In 2017, we were just getting settled into life in North Carolina after military retirement. We had bought our house the year before and it was the first time that we felt we had any sort or permanence and could do whatever we wanted to a yard. It was a weird thing to get accustomed to after living military life for so long and always knowing that we weren’t going to grow roots!
I had some homeschooling mom friends who had chickens and had already been planting little ideas into my head about getting some. They talked about how easy they were and how fun! I had researched a little, but had no intention of getting any until a warm day in February when…
I walked into Tractor Supply and they had baby chicks.
Gus is just as bad as me-we can be impulsive and he feeds into my crazy ideas. We saw all the cute little chicks and held a few. They were perfect and tiny and soooo cute! What made the whole situation worse was that there was a model of last year’s coop on clearance, making the whole situation more affordable. We agreed that we would get the coop, go home, and research a little more.
I did that while we assembled the coop. The next day, I found myself at a local farmer’s house, buying several freshly hatched chicks.
The Gephardts 