So, cute won out. Today I made a well thought through inpulsive decision. I've been going back and forth about chickens. And really, the only hang up is POOP. But, that hang up won't go away, and I won't know how big of a deal it is unless I try it out! So, I went on craigslist, found the cutest silkies on there and drove 5 hours round trip to go pick up four of them. I know, I'm crazy. Probably $50 in gas to go spend $12 on chickens.
But, these aren't just any chickens, these are silkie chickens. Remember the pictures from a few posts ago? Ridiculously cute, right? Plus, these are considered the best 'pet' chicken breed out there, they're really good with kids and I keep hearing the word 'maternal' used in reference to them. Um, okay. Maternal chickens, that's got to be a good thing, right?
It was such a blah day today anyways. Why not take a long drive into unknown territory? The chickens were in Waldron, AR, about 45 minutes south of Fort Smith. I'd never been any further south in AR than Fort Smith, so it was new to me. And it. was. beautiful. I mean, you know that feeling you get when you're going home after a long absence? It was like that. It reminded me so much of Washington, like, in the rural areas east of Olympia. There were evergreens, which aren't very common in my part of Arkansas, and beautiful fields lined around with beautiful trees, and rolling hills in a broad valley surrounded by the Ouachita 'Mountains' (growing up on the west coast makes it hard for me to actually call anything in the mid-west a mountain...)
Aren't they beautiful? I wish I'd brought my camera so I could show you what I saw, not just what wikipedia was doling out...
So, we pull up to this 200 acre cattle ranch to get the chicks. The wife, Elaine, runs a daycare out of her home and is so good with the kids. In fact, the reason she HAS chickens is so that the kids she watches can see them hatch and play with them. So cute. She kept the chickens in her well house, which had walls lined with home canned foods covered in cobwebs. When Kate saw the chicks, she started grabbing, one at a time, and putting each one in our box. I had to stop her and explain that these were mommy's chickens too, and that I got to pick at least one AND that we weren't taking ALL of them. We had practiced holding baby chicks at Tractor Supply earlier today, so I was faaaaairly certain that neither she, nor Jack, would squeeze the poor little buggers to death.
I let her pick one, and then I tried to get Jack to pick one, but he was too delighted with how they ran in a circle around the inside of the galvanized tub when he waved his hand at them. So Kate grabbed on and told him that was his pick and plopped it in the box. She let me pick my mottled chick out of a pile (okay, maybe not PILE) that had been set aside for someone else when I started going on about how cute they were. The whole ride home, Kate sat with her nose on the edge of the box staring in and jostling them periodically to get them peeping again :)
and one on gardening, 
. I grew up on 24 acres in the NE corner of Washington State, and being outside and using the resources on the land was just part of our life. We added new planters every year, had an orchard, canned our produce, and built a 2200 square foot house out of the trees grown on our land.
