Gone Postal

We have been anxiously anticipating the arrival of our chicken eggs this week only to be disappointed after many trips to the mailbox out at the road. I am sure that farmers in the distant past could have never anticipated the use of Ebay and the good old U.S. Postal Service to have their livestock needs fulfilled, or the anxiety and frustration that go along with purchasing something based on a tiny picture and the trust placed in a distant "seller" to complete a digital transaction. We were sure something was amiss when our new friends did not arrive as expected. We were sure that we were duped by a chicken misrepresentation of the most heinous variety. Well...after investigation we were somewhat relieved to find out that our chicken supplier had done exactly what they were expected, and sent our chicken eggs to Avon Lake, Ohio. Apparently the folks at Paypal (Ebay) do not automatically keep track of everyone that makes a cross-country move to avoid said confusion and you are actually required to TELL THEM when you make such a move. The icing on the cake is that they started in Raleigh, North Carolina about two hours from here

So after contacting the folks that are living in our old house and explaining that, yes, you can mail live chicken eggs, our friends are enroute again in the U.S. Mail and are anticipated here in about eight more hours. They will still be arriving soon enough to put in the incubator but we may find them walking in circles after they hatch due to their dizziness and possible jet lag. The upside is that we will have the quick trip from Cleveland to Charlotte and back over a weekend in common, and that should help with some of the awkwardness of our first meeting.

We do have the incubator finished and ready. It is a real work of art and necessitated engineering. A retired (or expired) upright freezer was obtained from the local Habitat for Humanity Restore and dissected to reduce weight and salvage usable parts. If you ever have a project that requires a number of windows that are all different sizes, shapes and colors, the Restore is the place for you. We added brooder heat lamps to the bottom with a thermostat, a thermometer and humidistat and a humidifier made from an old bread pan and the cooling fan from the back of the freezer and we are ready to incubate chickens, turkeys, waterfowl, snakes, iguanas, ostriches, etc…. Some time early in October we should be the proud foster parents of a freezer full of fuzzy little chicken peepers.

We received the results of our soil tests from the county extension office and are relieved that the soil here is not as bad as we had expected. We will be cultivating large amounts of compost to amend the soil in a way that does not violate the organic gardeners and farmer’s code (still need to learn the secret handshake). The cats are still not pregnant. The fall garden is growing slowly. The greenhouse will need to be assembled soon and this place still keeps the theme song to Green Acres fresh on my mind. I had better go see if Zsa Zsa is making hotcakes.