Day 10.

Blacky, The Ancient One. Photography by F L Campbell

Bush eggs: zip. Nest box eggs: diddly. Feed hopper: squat.

Checked on Steve. She is much more comfortable on eight eggs apparently.

I finally got to the bottom of Paula’s niceness. She wanted a story about her ‘heritage and ancestors’ (she shows great depth for one her age) so I told her about Blacky, The Ancient One.

The Female Person was ten years old when she bred Blacky. Blacky and The Female Person grew up and had a wonderful childhood together, only finally moving out of the family home when The Female Person found true love. To woo The Female Person The Male Person even built Blacky a wonderful hen house (now the broody box). “Love me, love my chicken” was The Female Person’s catch cry and thus Blacky was accommodated. It was hard at times for The Female Person to look after Blacky as her job took her away from Blacky’s home. Blacky was often lonely in these middle years but the two of them did their best.

The young people couple eventually bought this farm at Pecka Pecka where The Female Person settled down to the life of an artist (of modest talent), which meant she had much more time to spend with Blacky. The later years together were full of sunshine, good foodie treats and cuddles. Blacky never had any chicks of her own (a great sadness) but lived to the astounding age of one hundred and five chicken years (about fifteen human years). She was the founding spiritual mother of the Pecka Pecka chicken flock and is buried under the pohutukawa tree by the people house.

Paula was very impressed with the story, especially about just how truly old The Ancient One was. She was rather perplexed as to how she was related to Blacky, but just as I was about to explain she wandered off. I guess I had reached her ‘history lesson threshold’.