You remember the trailer to the Flintstone's where Fred is desperately running on the treadmill? Well, that's what I feel like life is like. Sometimes the treadmill is turned on low and it isn't difficult to keep up, but other times it is switched on hyper drive.

I think there are some people that thrive on being busy. They love the activity level of scurrying around from here to there. I am not one of those people. I like long unbroken periods of quiet, reflective time. I am drawn to houses with those wide, covered porches. I picture afternoons reading and evenings chatting with friends and family with a glass of fresh lemonade or wine or hot chocolate.

So I am doing my best right now not to get flung off the treadmill and so far I am succeeding, although things like a blog post keeps getting shuffled to the bottom of the to-do list.

Quick update: Had a very brief but enjoyable trip to Oahu. Waikiki was too populated for me and traffic was intense, but a much more peaceful feeling was reached outside of the main cities.
Five airports later arrived in Albuquerque for a wedding and catching up with family. It was great to see everyone.

Now it's our turn to host family for our daughter's wedding and I am having to keep and update lists and jog with occasional bursts of outright running lest I go sailing. But at least I have a porch (albeit narrow) and a chilling bottle of wine. Cheers.

Books That Waste Your Time

Fairly frequently I start a book, get a few chapters into it and decide it's not interesting enough to continue. Since I started this challenge, however, I was reluctant to do this, thinking I was already halfway into it and I wasn't sure if I would have enough time to read the 50 I committed to, so I forced myself to finish them.

Not this week. In fact, I started two books that had a cuteish idea but really not enough substance for an entire book. One was about a guy that went all over the world to sample all the different kinds of oysters. Now wishing I were an oyster lover, I checked it out from the library, eager to be entranced. Sadly this did not happen. While I still want to try them again, (no I never do learn my lesson) the descriptions he used over and over was sweet and briny, and I got about halfway through the book and thought, "this should have been a short essay, not a book."

The other book was a guy writing about his experiences working in upscale retail. Selling handbags. Once again, not enough material for a book. Once again I stopped halfway. While he was a little amusing, his use of language veered too much into the four letter category for my taste. And seriously folks, how much is there to say about rich women buying expensive purses? Oh, yeah, in the upscale handbag world the word 'purses' is outlawed. So now you know.

The exciting reason that I didn't have to finish these books was I will easily surpass the fifty book mark by my fiftieth birthday. The other categories I doubt, and I'm not sure how much I will even try at this point.

Here's my take on that:
1. I made the rules and I can break them!
2. Entering stupid contests just gives everyone your email address
3. Entering important contests takes $$ and a lot of time
4. Trying to measure what you've learned is impossible unless you take some sort of course
5. It is really hard to find 50 things I've never eaten.
6. It is great fun going to 50 new places, so I'm off to Oahu where I'm sure to add to this category!!

Bye.

The Big Move

Late Saturday afternoon we moved the chickens into their new home. It was fairly easy to catch the first two, but then word got out and the other ten huddled out of reach, squawking and flapping their wings, requiring much kneeling in poop and entering a two foot high cage (by my husband) to catch the rest. We carried them two by two, then four by four in their original plastic tote condo (two joined together with a pass-through) and set them free in chicken heaven--their new outdoor space. It is ten by twenty feet and a little ramp access chicken door leads to their indoor house, which is nine by six with four nesting boxes and a two-level perch.

They loved the outdoor space but avoided the ramp and the ominous dark space beyond like they'd seen it on an episode of the Twilight Zone. It was getting late and we were beyond tired. Like all parents we were anxious for them to go to bed. We hung their old heat lamp in hopes that it would be a familiar and comforting sight and act as a chicken night light but when that didn't work we resorted to chasing them again and heaving them in. Gently, of course. And then we spent the rest of the evening worrying that they were flailing about crushing each other. We set the clock for five a.m. and went out and opened the chicken door to let them out. They were sound asleep but made an appearance later that morning. That night it took awhile but all of them made it inside without any aerobics on our part. A peaceful night was had by all.

A Class Act

So it was to be an evening of culture and education. A night of discussion about the impact of digital media on filmmaking. We were there early and decided to have a drink in the bar. One minute I was walking and the next I was fighting for balance, as my left foot slid left, and my right one went God knows where. For a brief minute of suspended animation I thought I was safe. Then gravity kicked in and I went down. Hard. There was a collective gasp from the other bar patrons, as I hurried to my feet and pretended I was okay. I could only thank God that my little name tag that said, "Hello, my name is..." was hidden by my jacket. And truly folks this happened before the complimentary wine reception at the end of the evening.

The rest of the evening found my mind wandering to how I could fit that scene into my writing. Weird, but that's what you do when you're a writer. Incorporate your life into your fiction. However, I usually prefer the laughs to be at someone else's expense. But hey, you take your material where you find it and run with it.

Arches and Weddings

I just returned from the beautiful wedding of my niece and new nephew in St. Louis where I hope the wild night of dancing balanced out the nonstop intake of delicious food and adult beverages, but I'm not stepping on the scale to find out.

We also ventured into space, or at least it felt like it, by ascending the St. Louis arch. What an engineering marvel, but definitely not for the phobics of the world. The little windowless round pod that seats five urchins comfortably or five humans uncomfortably whisks you to the top in four minutes, so you can peer out the angled windows at the vista below. The sight out the windows is beautiful; the sight of seventy rear ends leaning in an arched row is less so, but rather funny.

And we followed that up with a Cardinals baseball game where they showed off for us West Coasters by hitting a grand slam in the seventh inning. All in all an enjoyable trip.

Green, Yellow and White

I walked through a typical grocery store produce aisle the other day and realized that I had tried almost all of them. That is either a pretty good feat or an indication that our grocery store has a limited selection. I choose to believe the former.

So I decided to peek at the cheese counter although I am on what I refer to as a dairy light diet. I would probably do better to be on a dairy free diet, but what can I say? I love cheese. So I try to be judicious about amounts and frequency and then listen to my body.

I chose something called Asadero, which was milky colored and mild and --I'm sorry Asadero makers--rather boring. I also picked a French Mimolette which was much more interesting. A medium sharp flavor that went well with one of my all time favorite red wines, Menage a Trois. Don't be fooled by the risque name, this is a wine you can drink in public.

Tonight I will experiment with mustard greens. I'm thinking of caramelizing some onion, then wilting or sauteing the greens. And a dash of kosher salt, then taste and adjust seasonings as necessary.

Long Time No Write

Beware all of you crazy people out there who want to set yourself a goal of doing something big. It is hard. Or rather, it is hard if you think you want to have your normal routines at the same time.

Life and chickens have a way of getting in your way. These little guys are growing quickly, and I have a sneaking suspicion that most of them are male. And that breaks my heart because they are two of my favorites. The one pictured above seems to like us a lot (maybe not after tonight!) and is always curious when we approach them. By the way, they are now being housed in the garage as they were getting too big for the Rubbermaid totes and yet our weather is still way too cold for them to survive outdoor temperatures.

Anyway, when I set myself this task of doing 50 things from a variety of lists, I thought, "I can do this. It would be about 1 a week." But real life has a way of getting in the way of the best of plans. Maybe you're tired, or busy or just have an overall case of the Ida wannas.

Whatever it is, I am rapidly approaching the halfway mark and I am nowhere near halfway on mostly all of my lists. Hmm.

On the plus side, I have no doubt at all that I will indeed read fifty books by my fiftieth birthday. And that, at least, is an achievment I can be proud of. The rest-we'll have to see. I still have six months. Wish me luck!

More of the Chicks

Baby chicks poop a lot. Which is a good thing. Trust me on this. Because when something plugs this up it could mean the death of a baby. Those in the know call it pasty vent or pasty butt. And I am now counted among those in the know. Cute little bundles of fluff with a wad of excrement glued to their rear and it was up to me, their mother, to remove it. Think dried on meconium for those familiar with that unlovely substance, or gum in the hair for the rest of folks.

Ah, the lot of mothers. My daughter-in-law has spent the day dealing with a prodigiously and violently ill offspring, and the resultant mountain of laundry, which puts my little bottom wiping in perspective. As in most things, if we knew then what we know now...

Good thing infantile beings are so cute.

Our Family Has Expanded

Once again I am
experiencing the thrill and joy of new motherhood in my life, and like every new mother cannot get enough of the sight of my young. I find myself peeking in and gazing with awe and love at my newborns.

I love the sound of their tiny voices and watching them sleep and play. They are adorable. And I hover like the mother hen that I am, checking to see that they can drink, but not drown, and know how to peck at their food and not their sibling. I am truly the mother hen--to twelve new chicks. I ordered ten and got a free promotional chick; the twelfth one must be a stowaway.

I set out this year to do a few specific things. At that time I had no inkling I would be raising chickens a few short months later. As far as learning fifty new things, I think on chickens alone I have accomplished that. And I have no doubt that these fluff balls will continue to teach me in the coming months. And I look forward to it. Gotta run, I have a family to check on.

Just a quick clarification for my followers. If you see an asterisk by one of the books I've read, it means it is classic literature. As you will soon realize, there are very few of those. I now have no doubt that I will be able to read 50 books by October, but I am less certain of whether I will be able to fulfill the requirement that half of them be a work of classic literature.

There are essentially two reasons for this. One: many of the classics are dense and wordy and take an unearthly amount of time to wade through, therefore me slowing down. And two: I am maybe not high-brow intellectual enough when faced with a stack of books, to choose the lit. It's a personal flaw that I am working to overcome. So now you know.

A Feast of Roasted Vegetables

My quest for eating fifty somethings I have never eaten before once again took me to the vegetable section of the grocery store and local fruit and vegetable store and I brought home a fennel bulb. I have never eaten one before, not so much because I hadn't heard of them, but because I really do not like the flavor of licorice.

But this year is all about pushing myself. Out of my comfort zone and experiencing new things. Which has been very enlightening. I've always known I like change. But I've liked it on my own terms. I hate when things at work get changed; it's hard to stay current and the change usually involves taking something easy and quick and turning it into something infinitely more time consuming and difficult.

So I took my fennel bulb, cut it in half, added a whole leek chopped in big pieces and a few carrots, slathered everything in olive oil and kosher salt and roasted them in a 400 degree oven till things started smelling like a chef lived here. I had to take the leeks out early because they cooked faster than the fennel, and I snuck a few bites, just to taste test. I've had leeks in soups before so I was surprised at the intensity of flavor that roasting brought out.

When a fork stabbed into the fennel with ease, I declared it done, and fixed myself a plate. And yes, it does taste like licorice. But a mild and sweet version. Along with the carrot and the leek, it was a melding of interesting flavors. One I highly recommend.

Don't Whine When You Write A Memoir

Some of the books I have read lately have been memoirs. A memoir can be a great way to get a glimpse into someone else's life and walk in their surroundings for awhile. Some memoirs can be profound and powerful as the author/protagonist faces a life threatening illness or overcomes some other huge life challenge. And some can be about a life experience I can only dream about, like "Under the Tuscan Sun."

What I have discovered about myself is, drumroll please, I hate it if the author is a whiner. Now I can tolerate the kind of whining where people recount a miserable experience where they run out of gas, and get splashed by mud and dumped by their boyfriends all in the same day, or something like that. I usually end up relating to them and feeling empathy. What I can't stand are the type of whiners like the authors of "Julie and Julia" and "The Saucier's Apprentice." These are two pathetic people who wrote books that should have been interesting if it weren't for the fact that they squandered all the good will I had for them when I started reading by moaning and complaining and making me very glad that I wasn't stuck in a cross country airplane next to them.

And the sad thing about it is they probably don't even have the insight to realize that they come across that way. Just a word of advice to all prospective memoirists out there: when you're done proofreading, give it one more read-through. And keep an ear out for excessive use of woe-is-me narrative. If Gilda Radner can tell me about her battle with cancer and do it in a way that makes me laugh and want to have her over for dinner, then certainly a guy who got to spend four months in Italy and France taking cooking lessons surely should be able to.

Love Letters to Pudding

One of the hardest parts of this challenge is finding contests to enter and then sitting down and knocking them out. There are a bunch of easy ones, and I'll resort to them eventually. But they are also not very interesting. One of the reasons I included contests as a category was because it would force me to get creative.

This contest allowed me to do that, in a strange and possibly cheesy way. Kozy Shack pudding has a contest that requires you to write a personal ad to eleven different pudding products. So far I have completed five. It doesn't sound that hard at first until you try to find enough different adjectives to describe chocolate pudding. And I'm pretty sure, silky, smooth, velvety and rich are a bit overused. I may have to make a pudding run to help spark the imagination.

On another note, I made a homemade cream of celery soup with apples and blue cheese topping. It was rather bland except for the blue cheese. My husband said it was like being fed air. We both hit the pantry later in the evening scavenging for snacks.

The Joy of Veggies

One day I was wandering up and down the aisles at the grocery store, trying to find food items I had never eaten before. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that I have to eat gluten free and a lot of prepared foods have hidden gluten ingredients in them. Growing a little depressed, I went back to the produce department and hunted.

I came out with watercress, a rutabaga and collard greens as well as a bunch of more common vegetables. Last night I made a big pot of vegetable soup using frozen liquid from tomatoes that I had processed last summer. (When making spaghetti sauce, or salsa I skim off a lot of the tomato juice as it's cooked down and freeze it for soup base)

The soup was delicious and I felt particularly virtuous when I thought of all those antioxidants and vitamins coursing through my body.

I did a little research and I found out that watercress is one of the most healthful foods out there. It has a high vitamin content and has been used historically to keep military troops healthy. It may have the ability to repair damaged DNA. I'll probably do a little more research, but I know that I'll continue to eat it.

What's funny is that yesterday while my soup was bubbling away, I turned on the TV and Dr. Oz was talking about anti'aging type of foods (colorful vegetables), and Oprah had the author Michael Pollan on talking about food, and how much of what we eat is edible food-like products--not actual food. His motto is, "eat food, mostly plants, not too much."

That night when I ladled out the beautiful soup for my husband and daughter, I felt a sense of pride that I was feeding them nutritious food. I know this because the TV told me so!!

In Search of Nesting Boxes

While perusing the ads in the farm and garden section of Craigslist, I saw an ad for nesting boxes for sale. I clicked on the ad, saw the pictures. They looked pretty good to me and I thought how buying these would save a lot of time, as there is already a fair amount of coop construction ahead of me.

I called farmer Paul and got directions that sounded a little like this, "now go aways past the four-way stop, ignore the streets that come up on you on the left, go up the hill, then down the hill and when you see the sign for a hard 90 degree turn, go straight, it will be a dirt road, look for the orange barrels. I scribbled as fast as I could, then did what any 21st century person does. Mapquested it.

Now mapquest is great. Mostly. But I warn you now, when you are entering into the country DO NOT RELY on it! It seemed so much more straight forward than farmer Paul's directions, but it took us down a dirt track, pothole infested, car and old appliance cemetery private driveway. I was seriously afraid that we were doomed to be on the 5 o'clock news. "Local Couple Vanishes Without a Trace." We u-turned in the driveway and high tailed it out to the main (I use the term loosely) road. My husband asked, "how many shotguns do you think were trained on us?" And I am sure my answer, "at least one" was accurate.

We then turned to Paul's directions and eventually found the farm. The theme from Deliverance began running through my head. And I felt a little like one of those moronic teenagers that always go into the scary, dark basement in a horror movie when there is a mad murderer on the loose, because we got out of the car and looked at the nesting boxes. Made with warped lumber and raw splintery edges, it looked nothing like the pictures. There was some rough handling of a dog, and hollering at a kid who was seriously developmentally delayed, and a trickle of a nosebleed of farmer Paul's that stained his white mustache pink and I had had enough. We hightailed it a second time before we got fed to the pigs.

I think the rest of the evening involved showering with loads of hot water and at least one glass of wine. All this and we don't even have the chickens yet!

All About Chickens

For a couple of years now I have been dabbling with the idea of keeping a few backyard chickens. Which is a curious sort of yearning for someone raised with both feet firmly entrenched in the the suburbs. Inertia or common sense has in the past been what prevented me from carrying this niggling idea into reality.

Until now. Now, of course, I am looking for ways to expand my life's experiences, knowledge and abilities and what better time to take the plunge and raise a few laying hens?

So I am researching how to do this. There are a surprising number of things to consider. I always thought it would be pretty simple. Throw them in the backyard, construct a simple coop and wait for the eggs to be laid. I pictured snipping a few chives from the garden and gathering a few eggs, and I was minutes from a scrambled egg breakfast.

Which may be the case somewhere down the road. Seems you order day old baby chicks and pick them up from the post office, then hurry them home to a prewarmed brooder, teach them how to drink and nurture them like a mother hen (now I see where that phrase came from) until they are able to scratch around on their own.

For those of you concerned about chickens having a free range lifestyle you also must consider keeping them safe from predators. Wily ones like raccoons that can undo latches, and soaring ones like hawks that can snatch them up. I am not entirely sure I can provide that level of safety, but I'm game to try. I am busy studying books, and coop designs, and websites full of information. And with a little luck I will have my first eggs in late summer. I'll keep you posted.