One of the first things on the schedule after vacation was Ally's horse camp. Our realtor Becky, has a teenage daughter who, along with a friend, put together a wonderful camp for kids. I was proud of Al, because she is cursed with a sometimes debilitating shyness. She was nervous at first, but since she was "in her element" around the horses, she did very well. The first day, she informed me that she didn't really learn anything because she already knew most of it(shocker). However, she did get first place in the horse show which was basically riding around the arena. She was the only girl to get the horse into a trot(Need for speed, that one). The next day when I picked her up, she began to cry. I knew she LOVED camp and thought she was sad to leave. Turns out, the kids were allowed to gather an egg from the chicken coop. The kids took care of the eggs the rest of the day, with Ally building it a nest inside her riding helmet. One slip of the elbow and the egg got, well, crushed. So was Al's spirit. She thought the egg would hatch if she kept it warm and safe. The hard reality was that since there weren't enough eggs for all the kids in the coop, Becky grabbed some from the fridge to set in with the hens. The eggs weren't going to hatch. Al seemed relieved that she didn't actually kill her chick, but was still very sad. Eric and I have talked about getting chickens for quite awhile, but never got around to the action of building a coop and researching how to care for chickens. Now, with the promise to feed and care for them, herself, Al may have started the ball rolling on the chicken adventure.

My brother offered up a couple design plans for a DIY coop.

LOVE this one, but since the kids have been begging for a tree-house, I think it would be unfair to build the chickens a tree-house instead.

Now THIS is more our style. Here in Morrow County, our ingenuity would be admired by all the chicken-owning rednecks.

We'll see what we come up with. Perhaps this chicken adventure will fade away as we realize we have more than enough to deal with with the dogs and horses. However, there's nothing better than farm-fresh eggs!!