Internet, chickens and eggs

Last night proved the point to Mama and me that we need good internet service to make this business work. After another bumpy start, Mama and I figured out how to use the information provided to us in excel format to find the property records the lines of numbers were referring to. It took both of us to piece together the information and get it into the right search blocks on a variety of websites to make everything work, but we did. When we did, it was fun to look through a spreadsheet of 2500 listings and investigate only the ones we wanted. That investigation required a good deal of bandwidth to retrieve and display. Even thought we had a very a good internet connection, the pages were loading slowly. Doing those searches using my phone as a hot spot would not have worked at all. I had to teach Mama how to watch the progression through the spreadsheet as I scrolled through the listings. Once I showed her the way I watch the advancing lines of numbers she caught on quickly and we were able to advance much faster. When we had been at it for two hours, neither of us wanted to stop, but there were other demands on our time that evening, so we headed home. It was an encouraging night.

Before we set up to search for properties we went by the Chen house and dropped off the dog crates they will use to pick up a couple baby goats at Trade Day’s Saturday. They are very excited to use the new truck Alex bought. Any excuse will do to buy a good truck – especially if you live in Texas. Once we unloaded the crates we headed to the restaurant to deliver eggs. Mama did not want to drop the eggs off at the house because the eggs were not washed, and she did not feel that we could explain that to the grandma. Lin and Alex assured Mama that they did not mind the dirty eggs. Lin told us they had raised chickens when they lived in China, so they were aware of how to handle the eggs – dirty or not. That relieved Mama. It also explains why they are so fond of the farm-fresh eggs.

This weekend we will take them a couple old chickens. Alex has told us numerous times that old chickens make the best soup. He told me last night as we picked up the cage we use to deliver the old chickens to them that he has recently tried to order old chickens from their Chinese food supplier, but the supplier could only get young chickens for them. They were disappointed. Enter me and Mama. We let Alex and Lin know that we had six to eight older hens that needed to be taken out of the flock and we would be happy to deliver the birds to them two at a time at whatever interval was suitable to them. They are excited. Another win-win. The only favor I asked is that they would share some of the soup with me when they did make it. I remember the last time we took them an old hen, Alex bragged on how good the soup was. “Soup was very, very good” He told us. “Chicken was very tough, but good flavor. Old chickens have best flavor.” Giving them the birds is a benefit to us because Mama is going to order chicks in a few weeks. Culling the flock is a requisite to open room for new layers to grow up on our farm. Plus, it saves us feed.

This weekend is full. We will not get everything done that we have on our list, but we can try.