First the bad news: Those of you who live in the United States will not be able to see Billy's chickens on The Discovery Channel. The good news is Canadians will get to see them on Canada's Discovery Channel. When, I don't yet know but life on Billy's farm goes on.

I've already got tomatoes setting on the vines-- see. The white powder is garden lime and not some toxic chemical.

This is Gus. He seemed to want to hog the camera while BB tried to avoid it and Elizabeth really wasn't concerned one way or the other.

Here's the three of them next to the garden fence. BB is the little black Bantam and Elizabeth is the brown Auracana who lays the blue-green eggs. If you live in or near Greensboro and need a cheap fence to contain your chickens you can buy used construction fence from Salvage America.

This is the nest Elizabeth and BB share. I leave one of BB's eggs in the nest as she tends to search for new places to lay if I don't remind her of where the nest is located. I draw little Xs and Os on one end of the egg so that I can keep from confusing today's egg and yesterday's egg. Eggs can easily remain in the nest for two or three days-- longer in winter-- before they must be harvested. Hopefully, soon I can wean BB of the need to remind her where to lay.

Below is my homemade chicken tractor, aka, chicken ark. It never gets very messy because I move it about the yard and rake up the chicken poop so that I can use it in the garden. I open it every morning when the sun comes up to allow them free range and close it at night to keep them safe from the scary things that only come out at night. The yard is well fenced but that won't stop hungry owls, opossums and raccoons. Having chickens provides me with better eggs than I can buy in the grocery store, organic fertilizer for my vegetables, a reason to get up early in the morning and countless hours of therapy.