The Minnesota Farm Woman

How many writers does it take to screw in a light bulb? What’s black and white and bruised all over? I’ll answer the second riddle first: Me. For a couple of years, I have raised a few of the Goliaths of the chicken world, the Jersey Giant. Jersey Giants are the largest of all chickens and were originally cross-bred in the late 1800’s as a replacement for the turkey, and often are used for meat birds. I started raising them because they are cold hardy and are known to be good winter layers, both a plus for northern Minnesota chicken farmers. Everything I read said they were a gentle and docile breed, also. What the chicken literature didn’t add was that they are gentle and docile UNTIL they get broody. Broody hens want to sit on eggs all the time, often to the exclusion of everything else. They are obsessed with hatching, and for one of my Jersey Giants, it is an obsession to the point of being crazed. Speaking of crazy, I tried explaining the Biology of the whole baby chick thing using my most soothing voice as I attempted to reach underneath for her precious egg. If there is no rooster in the equation, there will be eggs but no babies, I told her. She didn’t care. She fluffed her feathers out and pecked me hard. I tried to lift this hissing turkey-sized creature from her nest and she pecked me some more. It hurt like the dickens, and I have the bruises to prove it, but I finally had the egg in hand. The next day, she puffed herself up as soon as I walked into the coop. This time, the bruises to my arms and my ego still fresh, I used a metal feeding pan as a shield and managed to get pecked only twice before I got the egg. The third day I was ready. Who’s the boss around here, anyway? I wore HIS heavy winter jacket and a pair of work gloves to the coop. It was 85 degrees in the shade, too, but that didn’t stop me. I picked up my shield and entered the coop, ready for battle. My prizes? One large brown egg and another Farm Woman adventure story to write. How many writers DOES it take to screw in a light bulb? Two. One to write most of the story and another to add an exciting twist to the end. As I let all the chickens out today and they rushed outside, I tiptoed to the window and peeked in. The big black chicken slowly turned her head and looked me straight in the eye. I was on the outside looking in, but I swear she cackled. She’s ready for me. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Whatever the answer to the age-old riddle is, the egg is mine.