A couple of years ago my biggest childhood dream became a reality when we moved to my husband’s family farm. All my life I had loved animals, and being in a barn with its mixture of aromas—hay, manure, cows, and horses—well, it was a little bit of heaven to me. I was especially excited about all the opportunities this move would bring to our homeschooling adventure. We were still in preschool mode with our three children, ages 4, 3, and 1. Visions of nature walks and journals, 4-H projects and home businesses, fresh eggs and new kittens danced in my head.

The farm is just a 23-acre hobby farm, and there wasn’t much farming going on anymore besides a few ornery cows, some interesting buildings, and the usual dog and cat menagerie. I couldn’t wait to take advantage of all the amenities and make it a real farm. As soon as spring was in the air, I jumped at the chance to split an order of adorable chicks with a friend.

Rather quickly, I made another small acquisition. Small in size, that is, certainly not number. I went innocently into the feed store on a Saturday morning to buy some food for my 13 (not so) cute (anymore) chicks. They were four weeks old, and what an amazing difference a few weeks makes! As I placed my order, the clerk asked if I would be interested in more chicks. Now, you have to understand that up until a few days before, I was really sick of the chicks I already had, or at least our arrangements for them. I kept them in our old, rickety brooder, which seemed sort of pointless since the heater barely worked. To augment it, we had an old heat lamp all smashed up against the side of the brooder, and every time I moved the top back to get the water bowls out for a refill, the light would fall out of place and have to be reattached. We also had a couple of ancient floor heaters nearby to help keep the air up to the required temperature. I was out there a dozen times a day, checking the heat and adjusting it as the day got hotter or the night colder, and I was half afraid the whole place was going to burn down.

I had no proper water containers either, so I was filling the little plastic bowls several times a day. And to top it all off, it disturbed me that they weren’t getting to scratch like chickens are made to do, since their floor was wire mesh. In order to avoid feeling guilty for not giving them proper care, I removed them from the brooder for a couple of hours every day and put them outside in a confined area. This got harder and harder as the dumb birds got more and more skittish. All of my dealings with them had involved kindness: feeding, watering, and moving them to more pleasant quarters, but they didn’t appreciate it one bit! So they would scoot to the farthest possible corner of the brooder. I just had a small circle opening to reach into; this brooder looks kind of like a catering cart with stacks of brooder pens, and the one they were in (which supposedly had a working heater) was about nose high on me. By reaching into this small opening as far as I could, basically getting my shoulder “stuck” every time, and using an empty water dish to pry them out of the corner, I could one at a time get them out. Of course as soon as I had them outside scratching in the grass and taking dirt baths their obvious enjoyment made me feel glad I had persevered once again, but still it got tiring. It wasn’t as though all I had to do all day was mess with chickens! Finally, my husband and I fixed up a smaller area in the chicken house with fresh wood shavings, a proper water can, and a big feeder. We hung the heat lamp from the top, and they were happy little cluckers. And I was a happy chicken mama; much less bother for me.

So here I was in the feed store, being offered the opportunity to do it all again. The catch was, she was offering to give them to me. I like a bargain. And I had been thinking about letting the boys start an egg business. Of course, I had meant in a few years, but it seemed that the time just might be now! Being more than a little impetuous, I decided to call my husband first and see what he thought. He said it would be fine, and that he would get a brooder heating. Ugh. The more I thought about it, the more I did NOT want to use a brooder. Maybe I should just have a nice big box in the bigger chicken pen with a couple of heat lamps hanging down. That’s what the feed store did. I went home and explained to my husband how I felt about those poor chicks being on a wire mesh floor with nothing to scratch at, and how I thought we could do just fine putting them in a small pen inside the larger chicken pen. He agreed to let me try it, and he and his brother went to work getting things ready, while I went back to get the chicks. I was a little surprised to find that they had more than a “few” little birds. I was imagining five or six, but it was 41 chicks and two ducks to be exact. But they are adorable when newly hatched, and since I was in the mode to get them, I just took them all. So there we were, the proud owners of 54 chickens and three ducks. But everything was set up so nicely that they really weren’t much trouble at all, and the kids were just thrilled with it all. There was one small incident, however …

On Sunday nights, my in-laws have a group of families over including lots and lots of kids. Some of the kids had been in the chicken house looking at the chicks, so I just wanted to make sure everything was okay. I left the door open as I checked them out. Everything looked great. About that time, as I turned to head out of the pen into the storage area and on outside, someone ran by and shut the door. I wasn’t concerned until I realized that the wooden latch on the door had been spun around too, and I was locked in! There wasn’t any way to move it from the inside. I tried pushing on the top of the door, and it gave some, but not enough to get my hand through and reach the latch. I glanced around at all the windows and the openings for the chickens to come and go through to the chicken yard. No way. Besides the fact that I was in a church dress and nylons, the windows were covered in tightly nailed chicken wire, and I knew I couldn’t fit through the chicken doors.

I wasn’t really too concerned because my husband knew I had come down. But he also might think I had stopped to chat with someone, so it could be an hour or two before he got concerned. The chicken pen is awfully dirty and dusty, and I couldn’t really sit down anywhere. I decided to go ahead and feed the chicks since I didn’t have anything else to do. Then I kind of wandered around looking for something I had missed that would allow an escape.

There! I could hear voices coming from the trampoline, out behind the chicken pen about 25 yards. Could I yell loud enough for them to hear me? My eye caught once more on the openings for the chickens to get out into their yard. I could slide the wood up and poke my head out and then they probably could hear me. I slid the wood, bent down until my head almost touched the ground, trying hard to keep my skirt out of the dirt, and with my face upside down I looked out toward the trampoline and called, “Hey!” The little girls looked my way in amazement at the voice from the chicken house. “Can you please come open the door? I’m locked in here!”

Well, I have enjoyed having chickens and I am learning more about them all the time. But, after getting locked in the chicken house, I realized it doesn’t smell anything like a barn. Maybe I’ll look into getting some horses.

Sally has been married to Michael for nine years and stays busy teaching and caring for their four children, Judson (6), Judah (5), Liesl (3), and Leif (3 months). She enjoys reading, writing, playing the piano, being hospitable, and seeing the funny side of life.