A Rough Day on the Farm

Hi, my friends. I have been planning to share a post about what we are planting in our garden this year along with where we ordered our seeds from. Looking forward to the hope of Spring.

That post is going on hold and I’ll share it soon. Today has been rough. I went out to feed the chickens and let them out of the coop this morning, just like I do every day that Scott leaves for work at 4 AM. While I was filling up their food, I kept thinking about how odd it was that they were so quiet. Surely they weren’t still sleeping. I was late in getting out there.

I opened the coop door, and their bodies were everywhere. I wrestled the door open and immediately started sobbing. I remember saying over and over “what happened?” and counting them. Surely one survived, right? Not one single chicken made it. I thought maybe a rooster went crazy and killed them all and ended up dying also. Now that I’ve had time to investigate, we are pretty confident that a weasel got in and killed them all.

You guys, all of our beautiful chickens are gone. My mind can’t seem to process.. I’ve cleaned some of the mess up, but still have more to do. I still have to tell my kids. I know that this is part of homesteading life. These are the hard lessons that we have to live. But, I really, really hoped that we wouldn’t lose every single one in one swift motion. It feels so cruel.

I am THAT person who laughs hysterically watching them hop through the snow because they don’t like their feet touching it. I cheerfully tell them good morning. I say thank you every time I get an egg as though they understand. I excitedly go feed them mealworms and food scraps. My mom got me a “crazy chicken lady” shirt for Christmas that I proudly wear.

To look on the bright side, because I can’t camp in the heartbreak, we have everything we need for new chicks. If we get them this month, they will start laying in the summer. Our hens gave us over three hundred eggs in January. (We had 13 hens.) We have time while babies grow to fix the coop and find the problem.

Today, I am so devastated. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that. But, we aren’t giving up on this homestead dream.