A Chicken Tale and a Behind the Scenes Peek
Welcome to my first post/newsletter on Substack! If you enjoy food gardening and close encounters with nature, I hope you’ll find a comfy spot here at Little Farm Writer.
If you also like uplifting romantic novels, especially set in Ireland, you just might find the community you’ve been waiting for.
Now, on to the Little Farm news!
Miss Broody Sets a Record
I thought our hen had gone permanently broody.
In fact, she had spent so much of her life sitting on a nest—without anything to show for it—that John and I named her “Miss Broody.”
For those of you new to my chicken tales, Miss Broody is our one remaining laying hen here at Berryridge Farm. I’ve written about her rather colorful young life (and her gone-but-not-forgotten “sisters”) numerous times on my Little Farm in the Foothills blog.
To fill you in, broodiness is a state in which a laying hen’s chick-raising instincts kick in. But instead of producing eggs, all she wants to do is hatch them. If there are no eggs in the nest, she sits there anyway—day and night, 24/7.
The photo above shows Miss Broody firmly ensconced in her favorite nest box.
Now, laying hens are pretty much all about eating, snacking, and scratching the soil, searching for bugs to munch on. It takes a lot of protein and nutrients, vitamins and minerals to produce eggs!
Unfortunately, broody hens aren’t really interested in food, or even water. So as the days or weeks pass without proper nutrition, their health and wellbeing can really dwindle.
I’m no expert, but it seems to me with that kind of dedication, the hen’s hormones have sort of tricked them into thinking they are hatching eggs.
In any event, a broody hen doesn't actually just sit on the nest—she settles her whole self into the bedding, fluffs out her feathers, and sinks her head into her chest. Eyes half closed, she'll generally act like she’s in a stupor.
But woe betide the person who disturbs her: she'll rouse instantly, ruffle her feathers, and squawk or even hiss at you!
And since a broody hen completely stops laying, she’s just not earning her keep.
Miss Broody is a Buff Orpington—a breed known for a tendency to go broody. Research tells me that a hen’s broody period is supposed to last about 21 days.
The problem is, the broody hens at our place had really gotten into it—often staying broody for weeks and weeks on end.
And this summer, Miss Broody was on a hen-brooding marathon: she would just not snap out of it.
As August wound down, despite my coaxing to come off the nest and enjoy some weeds, and putting feed and water right under her nose, she was eating barely enough to stay alive.
I had grown resigned to her fate: this poor little chicken was going to live out her days alone in the coop, silent, pale and sickly, until she simply gave up the ghost.
But at the end of August, there was a new development in the coop. I discovered Miss Broody was actually sleeping on the roost instead of in the nest.
It meant her broodiness was on the wane.
Whatever the future held for her, she had definitely set a record for the longest broody period by far of any of our hens.
The following morning, I briefly saw her outside in her caged run, hanging out on the big leaf maple stump. She was off her nest! Now that was a reason to celebrate!
Her outdoor play time didn’t last long, but as the days went by, she began to spend longer periods outside the coop. Then one day, she appeared in the run first thing in the morning. And stayed outside until sundown—like a normal hen!
Suddenly, she was powering down the feed, and was scratching the ground constantly, like a laying hen ought to. Our previously languishing Miss Broody had a whole new lease on life.
I let myself hope she would start laying again.
Each day, when I came to take care of her, she was practically pushing on the door to get out of the run and into the yard. She was pecking at clover and other greens like never before, and still emptying her feeder regularly too.
Yet what was entirely new was her feistiness: whenever I opened the gate to the chicken yard, this previously retiring little girl would actually try to escape into the woods!
And she was molting like crazy. As I’ve mentioned on my Little Farm blog, molting is a normal, cyclical process: a hen loses a lot of feathers while her reproductive system takes a break. It had been many months since Miss Broody had molted, and now, there were feathers everywhere.
Piles of blond fluff all around the run. Inside the coop, I had to yard the feathers out by the bucketful. She was definitely setting another record, this time for the most epic hen molt ever.
All I could think was, who is this chicken? And what happened to Miss Broody?
After several days of marveling at all the feathers she was losing without going bald, I noticed her molting dialing down. The next time I entered the coop to clean it, there was a surprise.
A small egg lying on the platform beneath the roost! Her first egg in months!
However, Miss Broody must have forgotten what the nest boxes were for. So I moved the egg to one of the nests and left it.
Two days later, I found a second egg. Right alongside her first one. So apparently the whole nest thing had come back to her.
And thus began Miss Broody’s egg laying marathon… First it was two eggs in four days, then three in a four-day period. Then seven eggs in eight days!
Her eggs started out on the small side—not quite as small as a pullet egg, but little. But they’ve gradually gotten larger. We filled one empty egg carton, and we’ve started on a second.
Miss Broody has never laid with this much regularity before—almost daily.
And come to think of it, not one of our Buff Orpington flock ever laid as consistently as this, not even in their first, vigorous months of laying.
With all this champion egg production, we’ve stopped calling the hen Miss Broody—I abbreviated her name to “Missy.”
It’s so rewarding to see this girl living a “henny” life again. And with organic eggs running from $6-$8 a dozen at the Co-op, it’s especially gratifying to have homegrown eggs.
I know all good things must (or will likely) come to an end. But for now, John and I are enjoying having a happy, productive hen at Berryridge Farm!
In book news…
I just released a new Irish novel, The Fairy Cottage of Ballydara!
I’m always excited to publish a new novel. But it seems almost miraculous to me, to see this book out into the world. You see, there’s a story behind the story…
There’s a river of story ideas, some writers say. And when an idea comes around the bend, you’ve got to wade into the flow and nab it. Otherwise, the current carries the story idea away, never to be seen again.
I thought that’s what had happened to this story.
Over 20 years ago, I wrote a romantic novel that has a lot in common with The Fairy Cottage of Ballydara. It was about a woman whose career implodes and she finds herself in the sleepy Irish village of Ballydara to figure out her next move.
But although I loved the hero, a devoted Irish dad Declan, I wasn’t really satisfied with the story.
So I stuck the manuscript into the proverbial drawer of books that will never see the light of day and moved on.
I went on to start my Ballydara series, and publish my homesteading memoir Little Farm in the Foothills. You may ask, why did I keep this one in the drawer?
Well, I had to have a little think about that, as the Irish would say.
I realized the heroine of the early book was a bit too isolated, someone who took life and herself a little too seriously. Not really a character I could relate to.
And the overall tone of the novel was…well, not dark, but a bit on the dour side. And I prefer uplifting stories with a bit of humor. And since my goal is to write the books I want to read myself, I was certain the time for that book had come and gone.
Still, I felt very connected to the general plot of the story, and the idea of an Irish heroine who makes a fresh start and reinvents herself, and on the way, falls head over heels in love.
Then along came my character Emma.
And I really liked her. Emma was someone I wanted to spend time with, who knew how to poke fun at her own foibles. I could relate not only to her career dilemmas, but her family too.
In fact, I really identified with her boisterous Irish clan: her long-suffering dad, her cheeky brothers, and the younger sister whom Emma adored.
Yet the whole story refused to manifest in my head. I wrote other books because creating fresh stories was easier than revisiting this one.
But Emma stayed with me. Over the years, I wrote around the story, bits and bobs about her and her sister Hazel, a scene here, and chapter there. I even published two novelette-length short stories in the world of Ballydara, featuring Declan’s family.
The short stories turned out to be prequels to Emma and Declan’s relationship—The Secret Well, and The Christmas Visitor, which also features Emma’s sister Hazel.
Still, the novel just wasn’t there. Had my creative river carried Emma’s book away, and by now, the story was too far downriver to catch?
After four Ballydara novels, I published my second memoir, and my mental docket of projects was cleared. It was now or never.
Time to buckle down, face my block about Emma’s story, and just do it. Write the book.
I drafted a very long novel—one of those all-over-the-place drafts—and the book turned out to be as sprawling as an epic fantasy novel. After that, I definitely needed a break—so I wrote the little gardening guide I’d always meant to finish, Little Farm in the Garden.
Then Emma had my full attention. I must have had a backlog of dreams and hopes about her, because next thing I knew, I’d put aside polishing the big book and wrote a prequel about her.
After finishing that story, I was pretty sure that I finally knew everything there was to know about Emma! So I turned my full attention to crafting this long, unwieldly story into something coherent.
The prequel became The Little Irish Gift Shop, and my uber-long novel became two: Becoming Emma, and the new one, The Fairy Cottage of Ballydara. You can find more about the storylines of all three books on my website—the link’s at the top of this page.
Anyway, what I learned was, it’s never too late to get a long-lost novel down on the page.
And as writers and other creative folks know, the creative process, and whether it’s finishing a story or project you’ve put off forever, can be messy…and unpredictable. (Forrest Gump’s “life is like a box of chocolates” comes to mind.)
Finally… for all you creative people out there—and I firmly believe that everyone is creative—maybe that idea, which you thought disappeared down the river long ago, has come around again. And it’s flowing right toward you!
This just in…
Four of my books, including The Fairy Cottage of Ballydara, have been selected for a Kobo ebook promotion!
Along with the new Fairy Cottage book, my Irish novels The Galway Girls and Becoming Emma, Special Edition plus my 2nd homesteading memoir Little Farm Homegrown, are part of Kobo’s November 2022 30% Off Sale.
I'm especially delighted about this promo because it features the Special Edition of Becoming Emma: this edition includes two connected, novelette-length short stories, The Secret Well and The Christmas Visitor—both prequels to The Fairy Cottage of Ballydara!
To get a look at each book, simply click on the book title.
To see the promotion, visit Kobo Books, and scroll down to the Fiction carousel for the novels, and the Non-Fiction carousel for Little Farm Homegrown. The 30% off Promo Code is 30NOV.
The promotion lasts until Tuesday, November 22. In the midst of all the holiday hustle and bustle, I hope you get a chance to check it out!
So winding things up…
This first post/newsletter turned out to be a long one, but from here on out, expect shorter posts.
For now, I’ll be publishing on the 10th of each month—and if readers let me know they’re up for more, I’ll begin to post each week in the future!
Thank you so much to all the readers who subscribed to my list from my SusanColleenBrowne.com website…and to my book-loving friends and family, I appreciate your support!
Cheers and best wishes,
Susan