Catching Up

A lot has happened since my last post, and it is sometimes difficult to decide what to share, so I shall share what is on my mind, and if you, dear readers, have anything you'd like to ask about, please don't hesitate.  After all, that is one of the purposes of the comment section.

At the moment, I am preoccupied with how awesome it is to be working on my dream.  While financial success is certain a component of this dream, and in fact, is a primary goal for many reasons, the money itself, is not the dream.  My mother, my husband and I all have some similar desires, and we are combining our resources to achieve some of those desires, but we all have individual desires as well. Luckily for us, the building of this dream and vision is something we all desire to do.

Thus it is that we find ourselves enjoying everything from the unusual to the mundane.  As an example, a 5.9 earthquake hit Virginia for the first time in decades.  One of the things I told my husband is eerily reminiscent of something he once told me.  When we fell in love, he lived in Australia, and I was living in Virginia, and being somewhat logical and rational, as well as attached to our respective homelands, we spent a great deal of time analyzing who should move first.  One of the things he told me to get me to move to Australia was, "We don't have any natural disasters in Victoria."  In his defense, we were discussing things like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.  In spite of that, I tease him regularly over the fact that in February of 2009, I was treated to the opportunity of defending my home against the worst bushfire to ever hit Australia.

Fast forward two years, and we are planning to move to the U.S.  As I worked on his visa, I remember telling him that it's pretty easy to defend against tornadoes and hurricanes, and luckily, we'll be living on the East coast where there are no earthquakes.

Luckily, there was no damage and neither of us was injured, but at this point, we are both wary of declaring that any place we end up is safe from disaster, and our friends are now declaring a ban on us spending any amount of time in Yellowstone lest we cause the end of the world.

To return to my initial point about working on my dream, it is so much fun to take care of our chickens, and to catch up with friends we haven't seen in years, and to find out that we have friends who are not only celebrating with us that we have this opportunity, they insist on helping us to build our dream in any way possible, whether through ideas, sharing of skills, tasting the food and even going so far as to giving us money.  

We have faced a lot of challenges over the last half decade, and I know... I really know that there are more challenges to come, but this moment in the journey is a real joy and I'm stopping to savor it.

I do not want to over burden this blog with too many subjects in one posting as some of my readers suffer from ADD, so I will try and update a bit more regularly.  I'll reiterate that if any of you would like me to elaborate on something specific, just say the word.

Progress

As I mentioned when I began this blog, one of my goals in keeping the blog is to detail our journey as we attempt to start a business.  So often, when I've read about successful people, the kinds of things they share are dry, boring and don't deal with the day to day challenges.  Here are some of the challenges we are currently facing as we proceed on opening our business.


We are on a strict budget at the moment, as we wait for our house to sell.  So we're spending a lot of our free time working on the house and yard - things that need to be done but don't cost a lot. One of the delights I'm experiencing in what is a new home to me, is the opportunity to work on my own yard.  This is the first time, in over twenty years, that I've lived in a home I own that isn't being renovated.  


A lot of people are daunted by the aspect of home maintenance, and perhaps the sheen will wear off with time, but this house was empty for several years before my mother purchased it, and the yard had been neglected in certain areas.  One of my favorite books is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and though the garden I have to work with is not secret, I am really enjoying tackling the project.  


Unfortunately, I got rather overenthusiastic about this project last Monday, and I really overdid it.  I'm still suffering the after effects and it's hindered everything that I want to do for the last week.  The up side is I'm drinking far less alcohol in an effort to get my muscles to recover faster.  I've been meaning to cut back on my alcohol intake for some time, and I'm feeling a lot healthier as a result.


Things are progressing really well with the chickens.  We've had four eggs this week, and I get such a thrill every time I open up the coop and find an egg in one of the nest boxes.


Mom and I are also making excellent progress on the business plan.  We met with the artist my mother commissioned to pick up our logo and conceptual art.  

Another grand success we've had of late is that the husband has narrowed down a magnificent recipe that is easy to prepare, yummy and healthy.  I won't give away any details at present, but he even came up with a clever name that is in keeping with our theme.


The only real setback we've had so far has been our budget crunch.  For awhile, it was looking like I would need to get a job in order for us to get going on this plan.  Luckily, some contract work for the husband has made that unnecessary and within a month or two, our budget problems will be over.


I highly recommend that anyone attempting to open a business - make it as low risk as possible.  Don't take a loan out on your house.  Don't eliminate all sources of income.  Find a way to put together a team and start small.  It really lessens the stress when you don't have all your eggs in one basket.  I expect us to succeed, but if we fail, it won't devastate us economically, and that's a really peaceful place to be in.

Heat Waves and Winging It

In February of 2009, the husband and I went through the worst bush fire ever to hit Australia.  It came on the heels of a three day insanely hot heat wave, and we fought that fire all night long to protect the home we had moved into a mere three weeks earlier.


In July of 2011, we moved to the U.S., from winter to summer, but not just to any summer.  It was another heat wave, and on the day that ended up being the hottest on record here in Virginia, my husband and I built a chicken coop. It was less than three weeks since we'd moved in.  There were no fires in our area, so all in all, this was an improvement, but we couldn't help noticing the extreme heat.


For the record, we fully intend to reinforce the laundry room in our basement with steel on the off chance a tornado happens by.  I don't really think the Universe is out to get us, but I'm not taking any chances.


When we first decided on a chicken coop, the husband thought we could get away with modifying some plastic containers, but the mom did some research and we realized that could only be a short term solution.  And the more research we did, the more we realized that we needed to go ahead and build a proper coop.


My husband and I have a real habit of flying by the seat of our pants.  I could analyze it for you, but suffice to say we are happy with each other and we realize we would drive other people nuts, but we take responsibility for the fixes we sometimes get into, and we do what it takes to make it right.  Sometimes winging it works out really well.  Other times, it can result in some inconvenience.  


So we purchased the chickens before finishing the coop.  He built a cage for them while I went off with Mom to buy the chickens.  I had a long chat with the young man we purchased the chickens from just to give the husband time to finish the cage.


We returned with four full grown hens and five pullets, two of which may or may not be roosters.  We put them in the cage and fed them.  Then we realized we needed a proper water container, so Mom went off to the Tractor Supply Company and got one. We watered them, left the cardboard boxes in which we'd transported them in the cage as temporary housing and went off to relax and watch True Blood.  Mom went to bed as she had to work early.


Shortly into the show, the doorbell rang.  I answered it, and a young boy of about twelve stood before me and asked if we owned chickens.  I was astonished by this.  We live in a very rural area and we haven't lived here long enough to get to know anyone yet.  I responded that we did indeed have chickens.  He proceeded to tell me that one of them must have escaped as he'd been hunting in the woods with his bow and fired at it without realizing what it was.  He missed and then realized it was a chicken.


Now, I realize it's a very unsafe practice to shoot without identifying one's target first, but I was so impressed that he had gone out of his way to find us and let us know that I didn't take the time to give him a lesson on safety.  Not only was I impressed, I was also very concerned that one of the chickens had gotten out and I was starting to feel guilty over the spontaneous way in which we had handled purchasing these chickens.  


In our defense, none of us expected to care about the chickens.  Don't get me wrong.  We would never abuse them, but we weren't expecting to think of them as pets.  And certainly at this point, we did not.  But we didn't want to lose the investment we'd just made either, so we decided to stick them back into the boxes we'd transported them in and place them in the basement for the night.


The next morning, we went to Lowes to pick up the materials.  Lots of sixteen foot two by fours and 8x12 foot plywood.  A handy circular saw and plenty of beer.  


The only real challenge that faced us was the fact that we live on a grade of about 30 degrees, and the chickens are situated about a hundred and twenty feet from the back of the house in a lovely wooded section.  It's another fifty feet to the spot where the car gets parked, and it's steep enough with slick enough grass that driving my mom's car down the hills wasn't feasible.  So we were left with carrying everything down the hill and then walking back up the hill on the hottest day on record.


Ah well.  Good thing we stopped smoking and want to get in shape.  The husband got to find out what real humidity is.  We have some friends in Singapore that would understand humidity in the same way that I do.  I used to laugh when people Melbourne would complain of humidity.  Naturally, the husband thought I was exaggerating until this day in which he found himself needing a towel just to wipe the sweat off his brow so he could see to keep working.


The good news is he finished the coop and at the same time bonded with the chickens who seemed to enjoy spending time with him as he worked.  We were a little sad about losing the one chicken, but we definitely learned from the experience.


Two days later, the husband went down, early in the morning, to feed the chickens.  He found one of the red chickens outside the cage waiting to get in. This was very disturbing and we wondered if we were going to need to make the cage higher.  I went down to have a look at the hinges he'd installed on the coop and to analyze what we were going to do about the cage.  Suddenly, I realized we had nine chickens and not eight.  The one that had "gotten out" was actually our prodigal returned.  We were amazed.  It had been three days and they hadn't had time to establish a pecking order on the day she left, but she found her way back.  And she likes the new digs.  None of the chickens have tried to escape yet.


It's been two weeks, and we have pet chickens, but so far no eggs...

On Guns and Chickens

My husband is a character.  He's been a shooter since he was a boy of around twelve.  He grew up shooting in Australia where they have much stricter gun legislation than they do here in the U.S.  My personal opinion is that there is too much gun control in Australia and not enough here in the U.S. For example, in Australia, guns for home defense is a no no.  The reason this is significant is because the husband told me on more than one occasion that he wasn't interested in owning guns here in the U.S. He was quite adamant in fact.  I was surprised but not terribly invested in whether or not he owned a gun.


Shortly before heading over here, he began researching the laws covering hunting in Virginia.  Our first night in the U.S. as we relaxed in our hotel room in Hawaii, we came upon a show called Sons of Guns, and the next thing I knew the husband was talking about how it would be good to get a gun.  For the next week, he kept bringing this up.  It took awhile for it to sink in to me that he had changed his mind.  I was hesitant.  We're starting out on a limited budget as we've moved over here before our house has sold in Australia.


As this was going on, about day three after we arrived, we went shopping for some food.  While in the store, we picked up some chicken.  We live in a very small town so the only choices for primary grocery shopping are Food Lion and Walmart.  To get to the fancier shops involves driving at least forty minutes in any one direction.


While checking out the meat section in Walmart, the husband zeroed in on a brand of chicken that I refuse to support.  I told him we wouldn't be buying their chicken because they're evil and that I couldn't remember the details of why but he would just have to trust me.  He humors me at moments like these rather than trying to have a rational debate in the middle of the poultry section, but we both knew he'd be researching my claims later.  He settled on a brand I hadn't heard of and off we went.


As we headed home, with the husband practicing driving on the right side of the road, I looked ahead and saw a truck filled with a white, fluffy substance.  As we got closer, I realized that much of the fluffy substance was moving. 


"Are those chickens?" I asked in horror.  The husband looked and agreed that they were, indeed, chickens.  On the hottest day on record, we were driving behind a truck jam packed with half dead chickens.  It was truly horrifying.  Both of us thought about the chicken in the back seat that we had just purchased, and we were filled with revulsion.


I'll point out here that both of us are hunters, and both of us enjoy meat a lot.  Neither of us are interested in becoming vegetarians.  My philosophy is simple. I like animals to lead happy free lives and then end up on my dinner table.  I prefer this to them living in wretched conditions jammed into cages with no ability to move, carted off to slaughter in any kind of weather, and then forced to witness as the members of their group are brutally killed.  We could debate this subject, but I'm not trying to convert anyone or judge anyone.  I am simply explaining in short hand what some of my beliefs are.  And my husband agrees.  I won't even bother going into the health benefits, to us, of eating animals that run around getting exercise and sunshine.


Within less than an hour of seeing this truck full of chickens, we'd decided we should purchase our own chickens and raise them for their eggs and meat. We got home.  The husband immediately jumped online and began researching chicken breeds, chicken coops, predators in the area, etc. 


He then declared that in addition to building a coop that would protect the chickens, he was going to need a gun... when we left the gun shop with our shiny new .17 air rifle, the husband announced that it might be a good idea for the three of us (my mother, the husband and I) to sign up for a conceal and carry course.  He followed this up with a comment about embracing his new life in America.  Like I said, he's a character.


We now have three Rhode Island Reds, four Buff Orpingtons, one white Leghorn one mystery black rooster and an air rifle.  More on that in my next post...