As everyday fantasy’s go, the ‘I’d like to live in the country’ one is fairly common.
It probably runs a close second to the ‘I’d like to open a restaurant’ fantasy, or maybe the ‘Why don’t we pull the kids out of school for a year,  home school, and travel the world’ one.

    The home schooling travel one has never made my list, nor has the restaurant fantasy lingered in my imagination either.  The farmhouse one?  With the wide porch, horseshoe shaped driveway, fields of wildflowers and country kitchen?  Yeah.  That one’s been there a while. 

    While we’ve been happily raising our four daughters firmly rooted in the suburbs of Hanover,  the farmhouse fantasy has never been far from my mind.  I’ve tried to make our house feel kind of like a bed and breakfast, and I use vintage tablecloths most nights of the week for supper, which I cook while wearing old fashioned aprons, the kind Meryl Streep wore in ‘Bridges of Madison County’.  I bring in fresh cut flowers early most summer mornings, and had my brother install the requisite farmhouse fantasy front porch swing.  I even had vintage screen doors cut down to fit many door frames inside my house, complete with a mechanism fitted in order to ensure a proper country sounding SLAM. It’s all been pretty tolerable, this fake ‘life in the country’ façade.  I do admit to enjoying the conveniences of the suburbs though. With my farmhouse in the suburbs fantasy, I can enjoy all the perks of the country, without any of the hassles.  While sipping iced tea, I can watch my girls ride their bikes in the cul de sac, something not commonly found in your typical bucolic country setting.  If we actually lived in the country, that wouldn’t be allowed due to the big heavy trucks barreling down the road.  And darn, as much as I love the sight of sheets hanging on the clothesline, blowing in the breeze, my neighborhood association just won’t allow such structures here.

    All this pretend country living worked out just fine until my daughters and I convinced my husband Steve that it would be perfectly okay for us to raise chickens in our backyard.  ‘But we live in the suburbs!’ was his defiant reply.  To which we insisted, ‘So what?!’  Really, we live in a FARMHOUSE that just happens to be in a neighborhood!’  We twisted our theories to the extreme, resulting in our carrying out six fluffy yellow chicks from the state fair over the weekend.  Our visit to the fair was part of our ‘we love the country’ lore, and we even bought homemade lye soap before picking up our prized little chicks. 

    The first two days of our chicken raising went pretty smoothy, until we learned that we were in definite violation of county code.  Just because we thought of our home as a farmhouse, didn’t make it so.  Just because we liked to pretend we lived in the country didn’t mean that we did.  The jig was up.  We were busted.  No funky chicken coop in the backyard.  No farm fresh eggs scooped up in the old apron either.  Not even any organic eggs in the basket for our neighbors after all.  Our little chicks needed a new home.

    Not many people know many people who need or want chickens.  By nature, country folk tend to keep to themselves.  They know each other, but that doesn’t mean that I know them.  Fortunately we found a match.  So much for fantasy!