Thursday - 349th

The good news is that the sun is just pouring into the windows from all sides. Well, mostly from the south side, but it seems wonderfully bright every which way I look.

(farmette animals at play)

Breakfast, now routinely in the front room. We are, after all, creatures of habit.

During the morning hours I work diligently on my writing. But by noon we get distracted. First of all, there are car issues to mull over, but that's not going to be my topic du jour. Save it for the day when I stop mulling and take decisive steps! More importantly, Ed and I lose ourselves in the last details of the chicken project.

You remember perhaps that this year we lost two cheepers to possums. All in one day. It was awful and heartbreaking, as one of the losses was our docile, sweet old Java. The question arose: should we get replacements?

On the one hand -- no. We have three girls and a happy Happy -- the docile rooster. In the growing season,  they scratch up my garden, especially in the spring when the baby greens are just emerging. I positively hate having free range chickens then. I want to offload the whole batch to the first person I see. And the worry that goes along with predators! Hawks, possum, coyotes -- they're a constant threat and when they attack, it is awful. 

So no. 

On the other hand, Ed is convinced (and I sort of kind of am too) that the cheepers have decimated the tick population here at the farmette. We work outside all the time and we have not brought in ticks. The kids have had no tick issues either. That's nothing short of amazing, considering the prevalence of this menace in Wisconsin. Too, Peach is getting old and we should be forward looking. Introducing young chicks is best in this early spring season. You raise them in your house and then you let them out just as the weather warms up. So now is perfect.

Finally, they are so cute!! (That is, before they get to be bigger than a fist, at which point they're noisy, dusty and hard to control indoors. But I'm not thinking about that.)

On balance, we decided to go for it! Three new ones, purchased on the first day of the arrival of the spring chicks at the store! It's a plan!

Until it unravels. The chicks come in to the Farm and Fleet stores at noon -- a day earlier than expected. By 2pm, when I call to see if more have arrived, I learn that the first batch is already sold out. In this COVID year, Madison families are longing for fun projects. Backyard chickens are the thing! As a result, we lose our bid for the breeds we favored.

The afternoon is a chaos of phone calls to Farm and Fleet stores near and far. In the end, we decide to head out in hot pursuit the minute the store's agriculture clerks leave for the post office to pick up the next batch of chicks. We are there when the boxed chicks are brought in for unloading. 

We don't quite have the choice we expected, but never mind. We pick two Cinnamon Queens and a Light Brahma. Then we change our minds and return one Queen for an Easter Egger. Then we change our minds again and return the Light Brahma for another Cinnamon Queen. The  sales clerks think we are possibly nuts or are grossly deficient in decision making capabilities.

We do this quickly and with double masks of our highest quality and with gloves on. We're not ready to reenter the world of stores or the world of people. This dip into the retail world was tough enough!

Why the heightened caution? Well, it's because of the kids. We want to see them again and we do not want to bring a virus into their safe worlds. More on that at another time. For now, we are home, listening to the gentle peeps of the day old chicks. I tell Ed -- this is the funnest week of chicken raising: the first one!

He agrees.