Hatching

Click!!

It has been quiet here in Tweddley Manor this week. Unusually quiet. Fergus, normally tip-tappy typing on the computer keyboard in his room, has been out working as an intern. And Lachlan who, in between going back and forward from school, generally mooches around complaining about the actual existence of school, has discovered a love of volleyball and is at practice early morning and late night.

So our little nest has been empty. The temporary silence broken only by the Arthur snoring in his dog bed, or the constant whirr of the egg incubator.

We are hatching chickens again. Because of course we are.

We first got chickens here in Tweddley Manor in 2020. Well, strictly speaking we got the eggs that became the chickens in May 2020. I’d been mindful that the talk of death at the time was both inside and outside our house, and so we needed something that signified newness and life.

I’d requested an egg incubator for my birthday in April -less because I’m the woman who has everything and more because I’m the woman who can obsess about anything.

We had just entered into lockdown as proper. Also I was going through frickin’ weeks of radiotherapy down the left side of my body from my neck to just under my chest. And I have to tell you, if there’s anything you want anyone to buy you ever, ask them when you’re going through radiotherapy during a global pandemic. Literally, I just had to look a tad vulnerable wearing a mask as I headed in for my daily sizzle, and Mark would have brought me anything under the sun to make it better.

Anyway, the short and the long of it was that when I said I wanted chickens for my birthday in April, he was powerless.

At the time, there was a hold on live chickens being sold in California, because they too had been going through a Pandemic called Newcastle virus. Mark and I used to laugh about the name at the time, saying it was just like Sunderland virus but classier (you may have to be a Geordie to understand that joke). Anyhow, there was a brief hold on chicken sales until the virus was signed off, but there was no problem with hatching your own chicks. So eggs and an incubator it was.

In May we filled it with eggs, and in June the baby chicks appeared. For a few weeks, they lived under a hot lamp in a big tub in the bath. Then, when they were grown, they moved into Cluckywood, the coop Mark had built.

It was a brilliant experience. One that made the lockdown for the kids a lot brighter. The new creatures were noisy. Daft. They were a breath of fresh air. There is nothing that will make you laugh quite so heartily as watching a young chicken dig up a June bug grub and then wonder what to do with it.

From the moment our first hatchee, Bruiser, emerged from her shell, we were hooked. We have been a full-blown chicken family ever since.

Genghis, our rooster, keeps the chickens in order, getting them out of the coup in the morning as soon as the electronic chicken door opens, and back onto the roosts at night before the door closes. They free-range around an area of the garden underneath hedge rows and into a wee clearing we call the paddock that’s full of bits of fake old Roman statues and a miniature statue of David.

The chickens are a proper little community, with their nesting box choices and their egg issues and their strange little personalities. Velma refuses to sleep in the coop, preferring to sleep on a roost outside in the run. Vera and Veronica like to lay their eggs in secret, which can lead to odd surprises, like the 40 eggs we recently found hidden behind the exclusion coop. And Genghis the rooster who is fearless in battle with his enemies, but likes to be hand fed treats on a daily basis, or he gets a little sad and sulks.

They have a whole load of pals in the area too. They’re friends with next door’s black cat, and friends with the Cooper hawk that sits on the wall sometimes waiting for squirrels. They’re friends with a whole murder of crows, and a wee plethora of sparrows who live in a nearby tree. They’re even friends with a local Opossum, as I found out the other night when Genghis had been cut short and missed curfew and he and Nuggets were out on the run when I went out to check. Also in the run was the Opossum who ran up a tree seeing the light from the torch, while Genghis and Nuggets both observed him like he was mental.

Every year, we add two or three chickens to the flock to keep them in varying age ranges and because chickens (even the happiest ones) don’t live forever.

Usually, we buy chicks from a supplier because when you’re hatching from eggs, the odds of hatching a rooster are obviously 50/50, and you can’t have more than one rooster in a flock. This means you have to find homes for your newly feathered baby roosters - which involves a whole lot of stressing to make absolutely sure your wee guy is heading to a coop and not a soup pot.

But this year, the incubator is out again. There’s no Newcastle virus (which is just like Sunderland virus but classier), but there is an outbreak of bird flu, so we don’t want to add to our flock from the outside.

In the silence of the unusually quiet Tweddley Manor, you can hear the incubator whirring. There are six eggs in there. Hopefully growing a couple of chickens and not one rooster.

It was no big decision.

Last Sunday we went to a friend's house to meet their baby grand daughter. She’s a perfectly lovely wee thing with a shock of dark curly hair, and an attitude that said, “You think I've opinions now. Wait till I start walking!”

It really was the loveliest wee gathering of friends. A whole assortment of ages, some people I knew more than others, but all cool people being friends of the hosts. And in the center of it all, this new wee life.

Looking at the world through her eyes: the excitement for a cuddly dinosaur, and the curiosity for a light up monkey, and the complete adoration for her Mum, it was impossible not to feel hope.

Then, just as we left, another guest heading to her car slid on the roots of a tree in the street and fell, hitting her head off the kerb. She was out cold, and 911 was called. Watching her waking up, dazed and confused to see herself strapped to a chair being loaded into an ambulance, there was no greater reminder of how fragile we really are. And watching the concern on our host’s face as the ambulance drove off with their friend and her sister, no greater reminder that we are always at our best when our hearts are full with love.

On Monday, hearing that the falling friend was fine, I had a little cry. Concussion and a dodgy knee seemed like a pretty good bargain considering how it had looked. I asked Mark if we should put some chicken eggs on to incubate, and he smiled and nodded. Life is fragile, and we are vulnerable, but how lucky we are to get to have the magical weirdness of just even being alive in the first place.

From time to time the world feels a bit much. Right now, I know so many who are struggling with the complete overwhelm of it all - myself included.

But in all of the noise, I do not want to forget what is beautiful. To notice what may be tiny but is also magnificent.

Like a baby and the adoration for her mother. A teenager swapping their disdain for school for a passion for volleyball. A grown man exhausted after work, looking at me with gratitude for a home cooked dinner through the same eyes that used to look at me with wonder when I held him as a tiny premature baby, only five minutes ago. Like a daft wee chicken spotting a June Bug grub for the first time and wondering what the hell it should be doing with it.

Because all things are fleeting. Not just the good things but the bad things too. There’s no point counting your chickens before they’re hatched, but there’s no point counting the roosters either. Nothing is forever, apart from change. No matter what destruction there may seem to be in the outside world, every moment, new hope is about to be born. And the solution to fear is finding joy at breathing life into new beginnings.

It has been quiet here in Tweddley Manor this week. Unusually quiet. I can see a time on the horizon when our little nest will empty. And my heart will break a little. But that is as it should be.

This temporary silence broken only by the sound of Arthur snoring, or the constant whirr of the egg incubator. How completely lucky am I.

Xo

PS: Every time you click on the wee heart emoji on this post to like it, then a chicken finds a June Bug Grub, and wonders what the Hell it’s supposed to do with it.

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Nuggets and Genghis bitching about Senga.

The Chicken Paddock