Adventures in Country Living: Raising Chickens

So these are our lovely ladies. They are a great group of chickens and there's nothin' like fresh eggs.

The yolks are a deep orange that make the yummiest fried eggs, rich quiches and are a blessing to have on hand when throwing together a cake or batch of brownies. What? No eggs in the fridge? Time to trek out to the coop! And I must admit, I'm the #1 go to person on our street for "Do you have an egg to spare?" :D

As you can see they're a hodgepodge of different breeds. We started out with a quad of beautiful Rhode Island Reds.

And then we got a dog.

Turns out chickens and ADD Labrador teenagers (who know how to dig) don't mesh well. I'm pretty sure he meant well but no, they weren't moving toys. So the Labrador went to a neighbor (thanks Kelly). And she posted this picture on Facebook a few days later...

"If I don't make eye contact, they can't see me"

This would have been our backyard.
And those feathers would not have been a pillow.

So fortunately now, Zak has a home that is chicken-free with a super loving family, and a BFF named Kaya to play with all day long.

Keeping chickens is incredibly easy. All they need is a little shelter from varmints, food, water and room to roam when the weather is nice. Ours love walking the yard and eating grass and worms. This makes for happier chickens. I used to run a country store with my mother-in-law. We had a sign out front for "Happy Chicken Eggs." They sold as quick as we could put them into cartons. There's nothing like a farm fresh egg and the experience is all the more enjoyable knowing they come from happy chickens :) 


My favorite way to eat eggs is fried with crumbled goat cheese on top. SO good! How about you?

What Songs Move You?

I'm really curious. Because music is super important to what I do.

I'm a writer. But I'm also a mom. A mom with three kids at home (all day long!) It's not easy to balance homeschooling, a newborn, and writing. So when I sit down to write between the spelling lesson in the morning and the peanut butter catastrophe that's sure to happen in the next hour, I need something to help transport me to the world my characters live in.

I have dozens of play lists put together. Countless songs for particular emotions, experiences or settings. But I'll name just a few. Keep in mind the list changes as I do. It changes as my characters evolve. As they grow. As they experience their world--emotions that are as unique as the characters themselves.

Sorrow. Joy. Tension. Anger. Bittersweet yearning.

So without further adieu, here are a few of my top choices right now:

Don't wait for me by Josh Garrels
Silver coin by Angus and Julia Stone
I will exalt you by Hillsong United

...and of course lots of Adele and Iron and Wine

Often times, I listen to folk music, like the Cold Mountain soundtrack. It helps me feel my setting and my surroundings. Helps me dive into the Appalachian culture I write about. I'm excited to expand on this in another post soon.

I'd love to hear from you. What songs stir your emotions? If you're a writer, what songs do you listen to that reflect the setting of your stories?

Photo credit: Cold Mountain, 2003

A Very Country 4th

We celebrated the Forth of July Country Style. Some dear friends of ours have a lovely farm in the country. Literally, their home is the very last house on a rural dirt road which means they have only one neighbor and the 300 degree view from their back porch of the untouched mountains is stunning.

For most of the day, my son ran around in his bathing suit on the lawn chasing kids both older and younger, squirt gun in hand, water balloons flying past his head like little torpedoes. I don't think the kids stopped for a breather all day, except when it was time to eat. And then, I don't think anyone could have resisted that spread.

The enormous BBQ hauled in on the back of a vehicle was large enough to feed everyone with chicken, ribs and lamb drizzled in the most wonderful homemade BBQ sauces. Pots large enough to hold a couple of youngins held more corn than I have ever seen in one place in my life and with plenty of entrants in the cobbler and pie competition, there were desserts-a-plenty. My dad was eager to join in on the judging and as he walked around the table, sampling the cobblers with his fork, I don't think he could have been happier. The Lemon pie won, but I was too busy nibbling on peach cobbler that had been freshly baked in a dutch oven over a hot fire then topped with hand churned vanilla ice cream, I forgot to nab myself a slice of the winning entry before it vanished.

As everyone enjoyed the meal, a handful of toddler girls waddled about with chubby legs and ribbons in their hair. With watermelon juice still dripping from her chin, my daughter wandered from picnic blanket to picnic blanket, seeing what bites of food the kind folks would offer a doe-eyed, dimple-cheeked one-year-old. Needless to say, I don't think she had any room left in her little tummy by the end of the day.

As the meal came to a close, folks shared patriotic readings, poems and songs and when that was wrapped up, a gaggle of barefooted, sun-tanned kids hopped onto the flat bed truck for a trip down to the creek. I have no idea what they did down there, but when my three-year-old returned, he was wet, a little muddy and very happy. At that moment I figured he'd probably sleep for a week.

Earlier on in the day, names went up on a board in preparation for the shotgun competition. My honey did quite well in the shootout, making it all the way to the semi finals before getting knocked out of the competition. He has the bruise on his shoulder to prove it. His brother took the championship, shooting through four rounds of competition at twenty-five clay pigeons each round. I bet his bruise is bigger :-) Later on, some of the shooters took part in a twenty-one gun salute. My husband and dad were among the few who lined up for the series of shots in front of the garden...it was VERY loud...things you can only pull off in the country ;-)

As the sun sank on the 4th of July, the s'mores sticks came out and by the time the fire was crackling, a group of kids were huddled around the pit with eager hands. With my friend doing graham cracker duty and me on Hershey bar duty, we managed to sandwich those golden (sometimes rather charred) marshmallows up before any kids realized we actually only had 4 skewers. Even so, those too impatient to wait for a skewers, found a stick long enough to satisfy their s'mores cravings (several adults included) Meanwhile, the guitars came out and as we sang songs around the campfires. The littlest ones drifted off to sleep while the older ones were told they could have no more s'mores but if they were still hungry we had plenty of graham crackers and corn on the cob.

I realized just how late it was when my dad got a little droopy eyed, guitar still in hand. We packed up the picnic blankets and loaded up the kids. My dad managed to stay awake in the car, but my children were asleep in the car seats, with sticky stuff still on their faces, before we were out the driveway.

My Writing Playlist

It's the score to the words I write. The symphony behind the pages.


No, you probably wouldn't see Fernando Ortega trapsing around the Blue Ridge Mountains dressed up in hillbilly garb...but that doesn't mean his music doesn't play a roll in the scenes I write, helping me set the mood--sometimes sad, other times dramatic. Whatever the emotion I'm trying to put into my charachters, music plays a huge roll.

I call it my Writing Playlist.

Everything from the rock of Gavin DeGraw and the Fray to the old-time bluegrass of Alison Krauss and Nickle Creek to worship with Casting Crowns and the David Crowder Band.

Whenever I have writer's block (which happens rather often as the mother of two little ones) I throw on my ipod, head out for a walk and let the music transport me to another time and place...away from peanut butter and kiddie pools...to the drama of the worlds I'm trying to create--whether it's an upbeat musical scene or a tense, heart-wrenching goodbye. The music takes me on a mini writer's vacation. One where the scenes play out in my mind like the climax of a movie and suddenly the writer's block vanishes.

The playlist is always evolving. Often I dedicate a particular song to a single charachter. It becomes their theme. When I need to draw that charachter out of my mind and onto the computer, I put on their theme song and I'm instantly swept up in their world, their emotions, their purpose.

Then there are the songs and sounds that are not on my Writer's Playlist but exist within the world around me: a symphony of summer crickets coming out just after sunset, the husky voice of leather-skinned grandfather, the sound of bacon frying in a cast-iron pan. These sounds do not have on and off buttons and cannot be downloaded for a fee at my heart's desire--but exist only in the moment, and it is by the grace of God that He gives us these moments, these glimpses into another world, time and place. A world where our imaginations can run wild.