Happy new month everybody!
Today I want to share my joy with you and as you may have guessed from the first picture this post is going to be about chicks and how amazingly cute they are!
But lets start from the beginning. As you may have read before in my blog I have left the city of Athens and my carrier as a photographer in 2014 and ever since I am living in a small village on the island of Crete occupying myself with organic farming, in pursuit of a more natural lifestyle.
The first years I wasn't eating anything coming from animals so I was completely happy with my vegetable garden and my trees. When I changed my diet, though, to a more flexible one and started to eat eggs frequently, the idea of a chicken coop started to sound appealing. But there was a problem that seemed insuperable.
Every Christmas, my partner and I, go for a month in Athens to see friends and family and have our winter break. The dog comes with us, the cats stay behind but it is easy for the neighbors to give them some food but hens is another story. We couldn't find someone that could take care of them during our absence so, we postponed the decision to the future.
A couple of months ago we moved to another small village and the main reason that we chose this particular one is a few friends that live there. And one of those friends has a piece of land but not much time, another one has time but no land, we all wanted chickens and long story short we found ourselves with a cooperative chicken coop!
We are all first-timers to this and very anxious to do everything right which usually leads to one mistake after another :)
The first five chickens and a rooster that another friend gave as a present seemed to have found the 500 square meters fenced piece of land quite pleasant! A large carob tree provides plenty of shade all day long and a few more trees and bushes gives them a lot of places to explore.
We thought that we made some very nice nests for them to lay their eggs but we were very disappointed when we saw that they were ignoring them.
So we started to play the "find the egg game". In the beginning we were winning but every day the sneaky hens made it more difficult for us to discover the new hiding spot and at some point we couldn't find no eggs at all. Someone told us that they don't lay much eggs when the weather is too hot so we waited...
Imagine my surprise and my happiness when I saw one of the hens with 8 small chicks around her! Literally cuteness overload! We knew that they were from a local breed that can hatch their eggs but we never though it would happen so quick and without our knowledge. But I am so happy it did. It turned out that what we thought as a mistake and a loss of eggs was absolutely right for the well being of our hens and a big gain in chicks!
After all nature knows best!
Thank you for reading and if you want to know more about me you can check out my introduction post.
Commenting, upvoting and resteeming are highly appreciated!