July 28: Visitors

We had visitors to the farm today -- our old tenants from last year. They brought Blaze a pink tennis ball as a peace offering for taking over his domain for the afternoon. He kept a tight hold of it while the kids ran amok remembering their favourite play places of last year.

The two kids kept pointing and yelling, "look, MY paddock!" and "there's MY horse / cows / aeroplane" and of course, "MY chickens have laid hundreds of eggs" -- they felt right at home.

The chicken coop is a constant source of fun for the two kids. The chickens are real, live playthings, and the kids feel like wizards each time they have been successful in fertilising the eggs. This is a complicated process of patting the chickens until they lay eggs. Or so I'm led to believe.

Jemima found one of the chooks jammed in between the chicken wire of the coop and a small roost. I tried to free the wretched thing but its legs were entangled in the wire and it was too tightly jammed to move. Naturally, this led to a frantic and distressed phone call to the father-in-law to come and rescue the near-dead bird. Bill came as soon as he could and I wasted no time in taking him to the Disaster Zone. Whereas the chook had just blinked slowly at me (and I believed, as though it was having an outer body experience from the shock of being sooooo stuck), she took one look at Bill, marshalled every morsel of energy and wriggled up, up, up and over the top of the roost to freedom. Bill's such a good farmer he didn't even have to lift a finger! I now call him the Chicken Whisperer.

Today I am thankful for time spent with beautiful friends.