An ordinary miracle

When we bought our little farm a couple of years ago, we inherited a rag-tag flock of eight chickens. We knew absolutely nothing about raising chickens, but we were open to the experience, especially as people who are concerned about the healthfulness and sustainability of food production.

Those weren't spring chickens we inherited, and over time our flock has shrunk to just half its original size. This was a problem since we'd gotten hooked on truly fresh, truly free-range eggs. So last August we purchased four "laying hens" that were about 8 weeks old. After raising them to maturity, we discovered that every last one was a rooster.

The problem, of course, is that you really can't have more than one rooster in a small flock. They will fight to the death for supremacy. And as the little guys were growing up, we got attached to them, so it was sad to have to find homes for them. (No, we don't eat them.)

So this year we decided to try the old-fashioned way of growing a flock of chickens. After all, we already had the raw ingredients (that dominant rooster did come in handy!), and it was easy enough to buy a secondhand incubator on Craig's List. One of my online students from the spring semester gave me perfect and simple instructions to follow, and we put several eggs into the incubator, turned them several times a day, and--voila!--on Monday, our first two chicks hatched like tiny, ordinary miracles.

The first two eggs to hatch were from our banty hen Sugar (more about her in another entry), and they seemed impossibly small to hold anything that would turn into a chicken. But the chicks popped out singing in their high, flutelike voices. Within an hour or so, they were on their feet exploring the incubator.

On Tuesday, two standard size eggs hatched out two yellow chicks that are identical except for a dark spot on one's head. (We named that one Smudge.) In the wee hours of this morning, a fifth chick hatched, this one obviously the offspring of our brown hen because it is honey-colored.

At this point, there are six more eggs in the incubator, though two (not ours--we bought these) might not be viable. They are too dark to candle to see if there are chicks inside.

It's hard to describe how something so ordinary and in many ways so trivial can seem almost like magic or--well--chicken alchemy. Putting an egg in the incubator is a lot like planting a seed. It requires faith and patience and imagination to believe that life is so inevitable.

Reading report: I'm currently reading Isabel Allende's novel The House of the Spirits because it's on the list for my course in Banned Books and Censorship. It's full of magical realism (which is another term for ordinary miracles, now that I think of it) and fascinating characters. I can see why it has been challenged by those who want to control what the rest of us read, but it is a gorgeous book.