We gave up our chickens a couple of months ago because we have huge landscaping plans that involve taking down the old chicken coop.  I thought it would be a relief. The chicken chores do take up a certain amount of time every day, every weekend and I thought that it would be a burden lifted from us.

It turned out that, while it did save us a few precious minutes every day, and a couple of hours on the weekends, there's a lot more to our adjustment.

1.  We used to have two bins on the kitchen counter - the chicken bucket and the compost bin. The chicken bucket was for things like potato peels, apple cores, bread ends, the ends of carrots, stuff from the fridge that nobody was going to eat but that weren't quite rotten yet. The chickens got all sorts of veggies that weren't ready for the compost. The compost was for things that were improper for chickens - onions, celery, orange peels. Now everything is being crammed into one small bin, and I can't help but think "what a waste" every time I put a "too wilted for salad but not rotten" lettuce leaf into the compost.
   
2. We have to BUY EGGS. The eggs are a funny color. They're white and characterless, the yolks a pale yellow that promise nothing so risky as flavor. I miss the deep orangey-gold of our chickens' egg yolks and the amazing rich flavor that leafy greens give chicken eggs. I miss how the yolk of a very fresh egg sits high like a bubble when you break it into a pan, instead of flattening out and running all over the place.
   
3. The yard is so quiet. No gentle clucking as the chickens scratch in their yard, no squawk to announce that somebody either laid an egg or walked in on somebody else laid an egg. That noise gets into your brain and becomes part of the warp and woof of your life when you have it. It's hard to get used to the silence.
   

I thought that I was doing us a favor, giving us time and space to get a necessary thing done. We still need to get it done, but I can hardly wait to get chickens back. I miss them a lot.