photo by Lazy Acres Farm

via Sharon Kitchens The First Annual Maine Chicken Coop Tour will be held Saturday, September 28, 2013 from 10AM – 4PM. This self-guided tour will showcase an array of backyard chicken coops that display a variety of construction designs and materials, from recycled to custom designed coops. Inspired by the Funky Chicken Coop Tour in […]

photographs and text by Sharon Kitchens The eggs have arrived!  After 21 plus weeks just as I was beginning to wonder would these ladies actually lay eggs, they did – well some of them anyway. I actually saw one of the Australorps lay an egg this morning! Plunk and it was there…and in the nesting box not the […]

photographs and text by Sharon Kitchens The girls are seventeen give or take a day or two.  Here are a few pics from the past week… Field Trip! I open up the door to the run and every time four (Dorothy Parker, Isak Dinesen and two others – not sure which ones but Buff Orpingtons) […]

photograph by Sharon Kitchens Editor’s note: Sharon is documenting her entire Birds & Bees experience on her blog Delicious Musings and The Maine is pleased to repost some of her adventures and mis-adventures in raising chickens and keeping bees for the first time. See more photos from the twelfth and thirteenth weeks here and here.

photographs and text by Sharon Kitchens I decided to keep chickens, because (a) I want the fresh eggs (great nutrition) and (b) they were a much simpler alternative to larger livestock i.e. pigs. The fact that my new (old) farmhouse came with a chicken coop just made the decision that much more obvious. Hey, you […]

photograph, text and haiku by Kristen Lindquist I received a dozen fresh eggs this morning from my friend Janet’s laying hens. She’s got a mixed flock, so the eggs are all different colors and shades: warm brown, porcelain white, pale blues. (Araucanas account for the blue ones, I’m told.) In the basket, they truly shine […]