The author with a bounty of eggs.

“If you move me back to the South, I want chickens.”

The words came like spitfire from my wife’s mouth.

She held my gaze like a gunslinger.

“Of course,” I said. She’d had chickens on her mind since Vermont.

That was five years ago, when I’d uprooted her and our new baby. I’m an ordained minister, and we’d left North Carolina so that I could take my first call at a church tucked away in the Green Mountains. We loved the snow. We loved the cold. We loved Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Bernie Sanders, but we couldn’t adapt to the feeling of isolation.

When the next baby came, we named her after a Gilmore girl. We moved to Connecticut, where there were more hospitals, amenities and a salary increase for our growing family.

Still, we struggled to adapt to our new surroundings.

“What if we went back South?” I asked. A church had reached out with the invitation to bring us home.

My wife, who is allergic to the sun and anything stencilled with a monogram, was less than enthusiastic.

“It’s too hot. I’m done living in a place where I sweat standing still,” she said. “It would take a miracle to get me there.”

The miracle was chickens.

The clock started ticking as soon as we hit the Old North State. I’d find her scrolling on her phone. I caught images of silkies, Rhode Island reds and Plymouth Rocks. A book came in the mail. I tore off the packaging and held up a copy of “The Backyard Chicken Keeper’s Bible: Discover Chicken Breeds, Behaviour, Coops, Eggs, and More.”

“What’s this?” I said.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” she said. She snatched the book with a speed that would have impressed a kingfisher.

Things moved quickly after that.

I was informed that a coop was being constructed off-site and would be delivered in mid-spring.

“Well, that’s good,” I said. I had drawn a line in the sand, deciding not to be involved in the chicken business.

I had enough things to do. Somehow, I ended up being the keeper of a cat I never wanted, not to mention the two children I did — the youngest of whom was refusing to use a potty. It would seem my lot in life was to chase her diaper-covered bottom around until she was ready to squat like a civilized human.

The coop.

As a man built an addition to our backyard, packages arrived.

A brooder pen, a large heating plate, sacks of food and shavings.

“Where in the hell is this going?” I asked.

“In the upstairs bedroom,” she said. The decision already made, I took my opinion and moved it into storage to sit and gather dust.

The chickens came soon. Most inky black and looking as if they could hold their own at a Cure........

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