As I write this the sound of a cock crowing and hens feeding drifts from outside. A happy sound normally but not today. We have been living with six of these chickens for just over a year now, the other six we watched hatch just under a year ago. But today we are rehoming them because soon we are leaving our little smallholding in Canada to head for the UK.
I am British, my husband Quebecois - we thought that we were settling for life in this corner of Mauricie. How quickly life changes though and turns everything upside down. The sad loss of my brother Russell last year means that we are returning to the UK. We are generally looking forward to this - the rolling green hills, curry, beer, fish and chips and a much longer growing season. However a season of goodbyes has just begun too - and I hate goodbyes.
So as I prepare to bid adieu to our feathered friends I consider all that they have taught us, our first chickens: We learnt how to call them, care for them, decipher their 'language', enjoy their different characters and antics. To admire the cockerel for doing his job - protecting the hens by keeping his eye out for predators, finding them food and telling them with excited cluckings. To find a new respect for birds in general after watching their battle to begin life through the long hatching process. These same chicks helped me to smile during the dark days of my brother's illness when nothing else could make me smile - no small feat. They taught me not to name an animal you intend to eat, though I had heard it said often before. Of the eggs we hatched we had two extra cockerels and not enough hens to go round, so they eventually had to be dispatched. Another first for us and another learning experience as we tried to do it with respect and the least stress we could manage. So these cockerels taught us to fully value even more any meat that we consume - to endeavour to know where it comes from, how it lived and not to waste it.
I am happy to say we have found them a wonderful home where they will live a life as pets. They will provide their eggs of course but once they have finished laying they will still be cherished and never be eaten. They will become little old ladies (and gentleman) and will probably live a life better than the one we would have given them (but I could never have killed any of our 'originals' either).
So I say my first goodbyes with teary eyes to Jean-Luc, Lara, Daphne, Alicia, Amy, the wonderful Peggy, Peggy-Baby and the chicks. Thank you for teaching me so much, not least how to love chickens.
