So, I arrive at night at this farm outside of Champaign, Illinois, after a long but uneventful ride with my beautiful girls. And I'm greeted by two little girls in velvet dresses and a kind loving couple that I know as friends. they have this beautiful farm. And so, we put the carrier into the hen house and open the cage. My girls don't come out. It's dusk turning to night. And most of the hens are beginning to slow down and settle, but several step out to greet my girls. And Katie and Michael point out to me Del, up in the rafters -- their Delaware rooster. I'm floored. I'm just astounded. My girls are not only going to have safety and love and care, they are going to have hens and a rooster. I couldn't quite relax yet, but I definitely did over dinner. Michael transferred my girls to their own little roost, so they wouldn't have to pass the night in their carrier.
Michael prepared a wonderful Indian dinner with treasures from their own farm. Katie has been learning how to garden and how to raise and process livestock. She's putting in fruit trees and preparing fences and tending sheep. She processes chickens and pigs. She keeps a goat for milk. She has a farm life. And my girls get to live there too now.
While I ate that wonderful dinner, Katie told me about how they had backyard hens too -- how they had done exactly what I did -- check out the messed up ordinances in our town, get their hens, and then receive a citation. And how Michael went to the city building and said that he would be happy to meet with the city attorney at the city's billable hours to discuss how the city is in error about the legality of hens. And he told me that it really is a matter to the courts because the ordinances are a mess -- that the original intention of the two residential ones clearly defines hens as animal companions, pets, not agricultural animals.
But I didn't have any more fight to try and keep my hens. It was all I could do to drive them from Ohio to Illinois. So, I enjoyed cocktails, wine, a wonderful meal, great conversation, and fellowship with kind people. And I slept like a baby deeply and well in a beautiful room with a 19th century feel in an old farm house on a beautiful piece of property.
And the next morning, I laid in bed with two sweet little girls, read children's stories, had spectacular coffee and a great meal with farm bacon and visited my girls. Here they are on their first morning, looking uncertain, a bit ragged from molt, but unafraid. I didn't cry, though I wanted to.