Sometimes an idea pops into my head and I just have to do it.
Hanging a parachute from the ceiling of the store to create a quieter 'room' within the store? That was a late-night fever dream fueled by eBay and driven to the finish line by Ben's upper body strength.
Getting goats? That was mulled over for about 10 minutes before I jumped into the van to meet a pair I'd found on Craigslist.
Even starting Quittner was done on impulse. Ben showed me another storage unit full of beautiful things that simply wouldn't have a home in ours, and I talked him into a career change.
To be fair, he'd been flirting with the idea of going into antiques (our origins) for years, but I forcefully pushed him over the ledge, also known as registering as an LLC and setting up an Etsy seller account.
Most recently, I decided that we must photograph a pre-holiday/mid-fall tablescape, and it must have a chicken on it. Not a cooked one, a live one. If we didn't have over a dozen chickens (who are currently not earning their keep i.e., laying, btw), this would have likely blown over as simply a wild idea. But we do have chickens, and they are beautiful.
As I typically do, I told at least 10 people about my idea — not because I thought it was necessarily brilliant, but because verbalizing it concretized it. Now I had said I would, I had to follow through.
So, we did. Yesterday Ben and I set a table in the store with an antique coverlet, placed Palatine Collection plates, bowls, coupes, and cups in Mugwort and Smoke, positioned a few antique kerosene lamps and a trailing rosemary, and set off across our property in search of a chicken.
We don't handle our chickens often. They don't like it, so why would we? That isn't a problem until we have to (because, as I've already made clear, this was a 'have to' kind of situation at this point). I chased a few younger hens around, and looked covetously at a particularly beautiful rooster who won't let me within five feet of him. Then, I saw one bird — and a beautiful one at that — was missing. Maybe, I thought, she's in the coop waiting for me?
A few of the men working on our house watched in confusion as I abandoned my earlier efforts to walk quietly up to the coop, open the rear door, and grab. There, in my arms, was a Golden Laced Wyandotte. If the name doesn't communicate how beautiful this hen is, the pictures below do.
Ben scattered chicken scratch across a couple of plates to keep her happy, and she seemed to feel right at home — as if she was born to stand on a table, pecking at treats, basking in the attention.
