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!

Thanksgivin' Ya'll

Its definitely fall and most of the leaves are down now, which creates a few long days of work. The plan was to collect the leaves with the leaf vacuum and compost them for use in the garden to amend the soil, but it looks like we may end up with more leaves than soil. We have somewhere around two hundred and fifty trees on the property. Multiply that by ten million leaves per tree and there are enough zeros to make the leaf blower commit suicide. We know that the leaves have been here before but have no idea what the previous owners did with all of them. We searched the Internet for oak leaf recipes and found nothing even remotely appetizing, so they probably did not eat them. Even the chickens push the leaves aside to look underneath for food. We are diligently working on a plan to market them in some way and use the profits to subsidize our auction disorder.

Thanksgiving the neighbor turkey must have consulted with the Obama campaign folks and pulled an upset victory late in the week. Either that or he was purposely misnamed and we feel misled because we saw him early Friday morning strutting around the barnyard along with Christmas (the other turkey) Blue the peacock, the potbelly pig and chickens and cows. We don’t want to think that Brad and Mia were purposely deceptive so lets consider the possible reasons for the turkeys continued existence. Perhaps the neighbors have suddenly turned from carnivorous liver mush consumers into left wing ultra liberal tree hugging vegans and are plotting the demise of the entire pork, beef and chicken industries as we know them. Or maybe the turkey has learned the art of hypnosis and convinced everyone next door that he is actually a long lost relative and that he will be living with them for a period of time until he recovers from the current financial crisis. Could it be shape-shifting aliens in farm country? We may never know the truth but we will go with the story that Mia and Brad are really running a retirement home for farm animals and they will all live long happy lives.

Kaitlin and Nate and Chris visited the Great White North for the holiday weekend and saw family and old friends. They all reported having an enjoyable but hectic time and were relieved to make the trek home to their own homes and beds. Chris as usual had quite a few misadventures during the trip, mostly involving his refusal to use the GPS for navigational assistance, but after many miles he still managed to find his way back home again. On Saturday when they all left for home there was some snow on the ground in Cleveland while it was sixty-two degrees on the farm.



Christopher had the opportunity to share Thanksgiving dinner with his Aunt Jenny and family at the Keener farm in Wakeman, Ohio. He swapped farm tales and received farm animal rearing advice. Chris decided that he likes the Keeners goats Franklin and Claire better than ours because they are friendlier and will walk in the woods without a leash and behave. I think the truth is that he sees a lot of himself in our goat Laverne. They are both very idealistic and opinionated and choose to approach life in their own way. Neither of them is influenced by peer pressure at all when making decisions and consequences are just minor inconveniences that are the price you pay for proving a point.

While we missed our visit with the Schoenherr family due to their trading a virus back and forth for the last few weeks we did have Dan Kelley come and visit. Now that motorcycle-racing season is over Dan found time to get away from home and see how the farm half lives. While Dan seemed to enjoy the warmer weather I think he could do without roosters crowing in the morning and the special aroma that twenty-five three-week-old chickens seem to produce. While the chickens don't seem to mind the smell it is definitely not something you would want sprayed on you by an over zealous salesperson while trying to navigate the perfume counters at Macys in the mall. Dan is very good at observing the activity from a distance with a coffee cup in one hand. We did get to use up some of those pesky old bullets that have been lying around Dan’s house out on the rifle range (also doubles as the deck). Apparently the gun law enforcement in Rowan County, North Carolina is not as stringent as Avon Lake, Ohio. Gee, who would have known? And of course in Dan’s honor we had a two Nate fire in celebration.

All in all we had a quiet and relaxing Thanksgiving that reminded us once again of the magnitude of the blessings that God has granted us.

The leaves are mostly off of the trees here, with the exception of the pin oaks that will wait to lose the last of their leaves until the leaf blower is retired for the season, and the mood is becoming a little somber. The animals obviously have been meeting in the barn to discuss the dreaded upcoming event, Thanksgiving. At first we would have never guessed that the farm crew was intuitive enough to understand the issues involved with the holiday season, but now we are sure that they do. The neighbor's turkeys, oddly named Thanksgiving and Christmas, are campaigning for new holiday traditions and have chosen to break away from the livestock union and go it alone in their quest.

John Adams and the girls on the other hand are sure that their responsibilities here on the farm are less ominous and have opted to challenge the no animals in the hot tub rule. They have made themselves quite at home as "free rangers" and Gayle has been frustrated attempting to convince them not to hang out on the deck. They have been granted some latitude so far though, due to the fact that we are still negotiating an appropriate egg-laying contract. We have yet to see any egg production from the girls, but we are sure we will come to terms well before spring training.

The goat girls are doing well and have taken to playing a game called shadow. If you walk by the goat pen they follow you like a shadow in an attempt to endear themselves and convince you to let them out for a romp. They are very talkative and have something to add to any topic of conversation. They are still being temporarily housed in a plywood shelter with a hurricane roof (blue tarp). The big project lately has been to repair the electric fence that surrounds the pasture and woods so that the goats can have free run and do some lawn maintenance in the south forty. Fence maintenance is a repetitive and ongoing task for the farmer. Farmer Art says that all he does is grow grass and repair fence. The up side is that every time Ed accidentally grabs the electric fence it recharges his pacemaker battery.

The cats are also doing well and actually are enjoying watching the Thanksgiving politics on the farm unfold. The girls long ago realized that the type of people that are in the market for cat by the pound live far from here and even then the market for lumpy old outdoor cat is almost non-existent. They have a better chance of going down in a plane crash, so they are very comfortable sitting and watching all of the work and politics happen.

We have been working on the "official" end of farming as well and are now registered as "Crooked Gate Natural Farms" with the State of North Carolina, County of Rowan Register of Deeds. No, we did not have to go to Mount Pilot or Pixley to do this, but we did have to go to Salisbury, the county seat of Rowan County, and pay our fourteen dollars for the privilege of being tracked and taxed by Uncle Obama. We spent the better part of the last eight weeks mulling over names for the place, but settled on Crooked Gate after working on the fence. If you have ever hung a farm gate on a post in the middle of a field you know how hard it is to keep them straight and how fast they settle as soon as you walk away. With a name like Crooked Gate Farm we can say that all of the leaning gates are part of our marketing plan to avoid the scrutiny of the engineer types that notice that kind of thing.

We are looking forward to the Schoenherrs visiting from Ohio for Thanksgiving dinner and a weekend of farm frivolity and caloric overload. If nothing else we will all be a bit warmer and sunnier here in the South Ya'll.

Vet Visits, Oh Boy.

This week began with a battle of wills between us and the grown up chickens, specifically John Adams. Due to our good nature and desire to have the happiest chickens known to mankind we have been letting the Adams Family out in the chicken run regularly. It is a little early to trust them completely as free rangers yet and a chicken is a tasty treat for a hawk or stray dog, but we capitulated to the crowing and let them have some protected outdoor space. All was well on the farm so Ed and Nate sped off to Lowes for some supplies and testosterone-laden discussion. Upon their return Kaitlin and Gayle were running around like chickens with their you know what cut off trying to get Mr. Adams back in the pen. Talk about an opportunist. As soon as the boys left he decided to party like chickens do and sprinted laps around the chicken coop followed by the girls.

The exercise ended in a mild altercation between Ed and Mr. Adams, and lets just say Mr. Adams lost when he had to tap out and concede the wrestling match. Some chicken thinking and a few fence adjustments should correct the problem.

The new chicks are doing very well and growing so fast you can see them as they sprout new feathers. In a week they have quadrupled in size. We are especially proud of our “Rare and Exotic” freebie from the hatchery. He/She was included as a surprise with our order. Chris has identified it as a Japanese Phoenix variety, although we are unsure of its gender. There are over two hundred varieties of chickens in the United States. We have named our new friend Superchicken due to its dominance and exhibition of superior intelligence over the other babies. For fun and entertainment Ed will catch crickets and throw them into the brooder box with the twenty-five babies. Total mayhem ensues as all twenty-five race around the box like atoms in a molecule stealing the tasty treat from each other. It kind of resembles what would happen if a fifty-dollar bill blew across the floor at Kmart during a blue light special sale. Anyway, Superchicken is currently undefeated in cricket racing and has consumed the prize every time.

On Thursday we had quite a scare when Woody showed up with an injured right leg and couldn't walk. He wouldn't come for food or to go outside and winced in pain when we tried to look at his paw. We decided that it was his right front wrankle (wrist/ankle) that was bothering him and set out to determine the cause of his pain. When asked Woody wasn't clear about exactly what happened (typical of teenagers) so we had to reconstruct the incident by gathering evidence and piecing together a good timeline for the time period prior to his lameness. After thorough investigation and a rather costly visit to the vet we decided that Woody was lying on the couch and realized that Gayle was on her way upstairs to take a little nap. In his haste to join her he fell off the couch and landed wrong, injuring himself to the point that he is on bed rest and anti-inflammatories for two weeks.

Now, I realize that I do have a tendency to be cynical, but come on. This isn't a union shop. We don't work our staff too hard. Why would someone need to exaggerate an injury to get time off on bed rest? He could have worked to make it look like he was injured doing something heroic couldn't he? I guess the stress of moving from suburban prince to rural farm hand may have been too stressful. I'm sure a vacation request is on its way.

This week we are installing the most important modern farm implement that any farm could have and every farm should have, a hot tub. The hot tub is important on the farm. It keeps the farmer in the right frame of mind and actually moving after riding the tractor for too long or listening to the goats complain incessantly about EVERYTHING. There is bound to be some allegations of unfairness, since the hot tub club will be exclusive to people only, but we will cross that bridge when it comes. Besides, you can bet that if the farmer has an orthopedic issue and gets bed rest for two weeks that the goats and chickens will be filing a grievance in no time.

Now, how to duck proof a hot tub....?

Birth Announcement: It's a girl, and a girl, and a girl.......

 Persistence and/or obstinance have paid off on the old farm and we finally can count our chickens. (They’ve hatched). They arrived early Thursday at the now somewhat infamous Mount Ulla, North Carolina post office and our postal contact and chicken advisor Jennifer again called for us to pick up the new peepers. In our extensive poultry research we learned that the appropriate term for a group of chirping females of the chicken variety is “biddies”. Go figure. The upside of ordering day old chicks as opposed to eggs is that you can order all hens so you don't have to deal with rooster issues. The down side of ordering all hens is that it has significantly swayed the hormonal balance in the barnyard. All twenty-six arrived in good shape in a cardboard box. Apparently even the Postal Service has a heart for baby chicks and doesn’t run them through a piece of automated handling equipment that folds, spindles and mutilates very effectively. We now have twelve Barred Rock hens to add to our four “adult” hens living in the chicken coop as well as thirteen Buff Orpington hens and a free “mystery rare and exotic chick” of the breeder’s choice. Chris identified the loner as a Japanese Phoenix chick. The males (roosters) in Japan could have tail feathers up to twenty feet long. Chris is hoping it’s a rooster. Gayle wants to know who’s going to keep that tail clean.

The chicks are shipped as soon as they are hatched and have not eaten or had water yet. The first task is to teach the little orphans how to drink water. Since Chris has been drinking water for quite a while and Ed only drinks Dr. Pepper and rarely ever shares, it was Chris’s job to instruct the class. After a little effort and some issues with a couple of class clowns the babies decided that drinking was good and they would continue to practice. The marbles in the pie pan are to keep them from drowning. They are all living in a one-room brooder box with a heat lamp for the next four weeks until they grow adult feathers and can deal with cooler nights in the coop.

While the babies were napping we decided that the big birds had been in solitary confinement for long enough to learn where home is and that we could let them out in the chicken run for the first time. It was a popular decision among the flock and they were happy to scratch around in the dirt looking for something interesting to put in their mouths. After watching them and the goats for a while we decided that animals would not do most of the gross things that they do if they had opposable thumbs, but God must have created them without thumbs for our entertainment. Woody and Charlotte were very interested in the big chickens that are a bit taller and much more aggressive than they are. It is probably a good thing that the dogs don’t know they are dogs because the inevitable confrontation between John Adams and the pups ended in the dogs leaving rapidly and very insulted. I should have warned the dogs that not everyone likes to have their butt sniffed on a first meeting. Live and learn.

Farmer Art continues to heal and will be back to his old self in no time. The goat girls are doing well and were treated to a worming and a new salt lick this weekend. They weighed in at forty-five pounds each and are half way to becoming our first attempt at animal husbandry. There has been discussion of pigs and cows recently, but Gayle just plugs her ears and starts singing show tunes really loud when the topic comes up. Ed keeps reminding her that we need to have all of the animals that came in the Fisher Price farm because that is his earliest farming memory, although he recently found out that chickens don’t really have a square hole on their bottom so you can stick them on the fence post. Maybe that’s another “mystery rare and exotic chick”

Why Did Old MacDonald Sing?

It has been a busy, hectic week. We have been anxiously waiting for news regarding Farmer Art’s condition after his recent mule melee. The news is good and bad. Art returned home over the weekend after a week in the hospital. He has three broken ribs, a broken left collarbone and a looming date with a cardiac catheter lab. His head injuries have healed to the point that they are not critical. The problem with the collarbone and rib fractures is that they really cannot be immobilized, so every movement is extremely painful. Please continue to pray for Art.

We spoke to Art’s wife Brenda and asked if Art knew what happened. He has no memory of anything that occurred from the time he started messing with the mule until he was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I told Brenda to remind Art that he promised to give us his nicest tractor. It didn’t work. Apparently even after a head injury he would remember that.

Our new flock of four hens has not started laying eggs yet but we do expect them to any day. For motivation we purchased some brown ceramic eggs and placed them in the nesting boxes in the chicken coop. I think this might be the same theory as running the water when you are trying to potty train a toddler, but I’m not sure. As of tonight nothing from the girls, but old John Adams has been practicing his crowing…A LOT. We are very happy that we put thermo pane windows in the coop now because even with the coop all closed up and the windows in the house closed we can still here him. He’s like a concert pianist trying to perfect a concerto. He practices at least eight hours a day. I hope the hens find it endearing or he may be evicted from the commune. He is getting louder but we are concerned that he is spending too much time with the girls. His crow actually tails up at the end as if he’s asking a question or confused. We hope he is not confused about his responsibilities on the farm. A rooster that doesn’t rooster is soup.

Brad and Mia’s cows next door are growing fairly quickly. The plan is to raise them for the rodeo. They will be roped by cowboys a few dozen times and then sent back home. I’m not sure what the long term plans are for them. I think the way you train a roping calf is by sneaking up behind them and whispering “LOOK OUT” or something like that in their ears so that they become overly neurotic and easily spooked. (This works on little sisters also). Then you wave pictures of cowboys and large crowds of spectators in their face while playing loud hard rock music in eight-second intervals. By the time they get let out of the gate at the rodeo they are absolutely crazy and run around at full speed kicking and thrashing. I know this is how they do it because I read it on Wikipedia. We are planning on having a few beef cows in the back pasture in the future but they will be the thick, juicy kind of cows, not the crazy ones.

The Milwaukee goat girls, Laverne and Shirley, have not attempted an escape since their first outing and have become very friendly to all of us. They know how to get Chris to take them for a walk and tie them out where the grass is greener and when Gayle calls the dogs or the cat the girls always answer in unison. They hate to be left out of anything. We will take them on their first date when they reach eighty pounds or so and hopefully the birds and the bees will be working that day.

We are very appreciative of the warmer weather and the longer growing season and still cannot get used to the climatic disparities between Cleveland, Ohio and Mount Ulla, North Carolina. Only an eight hour drive but a world of weather difference. We look forward to our first and probably only snowy day sometime in February, but for now we will have to settle for days like these.

Feathers, Feathers, Everywhere.... Finally

Wow news travels fast and boy is everyone excited. These folks heard the news that we FINALLY found some occupants for the chicken mansion. Yep, that's right, real live poultry. Chris worked for our good friend Art again this week and shared our feathered frustrations with him.

At the end of the day Art offered to help us get a start with some good looking, very healthy Barred Rock hens and a young Buckeye rooster that is just finding his crowing voice. We picked up the whole bunch Sunday afternoon and they are now living in their new home and adjusting to being spoiled like the rest of the inmates on the farm.

The week started out with some fun and frivolity when the neighbors that live to the south of us came over to tell us that Laverne and Shirley, the goat girls, had decided that they were bored and let themselves out to take a walk. Chris and I tracked them through the cornfields down the street where they finally ran into a fence. We caught up with them while they were arguing over which way to turn next and "persuaded" them to rethink their night on the town and come home. Goats are known for their Houdini-like abilities, and after some observation we realized that they had escaped by climbing onto the goat house roof and jumping off over the fence. Apparently they really needed a night out. After some re-engineering with a sheet of plywood their roof climbing capability was eliminated. Maybe they are practicing to be reindeer when they grow up! We wouldn't want to crush their dreams so we will let them go on pretending they are not goats.

We had a visit from Chris's friend Tom Nickel this week. Tom lives in the old neighborhood and goes to school at Malone College in Canton, Ohio. Tom learned a little about farm life and took Chris for a night out in downtown (or uptown) Charlotte. We are a little concerned that Tom will never eat beef or soybean derivatives again after we shared some commercial food production truths with him. But then again, being an average twenty-one year old, he probably forgot all of his concerns an hour into the eight-hour drive when a Taco Bell appeared over the horizon. I'm sure he will survive somehow.

This week was spent working on the gardens up front where we planted some horseradish roots and some strawberry plants for spring. We have also been reworking the electric fence to give the goats a little more protection from predators. Apparently stray dogs and coyotes don't like 60,000 volts tickling their busy little paws or noses. Ed's Uncle Rob called with some much appreciated good advice about goats and plowing and general farm etiquette. We also calculated that we could milk the goats to the tune of 300 gallons of milk a year, one little squirt at a time. But still the most rewarding accomplishment of the week was finally starting our egg and chicken supply.

Now is that a handsome looking fella or what!?...

PS. We received a call late this evening that our good friend Art has been in an accident with his mule. When we left him earlier today he told us that he was going to be working with the mule and that he was concerned about the hazards. He has a broken rib and punctured lung as well as a serious brain contusion. He was admitted to the hospital and is sedated. Please pray for Art. He is a strong Christian and has been a great help to us and a good friend to Chris. We will let you know how he is doing as soon as we know more.

The Chicken Saga Continues

For those thousands of concerned blog viewers that have been on chicken watch anxiously awaiting the arrival of our Buff Orpington chicks we have a definitive resolution to incubation stress, although the outcome may be difficult to accept. If you have young children reading along you may want to put them to bed or divert their attention. After much calculation, planning, engineering, design, construction and late night egg rolling we have determined that a critical thermostat malfunction on the level of NASA's bad space shuttle o-rings has caused the first batch of forty-eight eggs to over-heat and suffer a critical failure. While a good hatch rate is normally 95% and we would have been satisfied with an 80% hatch, our zero hatch was a difficult loss to overcome. Upon inspection of our digital thermometer's maximum and minimum readings we realized that our low was too low and our high was conducive to omelets, not live chickens. I never thought it could happen to us. It's always on someone else's farm. I wasn't sure if we would recover from such emotional devastation.

We mourned our loss for the customary forty-five minute time period and continued on to plan B. (It's actually probably plan W or X, but we can't even remember where the chicken chase started.) Back to our favorite farm tool, the Internet, we went. We were very happy to find a local monthly poultry auction not too far from home that was coming up Saturday morning. So the calendar was duly marked and we again were chicken hopefuls.

In the mean time we were graced with a wonderful visit from the Simmerer clan of Westlake, Ohio. The Simmerers are a stout bunch not unfamiliar to the ways of the road warrior and an eight-hour drive is like a walk in the park for them. They made the over the mountain southern trek and arrived at the farm at 4:30 a.m. on Friday morning. Rick, Ruth, RJ and Rachel. Their camper blended well with the 53-foot semi trailer in the front yard and the neighbors didn't even notice all the goings on. Late Friday it was agreed that the men would go to the chicken auction while the girls toured the greater Mount Ulla area and visited Kaitlin in Huntersville.

Saturday came early, but the men were committed to filling the chicken coop, so off they drove deep into farm country. (Even deeper I mean.) The auction was all that was expected and a crate full of Barred Rock hens was identified and marked for attention at the appropriate time during the bidding. After a two-hour wait as the auctioneer peddled trailers full of land fill quality merchandise and miscellaneous live stock and related items the chickens finally began to come to the podium.

We patiently waited as box after box of some seriously distasteful looking poultry went by, but our target purchase had not come up yet. With only ten or so items left Ed got impatient and got up to look for the soon-to-be-his Barred Rock hens only to realize that he had been back-doored by some underhanded auction scalawag and the chickens of his dreams had disappeared. Obviously some high level corporate dealings had gone on outside the accepted auction channels and the opportunity was lost forever. Within seconds the auction was over and Ed, Rick and RJ were left to review their purchases, still reeling from the dirty chicken dealings. The day was not a complete loss though because Ed has a serious auction disorder and came home with a couple of rakes for the chicken coop. Oh,.... and two female Nubian milk goats. Meet our newest additions to the farm family, Laverne and Shirley.

These two fine specimens are six months old and are relaxing in the old dog pen behind the house. Goats are very social and fairly intelligent. Our next plan includes attempting to teach the goats to cluck and lay eggs.

The Pursuit of Happyness (For Chickens)

When we began the process of moving from Ohio to North Carolina we recognized that there could potentially be changes in our day-to-day activities and interactions with our neighbors and acquaintances. In an effort to bridge the gap between the Southerners and Northerners we have started to research linguistic patterns and diction differences relative to geographical, cultural and socioeconomic disparities. You may have noticed the fruit of our labors above. As we continue to adapt to life with the indigenous inhabitants we will share our verbal discoveries in a section we like to call "The Countryfied word of the day". We hope you can all learn along with us.

We are again realizing that our internal calendars are not accustomed to southern timing. While up North, friends are talking snow and beginning to wear cold weather clothing, Chris has been harvesting some of the vegetables he planted in the end of August. No, those are not beets. They are radishes THE SIZE of beets. And yes it is still warm enough here to be out all day in a sleeveless T-shirt and the sky is almost always that blue. I may never get over it. Gayle has again moved her front porch decorations to better serve the neighbors and all humanity. If she keeps this up I am going to start passing the house when I come home because I don’t recognize it.

The chicken coop is ready for our McNuggets to hatch. They will be here in three days, so we stop rotating them today. We need to give them time to figure out which way is up. I can only imagine that getting rolled over inside that tiny shell every eight hours for three weeks is like being hung over with jet lag and falling down the steps. The CIA may want to consider using this method for interrogation if they aren't allowed to water board the bad guys any more. Once the chicks hatch we lock them down in the coop for three or four weeks under the heat to keep them warm until they grow their big bird feathers. After four weeks old they can go out into the chicken yard and "free range" all they want. Our job at that point is to watch them and try to decide who looks like a good egg layer. We will keep eight to ten good "Pullets" to lay eggs. The rest will get to go on the Colonel Sanders ride at Ed’s Fun House. The hens that stay on the farm will get to live in the nicest hen house this side of the Mason Dixon line, complete with real cedar branches (naturally rot resistant) for roosting rails and central air (a retired kitchen fan).

To go along with our chicken dinner we would like a nice white wine, so, we planted grapes. As it turns out our soil needs help to grow vegetables but is perfect for grapes. There are some rather large wineries North of us and some varieties of wine grapes grow very well. We have planted two varieties of seedless eating grapes this fall but will plant two or three rows of wine grapes next year.

We are getting ready for another two or three "Nate" (see previous blog) fire this weekend when Rick and Ruth Simmerer and clan visit. We are looking forward to sitting by the fire and roasting marshmallows and then treating our radiation burns. We have a feeling that someone is coming during the night and dropping off scrap lumber and yard waste. Naturally, being a retired firefighter, Ed recognizes the hazards involved in combustible woodland materials lying around and is always prepared to promptly correct any of these hazardous situations.

Woody and Charlotte recently graduated to mans best friend level five and have been allowed to stay loose in the house if we leave for a while. They have also been adapting to large space roaming rights with only an occasional drift across the boundaries into the neighbor's perimeter. All was going well until today when Thing1 and Thing2 decided that it would be good times to explore the overgrown part of the woods and find things to eat that are not appropriate to be eaten. They returned when called with extreme guilt and certain that they were going to be busted back to level one subservient canine. Woody had managed to find some type of burr that when attached to curly dog hair is next to impossible to remove and both deviants had consumed something that made their breath smell like they were backwards. So, off to the tub for a major scrubbing and then the punishment that these dogs fear more than being left behind when we go for a car ride.....the toothbrush.