Is it just my imagination, or are you also hearing a lot of chatter about keeping backyard chickens?
It started with several of my favorite bloggers writing about their feathered girls.
Rebecca Sower , one of my sweet friends and favorite bloggers, has been a chicken lover for quite a bit (long before I started noticing this "craze") and I love reading posts about her hens. Several months ago, Heather Bullard styled the most adorable pictures of her new little peeps and then several posts later, showed the most amazing mansion style chicken coop ever that was built by her hubby, "The Man". Andrea of Faded Plains, another of my favorite bloggers, has also been writing about the acquisition of chickens and has been posting pictures of how big they are getting.
Then, earlier this month, at a family graduation party, I got chatting with one of my local cousins whom I haven't seen in a while. She is apparently raising chickens now in her Chandler back yard. She and her hubby related some hilarious stories about their adventures with chickens...get these names...Rotisserie, Nugget...you get the point. She's a pretty quirky cousin!!!
The most recent issue of Romantic Homes magazine featured an article (great article by the way) about Lizabeth McGraw, owner of the California shop Tumbleweed & Dandelion, and included in that article was this photo of the coop in her urban backyard.
Photo by Mark Tanner via Romantic Homes Magazine
Can you see why I'm thinking there's some kind of trend here?
For the past couple of years, we've talked about getting chickens. I think it would be fun to have some fluffy feathered girls in our backyard...well, maybe. I'm wondering if maybe I'm romanticizing the whole idea of chickens. I know that they smell. I know that they leave poop behind. They like to squabble, and sometimes fight over each other's eggs. I know that the eggs don't come out nice and clean and in a carton :). And, after talking to my cousin, Joy, I now know that they don't do well around bodies of water such as pools or ponds. And, from the research that Vern's done, they also love to root around stuff that is planted.
We have a bit of a dilemma...a pond, a small backyard, and plants everywhere. Thought I'd share what I was viewing this afternoon...forgive the shadows...it's a hard yard for photography because of all of the shadows, but here goes...don't know why, but Typepad won't let me center the pix...
See what I mean? Lots of plants and very little room for much of anything else. In spite of it all, I still want some chickens...
If any of you have chickens, do you have any suggestions?
Anyone else thinking of adding some finely feathered friends to your backyard?