Growing up, I had two brothers and three first cousins with whom we were very close. The six of us didn’t see one another very often, but when we did get together, it was fun and familiar and the connections were strong.
As we grew older and went our separate ways, we saw less and less of each other. In 1992, my first nephew was born. He was the first child born to any of the six cousins.
Immediately following his birth, my aunt (the writer Sue Sussman http://www.susansussman.net/), wrote a letter to my brother and his wife. As a writer, she had some lovely turns of phrase and beautiful insights. The one that stuck with me to this day, however, was her comment that our family was “ripe for renewal” and that Judge’s birth signalled the start of that renewal.
Now, 13 children total comprise the next generation of our family, ranging in age from five to 21. We have been sufficiently renewed.
I thought of Sue and that phrase today as Dave and I were setting up The Chicken Nursery.
As you may or may not know, we have endured a spate of chicken losses over the past couple of weeks and we’ve really, quite frankly, had enough.
As fate would have it, all but two of our broody hens have hatched their eggs over the past three days. We have now replaced our seven losses with ten beautiful new chicks, all snuggling with their mamas in (what we hope is) their safe new enclosure.
The chicken renewal is decidedly cuter than our human one (no offense, kids).
Here are several pictures of mama hens and their adorable, newly-hatched chicks for your viewing pleasure.
applewood farm 
Your blogs make my day! Thank you doll!
Its wonderful to see the hens with their chicks. Despite our losses or maybe because of them, life goes on!
It’s weird to think that some of the next generation are (biologically) old enough to have kids of their own.
We’ve had chickens for 7 years now and we went through a rough patch a couple years ago where we had attacks every couple of weeks. The first were some random dogs (we had never seen them and haven’t seen them since), the next was an unknown animal that ripped the chicken wire off of our outside enclosure, and the third was an animal that got in the coop while we were gone through a small hole in the siding. Now our coop resembles the Fort Knox of chicken coops. Glad you have the new little ones to keep you smiling… I know how sad it is to lose chickens!
Glad you see that you’re renewing your flock. Seems like something we have to do if we let chickens roam freely. We’ve had steady attrition all summer. Yesterday I found a hen half-eaten by a hawk. While we were away a young son of the woman watching the farm for us collected the eggs to surprise his mother. Unfortunately he collected the eggs that were set to hatch a couple of days from now while the hen was off the nest. Now we’re back to square one, with two sitting. We’ve only had four of our hatchlings make it to puberty this year. Hopefully they’re not all roosters.
Thanks for sharing your pictures. 🙂