I refer to them as “The Girls” and life at Las Golondrinas just wouldn’t be the same without them. I’m talking about my flock of laying hens: two Buff Orpingtons, two Rhode Island Reds, and two Plymouth Barred Rocks.

Now, The Girls are supplying me with more fresh, brown eggs than I can eat so I bag ‘em up and give them away. It’s not wine or flowers in my hands when I’m invited for a meal at a friend’s house; I take a brown bag full of fresh eggs.

To blog readers out of touch with life outside of supermarket shelves, my Girls’ real eggs make the commercial store versions pale and plastic by comparison. In fact, to break and eat my real eggs is to see store eggs as ‘virtual’ eggs at best, mere simulations of the real thing.

For one thing, you need a three pound ballpene hammer to break the shell. And the brown, outside shell is just the beginning. Inside the strong shell is Nature’s own strong membrane protecting the prize inside. That prize is the yolk in my Girls’ eggs. They stand up like elementary school show-offs, tall and orange, not pallid yellow, a natural world away from the pasty, washed-out wanna-be color you see in store-bought eggs!

There’s a simple reason why my Girls’ eggs are so rich and wholesome: they lead wholesome lives, eating well and roaming over two acres, getting lots of exercise and activity and stimulation, lots of sunshine … and all the bugs they can scratch up! Contrast that to cramped, caged-lives of commercial poultry where a chicken’s lifespan is without exercise or natural sunlight and you see why my all-natural eggs are food of a different order.

But there’s one daily ritual I share with The Girls that never fails to bring a smile and chuckle. It’s the ‘Henpecked Olympics’ at evening feeding time. Now, anyone who’s been around chickens much knows they’re not Nature’s astrophysicists. That’s not to say they’re dumber than dirt, but let’s just say it’s other body parts they associate with ‘egg,’ NOT ‘egghead.’ Brain synapses may be limited but they’ve got one neural-connection that is simply amazing: it’s the Running-For-Dinner hot wire connection between brain, stomach, and feet.

That’s where the ‘Henpecked Olympics’ come in. They’re ’special olympics’ of a poultry kind. What I mean is, watching a chicken’s unbalanced running, their side-to-side almost-out-of-control lunging they call running, is simply a wonderment to behold. You see, every evening when I go to the Chicken Palace carrying my baking pan full of fresh lettuce, tomato, corn kernels, and wheat bread crumbs, I pause at the bridge going across the irrigation ditch, and in a loud, high-pitched voice I call, “CHICK, CHICK, CHICK … CHICK-EN!” The Girls are always at the far end of my property, having scratched and scavenged their way to the north fence throughout the day staying together as a flock.

At the sound of my voice calling them, heads go high in the air, brain synapse starts firing, and quickly my Girls are doing their side-splittingly funny impression of a Road Runner, heading straight for me down the ditch bank path, making me giggle watching their Henpecked Olympics.

Life at Las Golondrinas wouldn’t be the same without them. They’re feathered comedians funnier than canned laughter on TV. My Girls are showing me when I re-connect with Nature and the cycle of life I connect with what is simple and basic and real. They’re showing me how satisfying authentic reality can be.

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine