The Cottage Smallholder

Marco and Gep had settled really well chez The Chicken Lady at the other end of the village.
“They spend their time preening and gazing at each other,” she explained.
“Preparing for the arrival of the girl friends,” chipped in her husband.

A couple of weeks ago I was introduced to their girlfriends. They had a pit stop on their nuptial journey to meet their new husbands. Three pretty pearl grey guinea hens were in a sturdy wooden crate in the boot of TCL’s car. Pearl grey actually looks like darkest grey with white flecks. I examined the birds in the crate. Calm and serene.

Somehow they reminded me of nuns. Perhaps it was their colour or the helmets and wattles that echoed the nun’s starched wimples. I attended a convent school as a child. Aged eight, I toyed with the idea of becoming a nun. The pre dawn Matins and the idea of coping with the scratchy wimples put me off.

A week later, The Chicken Lady and husband S arrived for the first Cottage Smallholder Bacon Smoking event. The conversation naturally turned to Marco and Gep.
“The girls are really keen to get acquainted but the boys keep on chasing them away. They’re really aggressive, those young lads.”
“So we’ve separated them in adjoining runs.”
“They can look but they can’t touch.”
“Ah,” said Danny “Glad to hear that you’re employing a Masters and Johnson technique.”

The next day I went up to deliver their streaky bacon.
“You must see Marco and Gep while you’re here.”
We walked through the pretty garden to the chicken house.

The boys had changed since I last saw them being carried through the cottage kitchen. Their wattles and helmets had grown. Happy to live with hens but not so certain about their new girlfriends. Marco stood in the male guinea fowl run looking out at us. An arrogant wattle-rattling male. Meanwhile Gep couldn’t resist examining the girls through the wire.

This harem are clearly a gang of pretty racy girls. Desperate to break their purda, climbing over each other to communicate with Gep.

Nuns? No way.