Green Mountain Girls

The girls are not a militia.  Well, in some respects they are.  Earwigs, earthworms, cutworms, flies, spiders, little creepy critters of all kinds would definitely consider these chickens to be armed.  Sharp beaks and strong toe-nailed feet count as lethal weapons.

Mountain of gifted greens

When my hens bellied up to the mountain of grass clippings and clover dumped from the five-gallon bucket, they meant business, and they became the Green Mountain Girls, for just a minute or two.  Collecting the bucket of greens from my sister's place was one of the Things I get to do today.  Dumping it in the hen house where they could forage without concern for the rain was another.  Eating their way through the pile as tall as they were was their job which they dispatched with the precision of a platoon of soldiers.  What they didn't eat, they scratched.  Days later whatever is left will have dried and become the pickings for a boring day inside coop while a fall storm thrashes its way through.