Lunch time sends me out into the garden to fetch dill and kale. The nice thing about having your own garden is that if you need just one or two leaves of something, you can go get it.

Walking out to the garden and back, I can’t help but take photos of the mother hens and their chicks. Tangerine’s chicks can still huddle underneath her, but at the rate they are going, not for long. When one of them gets separated from her, you can hear its loud peep from 500 feet away. Niji-hime and her daughter are inseparable. And Madge is still caring for her chicks though they are well able to manage on their own.

Watch hens care for their chicks, and you can understand why love is the greatest of all. It’s the one thing chicks crave from their mothers more than anything.