Today my family went to my friend Sophie’s house in the Redlands. We visited her to see her chickens. Oh and her too. There were at least 30 chickens. There were many different breeds: Sussex, Leghorn, Buff Orpington, Bantam, Plymouth Rock, All Americano also known as an Easter Egger, Silkie Bantam chick and one rooster named Sherlock who was a Sussex. She had other birds, her most favorite  a lovebird named Opal. Opal just hung out in Sophie’s shirt collar all day. A Cockatiel named Loki who hung out on Sophie’s mother’s shoulder. Also, finches and one quail. Sophie loves birds. I am going to introduce her to Buddy our yellow nape amazon.

The coop was made out of an old swing set/playhouse and they added a pen around it. We went to collect some eggs and had to reach under them to get the eggs while they were sitting on them. The eggs were many different colors and were warm. There was one hen and her babies that was outside of the pen and we tried to catch some of them. It was hard. They were fast. But we did catch them finally.

The chickens feathers felt like dog fur, they were so soft. The rooster was really soft and his feathers were so silky.

They had a garden growing many different things. Including one plant we cannot remember the name of and we forgot to get a picture of that was bright orange and tasted like pepper. We also at teeny tiny tomatoes that were delicious. The garden was made with soil that they made themselves by using table scraps in a compost bin. The bin attracts bugs and the chickens just eat them that lets the worms Sophie puts in the bin do their job to break down the compost into soil. They even use the chicken poop as fertilizer for the garden. See, one happy circle.

My brother Finn loved the chickens. He even got in the baby chick cage with them.

We learned so much today. We learned about birds, eggs, gardening, edible flowers, conservation, recycling, and stamps and stamp collecting. Sophie collects stamps. I have some from Greece that I am going to give her this week at class, we take creative writing together.