the birds and the bees 93demand has continued. So we jumped on that wagon, hoping to have our
rare birds and eat them too.
/Lily’s chickens, however, were a different story: her own. The day of
their promised arrival had been circled on her calendar for many months:
April 23, my babies due! Some parents would worry about a daughter tak-
ing on maternal responsibility so early in life, but Lily was already experi-
enced. She started keeping her first small laying flock as a fi rst- grader,
back in Tucson where the coop had to be fortified against coyotes and
bobcats. The part of our move to Virginia that Lily most dreaded, in fact,
was saying good- bye to her girls. (The friends who adopted them are kind
enough to keep us posted on their health, welfare, and egg production.)
We prepared her for the move by promising she could start all over again
once we got to the farm. It would be a better place for chickens with
abundant green pasture for a real free- range flock, not just a handful of
penned layers. “You could even sell some of the eggs,” I’d added casually.
Say no more. She was off to her room to do some calculations. Lily is
the sole member of our family with gifts in the entrepreneurial direction.
Soon she was back with a notebook under her arm. “It’s okay to move,”
she said. “I’ll have an egg business.”
A few days later she brought up the subject again, wanting to be reas-
sured that our Virginia hens would just be for eggs, not for meat. Lily
knew what farming was about, and while she’d had no problem eating our
early turkey experiments, chickens held a different place in her emotional
landscape. How can I convey her fondness for chickens? Other little girls
have ballerinas or Barbie posters on their bedroom walls; my daughter has
a calendar titled “The Fairest Fowl.” One of the earliest lessons in poultry
husbandry we had to teach her was “Why we don’t kiss chickens on the
mouth.” On the sad day one of her hens died, she wept loudly for an en-
tire afternoon. I made the mistake of pointing out that it was just a
chicken.
“You don’t understand, Mama,” she said, red- eyed. “I love my chickens
as much as I love you.”
Well, shut me up. She realized she’d hurt my feelings, because she