Adding a few clucks to the monotony of everyday life...

In my ever continuing journey to live a better and more organic life, I began a project two months ago. I started raising my own chickens. That's right you heard me, chickens! Of course you may have gathered that from the picture at the top of my blog. I thought that I might write up a post about my chickens to share with you.
My love of chickens isn't actually something all that new. Actually owning my own chickens however is a new experience (well relatively within the last two months). I remember when I was in high school, freshman year, my French teacher (who's family owned the local Kimball Farms ice cream shop) would always talk about her pet chickens and how they were some of the best pets ever. Since then I have wanted my own chickens, but finally this summer it became a reality.
I told my boyfriend that I wanted chickens, and like many city people his initial reaction was absolutely not. I didn't let that deter me from beginning my backyard flock. I read hobby farming books, and searched for someone who had chickens for sale. I also built myself a coop (but I will talk about that in another post).

Finally I convinced my boyfriend, and that same night I found someone who was selling her hens. The next day we went and picked out our girls. It took me a few more weeks till I was able to bring them home, as I had to jump through several legal hoops in order to obtain an Urban Chicken permit for the city of Cedar Rapids. The permit is our city's way of controlling those of us who own chickens and limiting us to only having six hens and no roosters, however at least we are able to own chickens! There are many cities out there who have made it completely illegal to own chickens within their limits, and we used to be one of them up until a few years ago. Thanks to CR-CLUCK led by the amazing Rebecca Mumwaw, the city now recognizes an ordinance that permits us to have our girls.

After three weeks of jumping though hoops, taking a class on raising urban chickens, and building the coop, it was finally time to bring our girls home. We drove out to the farm about 20 minutes out of town and picked them up. Poor things were all confused and then had to have their id bracelets put on downtown in the middle of a parking lot. But we finally got them home in one piece. It took them a few days, but they quickly recovered from their traumatizing journey from their old home to their new one, and they have become such an integral part of my daily routine.

That is Elizabeth and her twin sister Katherine. They went everywhere and did everything together. I will talk about what happened with Katherine in a different post as well.

This is our pride and joy (well more my boyfriends), Oprah. Yes, Oprah as in Winfrey. My boyfriend gave her that name because when we picked her out at the farm she walked around with such an attitude and she would look at something and just shake the feathers on top of her head from side to side. So Oprah it was. 

It has been about two months now since we originally brought our three girls home. There have been a few changes since then and we have added two more chickens (after a devastating loss) to our backyard flock. Their names are Alice and Scarlet, and there will be more to come about them soon.