Back in Business

All my life, for as long as I can remember, I have wanted a farm.  I've loved reading farm stories, and there was never any other kind of life I even remotely wanted, along with being a mother.  A mother on a farm.  A mother on a farm with LOTS of kids.

No, honestly, I'm not crazy.  Or maybe I am, and that's why I've always wanted this...

So ten years ago, we moved out here to Grandview, and soon, we were able to buy a house on twelve acres of land.  Although we've had land before, I had never been able to make a go of anything at all.  But this time, I was living among Mennonites, who know how to do this stuff, and it wasn't long before I had lots of chickens and cows.  I milked cows and sold the milk for a while, and made a good amount of money, the most I've ever been able to make.  But newborn Luke made that hard to do, so I sold my cows and bought more chickens, an incubator, and finagled my husband and sons into building me lots of chicken houses, and I was in business.  It was pretty profitable too, and I was soon able to quit taking my chickens out to Antique Alley to sell, because people came out to my house to buy them.  I enjoyed some of them - I had quite a few 'characters' that came all the time - I suspect they just liked to hang out.  And I had a few that I wished wouldn't come so often...but that's another story.

Last summer, however, my dad got sick.  I needed to be gone a lot, and I just couldn't care for the baby chicks.  So once all my chickens were sold, I didn't get new ones.  I just let it all lapse, and quit selling.  I even decided I would not sell chickens again.  I don't need to make money, although it is kind of fun, and I've been able to sell some things on Etsy, and also, another life long dream of mine has come true and I've been making a little bit of money writing.

But Christmas came and went, and my regular time to buy chicks came around, and I felt that old stirring...and I gave into it...

I thought about buying a big batch of chicks from the hatchery to get me going again.  Then I thought, no I would just buy eggs from my friends, and I'd hatch my own.  Then, I found out some people from church were selling out their last years chickens at an amazing price, and not only that, they would let me go ahead and get the chickens, and make payments to them.

So that explains why earlier this week, on a freezing cold day, I was tromping around in a barn, catching chickens in the muck.  The chicken's owner was helping, and since he is quite a few years younger than me, he was doing much better, catching five or six to my three each time.  I had loaded the back of our truck with cages, and that's when I realized that, although my big sons have all either moved away or are going to college and working all day and are not around to help me so much anymore, I happen to have another son that I was really glad I had brought along: Luke!  I put him in the back of the truck and as the chickens owner and I caught them, we handed them to Luke, who plopped them in their cages.  Thanks, Lord!  Old ladies really need sons so they don't have to climb up and down the back of a truck beds!

You can't imagine how much I wish I had brought my camera, so I could show you the farm I was at, and the sheer numbers of chickens running around a barn for us to catch, but I didn't think of it at the time.

Now, for some reason, nothing ever, ever, EVER runs smoothly for me, and this was no exception.  First off, whenever I get working hard at something, I begin to whistle.  And the song I whistle is "Mary's Boy Child".  And it's not the nice soft John Denver version, either.  It's the Bony M version.  And I can whistle really good, if I do say so myself.  And so imagine me whistling this song in front of a very reserved Mennonite man without realizing I was doing it...Yes, I embarrassed myself very thoroughly...

And it took two trips to get the chickens.  Once I had come back the second time, and we had the chickens all loaded, I had paid him and gotten in the car to leave...The key would not turn!  Great, I have 70 chickens loaded up in the back of my truck, in the mud, with three little muddy kids already buckled up, and the key won't turn.  The man who owns the farm tried.  I called Bill.  Then I called Max, who left work and came to my rescue, and he couldn't get the key to turn either.  But he thought it was the magnet in the key, and wanted to go home and see if he could find another one.  But he wouldn't let me load up my 70 chickens into his brand new car, although he did break at the three muddy kids...

No, the house you see behind the car is NOT where we were at the time.  That's my mother's street, I'm just showing you the car.  And the son...
And, well really, that is one impractical car.  It barely held three muddy kids.  How in the world would you EVER get a load of groceries in there???

But Max rescued me, only complained a little bit about mud on his tires, went home and got another key, and it WORKED!!  So we drove my last load of chickens home, and I started to unload...
Unfortunately, while Luke was GREAT at throwing the chickens into the cages, he was too short to bend over and get them out, so I had to do that.  Max had dropped me off and ran.  I think he knew what was next if he stayed around...

 

Nosey goat...

My next brilliant idea was to pay the kids if they could catch the rest of the chickens running around the yard.  A quarter for each chicken they caught.  Angel-Leah claimed she caught sixteen, and Luke was sure he had caught that many too, although I only had about ten running around the yard.  We pick up on the math lessons next week.  Or maybe character building?

So finally, almost all the chickens are penned up (hear THAT, Gage?  No more chicken poop on the porch) and now the fun thing to do is collect all the many eggs we have already started to get, even though it's freezing outside, and they just got moved to a new home.

So I want to let everyone know I'm back in the chicken business!  Come by and see us, especially if you are one of my favorite character friends, which is safe for me to say, because my character friends are not on facebook - I hope...