By Suzy Lowry Geno

"Is the Chicken Lady at home?"

That’s the greeting my husband often hears when he answers the doorbell.

Or—"Hey, aren’t you the Egg Lady?" I may hear when I’m out shopping on one of my as-INfrequent-as-possible forays into the local big-box store.

No—the last time I looked I hadn’t sprouted feathers, but I AM the Chicken Lady to a lot of folks just the same.

It started innocently enough. For years I’d tried to be as self-sufficient as possible on my little 15-acre homestead, but my only livestock (THEN!) was a small barn filled with fluffy Angora rabbits and, of course, the constant dogs and cats.

But the more I read, the more chickens begin to make sense.

So in the early spring of 2000 as I was buying rabbit feed in the Blount County Farmers Co-op in Oneonta, I asked Jerry Sterling what type of chickens he’d recommend.

Sterling, who has since passed away, had served as the manager for a long time, and although officially "retired" still came in a couple of days a week to help.

He pulled a colorful poster off the wall and showed me an orangey-brown splotched chicken called a "Golden Comet."

"They lay huge brown eggs and are really hardy. They’d be good for a beginner," he said.

So he placed my order for 20 Golden Comets AND five Easter Egg hens, Ameracaunas, which would lay big bluey-green eggs.

He helped me choose a brooder light, waterer and chick starter feed.

Into our spare bedroom went a giant cardboard box with pine sawdust on the floor with the light hanging in the middle, held in place on a broom stick hung across two conveniently placed straight-backed chairs.

When those 25 chicks arrived I was fascinated! I put a tablespoon of sugar in their water each time for the first couple of days. As I carefully lifted each one from the box, I dipped its beak in the sugar water, then in the small pan of feed.

And I didn’t loose a single chick!

I built a chicken enclosure onto one side of what we call "our barn." I read everything I could get my hands on about chickens.

When those 25 feathered out fully, I moved them to their new home and they immediately began scratching in the dirt! I was in chicken-heaven!

My husband, whose mama had owned a "real" chicken farm for several years, told me I’d know when I got my first egg because there would be a decidedly different cackle.

About four-and-a-half months after their arrival, I heard it! It was a Thursday morning about 10 when I heard Miz Chicken doing her happy-song-and-dance!

I raced outside and sure enough, there was a big brown egg! I swear that hen had a smile on her face!

I carefully cradled that egg in my hand and raced to show my then-80-year-old mama! Then I called my husband. Then e-mails went literally around the world to all my homesteading friends! They laughed with me and shared my joy.

Move forward more than nine years later…

Chickens are addictive.

There are now approximately 250 chickens (of practically every breed) and six roosters who roam all around my little Old Field Farm. Each rooster has his own harem. Each group has their own area of the three-times-added-on chicken house to enter that is divided from the others. Each little flock patrols their own areas of the woods, yard, goat pastures and more.

But every night, they all line up and march back into the safety of their little houses.

And those big beautiful eggs! About seven years ago a neighbor donated an older refrigerator for my carport because he said he got tired of having to ring the doorbell when he needed eggs!

Now there’s a fruit jar in the fridge and if you need eggs when I’m not at home, you just help yourself, leave your empty cartons on the counter and your money in the jar!

People come from far and near to get "farm fresh eggs from happy chickens." I’ve helped innumerable families get their own home flocks started, just as folks helped me when I started out. For the past three years, I’ve also been selling (and giving away) fertilized eggs so now I have little chicken-grand-children all over our county.

But the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a huge change and this spring it’s been enormous.

All the major national hatcheries serving backyard flocks have a back log of orders as of mid-May. They told me folks are ordering chickens who either had never had them before or who had them years ago and feel now is the time to make sure their families will have fresh eggs (and possibly meat) no matter the state of the economy nor the threat of world-wide situations.

Some of the "real" chicken farmers don’t like it and I’m sorry about that because there is a place for the huge farms and for the little home farmers as well.

While those larger chicken industry folks don’t like to admit it, and some adamantly deny it, Mother Earth News conducted a survey in 2007 where they contend true free-range eggs are lower in cholesterol and higher in most vitamins than the typical eggs you get at the store (go to www.motherearthnews.com/eggs.aspx).

Whether you agree with that or not, you have to agree there is just something special about going out in your own backyard, sticking your hand in a nest under a happy hen and coming out with a big brown egg!

There are still nay-sayers. One woman visiting my farm said of my farm fresh eggs: "I wouldn’t eat ANYTHING that came out of a chicken’s bottom!" (Although she all the times eats standard white eggs from THE STORE!!!)

So I am just writing this article as a warning: chickens ARE addictive to some folks——me for sure.

Once you see that proud rooster strutting and calling his "women" when he finds a tasty bug or you hear that special cackle when that little lady lays her very first egg, you won’t ever be the same. And that’s good.

Suzy Lowry Geno is a freelance writer from Blount County.