Why did the chicken cross the driveway? To get to the salad bar on the other side.
Ginny Neil
Fifteen years ago, I found myself sitting on the front steps with my cat, Tip, surveying the enemy troops as they gathered for another assault on my garden. Tip was expressing his disgust with twitchy whiskers and a busy tail. He was all for another frontal assault, but I was considering enlisting the aid of my chicken-chasing dog. Unfortunately, Luke tended to eat his enemies, and I didn’t want to lose a layer. This all started because I did not have a clear understanding of farm life when I married My Own Farmer.
When we finished renovating our house and turned our attention to the yard, I insisted that we build a board fence rather than the more practical chain link that my husband suggested. I argued that a white-board fence would look so much prettier from the road. He capitulated, but it only took me one season to realize that a board fence was useless for keeping certain members of the livestock clan out.
There’s nothing sheep enjoy more than a smorgasbord of flowers. They especially love dining on the kind that were planted along the inside of my fence. The lambs, who could reach through the gaps in the boards, gnawed my beautiful daylilies, hostas and coneflowers to ragged stubble.
But, the lambs and I made peace. I widened the flower beds and let the lambs trim the six inches they could reach through the fence. The damage wasn’t noticeable, and it kept the weeds down in the back. Then, we built a chicken house so we could have fresh eggs. The chickens were penned at night but roamed the front and back forty all day, scratching up bugs and worms. It was a happy, practical arrangement until Henrietta wandered too far and discovered the salad bar in my vegetable garden.
Ginny Neil
This plucky chick convinced every member of the flock to join her for a snack. I fought back. I bought chicken wire and stapled it to the bottom of the fence where the hens were sneaking through. They just followed the wall of wire until they found the end and ducked inside the yard, again.
I ran out of chicken wire so I recycled some items. When the chickens ducked under the gate, I wired up a leftover piece of lattice work. When they discovered a hole behind the shed, I draped an old volleyball net over that section of fence. When they wiggled around the grill I had placed in a vulnerable corner, I stapled up a badminton net I found at the dump. And when the hens powerwalked to the pasture side of the fence, I cut up a bird net and stapled it to the bottom boards.
I covered holes with abandoned tomato cages, parts of an old tricycle, black plastic drainpipe and a piece of shower curtain. I realized I had lost the war when I covered the last hole with a recycled pot rack.
The hens were still finding their way in, but now they couldn’t seem to find their way out. That’s why the cat and I were commiserating on the deck. We’d spent the last hour chasing five chickens past the hole they had entered. They never found it.
Ginny Neil
When all the other chickens went to roost, we opened the gate and the renegades hot-footed it back to the henhouse. I covered the last hole with a bushel basket and went to bed. The next day, there were no chickens in my yard. I won the war, but I couldn’t see my beautiful fence anymore.
A week later, we built a six-foot-tall wire enclosure around the henhouse and the hens stayed home.
Which brings me to this year. We regularly replace our hens with new layers, stewing their predecessors and canning them for soup pot or potpie. Word must have gotten out, because recently there has been a rebellion.
It started with one white hen. She taught herself to fly over the fence. A week later there were three more hens wandering around outside the enclosure. They haven’t found my garden yet. But I am smart enough to know that it is only a matter of time before I will be considering ways to fence them out. Or not. I could stew the renegades, instead. Are you reading this, you feathery fiends?
The thing about country living is that all problems are just temporarily fixed. Chickens in the garden are only one of the issues that take up time I would rather be using to make art, or walk, or sit on the patio in the shade with a cool beverage. Isn’t all of life like that?
The trick is to accept it all, good and bad, as part of the journey. And if that fails, nothing comforts the soul quite like a bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup.
The story above first appeared in our July / August 2025 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!