The ladies out back turned me into a hoarder

Musings on chickens, eggs, and toilet paper from a couple years ago.

Share this post with someone you’re thankful for.

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Rebecca Holden

, writer of

Dear Reader, I'm lost

, recounted her happy childhood home with its menagerie. Especially dear to her were a pair of goats, Annie and Polly. Rebecca’s place had “ginger-haired Tamworths” (pigs), “Bantams, geese, ducks, … sheep and goats.” And bees, who doubtlessly pollinated the family’s flourishing vegetable garden.

I was inspired, since our family has had livestock for decades, too. Scores of chickens, usually in batches of a half-dozen or a dozen (our count now is twelve ladies), geese (favorites were Petunia and Charles, named after children’s book characters), horses, and the usual dogs, cats, birds, fish. We have fish like crazy, many swimming around in a canoe out back that’s turned into a little, rather odd, pond. We have gardens, too, but mainly serving to ornament rather than to feed. (Rebecca, we’re trying garlic. I’ll let you know how that turns out next year.)

What follows first appeared in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, when vaccines were hoped for, people were holed up in their homes, the fortunate among us were able to keep our jobs with the frail Internet tethers of Zoom and emails, and eggs and toilet paper were no where to be found.

I hope you enjoy it and recall that, though many have suffered much, we also have much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. We have emerged through the trauma of disease, and we have greater hope, I think, that we’ll surmount today’s challenges and those that linger from darker days.

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Occasional smears of manure indicate freshness. Part of the egg haul. No more room in the fridge.

“heres the deal,” I texted, “1 dozen for 1 roll. make sure its whole.”

A dozen eggs for a roll of toilet paper: a fair exchange in these times, I thought.

“delivr is prob,” came the reply. Yes, it is, I agreed.

I had imagined a furtive exchange at an isolated location, with the actors peering at each other from afar to keep up the social distancing. Maybe we’d crouch behind a bush or tree and catch a glimpse through binoculars — small spy-gear ones, like opera glasses. My hoarded eggs in trade for hoarded toilet paper, a lesson in Covid-19 economics and human folly.

Like David Sedaris, I have failed at my attempts to hoard anything at all, but my little flock of chickens have helped me retain my pride with a hoard of eggs — multicolored ones, since we have two Araucanas (“Easter Egg Chickens”), a sole layer of whites (“Lucy” the Polish with the fancy hair-doo), and a cackle of Buff Orpingtons, all named “Ethyl” because they’re indistinguishable one from another. Julius, the rooster, of course, doesn’t lay — eggs at least. He occupies himself with other things, since roosters, as people in the Middle Ages knew, prod us to virtue. When I go out every morning around five o’clock, he rouses himself to crow.

Lucy the Polish with her fancy hair-do perches in the Crepe Myrtle next to the chicken yard. Traumatized by a wily and murderous opossum attack, Lucy took to perching in the tree. For weeks, I’d grab her at night when I put the chickens to bed, but I eventually just let her sleep where she wanted. She was plucky and smart. One day she was missing. Someone’s evening dinner, I imagine.

We have about a hundred eggs amassed today in baskets and cartons in the fridge. I used to traffic them — foisting a dozen here and there to the visitors, mainly visiting children. Derek and Kathleen were always ready to take a couple dozen, Aaron and Natasha, too. The Horsey Ladies at the barn down the road were good for a couple dozen sometimes – mostly fancy women who procured their eggs from Whole Foods, probably. Anyone who chanced to drop by.

We remind them: “Occasional smears of manure indicate freshness.”

Julius the Rooster was state-fair-winning stock, though we were cautious about bringing livestock to the fair. Too much worry of infection. He ruled the roost for a long time, until we ended his reign when he began to beat up on some of the ladies.

Today, the innocent egg trafficking has stopped, and unwillingly we have an abundant hoard of eggs but a dearth of toilet paper.

Who knows, perhaps my Ethyls, Lucy, and the Easter Eggers might lay golden eggs. I will have inadvertently succeeded at hoarding something.

The only place I know with toilet paper is a country store off the road just north of us. A real country store that seems a bit stuck in Norman Rockwell’s America, but they had some Charmin and eight individually wrapped rolls of “Marcal Pro Snow Lily” sitting serenely on a lower shelf when I dropped by. Septic safe, so I bought four rolls of the “Pro” paper, 69 cents each plus tax. (I do wonder what the “Pro” means, though. A professional-grade wipe?) The gentleman cashier nodded his head in disbelief when I told him he’s got the only toilet paper for sale in the county.

Toilet paper has become a currency: “In the high-stakes world of gift giving in Asia’s financial hubs, Montblanc pens and leather folios are out — toilet paper and surgical masks are most definitely in,” David Ramli and Abhishek Vishnoi reported from Hong Kong in February.

And this morning I read in the Washington Post that eggs, too, might soon be a prized commodity: “Wholesale egg prices have risen 180 percent since the beginning of March, according to Urner Barry, which does market price reporting,” said the article.

Who knows, perhaps my Ethyls, Lucy, and the Easter Eggers might lay golden eggs. I will have inadvertently succeeded at hoarding something.

Delivery is still a problem, and it’s far more gratifying to share the egg wealth without a trade of anything but goodwill and, sometimes, a visit. Visits are tough in today’s strange world. Goodwill, however, survives.

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I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving break. Got a comment?

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Tags: chickens, eggs, pandemic, rural life, toilet paper