Over the holidays last year, my brother John taught me a new word, agrícola. Turns out, it exists in Spanish too, and means “agricultural”. The last few days I’ve been engaged in all things agrícola, starting with building a greenhouse (more on that in a coming post).

Last night, however, Maria the Chicken Lady dropped by, carrying a large gunnysack. She leaned over our dutch door and dangled it into our house as though she was going to dump its contents out onto our floor. “Here they are!” she happily proclaimed.

Luckily, Emily realized what was going on and stopped her before she unleashed a pair of chickens. You see, it’s the custom here that people just keep chickens running loose in their houses. Part of our job is teaching the locals this might not be a good idea from a health perspective, but the going is slow. “Wait,” Emily said calmly, “Our gaillenero (chicken coop) is ready, lets put them there.”

So, that’s what we did. Emily let me grab them from the gunny sack and stuff them into the coop, and they cooperated peacefully. So peacefully, in fact, that the first one was already roosting happily before the second one was even out of the sack. If you click to enlarge the image, you can see the black one staring out at us. Emily told me later that she let me grab them because she was kindof scared to do it herself. Ha!

We’re now proud chicken owners. The includes the trying things, like chasing the black one all over the village after it escaped this morning. Luckily, Lucas and some of the village kids helped me catch it, or we’d be down to one chicken in just the first day.