Today I continue my quest in creating and posting one block a day of the fabulous That Town And Country Quilt by the lovely Susan-Claire Mayfield. This is day three hundred and twenty-one of that project.

This quilt block is also a corner block. The corner is on the bottom right and is a large swatch of green fabric stretching from the bottom left corner to the upper right corner. On the curved surface of the grass is a mother hen, a cut out of brown fabric with pen marking and stitching on it to indicate the feathers and wing. Next to the mother hen are three small bright yellow patches of fabric shaped like baby chicks. Each baby chick has a little beak and eye in pen, and two tiny feet. — Click To Enlarge

Baby anything is cute, and baby chicks are no exception.

Some small farmsteads let their happy hens hatch a clutch of eggs (usually about 10).

Of course, this is where the rooster comes in. Once the eggs are fertilized, the hen will go “broody.”

They make a different clucking sound and just sit on their nest most of the day. She turns and rearranges them to keep them at the right temperature. Then, amazingly enough, they all hatch within a few hours of each other.

On Sisu Farms, the chicks arrive via US Mail. UPS and FedEx will not deliver them. Chicks have been shipped this way since I was little; I don’t know how long before that.

They arrive in batches of 200-600 at a time at Sisu. For smaller farms, you can order as few as 25. It takes that many to keep them warm enough.

At the hatchery, as soon as they are hatched, they are placed in boxes, and out they go. Arriving in 1 or 2 days, they are peeping bundles.

They have had nothing to eat or drink since hatching, so they are gently taken out of the box for the first thing, and their beaks are put in water, so they have to take a little. All the farmhands help with this part, and even Farmhand 4 is gentle enough.

As soon as they taste it, they start drinking. Once that has happened, everybody is moved to the temperature-controlled brooders, where they learn to eat (rapid learners).

They grow so fast!