The Adventures of Feather Flocklear

 I have always been a farm girl, loud and proud.  I will happily wade through sloppy steer yards, bottle feed a sick calf, make parts runs, and the other myriad tasks that fall to the Assistant Farmer of the family.  In fact, 40 years ago I was an Olmsted County Dairy Princess!

That said, there is one thing I swore...vehemently and at the top of my lungs...I would never do, and that was gather chicken eggs.  

I did not grow up with chickens except for the black and white speckled hen that I remember sat on the handle bars of Baby Brother's tricycle while he rode it up and down the barn floor.  Other than that....not a feather on the place, so I really had no frame of reference for my dislike of these creatures.  

Maybe it was sympathetic loathing in solidarity with my sister from another mister, Veronica.  Her deep and lasting hatred of the cursed fowl is known far and wide, and us gal pals have to stick together, right?

Whatever the basis for the resistance to having a flock of feathered friends (did you like that alliteration?), there it was.  

So imagine my surprise and horror about a month ago when one of the chicken's from Captain's boss's house stowed away in the bed of his pickup and came home with him.  Given the lack of experience for either one of us, we were unable to catch the hen to return her to her rightful owner. 

Well, crap.  We are now the owners of a stupid chicken.  And she needs a name.  After much robust discussion and disagreement, we settled on Miss Feather Flocklear.  Readers of a certain age will get the reference.

Miss Feather Flocklear thought she could roost in our garage over my van, but I disabused her of this notion in a non-negotiable way, so she relocated to the calf shed.  Over the last three weeks or so, Captain has caught glimpses of her in the rafters of the back bay of the shed and in the middle bay where the extra corn stalk bales are stored.  And which, on a side note, is where mama kitty, Black Olive, has her litter of babies at the moment.  

But I digress.

Even though we saw her repeatedly in the middle and back bays of the shed, we couldn't find her nest.  We searched behind the round bales, between the walls, and around teh foundation to no avail.  

Until this morning.  Captain was feeding calves in the front section of the shed, and Lucy had her nose in the corner having a conniption fit.  When Captain investigated, he finally found her nest....with 17 eggs in it!

So today I did that one thing I swore up and down I would never, ever do.  I gathered eggs from a chicken nest.  We couldn't use these eggs as we had no way of knowing which ones were good and which were stale.  They all got tossed out into the big steer yard, which was actually kind of fun!

After my one--and I vow, only--experience of collecting eggs, I decided to leave that job to Captain from now on as he is the one who is out there every morning!  I'll cook them without complaint, but I"m not going to collect them.  I"m firm on that.

Herein lies the problem.  Because we are both chicken virgins and have absolutely no clue on proper care for the cursed fowl, we didn't realize that by taking ALL of the eggs, Feather Flocklear would not come back to that nest.  She is still here, and we assume still producing eggs, but we have not been able to locate her nest.

She has chosen a tree on the north side of the calf shed as her roosting spot, and we have searched high and low in and around the shed to no avail.  Captain even used the bush hog over the weekend to knock down the burdocks and ragweeds in the grove without uncovering (or running over) her nest.  

If anyone who actually does know a thing or two about raising chickens has a hint on how to find her stupid nest, please let us know!

Oh, and those kitties I talked about?  They are much more adorable than Miss Feather Flocklear or her eggs!  They are old enough now that they are out and about exploring the calf shed.  Georgie (the first mama cat) has retired from nursing and the kitties are eating solid food and drinking water from a dish.  Black Olive (the second mama cat) still has her litter semi-hidden in the round bales, but we have seen glimpses of them roaming further afield as well.  

But the best addition to the Brogan Ranch is a new friend for Famous Amos.  Amos is our 42-year-old donkey who is the last survivor of the group of equines we had which included a paint horse, two Belgian draft horses, and Amos.  

After the last of his herd passed on, he was lonely in his pen by himself so he would escape and travel half a mile down the road to visit the neighbor's horses.  Then he decided he was actually a holstein steer and stayed in the yard with the bovines.

On Saturday, however, we got a new friend for him from some friends of ours.  Meet Andy, the miniature donkey!  Isn't he precious??  And only those of a certain age will get the Amos and Andy reference.  

So now we have become the Old MacDonald farm of the neighborhood, and we are completely okay with that!