The 2023 Chicken Paradise Hawaii calendar was finished!
How the calendar started
The sample I showed first was the 2022 calendar, the one I made the year before. On its cover are Heart and Star as babies. (Heart’s name comes from his heart-shaped butt — I have proof, and isn’t he cute?) There was a page for Kin-chan and Gin-chan, too.
That first year, we made calendars only for ourselves and to give to people we know. But when I gave one to a friend, people visiting that friend’s house saw it and said, “What’s that? I want one!” Suddenly everyone wanted one. So for 2023, we made it available to buy online through a print-on-demand website, and each purchase brought about two dollars to the farm, which I planned to put toward chicken feed.
A tour of the 2023 pages
The cover is Hare-chan, crowing “cock-a-doodle-doo!” under a bright blue sky. I got some good shots of him.
January is lots of Heart and Star — as they look now, plus pictures from when they were chicks and teenagers. February features our egg-laying hens, all fluffy with cute faces. March is the bantam page (bantams are our small chickens); they’re very friendly, so they’re all looking at the camera. April, part of chick season, has cute chicks.
May is full of roosters. Marron is all blurry in the background, but I labeled him anyway because I thought it was funny — have fun finding him! June has the teenage chicks, like Marron’s team and Shiratama’s team, the ones we’ve watched grow up recently. July is hen butts. Nice and fluffy!
August is the ducks. We originally had only one duck, but now there are so many that I featured them all. September is everyone looking straight at the camera. I don’t know why, but they all stare at me when I point the camera at them, so I collected those pictures. October is the season of appetite, so it’s everyone eating something. They eat a lot!
November shows the many kinds of animals that get along well here on the farm. And finally, December is a photo collection of Pen-chan, the one who started it all. The back cover is a blue-sky view from the farm, along with our Chicken Paradise Hawaii logo.
I couldn’t fit everyone in, either year, but Star, whom everyone loves, made it in along with some other popular birds. The site also let buyers switch the holidays to their own country’s, so people ordering from Japan could print it with Japanese holidays.
A year with the chickens of Chicken Paradise. Thank you so much for all your support!