Enough dreams come true and I start believing I can see them all into reality . . .
For years I dreamed of having a bike I could ride wearing a skirt. With a basket to carry fruits and flowers. But now, if my bicycle dreams can come true – why not the chicken & egg dream?
Of course, like any long-cherished dream, this one has got embroidery.
I want not just any chickens.
What I really want are Marans who have dark mahogany, dark chocolate brown eggs – their shells so tough and delicately dense, with pores so tiny that supposedly salmonella bacteria can’t pass through.
Soft boiled eggs, raw egg eggnog, real mayonnaise, Bavarian creams, delicate meringues . . .
Except I also dream blue and blue-green eggs which means Auracanas with their feathery side-whiskers as well.
And storybook Little Red Hens and other old-fashioned heritage breeds
Rhode Island Red, Plymouth Rock, Barred Rock, Leghorn, Light Sussex, Delaware, Holland, Orpington, Austrolorp, Cochin, Faverolle, Silkie, Aseel, Old English Game, La Fleche, Barnevelder, Welsummer . . .
And what I really want is this rolling coop . . .
Or one just like it . . .
Could a widespread personal chicken habit be a necessary part of this Small Town Revival?
It’s at least another basket-filling Backyard Bounty. It’s at least another way of Eating Local.
And with enough up-and-at-’em roosters chorusing from street corner to street corner it would certainly be a Small Town Reveille.
How would that be? If we turned into a whole town of early risers?
A whole citizenry who can sit down regularly to a golden-yolked egg, over easy, fresh and full of taste, pumped full of all those naturally occurring vitamins and minerals we are never going to get from the sad essentials added after the fact – how would that be?
I’ve just learned about those chickens with the chocolate eggs, and if there were some way to litterbox train them we’d have our own flock.
How about a chicken tractor – it’s a moveable pen and coop combined? That way you can at least contain their litterboxing donations?