A drawback of urban farming

Yesterday evening I was sitting in my warm, cozy home.  It was peaceful and the resident quadripeds were all snoozing.  I was working intently on my newest knitting project, Fiddlehead Mittens.  I've never done colorwork before and there's a fairly steep learning curve.  Hubbie wasn't home from work yet.

The weather forecast was dreary: high winds, heavy rain, and chilly temps.  But I was snug as a bug in a rug!  The storm hadn't hit the area yet but wasn't far.

All of a sudden the storm arrived with much fury.  I could hear the wind howling and could see the boughs of the giant fir tree across the street whip around.

I called G-man to warn him of the weather because he was driving home.  He told me later that the car doors felt like they were going to get ripped open as he drove across the Narrows Bridge. 

Tangent... maybe you've heard of this bridge?  It fell down quite famously in 1940, just four months after its completion.  The video is chilling.  Check out 1:31... can you imagine the noise that must have made?

According to family lore, my grandfather drove across it that morning.  At the time he was a brand new father of a 2-week-old son and weeks shy of his 23rd birthday.  After the bridge fell he was stuck on the Key Peninsula and had to drive back to Tacoma via Olympia - a long way. 

I digress.  After calling the hubster, it dawned on me: I hadn't closed up the chicken coop yet for the night.  Our neighbors lost 8 hens to noctural critters this fall and we've been doubly careful about the safety of our girls.

I pulled on a pair of boots, slogged out to the coop, counted heads, filled the feeder, collected the eggs (yay: 3!!) and locked them up tight for the night.  The whole time I was thinking: my friends without chickens are at home, warm and cozy in their houses but silly me, I'm out in this awful storm locking up the stupid birds, all for the sake of fresh eggs.

We love having chickens, we really do.  And I've talked about the downsides before.  But... bluuuurgggg... fresh eggs don't make it suck any less when you're tramping through mud and the rain to shut a chicken coop.