I employ an organizational method I call “creative layering.” An example of my technique can be seen on my bookshelves. Where the books are low-profile, I have them double shelved – or rather, I have two rows of books per shelf. And then I lay more books on top of those books, crossways. And then I put more books outside the bookcase on the floor, leaning them along the side so they can stand upright. I call the result “efficient maximum use of space.” My daughter calls it a mess. Apparently, she has little to no appreciation for the creative layering method.

Michele Coleman

Michele and her husband, Dave, live in southern Idaho where they boast an extensive collection of...

She callously tells me I need to get rid of at least half of my books. Her justification seems to be that I will never, ever read them all – as if that were the reason for having books in the first place. I have all those books so I can read them if I need to. I need them to be accessible to me, so if I suddenly need a dose of Mark Twain or a limerick or an English murder mystery, I can have it. Like many uninformed people, she has totally misdiagnosed the situation. I don’t have too many books; I just don’t have enough bookshelves.

This is far from the first time we’ve had a disagreement like this at Coleman Farms. Finding balance is always a problem around here, our differing perspectives a reoccurring point of contention. In Dave’s mind, for example, we never have too many cattle; we just need more acreage. We don’t have too many vehicles either, just too few drivers buying their own gas. We don’t have too many weeds; we have too few weed pullers. No wait, never mind – we do have too many weeds. And too few weed pullers. And a whole heck of a lot of kids who have mastered the art of weed avoidance.

I had a conversation with my chickens about perspective and balance just last year, but in reference to the bookshelf debate, I was on the other side of the argument. The problem all began with an unforeseen, high-drama poultry situation. I had brought a spare bag of sawdust into the coop so I could periodically refresh the ladies’ laying boxes with nice, soft, tushy-tuftiness. (I am nothing if not a thoughtful hen butler.) Of course, the ladies never used the refurbished boxes.  They used the sawdust bag. All of them. I’d find five to six chickens on the bag all at once, each one jockeying for position, hens sliding off the edges, eggs rolling left and right, everyone simultaneously clucking the lay-an-egg cluck at high decibel. It was ridiculous.

So I filled up the boxes with sawdust one last time and emptied the bag. Of course, the chickens panicked and thought the sky was falling. They immediately unionized and went on strike. No eggs. I tried to explain to them that they couldn’t all use the same sawdust bag at the same time. It wasn’t dignified. It wasn’t hygienic. It wasn’t sustainable. I even told them it was beneath the dignity of their level of breeding.

They weren’t buying it. They said I was the one who had the problem backward. The issue wasn’t that too many hens were using the same sawdust bag, but that I had given them 14 too few bags. They wanted a bag per hen. I am pretty soft when it comes to the chickens, but there was no way I was lugging 15 bags of sawdust into the coop. I gave them a full foot of straw carpeting on the floor and called it good, end of negotiations. Of course, they still don’t use the laying boxes. They use the floor.

I am already gearing up for more chicken drama this year. Last summer, I finally got a decent stand of green beans in my garden after replanting and supplemental planting them twice. If you remember, it was a crazy spring. By the first of August, though, my plants looked pretty good. Unfortunately, they weren’t putting on beans, and I couldn’t figure out why. They were flowering, the bees were buzzing, the weather was holding – but no beans. Nada. I should have known the chickens were involved. My niece Googled some chicken facts and found out that, lo and behold, bean blossoms are a chicken’s favorite snack. Chicken popcorn, in fact.

Critics might wonder why I let my chickens into the garden in the first place. Actually, the hens and I have a pretty benign gardening relationship. I let them eat bugs and give themselves dust baths and leave their fertilizing droppings all around the rows until the vegetables start looking interesting to them. Then I lock them up.

Last year, we were ticking along together like usual, and I had locked them up for vegetable season, when the dogs got involved. Their interference is another classic case of differing perspectives on the Coleman farm. It seems that, unbeknownst to us, we were starving the dogs to death. The problem wasn’t exactly that they didn’t have enough dog food or mice out in the field to terrorize, or table scraps or all the delicious awfulness they find to eat out by the canal, but that we weren’t feeding them enough chicken food. Nothing is as essential to our dogs’ survival as someone else’s dinner. In desperation, they dug up the buried chicken wire surrounding the run and freed the chickens.

Well, I suspect freeing the chickens was actually a side effect of the crime, their interest in chicken independence being minimal, but the ladies made the most of it. All 15 went on the lam, living the high life, eating bean blossom popcorn and watching movies. Their favorite movie, apparently, was one about an overweight, middle-aged and enraged chicken butler chasing worthless dogs around a farm. I hear it’s a showstopper.