A first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford.
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“My favorite chicken’s name was Blackie. My great-uncle had given me a whole bunch of eggs; the hen had gotten off the nest and decided to just give up on motherhood. I put the eggs in the incubator, and one by one they stopped peeping, which meant they were going to die.
“I had to get rid of my chickens when I was in college. One day after I moved to Chicago, I went to my friend Stewart’s house, and he said, ‘I’d like to have chickens in my backyard.’ I was giving him advice about that, and he looks at me and said, ‘You could be a chicken consultant.’ So I mocked up my business cards on Vistaprint. It was like throwing spaghetti at the wall. But sure enough, people started taking it seriously.
