Well here we go...

Steve and I have been thinking about writing some of this down.  You see, we are still relatively new to the  country and many of our exploits have been quite comedic.  Our name for instance....

We moved to rural North Carolina shortly after being displaced from Hurricane Katrina (that's another story).  Our little place was everything we had ever dreamed about...  a little bit of field, a little woods, a little house.  And no neighbors!  A far cry from the 66x113 lot we had in Mandeville.  Our main garden is bigger than that now (yet another story).

Well, anyway... a couple months after moving in someone had gifted us a pet rooster.  Our girls (Claire was 4 and Emma 6) curiously named him "Pecker".  We readily took him in because there was already this old chicken coop on the property with a few nesting boxes inside and a perch for roosting.  A ready made start for our first chickens.

We were told that the 11 acre flea market in Thomasville was a great place to find a few farm animals.  Never in one place had we ever seen such a place that you can find laundry detergent, new shoes, fresh fish and vegetables, dresses for a quincenera, bras fit for Jennifer Lopez, and be able to pick up a nice rabbit or chicken.  Our old neighborhood was too Starbucks-AnnTaylor-BarnesandNoble for that.

After a couple of hours we found a lady in the back that had cages upon cages of animals.  She had puppies, bunnies, ring necked doves and tons of chickens.  We asked how much and I think it was 4, 5 and 6 dollars each.  We picked out a few, she boxed them up and the girls fought over who got to hold the box in the back of the truck.  We picked up some fresh hay, some laying mash and let the chickens go in their new home to get acquainted with Pecker.

A couple months later Steve was chatting with a local fella that had stopped by to pay a visit when the man looked over at our henhouse.  "Steve?"  he asked, questioningly in particularly thick Carolina accent.  "That thar ya got is five roosters."  Did you see that coming?  Well, we didn't... but we did get quite a laugh out of that.  Hence the name.

Our next go at chickens led us to buying some older hens as to not make the same rooster mistake again, however unbeknown to us the girls we bought were of the geriatric variety and about the only thing they were good at was eating and s****ing.  So several months into the chicken adventure and we still had no eggs and a bunch of very frustrated and irritable roosters.  Poor Pecker.