Yolks On Me

When the strangest things I share with my home health provider, Annette, is our interest in chickens. Annette is crazy over her chickens, I not so much but enough to encourage the girl on in the morning. She actually lives in the city of Salt Lake in older part of town I guess where they allow you to have chickens. These chickens run semi-wild but in the evening she actually tries to bring them into the coop that she has in her backyard. She has a couple of times been invaded by raccoons who like chickens. So every night she chases down her chickens. There are a couple rogue birds who have wild gene DNA to the point that they elude her and choose to sleeping trees. This fascinates me. Growing up we had a chicken coop on the farm and of course one of my chores was making sure the chickens had grain and water both summer and winter. Of course I had to click the eggs as well. I don't think we ever lost chickens that I remember. We did not have anything like raccoons in Boise, were relived out in South Boise but there were cats and occasional dogs what they seem to leave the chickens alone. My dad did build a good sense around coop high up higher than the chickens could fly I guess. What I think is fascinating is, Annette raises a flock of chickens each year. She gets the eggs and incubates them to birth (I don't know if that's the right term for chickens that are hatching but will have to do tonight. I don't remember doing anything like that except at one point my dad invested in an incubator from Sears Roebuck and hatched out about 50 chicks. I thought this was amazing amassing science experiment going on in our utility room. Sure enough, after a couple weeks little bitty beaks begin to break through the eggs. We of course spent time previously turning the eggs and holding the eggs up to the lamp to see how the little birds were progressing. To the best of my knowledge these were like white utility chickens the only purpose was to butcher them at the end of the summer to freeze and enjoy through the winter. We had other chickens as well. Bantams and a mixture of other breeds were the outside chickens. They lived in the coop but had quite a large yard and scratched and did the chicken things all day long. Every day we got about 10 days enough for the family as well as enough to sell to neighbors who also bought our milk. Bovine milk not chicken milk. The kindness that the chicken part. Perhaps that's what endears me to my home health person and listening to her go on and on about her chickens how she loves them. Couple of months ago this year's batch of chickens began laying eggs don't know why but I was truly impressed. Now the chickens are busy layers all the time. Annette was telling me about how when chicken cackles louder than all the rest whenever she drops her load. Nine times out of 10 Annette says loud cackle means she's delivered a double yolk. The other day Annette brought me a bag of eggs! One was much bigger than the others and Annette assured me this was a double yorker. So of course, after she left I made breakfast. I had left over garlic mashed potatoes and bacon cooked last week. A heated the whole mess up and then cracked the double yolk egg and there was, Annette was right but only was it a double yolk but the taste was divine…