A bit about biddies at New Earth Farm in Virginia Beach

PUNGO — Sometimes, even among friends, it seems like English-speaking folk aren’t speaking the same language.

Don’t worry. This isn’t about politics, unless baby chickens are partisan. This is about chicks. 

Or biddies. 

Biddy has long been a way to call a baby chicken (or fowl) by a term other than chick.

This is to the confusion of some.

The speakers that follow below were Ann Sokolowski, who lives in the Princess Anne area and helps at New Earth Farm along Indian River Road not too far from the Pungo stoplight, and Jeanine Nosay of Courthouse, who works at the farm as a “Jill of all trades.”

Sokolowski is originally from South Australia, spent time in England, and resides here now because she married an American.

“He said, if I married him, I’d never be rich and I’d have to get a job,” she said. “I decided he was worth it.”

Sokolowski first encountered the term “biddy” on social media or in conversation. Nosay knew the term.

“I didn’t understand it,” Sokolowski said. “I didn’t understand what the heck she was talking about. Sometimes I think she uses really weird words. What the heck is a biddy? I’m not sure if its biddy or bitty. How do you spell it?”

“I never thought of that,” Nosay said.

There was some discussion of this, as well as another use of the term.

“The little old lady is biddy,” Nosay said.

“Which means she sticks her nose in your business,” Sokolowski said.

“They’re generally unhappy.”

“When they don’t know they’re one.”

“We shouldn’t want to be an old biddy.”

“When I go back to Australia, I have to think of what the Australian word is.”

“Would I be in trouble in Australia?”

“No,” Sokolowski said. “You have an American accent.”

But back to biddies.

Why call a baby chicken that?

“I think,” Nosay said, “because they’re little-bitty.”

Or, when in in doubt, use pronouns.

© 2016 Pungo Publishing Co., LLC