Event Date: 1979–1983

Event Date: 1979–1983 Drafted: 2025-11-23

The chicken yard sat just beyond the goat pen, a small world enclosed by wire and the rhythmic cluck-cluck-cluck of hens who always seemed to be gossiping. Chickens were ordinary creatures to adults, but to me, they were tiny dinosaurs — sharp-eyed, quick-moving, unpredictable.

Stepping into the coop was always a little thrilling. It smelled of warm feathers, dust, and straw. Sunlight pushed through the slats of the siding and cast golden stripes across the floor, lighting up suspended motes like constellations in a barn-sized galaxy.

Egg-collecting was both glorious and terrifying: • The nest boxes were warm. • The hay smelled sweet and soft. • And every hen looked like she might peck your fingers clean off.

Mom would tell me, “Just move slow. Announce yourself.” As if the hens needed a polite introduction.

But when you finally lifted a warm, freshly laid egg from the nest, it felt like holding treasure — fragile, secret, glowing with life. Even the goose eggs, impossibly large, felt like artifacts from another era.

There was always one rogue hen who escaped the fence to wander by the barn foundations, scratching for worms. I admired her rebel spirit. She lived by her own rules, outside the pecking order.

The chicken yard was humble, messy, hilarious. But it was one of the first places where I learned gentleness — not from lessons or sermons, but from the simple act of reaching beneath a warm, feathered body and lifting something delicate into the light.