Old McDonald

Last month, at Cade’s birthday party, Avery wanted to see Charlie. I walked her out to his pen and she spotted the hog house that’s sitting in our wooded area. Jay moved it here last fall with plans of getting two pigs and raising them for their hams. Jay was a little obsessive a couple of years ago about curing hams to enter in the Ozark Empire Fair and the State Fair. Well about the time we were supposed to get the pigs is when the economy started going crazy. We decided that we really didn’t need/want to spend any extra money at the time so we didn’t get the pigs. Also, the fact that the pigs have to be butchered a specific way and we couldn’t find anyone close by to do this was also factored into our decision. So the hog house is there, but it hasn’t been used yet.

Anyway…Avery asked me what it was and I explained it to her. All of a sudden I had one of those feelings of revelation…where you realize something and it hits you like a ton of bricks. Old McDonald has a farm….and I’m married to him.

This all hit me as I’m walking out to our dog’s pen, I can see Lyle and Jania’s two heifers out of the corner of my eye, Avery’s asking me about the hog house, Cade just got chicken waterers from Jay for his birthday and there were two donkeys with giant red bows around their necks in a trailer in my front yard. At what point did my life take this drastic turn? How did I not see it earlier?

Things got even crazier last week when the 15 baby chicks were added to our family. Cade is showing them at the county fair the first weekend in June hence the gift of waterers for his birthday. Right now they are little and cute. In a few weeks they are going to be large and squawking in our yard. I’m wondering how many of the 15 will actually live to see the month of June. So far it’s been fine, but once we move them to the bigger pen outside who knows what will happen.

A day or two after getting the chickens something hits me again….Jay is leaving next week for Oklahoma. I will be responsible for the chickens. Jay said he wondered how long it was going to take me to realize it. Apparently I’m thinking slowly because it took a couple of days. By the time I take care of the dog, the 15 chickens and get a cranky boy around I’m wondering what time I’ll finally roll into work. I just hope that when Jay gets back early Friday morning he’s greeted with the same number of everything that we had when he left.