Chickens are a gateway drug
Happy Sunday everyone!
I’ve made it a tradition to do these things every Sunday so I think I’m going to keep it! I’m still not sure what a blog is or is suppose to be so until then you lucky ones get to hear me ramble on! Sundays... the day of the lord & a morning of blogging? I’ll even put my holy jeans on for this one.
Honestly, The first thing that pops into my head when I think of Sundays are the Farm Swaps!!! The real deal where you can go sell & buy animals at the fairgrounds & not worry about getting flagged from every Facebook page in Illinois for trying to post your animals online.. Where you don’t even have to say your selling “grass mowers” instead of goats & “flock protectors” because you’ll get flagged just for posting a rooster🤣 Believe me, Been there Done that!
Man I cannot wait for spring when I can go back to waking my boyfriend up at 3am against his will to head out to the Kankakee County Farm Swap to get there in the pitch black with our flash lights to “look to see what they had that month”. I wish I knew how he puts up with me. The first Sunday of every single month it was something new. We would pull up every time & before we even got out of the truck Mike would look at me & say “Jamie, NO animals! Repeat we are not getting ANY animals this time we are JUST looking so I didn’t even bring a crate because we are NOT getting ANYTHING!” Then there we are, carrying 2 Nigerian Dwarf baby goats out of the farm swap, crate in each of our hands that we had to purchase from the swap for $30 (when we had about 4 more at home) because Mike didn’t bring one.... because we were NOT leaving with one animal..... So we left with two instead 🤣 I will never forget the look on his face to this day. Walking to his truck with 2 baby goats & I just looked at him & smiled like “I win”.
Then even since then we’ve got more chickens & cats & Peafowl, & another goat.... But it allllll started with Chickens. You can’t even live out in the country without having chickens. Chickens are my entertainment. Who doesn’t want to sit on their deck in the summer, just watching the chickens peck around the yard. Okay that might actually just be me but who’s judging!
We all know that time in early Spring when the whole town flocks to Big R (yes, I’m aware the name changed but it’ll always be big R to me🤣) to see what kind of chicks they have!! These tiny $3 baby chicks that will soon be laying you a beautiful farm fresh egg every single day. So we stocked on about 12 chicks from 2-3 different farm supply stores to get a variety. 2 of each breed (Call me Noah).
So as we got our chickens I grabbed one of the homesteading books that had a whole chapter about raising free-range backyard chickens! This book is called “Welcome to the farm- How to Wisdom” & dun dun dun..... It’s actually what interested me in goat milk soap & gardening & of course, more animals such as goats for goat milk! Life changer I guess you could say!!! I like to research ALOT just Incase something ever comes up that I’m not familiar with & thank god because who else would have taught me about “pasty butt” on chickens especially silkies As a first time chicken owner😳 Sorry, it’s gross but welcome to my life!
So there it is, You buy a few chickens & it turns into doing research on more animals & buying books & getting more ideas & suddenly you have 20 something animals & you just want more because those loving little faces when you walk into the barn first thing in the morning is totally worth it, & those collected eggs in the basket on the counter in a rainbow of colors are totally worth it, & our fresh goat milk right from our barn will be worth it. & When March comes along we will probably get atleast 10 more because....
Chickens are the gateway drug.
Once you start, Theres no stopping.
🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓🐓 🐔🐔🐐🐐🦚🦚🦚🐕🐈🐈🐈🐈