Feeding the Chickens

We have about an hundred chickens. (and currently no steady egg sale market so palettes of eggs are stacking up on the kitchen counter) Somedays, it is a real struggle to get that afternoon feed accomplished before it is time to set off in the car to guitar lesson or Spanish class. I found myself a few days ago, struggling to retrieve an antique wooden clothes pin from the mud under the chickens, as they cluttered around, excited about the maggot-ridden peanuts that I had brought them in a cellophane bag closed with the pin. The maggots had had plenty of time in the bag to make a fine sort of webbing that swaddled the bag, the nuts and the clothes pin, but I picked it up from the mud and put it in the now-empty food bucket. It is wonderful to even be able to put maggot-ridden peanuts to good use.