Barnmaven

I want chickens

There are so many topics I could blog about today, but they're all overwhelming and depressing.  I will take the time to send out a hollah to Jack, who shrugged off his mortal coil on Sunday.  We didn't always see eye to eye, but we shared a love for my sister which bonded us forever.  Give my love to the Big Guy and if you meet up with a certain few you-know-who's, you know what to say.  We love and miss you always.

So anyway, chickens.  I want to get some chickens, but of course I need a chicken coop for that.  Apparently you can buy these premade on the internet for several hundred or even a couple of thousand dollars.  What the heck?  These are for *chickens* fer crying out loud!  I did find a build-it-yourself plan that appears easy enough that even I could complete it relatively unscathed.  But I need to figure out why the heck I want chickens so badly.  I mean, its not like they are going to love me back.  And I don't eat eggs that often.  J does, but not enough to require our own chickens.  And I don't have time to sell eggs, I'm never here anyway.  So what appeals?  Who knows.  For some reason this is an idea that won't let go of me, and we all know what happens when that happens. 

We had chickens when I was a kid.  We had Rhode Island Reds, which were our main layers, and eventually we also got some little Cochen Bantams which I showed at fair and got blue ribbons for. They laid little teeny eggs that you could eat, but they were more for looks than egg production.  My dad built this awesome henhouse with a side door and eight laying boxes, a ramp up into the front from the meshed-in yard, and wooden roosts.  (I wish my dad could still do stuff like that, I'd have a chicken coop in no time and it would be a really nice one, too)  My brother and I used to have clean it out periodically and put some kind of chemical on the floor and roosts ( I seem to remember it was diesel oil?) to control the tick and mite population.  Oh, and do you know you can feed egg shells to your chickens?  Apparently it helps to restore the calcium they lose in the egg-laying process.  We fed them kitchen and garden scraps and a store-bought cracked-corn mixture.  My other job was to keep the feeders and waterers full.  Mom would stuff plate scrapings in an empty milk container and whenever it was full I'd bring it down to the coop and toss it in.  They really liked salad leavings.

Our chickens weren't particularly smart or friendly, but I remember one old hen that didn't seem to mind being caught and picked up and petted.  We let a batch or two of chicks hatch each year, and they were lovely cuddly little things, up until they became pullets, whereupon they started to take on the personality of their mothers and became mindless eating, pooping, egg-squirting machines.

The best and worst part was the slaughter.  Once then hens were too old to lay, they became the basis for stew.  And honestly, that old saying "running around like a chicken with its head cut off?"  Its totally true.  Separate the head and the body takes a while to figure out no one's running the show.  It was totally horrifying and at the same time completely fascinating.  Its hard to get too attached to a chicken, so while I took no enjoyment from the deaths of the old biddies, I found it hard to get too upset either.  I like chicken stew with homemade dumplings.

Taking Jackie up on it: Costco Fuel Man - w4m - 27 (Kennewick)

My friend-in-the-box (and sometimes on-the-other-end-of-the-phone and text-in-my-phone) Jackie blogged the other day, "You should go look at the Missed Connections page on your Craigslist and report back with the best one. Or not."  I'm game. See, I live in this great community in the middle of the desert.  Mostly its farmland around here, so you'd think the Tri-Cities would be rife with camo-wearing Skoal-spitting rednecks - which we are - but see we also have this thing called Hanford.

Hanford was built in the 1940's to produce weapons-grade plutonium.  The bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was built using nuclear materials produced at Hanford.  I know, not a great thing to be famous for.  During the cold war, Hanford grew into a tremendous research center.  They're also studying other things out there, not sure what, most of its top secret.  My neighbor across the street is a fluids engineer and employed in a research capacity out there.  He's not allowed to talk about his projects, but apparently since the Iraq War they've been working a lot of overtime...

At any rate, despite our high percentage of farming folk and migrant workers, we also have a disproportionately high percentage of sickeningly smart people.  The guy who invented cruise control reportedly lives here.  Its also rumored that many of our scientists came here from Area 51, and several of them have constant government security.  Or surveillance.  Or both, whatever.

So despite the plethora of horribly spelt craigslist ads, there are also a good number of pretty witty, intelligent ads as well.  This is the current pick of the litter:

Costco Fuel Man - w4m - 27 (Kennewick)

You're casually friendly, which is super sexy. Every time I see you, I wanna jump on ya. Can I buy you a Costco hot dog?

 

Here's the loser of the day.  This is definitely from one of our local skoal users.  Oh, and its not in the missed connections section, either.  I habitually check Farm and Garden, Free, Barter, Lost and Found and Pets.

Free Horse Manuer (Kennewick)

My manuer pile is getting too big. I just want it gone. Take all you want. Great for furtilizing gardens and such. There is also a pile of old straw i would like gone.
Thanks

Its a tie with a "Rotwiler 4 sell" ad from earlier today, but I can't paste that one...I flagged it and now its gone.  Thanks, Craigslist Mods.  You guys do an awesome job of promptly stripping the posts I find offensive.

 

Anxiety

Is anyone else losing sleep over the economy? I sure am. I woke up at 2:00 am Monday morning and lay there until the alarm rang at 5:00, heart pounding, palms sweaty, as certain as I know the sun will rise that terrible things are lumbering our way.  I feel it in my bones, our world is being slowly torn apart by unstoppable forces.  I don't just mean this in the long term general sense, whereby we know logically that the universe is slowly expanding, our sun will go nova in some number of years long after we are dust.  I mean this in the sense that the human events of the last hundred years have taken their toll and will culminate shortly in some sort of universal event.  I think Yeats captured it best, and his words of nearly a century ago ring out like an omen:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Red is the color of my true love's hair...

..and purple and black are the colors of my poor little piggy.

Seriously, I broke my toe at the grocery store yesterday.  It was already the shopping trip from hell, husband got sick and couldn't go with me, the kids were whining and fighting and being generally impossible.  It happened in the dairy section, I stepped out from behind the cart to go get some yogurt.  I don't know how I hit it so hard, but I mashed my toes against the cart wheel.  Oy vey.   Reminder to self:  no more Birkenstocks at Safeway. 

At least I only broke my toe, unlike my poor Mojo kitty.  I think the dogs were playing too rough with him, and as it turns out, his poor leg is broken.  He spent Saturday at the vet's and now he is home with his rear leg all splinted up.  Amazing how fast they learn to navigate on three legs.  He was even using the litter box today.  I have a call in to the orthopedic surgeon to get an appointment for him.  I just have no idea how we're going to afford it. 

Crap, I'm tired

I've been so proud of myself, I got up at 4:30 every day this week and did some form of yoga or cardio.  I might even do it this weekend too (except without the 4:30 am part).  But damn, when I started working out today I noticed my nose was runny and I was hacking up stuff.  Is it somewhat of a blessing to be so not awake you don't even realize you're sick until a good 10 minutes into your workout?

I poured some Alka Seltzer Plus cold medicine into myself after I made it to work and of course now feel like my day would be greatly impoved by crawling under my desk and going to sleep. Nothing like a little cold medicine to make you feel sleepy and detached.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ....