Doin' The Funky Chicken!

Our very full weekend seemed to have a chicken focus to it. And I'm not talking about the menu.

We warmed up by showing off our own fowl flock.

(Pictured at right is Jachin, whom I've known since we were toddlers, and who was visiting from California with his lovely wife Jessica. We had to break him in to the ways of the Ranch.)

Then we saddled up and took off for the Funky Chicken Coop Tour. It's like a Parade of Homes -- except instead of well-heeled guests ogling antiques and designer rooms, think families in REI footwear wandering through fifteen back yards and admiring an eclectic horde of chicken coops.

We saw a couple coops that looked much like ours ... and some that were like ours in the way that a white house is like The White House.

One coop hosted hens who were EIGHT YEARS OLD. Madelyn, forgive me for deeming you geriatric!

Another yard offered its hens a lovely, shaded bamboo grove in which to wander. They probably wondered why all the poor humans were sweating in the sunshine.

I saw a bunch of people I know, including Jimmy and Sarah, who ghost-write their toddler's hilarious blog. Check it out.

We saw baby chicks.

 Guess what we have our house now, hanging out under the heat lamp?

Meet Twilight and Peeper!

We polished off the weekend by lunching with some friends who live in a particularly affluent (read: not known for urban farming) area of town. Their next door neighbors joined us, and within five minutes, we'd connected over our joint chicken husbandry. It's a weird but instantaneous bond, this chicken owning thing.

One might even call it funky.