One of the fun things about promoting Tillie Lays an Egg is that I get to take my chickens places that poultry are not usually welcome. This past weekend, The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts had it’s first Family Fall Festival. The Country Club (yes, that’s it’s name. It’s exclusive enough to be THE country club) is a bastion of privilege. It is an oasis of manicured lawns and elegant, historic club house, and a master’s level golf course. There’s even a curling rink! Suffice it to say, chickens are not welcome on the greens. However, they invited Tillie and me to come to this event, and we were happy to show up. Tillie (in this case, Coco, the actress who plays Tillie), was, of course, already in her country club finery of a white dress and fancy red comb. I put on some lipstick. Tillie graciously let dozens of children pet her. A few older members reminisced about chickens that they had when growing up. Here is a photo of our tent on the club house lawn. It was a lovely afternoon.

Next, we traveled to the Barnes & Noble in Framingham. Most B&Ns have cafes, and so, for health regulation reasons, I’m not allowed to bring a chicken. But this one’s Starbucks is separate, and so Tillie was invited. There’s nothing like a bringing a hen to a place where animals are totally unexpected. The children sat cross-legged, transfixed by the story and the live chicken. At least a half-dozen B&N employees joined the audience. Who can resist a pretty hen?

Here are Larissa DeAngelis and Muriel Macleod of the children’s department.

In October, Tillie and I drive 100 miles to meet the children in Springfield, Vermont. We can’t wait.

I’m in a bit of a mood today. It might have something to do with my agent letting me know about a manuscript that we thought would sell readily, but has been “declined.”  I need a new work-in-progress. I miss the emotional entanglement with my characters and the hashing and re-hashing of words. Somehow, all of my projects are now waiting for approval. I don’t have anything in the just-started phase. I do have an idea that involves goats. So, I’ve been spending time with the boys. Nice excuse, isn’t it?

Luckily, the vegetable garden suits my mood. My tomatoes succumbed to the blight and cold nights. I ripped them out. The bean plants, although still leafy, are producing twisted, discolored beans. The nights are too cold and the plants are too old. I tore the vines off of their support trellises and tossed them in the compost. Very satisfying.

This is not the time of year for planting and nurturing. It’s all about dead-heading and composting, gleaning what’s left, and letting the soil rest for awhile. It’s the perfect metaphor for my life. Okay, that’s a cliche. Not my best writing. But it sure makes for mood-lifting gardening.

Yes, in Tillie Lays an Egg, the hens share and take turns. But, sorry, that’s a work of fiction. This is what happens in real life:

Philomena and Agnes both want to lay their eggs. There are three nesting boxes. The other girls are outside. Plenty of room, right? Wrong. They both insist on the middle box. Today. Yesterday they laid eggs in the right-hand box. What one has, the other wants. It’d be funny, except sometimes they get so pushy that they trample their eggs.

The egg that you see to the right is a decoy egg. It’s wooden. It’s used to convince new layers to lay in boxes and not on the floor. It works. Well, for everyone except for the aptly named Eggers, who lays whenever she is ready, wherever she is. Today it was on the floor of the coop. The other day it was under the bunny hutch. Last week, it was in the mud, in the rain. I stepped on it before I realized it was there. Once she lays her egg, she doesn’t look back, which is a very Tillie-like thing to do. So, there is some truth to my book!

Last week we extended the goat paddock into the back meadow. Remember this lush view?

This is what it looks like today, one week later.

Yes, it looks decimated, but the goats were quite fussy. They didn’t just mow it down. The golden rod went first, eaten with gusto. Cleansing nibbles were taken on the ferns. Then the leaves on the thorny bush were savored, but not all in one sitting. It’s best to tear off the leaves, wander off and then come back. The tops of the clover were eaten, and the leaves ignored. Now, they are doing gleaning forages through the pasture, looking for morsels they’ve missed. They are not much interested in the black-eyed susan, so I might have flowers bloom again next year.

I’ve ordered more fence so that they can browse further back. I’d hoped that the meadow would give them forage until the first snowfall, but at this rate, it will all be gone in a month. Fortuitously, there’s an overgrown meadow across the street. It’s conservation land and mowed only once a year. It could use a good tidying along the edges by the stone walls. I know just the boys for the job.

Lots of people claim that they get backyard chickens to “teach their children about responsibility.” It’s a good way to do it. No one is harmed if you don’t vacuum your room, but if you don’t water the poultry, they’ll die.

I got my first hen when my oldest son was two. He’s now sixteen. However, I didn’t get chickens for him, or for his brother. I got them for me. I like doing the chores. I spent this morning cleaning out the coops and shoveling goat manure. I couldn’t have been happier. I like doing the daily feeding and scrubbing the waterers. My husband does too. Honestly, I haven’t wanted to share that with the kids. Terrible, isn’t it?

Still, the boys, somehow, have learned about putting other living creatures ahead of themselves. They’ve learned about how calming sitting with a hen can be. They know the sweet smell of goat breath. They do have chores, just not barn chores. Among other tasks, they vacuum (up a lot of dog hair!)

Once in awhile, they collect the eggs. You’d think, that after 14 years of bringing eggs into the kitchen, that my eldest would know the routine. But, as I said, my son is 16. There are teenage brain-lapses. A friend of his was over, so they went out to the coops to see the chickens, pet the rabbit, and play with the goats. The backyard animals are always the first stop for visitors. Even teenagers. More fun that a Wii. Anyway, he came in with three eggs and asked me where to put them. How he couldn’t know, after 14 years of bringing eggs into the kitchen, I don’t know. I was busy and didn’t look up. I said, a bit exasperated, “with the other eggs!”

I later asked him where the eggs were. He said, “in the fridge with the other ones, like you told me to.” After a bit of searching, I realized he’d put the freshly laid eggs in the bowl with the hard-cooked ones. Now how was I going to tell which was which? My morning routine is to eat a hard-cooked egg, first thing. I’m usually still half-asleep at 6:30. The jolt of protein helps. I cook up a big batch once a week. I didn’t want to wake up to a raw egg. From the outside, they look the same. How to tell which was which? Take a flashlight and shine it on the egg. A Raw egg looks translucent. A cooked egg is opaque.