There are these moments

You sorta had to be there

There are these moments, they’re hard to explain, but perhaps you’ve experienced them too. Like the other day I was in the yard, taking out an old lavender bush and one of our hens, Handsome, was under my feet the whole time, waiting for spiders to fall.

At one point I stopped my hacking and looked at her–really looked at her. She was dappled with late afternoon sun, her fresh molted feathers glistening and speckled with bright gold patches of light. Sensing my attention, she stopped scratching and just looked at me. The sun caught her amber eye and made it beautiful and deep and somehow profound. And we just sat there, regarding each other for a long half moment. And in that small space of time, I realized how blessed I was to have this moment, outdoors, in the golden light, surrounded by the scent of dying lavender, with this strange and amazing creature by my side.

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10 Comments

  1. cool. did you feel that incredible, unspeakable sense of joy that sometimes happens during these moments?

    i love it when that happens.

  2. I have a dark Brahma (amongst others), who is the most loving creature. She follows me around, longs for pets, and will hop on my lap if given the opportunity. Consistently an amazement. I recently got a light brahma to see if it’s the breed or the bird… and it is extra friendly as well. I still say my dark Brahma is a loving creature and super-special though.

  3. Beautifully expressed! I can totally relate to that feeling. You made me miss my old chickens…I loved how they’d follow me around the yard during gardening chores.

  4. I read your post and felt a sharp tightening in the pit of my stomach. I live in town and had 5 beautiful gold laced wyandottes. They followed me all over the yard, came when I called them, each with her own lovely, quirky personality. And two nights ago two dogs out on a roam broke through our fence, knocked the side of the coop off, and killed four of our girls. I am nursing the last one, have adopted a hen pecked girl from a friend, and will get 3 more Monday night. Getting the new girls make my kids feel better, but I ache inside thinking about the ones that are gone.

    All this to say, I totally know what you mean. I appreciate each and every moment that happens. Life is good. Chickens make it even better.

  5. Kitchen Mama,

    I am so sorry for your loss. Erik sends his sympathies as well. What a terrible, shocking thing to go through. Wyandottes are such gorgeous birds, too.

    I hate it when people let their dogs roam. I love dogs more than anything, but when they get on their own and form packs they do bad things. But I’ll restrain myself from ranting more.

  6. I have a rhode island red named Geraldine I can always count on to be the first to escape the coop, the first to hop the wire fencing and scratch between the tomatoes, the first to belly-flop into a hole if I have the shovel out when they’re working over a bed for me. She was also the one who ran victory laps around the coop when I brought the girls home as chicks, making a Daffy Duck ‘woo hoo hoo hoo hoo!’ sound.

    She’s a sweet-natured hen, and the goofball factor suckered me in from day one. When I have the girls out for recess in the evenings, and she escapes from their temporary pen where I have them working over the dirt, I’ll usually just tuck her under my arm and we’ll walk around the yard a bit to work the curious out of her, and then she’ll go back in the pen and get back to scratching.

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