a hennish introduction

These are my hens, for those of you who haven't met them in real-time. The gold one in front is Henrietta, she is a Buff Orpington and came here as a gift from my old friend Sharon in Olympia; and the red one barely visible in the background is Hennypenny, she is a Rhode Island Red, and is the lost hen who came to live here...

Once upon a time (last year), not too long after I moved in, I was in the front yard, planting the sage plant that Bill gave me (which I had been carting around in a big pot for many a year), when I heard an odd sound. As I looked around, there was a little red chicken walking across the yard towards me. As I have neighbors that let their hens "free range", I thought she was one of those
...it turned out that they were not missing any chickens, and as I had intended to keep some hens "someday" she ended up living with me... after a number of months she had another hen for company, and a beautiful henhouse, built with wonderful helpfulness by my friend Chance, helped by his wife Rois, myself, and their two sons.

Later this year, I intend to paint the henhouse... as the idea this past autumn was to get the hens solid walls and a roof before the winter rain and snow. Their previous shelters were cobbled together with zip-ties from chicken wire, tarps, and discarded wood scraps from old political signs, not the most weathertight (or predator-proof) of abodes.

My friend Heidi, (who, with her husband Dan are the blacksmiths of White Hart Forge,) made the forged iron weight for the sliding henhouse door.