Billy, who will be seven in May, enjoys taking dust baths with the hens. It beats competing with the younger roosters. A problem with young roosters is they all think they are Donald Trump. Which is why many end up in the oven.

After whiling away time with the hens, Billy is off for a quiet walk in the woods. Across the bridge he goes, strutting and flapping his wings. Being an old rooster isn’t bad. It’s better than being a young rooster in the oven.

A day when a mystery is solved is a good day. This nest used to be where Margaret slept with her chicks at night. That ended several months ago, when Margaret and her chicks decided they were big enough to sleep on the roost with the other chickens. The nest went unused until recently, when one of the hens began laying big brown eggs in the nest. Today, the mystery as to which hen it is, is solved. It is Maggie. Now I can make Maggie omeletes.

One of the hens lays a speckled egg. It’s among the most beautiful of eggs I find. Which hen lays this wonder? I’m not sure. I like to think that whoever it is, she lays it on days when the sunshine is speckled. It doesn’t work that way.

We woke up this morning to a fairy dusting of snow. It was still falling but the snowflakes were so fine, you needed fairy glasses to see it falling. The fine snow didn’t deter Nina from taking her little chicks out to forage. There is almost nothing that will deter a mother hen.

This is Anna’s first snow. Hmm, she’s not sure what to make of it. One step forward, then another, she goes. If she ever raises chicks in the snow, I wonder what she’ll tell them about it. “My first snow was breast deep and …” She looks like a hen with an imaginative mind.

What happens when raw eggs freeze? We have had many days of freezing nights. In the shade, the frost hasn’t melted for days, getting thicker with each passing day. On Saturday, I found an old nest where some of the hens have been laying eggs. The last time I checked that nest was five days ago and I stopped checking every day as no hens were laying eggs there.

The hens must have been watching and noticed I wasn’t checking that nest anymore because they started laying eggs there once I stopped checking. The eggs were freezing cold and some were a number of days old.

Hmm? Are these ice cold, frozen eggs any good? I let them thaw a day and cracked them open today. They were perfect. Now I know. If an egg stays on a nest a few days in freezing weather, it will be fine.