On The Road Again

Our sincerest apologies for all of you blognuts that have missed our tales of farm adventures for the last couple of weeks. We have been occupied with pursuing financing of the farm property, but regretfully have been refused repeatedly. Apparently these two people named Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac work for all of the local banks and for some reason do not like us. Every time we have tried to talk to them we are referred to our congressman and he doesn’t seem to have a clue. Go figure.

Due to frequent and drastic changes in the federal regulations for lending many qualified people with good credit have been penalized for decisions made by self-serving politicians over the past years. So unfortunately unless we have a long lost uncle that keels over and leaves us a stack of folding money we are going to have to relocate. We also had the idea of soliciting everyone we know for the loose change from the ashtray in their car, but if you’ve ever had to count and roll that much change you know we wouldn’t finish by our February first deadline. We may start tearing the walls out of the house tomorrow to see if any money is hidden there. We’ll be sure to let you know.

We did get to have a nice Christmas dinner with Kaitlin and Nate and actually had snow (for you purists). Ed has decided that he still is disgusted by snow and the necessity to shovel it and drive in it and is considering moving even further south, like Cuba. They never have snow there and the cigars are fabulous. He also thinks our government is resembling the government in Cuba more and more every day so it shouldn’t be a big adjustment. As is typical for the holidays we all have overeaten and gained some weight. It has been interesting to watch the drivers here in the snow. They have no salt and only four plows so when it does accumulate all the road crews can do is make the roads more slippery by compacting the ice. The obvious solution is to drive faster as if that will heat up your tires or maybe get you home before it really gets bad. Let’s just say that the local emergency response personnel have been active lately.

The goats and chickens have not been informed of their pending relocation. The goats are up for adoption and we are arranging fingerprinting and background checks for prospective parents. Two families have already been eliminated because they could not pass their psychological exams.

 The chickens will probably fulfill the remainder of their contract in triple-A league over at farmer Arts place. They will soon be nine weeks old. They may get called up to major league egg laying sometime in April or May.

We are not sure where we will be housed next but have been looking diligently. Gayle has found a beautiful one-year-old home on Lake Norman that has a lot more room and all of the desirable upgrades any good suburban princess could possibly desire. The downside is that it has an (.189) acre lot. For those of you keeping score, nine one-thousandths of an acre is 392 square feet. That’s four garden rows fifty feet long or room for about twenty chickens to free range. We just have to get our lawyers to challenge the Home Owners Association rules prohibiting “livestock”.

We really do appreciate all of your interest in our wayward lives. Please pray for us as we deal with legal issues related to the real estate situation and as we go through the stress of moving one more time.

Finally, a clucking victory!!!

It has finally happened. We have successfully harvested our first two eggs. Eggs are one of those things that we always took for granted when we walked into the grocery store and bought them by the dozen. As a kid I never even considered the time and effort that goes into the production of those favorite projectiles of hoodlums everywhere. As of this morning if our chickens stopped laying, those two eggs would have a production cost somewhere near four hundred dollars each. But, being the perpetual optimists that we are, those eggs represent the first of many treats that we will harvest from our foray into the wild world of agricultural speculation.

After a brief version of the happy dance and some high fives because we knew that we had proven mans superiority over chickens, we realized that eggs are fleeting and we needed to do something with them besides having them bronzed, so Chris decided it was time to make a pie. A pumpkin pie to be more specific. We eagerly set about the task of preparing fresh pumpkin filling from Kaitlin's remaining fall decorations and included our two eggs. This won't take long, did it! A short time later and some fresh homemade whipped cream and this beauty was all ours.

While the big chickens have been doing chicken things and have now started to earn their keep, the babies are just eating and running and more eating. They are five weeks old and still have no idea that some of them are destined for a very short vacation in the G.E. tanning bed along with a side of green beans. At twelve weeks we will choose ten good looking showgirls that we think will produce eggs like Chinese women produce knock-off Kate Spade purses and the rest become naked penguin look-alikes in the freezer in the shed. The truth is that neither Ed nor Chris is looking forward to "Chicken Day", but it's part of the job.

Super Chicken continues to hold his own as a standout in the baby chicken crowd. We are seeing more and more "rooster" type behavior every day, although it is still a little to early to tell by looking if he's a he or she's a she. Regardless of this ones gender, it is definitely smarter and more aggressive than its counterparts. Yes, Chris and I have had the discussion that it looks an awful lot like a hawk. Boy, wouldn't that be funny.

You can see how much our friend has grown and how silly the Buff Orpingtons can be.

We are continuing research and planning for our spring planting. This week we cleaned and dried the pumpkin seeds out of all of the pumpkins Kaitlin and Gayle were using for decorations. Gayle will probably not notice that her pumpkins are gone, but if she does Nate will not be here to defend himself. Our rule is be here or be blamed. It happens. We harvested 2584 seeds. That is enough to plant about two and a half acres. Some quick math will tell us that if we plant 2584 plants and each plant yields two good sized pumpkins then we will only have to sell them for $193.50 each to gross one million dollars. That won't all be profit though because we will need to purchase a vehicle that can haul thirty six thousand pounds of pumpkins because they all need to be sold the week before Halloween. Figuring that the average wholesale price of a pumpkin is somewhere around two dollars each, we should probably be satisfied with recovering the cost of the gasoline for the tractor. All of the seeds are stored in the window envelopes Gayle saves that come with all those pesky bills Ed likes to ignore. If you look closely you can see that six of the seven envelopes are from the same company. They must really be upset. We use the mail to start the bonfire and recycle the envelopes. Maybe we will win an award from Al Gore for being so green. Apparently anyone can get a Nobel Prize these days.

We have also been looking into raising cows for beef. There are quite a few dairy and beef farms in our area. Wikipedia said that the highest priced beef is called Kobe beef from Japan. While we have never been to Japan we have purchased goods from Wal-mart. We are thinking about hiring some experienced Japanese fellows to assist us in our Kobe beef production. Check out this link to learn all about Kobe Beef.

We had a great meal Saturday with Kaitlin and Nate. Fresh free range grain fed beef hamburgers from farmer Art and fresh homemade coleslaw using one of Chris's heads of cabbage. I think we all could get used to this.

Holidays and Birthdays

As usual at Crooked Gate Farm the entertainment is often disguised as farm animals doing their thing as God intended. We are sure that our ancestors that relied on their farms as the sole method of providing sustenance for the entire family found little if any humor in animal antics, but we sure are amused regularly by the group dynamics and species specific idiosyncrasies.

The week started somewhat anxiously when John Adams took exception to Chris attempting to be nice and give him some attention, resulting in a beak shaped laceration on Chris's hand. Obviously rooster number one has no idea that Chris is well versed in the martial arts and his hands could be registered as lethal weapons. Chris, as usual, was gracious and decided that he was not in the mood for chicken stew that night so Mr. Adams continues on, believing that he is Lord of the Manor and we are here to serve him.

On the other hand he has figured out that Ed is always so pre-occupied and busy with farm tasks that if you bother him he will throw some corn your way to get you to leave him alone. Now every time Ed walks past the big chickens they follow him until he provides the treats.

The little chickens (twenty-three of them) are now four weeks old and have grown from cotton balls to pigeon size and have all of their feathers. The original brooder box could no longer house them so alternative accommodations have been constructed. The crew has moved from eight square feet into twenty-four square feet. We are still keeping them separated from the large chickens until all of their chicken training is complete. The chicken races are still very entertaining and Super Chicken is always the favorite to come away with the prize (crickets or worms).

On December sixth Woody and Charlotte celebrated their second birthday by taking a trip to Mayberry. Yes, I said Mayberry with Sheriff Andy, Opie, Barney and the whole crew. Mayberry is actually modeled after the town that Andy Griffith grew up in about an hour north of us called Mount Airy. If you stand in downtown Mount Airy you can see Pilot Mountain (Mount Pilot in the show) in the background. When we arrived in Mayberry the locals were just getting ready to kick off the annual Christmas parade (people down here still call it Christmas, not “The Holidays” or some other white washed, P.C., tree hugging, lefty, why can’t we all just get along term) right down main street past the diner and Floyd’s Barber Shop. We managed to drive down Main Street just before the parade and see some of the beautiful homes and landmarks while thousands of onlookers wondered who we were and why we were in the front of the parade. Gayle was just a touch uncomfortable being stared at but Ed was very excited to see Otis, the town drunk complete with his brown jug of hooch. We managed to escape before the Mount Airy High School marching band caught up with us and headed for home, stopping at our new Sunday afternoon hot spot, the feed store.

Chris spent Monday at farmer Art’s place helping him clean up for the winter. We are grateful that Art is recovering from his mule incident, although slowly. The task of the day was cleaning out the pigpen after three weeks. Chris said that after you get used to the smell it’s still no fun. Again the whole family benefits from Chris’s labor as Art sent him home with some top quality grain fed beef and pork. Art also mentioned that he would be interested in sharing some space in his roadside stand next season, which may be a great way to begin to market the sixty thousand pounds of tomatoes that you can harvest on one good acre. We’re going to need a bigger truck!