Moon over Martinborough

I just wanted blue eggs. That’s the reason I’m out here in the dark this morning, as a bone-chilling autumn rain pelts me furiously on all sides. I’m carrying a red bucket in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

I trudge forward. Already it’s 6:15am. I have to be in the shower by 6:30 to get ready for work. I have to be quick.

The girls in a line-up

Six months before, I decided I wanted chickens. But not just any chickens. I’d read about a breed called Araucana – an old South American breed that lays pale blue eggs.

Blue eggs! How fantastic! I imagined a bowl of farm-fresh, blue eggs on the kitchen counter as I chopped veggies for omelettes on a Sunday morning.

I never thought about the dark, cold mornings of fall and winter, or the icy rains.

The old chook house

The only place we had for poultry was an old, rotting chook house. (Chickens are ‘chooks’ in this neck of the woods.) It was up near the main house, just on the other side of the Granny Smith apple tree. You could see it from our bedroom window.

Priscilla, who we bought the property from, used to keep free range chooks in that chook house. We met Priscilla after we moved in.

“Did the chickens get in the garden?” I asked her one day, after I’d started contemplating blue eggs.

“Yes,” she said. “I had to fence everything. And sometimes they went up on the front deck and pooped there.” She turned up her nose.

I’m still a city boy at heart. I didn’t think I could handle chickens living that close to me.

The Communist Egg Collective

We moved the chook house out into the top paddock next to the hayshed. Our Wellington city friends helped us do it one weekend when they were visiting – afterwards declaring themselves to be the ‘Communist Egg Collective’ because in return for their labor they wanted fresh eggs from any future chickens.

Next, Rick asked our friend Fred to help him build a large chicken run. (Although I suspect that Rick held nails and coached while Fred, who is a proper builder, built us a chicken run.) After re-cladding the old chook house from top to bottom in new plywood, it was tidy and weatherproof once again.

Rick called it ‘The Chicken Palace,’ it was so deluxe.

The hunt for Araucana

Having finally secured appropriate accommodation for our future chickens, I began looking for an Araucana breeder, but it wasn’t as easy as I’d thought. None of the local breeders had them.

Only after searching high and low was I finally able to order two Lavendar Araucana online from Mapua Country Trading, but there was a waiting list. My rare blue egg layers were going to be months away.

Light Sussex girls

In the meantime I’d found a breeder of more ordinary breeds in nearby Masterton – a town which is a 50 minute drive up the valley.

I drove out on a Saturday morning and selected two seven-week-old Light Sussex chickens. They’re all white with a black circle around their necks. Although their eggs won’t be blue, Light Sussex are supposed to be ‘good layers’ so that was okay with me.

I brought them home in a cardboard box in the back of our little Nissan Pulsar. It was a hot day in summer, and I got a little worried when in the heat of the car those two young hens stopped making any noise whatsover. Were they dead?

The Chicken Palace next to the hayshed

When I got home, I carried the box out to the chicken run and opened it. They were very much alive. They ran around, clearly pleased with the Chicken Palace and its spacious grounds.

We named them Henrietta and Ethel. We don’t plan on ever eating them, or we wouldn’t have named them. We just want their eggs. Our friend Ray says, “Never name your food,” and I think he’s right.

Enter the Araucanas

A month later the two Lavendar Araucana finally arrived. They were delivered by the “Pet Bus” which made a stop up in Masterton. Rick’s father, who was visiting from Chicago at the time, drove up to meet the Pet Bus and pay the driver. I know it sounds absurd, but it’s true.

The Araucanas are grey and have tufted feathers on the top of their heads. I was thrilled to have them because some day, when they’re old enough, they’ll lay those blue eggs.

Rick took one look at them and laughed. “A chicken should look like a chicken,” he said. “Not like a hat.”

The Araucanas strutted around the run looking so aristocratic and proud that we named them Natasha and Francoise. Henry, our geriatric rooster, came later, but I’ll write about Old Man Henry and the Chook House Race Wars in another post.

So, we finally had chickens and the chicken run was alive with feathers and clucks.

That’s how I ended up in the rain.

Chickens need food

The bottom line is this: If you want to eat fresh farm eggs, you have to feed the chickens.

It doesn’t matter how cold it is, or how rainy, or how dark. It doesn’t matter if it’s already 6:15 am and you should be getting ready for work shortly. Too bad. The chickens need to eat. And since these chickens were my idea, I feed them – although Rick takes over on the weekends, God bless him.

But here’s the craziest thing. I’m out in the rain, soaking wet, and I like it. In fact, I love it. I’m walking through the rain to feed my chickens!

Yes I’m cold and yes I’m wet but I’m thinking how fantastic it is that I have chickens. When I was a young man dancing in the dark bars of Detroit, I never would have though it possible that I could end up here, in paradise, with chickens.

Of course, they’re not just my chickens, not even just mine and Rick’s chickens. These chickens belong to our friends and our family. To the Communist Egg Collective, who moved the chook house. To Fred, who built the run. To Rick’s father, who met the Pet Bus.

It takes a village to raise a chook, you know.

Out here, carrying my red bucket in one hand and my flashlight in the other, dripping wet with icy rain, I feel grateful.

Checking for eggs

When I get to the chicken run, I open the gate and toss the food around the muddy ground – poultry pellets and some wheat, some veggie scraps and greens. Then I walk over to the laying box. I check it every single day now. I can’t help myself.

I was told these chooks should be laying ‘by winter’. June is the real start of winter here, and it’s already mid-May. I might find the first egg any day now. It could, in fact, be today.

I lift up the lid to the laying box. There in the glow of my flashlight, setting on top of a nest of hay, I see an egg. For a moment I smile, but then I quickly realize it’s just the fake egg I left there last week. I put it there to teach the chickens that the laying box is where they should lay their eggs. (I’m not crazy. I swear this is what you’re supposed to do. I read it in books.)

There are no eggs today. No eggs at all yet, of any color. I shut the lid and turn away. The Communist Egg Collective will have to wait for their rewards. So will I.

I  begin walking across the top paddock and back toward the house, thinking of two things: how nice a hot shower will be, and how smart Priscilla was to have the chicken coop closer to the house.

Perhaps there will be an egg tomorrow.

I hope that it’s blue.

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Read the next post: The gay Americans meet the neighbors

Read the next part of the chicken saga: Strange morning at the chicken run

See all the posts about chickens.