It all started on Good Friday morning. The Fix-It Farmer left the house early on a mystery errand. When he came back, he asked daughter Rachel and me to help him unload something from his pickup.
Thinking that he’d purchased a heavy piece of equipment, I begrudgingly pulled on my work boots. I was confused when I didn’t see anything in the truck’s bed, but he told me to look in the cab. There I found a cardboard box with holes and tiny chirps coming from inside.
“Happy early Easter!” he said.
He had me carefully carry it into the shop office where he’d set up a heat lamp and a generous layer of pine shavings inside an oval metal stock tank. After I set the box inside, he opened the top to reveal a fluffy flock of butter- and caramel-colored chicks.
I struggled between three emotions:
1. Cuteness overload – Awww! How precious!
2. Mild panic – What do we know about caring for chickens?
3. Concern – How will this complicate our lives?
Shawn, a.k.a. Fix-It Farmer, mentioned several times in recent months how he’d like to get chickens, but I had no clue that he would put his plan in motion without us talking about it first. We have a nice chicken house on our property with electricity and an outside run.
I’m the kind of person who likes to do deep-dive research before I make a big commitment, like keeping critters alive and thriving for the long haul. Hence, the mild panic. I shouldn’t have worried because my engineer hubby also is into research and he’d done some of that, but there were still surprises.
They come in the mail?
He ordered our chicks online through Tractor Supply to ship in the mail, a flock of ten “Brown Egg Layers” that could have been from more than 20 breeds listed on the website. No, they don’t come to your mailbox. You go to the Post Office when you get the alert that the chicks have arrived. Early that Friday morning, Shawn had to dodge mail carriers pushing carts down the loading dock to pick up the chicks at our local Post Office.
The Internet tells me that newly hatched chicks can live for three days without food or water because their tiny bodies are still operating on nutrients from the yolk. That’s why mailing chicks is a common way for folks to start or grow their flocks.
Mail order chicks is a time-tested tradition in the Engelland family. Shawn’s grandmother regularly ordered them by the dozens. Almost every day on the family farm in central Kansas, Grandma Evelyn would prepare fried chicken for the noonday meal, from the coop to the table, if you catch my drift. That was probably the most economical way for her to feed her large family.
Side note, they also made their own sausage. Not gonna lie, I still have some PTSD from watching the old 8 mm family movies. Very eye opening for this city girl. I have NO plans to revive that old family tradition.
On a similar theme, no one in my family has the desire to raise meat birds, but we like eggs. And if you’ve bought them at the grocery store in recent years, you know they can get expensive.
Fowl beginnings
Although they won’t start laying eggs until they’re 5 or 6 months old, I decided I could get onboard for the chicken-raising ride.
Shawn carefully picked up several of the chicks in his gloved hand and gently dipped their beaks into their water dispenser. Apparently, you must show at least a few of them how to get water, then they in turn teach the others. They also found their feeding station and began pecking away at the chick starter feed.
It doesn’t get much cuter than this, but the light-yellow chick at the bottom center was one of two early casualties. You can see how she’s not interested in the water or her sisters.
The early days were not without some challenges. Right off the bat, I noticed one fluffy yellow chick who stood in place swaying slightly while most of her sisters ran around in a little mob to check out their new larger digs. She appeared to be shell shocked to find herself out of the shell and out of the box, showing no interest in eating or drinking.
Shawn found her dead the first morning. We lost a second chick who also looked shell-shocked by the second morning, despite daughter Rachel’s valiant efforts to gently administer chick electrolyte solution with a small syringe.
The other eight showed no signs of shipping stress, running around their tank, eating, drinking and pooping. They shied away from human contact but a few of them enjoyed bullying others by running right at them and jumping on the more timid sisters.
Rachel, with a little help from me, did have to deal with something in a few of them called pasty butt, which is pretty much what it sounds like. A chick’s “vent” that releases both #1 and #2 can become plugged by dried-on pasty poop. They can even die from it.
What do you do? You take a cloth or paper towel dampened in warm water to gently wipe away the plug. Needless to say, our shy little girls did NOT enjoy this process.
Awkward teenagers
So this is a cat carrier we used to transport our senior feline from Texas to Kansas. Think the chickens know?
When they were several weeks old, Shawn moved them from the metal stock tank in the shop office to their official home in the chicken house. Now at 12 weeks, all eight birds are doing fine but still run from human contact.
We’re still unsure of the breed or breeds we have. My sister in-law who has raised laying hens for years visited our coop and said she thought they looked like Rhode Island Reds. Or, according to online pictures, most of them may be Production Reds. One or two of them are noticeably lighter and might be another breed. But they’re still at that awkward teenager phase where they don’t look like the pictures on the Internet.
They like to roost on the long, narrow boards along the walls. Soon, we will line their nesting boxes with pine shavings.
Anyway, Shawn and Rachel have done pretty much all the chicken-related chores, which includes keeping their food and water topped off and replacing soiled shavings.
This makes me very happy because I’m busy working with my horse Penny, who is the most high maintenance animal at Plum Prairie Ranch. But that’s for another post.
This week, Shawn is renovating their outdoor run before allowing them access to their little yard.
Avoiding a chicken-hearted faith
In Luke 13:34, Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!”
Gently taking the last chick from the box to place her in her new home.
Shawn and Rachel take care of all the chicks’ physical needs, but the birds won’t have anything to do with their providers.
How often am I like that with God? Am I too busy to spend time with Him? Or if I do take time to study the Bible and pray, am I truly abiding with Him or rushing to check it off my to-do list?
Do I choose to rest in His presence and peace or keep struggling with ALL THE THINGS?
It all comes down to trust. Do I trust in God or do I trust in my own efforts?
Here are four challenges I encounter in learning to trust God more and ways to overcome them:
Challenge 1. Busyness. Solution: Finding rest in the Lord.
God wants us to be productive, but He also wants us to take time to rest. By setting aside regular times of rest, I show that I trust God to provide for my needs.
This is something most of us in the United States have difficulty doing, really resting. In his book “Garden City,” John Mark Comer talks about Sabbath as a time each week to unplug. Prioritizing sleep, no email or social media, no difficult tasks or challenging conversations. Just rest and worship, spending time with God, family and friends.
Just 3 cool chicks chilling out. Only 10 days old, the details showing up in their wing feathers are glorious.
In Eugene Peterson’s Message version of Matthew 11:28-30, he paraphrases and amplifies the concept of Sabbath rest with God:
Jesus said, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
I’ll be honest. I’m not very good at this type of Sabbath right now. It’s something I want to develop in my Sunday schedule.
There’s always more I can do on the ranch, so I can easily fill my day to overflowing. But on Sundays, I want to focus on personal and corporate worship, and maybe even an afternoon nap.
Challenge 2: Lack of faith. Solution: If I want to trust God more, I need to know Him better.
There’s no substitute for spending time in the Bible, the best way for me to get to know God better. I’ve done Tara Leigh Cobble’s The Bible Recap, a one year chronological plan to read through the Bible, a couple of times. I really appreciate her focus on what the passage teaches us about God’s character. When I study a passage, it’s easy for me to slip right into the applications for my life. What does this mean for me? But the Bible is first and foremost the story of God at work in the world and His plan to redeem us through His Son Jesus Christ.
Now this is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent. – John 17:30
Challenge 3: Stunted faith. Solution: To keep growing in faith, I must do hard things.
If I want to run faster or get stronger, I need to push myself to the point of fatigue. I don’t grow by taking the easy path but by persevering when the going gets tough.
God places each of us exactly where He wants us and calls us to walk with Him through the wind and the waves so we grow in faith.
Right now in my ladies’ Bible study, our workbook, based on the book with the same name, is “If You
Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat.” It’s based on the story from Matthew 14:22-33 where Jesus walks on water during a storm and Peter gets out and walks with Jesus until he looks at the wind and waves and begins to sink. He cries out to Jesus to save him. Jesus pulls Peter out of the waves and helps him back in the boat. He asks, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
Author John Ortberg makes the point that Peter got into trouble when he took his eyes off Jesus, but the bigger failures were the 12 other disciples who never got out of the boat. They never knew the exhilaration of water walking.
In his book, Ortberg writes, “Failure is refusing to run the race at all.”
Sometimes I let the fear of failure keep me from trying, but the true failure is giving up on my calling. I can allow discouragement to derail me, or I can take some positive step of action, which robs failure of its power.
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. – Romans 5:3-5
Challenge 4: Dissatisfaction. Solution: Practicing gratitude in hard seasons.
Thanking God when life is difficult helps me remember that the Lord is always giving me tangible evidence of His goodness if I will just pay attention. It might be a new insight from a Bible study, a cooling breeze after a steamy summer day or a text from a friend. Giving thanks frequently draws me closer to God and boosts my joy.
Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. – 1 Thessalonians 5:18
Trust brings hope
Sometimes God will keep bringing up the same theme over and over again, and I know I need to pay attention. A verse that keeps popping up in recent devotionals, studies and in my mind is this encouraging prayer:
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. – Romans 15:13
As I’m thinking about this verse, I can see that God is my source of hope. He fills me with joy and peace. His Holy Spirit has the power to cause me to overflow with hope.
My part? Trusting in Him. God gives me hope when I choose to trust Him.