I guess I’m a real farm girl now. I have baby chicks in my kitchen. Their adorable little peeps fill up our house. Ruthie loves to watch them. (Just wait until next year…!) But they get a little worried when she cries.

We went to the feed store yesterday morning to see about ordering the Bard Rock chicks we wanted. But there was this adorable little potpourri of pullets just waiting for us to take them home right then and there… And we couldn’t resist. So there is now a big stock tank next to the kitchen table, home to 9 Golden Sexlinks, 10 Black Sexlinks, 4 Ameraucanas, 1 “Crested Special”, and the 2 lonely Bard Rocks they had. We’ll do all Bard Rocks next year, and maybe Buff Orpingtons the next–we’ll just know that the variety batch was from spring 2008!

Remember the little fluffy yellow chicks they sold one Easter–when you put your finger over the little sensors on their feet, they made little peeping noises? Well…our baby chicks sound just like them. And the Golden Sexlinks are just about the same color, just a little bigger. (Sexlink varieties, for those of you not into chicken lingo, simply mean that it’s easy to tell the boys from the girls, because the girls are all golden, or black, or red, depending on the breeding. Otherwise, it’s a lot harder to tell the pullets from the cockerels, and you may end up eating a lot of the birds you bought for laying purposes! All of the other varieties we bought were supposed to be pullets, but they can be wrong.)

So we have embarked upon the adventure of chick farming. At least we got to start with chickens, so we know what headstrong things these adorable little babies grow up to be. Otherwise I might become a bit more attached… It’s a pity one can’t train chicks like you can children. Several chickens always roost in their nesting box, which equals dirty eggs from that nesting box. And then there’s the dears who are always making messes right in front of my front door, and digging up my rhubarb shoots! Ah yes, they are adorable now…but it’s a good thing they lay eggs when they get older, or I might not keep them.

But for now, we’re having fun watching them every spare moment we have. And looking forward to teaching Ruth how to carefully hold them when it come time for chicks next year.