Chasity‘s daughter Isabella needs a liver transplant, and they need help to make that happen.
Go check out Isabella’s page and donate if you can!!!
Fred came in the house Saturday afternoon and said to me, “I need to come up with a good excuse for why we don’t sell our chickens.”
“Was someone getting pushy about wanting to buy some?”
“No, he just asked and I said we don’t sell them, and then I was like ‘I’m weird about selling our animals, I don’t like to do it, blah blah blah.'”
Fred is, as I have mentioned before, an overexplainer. If you ask him something and he answers you and then you don’t say anything, he will rush to fill the silence by explaining himself. Sometimes at night I’ll ask him a question I already know the answer to, and then when he answers I don’t say anything because I want to see how long he’ll keep talking before he stops and then says “Y’know?” in a bid for a response.
“How about you just say ‘No, we don’t sell chickens’ and don’t say anything else?” I suggested. “Because we don’t sell chickens. Those chickens are for us, not them.”*
“Yeah, I know…” he said.
Sunday, a family stopped by to buy eggs, and this time when the guy asked if Fred sold chickens, he simply said that we don’t.
“But he kept giving me looks,” Fred told me later. “Like he was looking for an explanation! I finally told him we eat them ourselves.”
*We did sell some little chickens once to someone who stopped by, back in April. But we both felt really bad about selling them and decided we wouldn’t do it again, because we know that here they’re treated really well and given lots of food and room to roam and (now) protection, but we certainly can’t know that in their new home they’ll have the same. We’re weird that way, I guess.
Sunday morning, Fred wanted to go to D0g Days (a flea market in Tennessee where we’ve gotten a lot of chickens, and in fact where we got our last two pigs) to see if there were any pigs there. He was also interested in buying a fig tree. We got five cherry trees at D0g Days a couple of weeks ago, as well as a Weeping Willow tree. The cherry trees are doing fine so far, but the weeping willow didn’t make it a day before the dogs chewed it down to a nub.
Lesson learned on our part! No planting small trees in the chicken/ dog yard.
So we were surprised, pulling into the D0g Days parking lot, to find that there weren’t many people there. Usually it’s bustling, but we also arrived there a lot earlier than we usually do. We walked slowly through, looking at what was for sale, until we reached the table we’d been aiming for. The guy there was selling cooked pork, butter, milk, and eggs.
Oh, eggs.
When we were there a few weeks ago, Fred asked if the eggs were fertile (that is, if there was a rooster in with the hens). At that point, the guy told him that none of them were, but that he’d have fertile eggs in a few weeks.
Yesterday when Fred asked if he had any fertile eggs yet, the guy answered in the affirmative.
First we bought two and a half dozen, and then we walked through the rest of the market, looking to see what there was. There were plenty of chickens, plenty of puppies, plenty of turkeys and geese (HATE), but no pigs.
On our way back to the truck, we stopped and got another dozen eggs. Hey, the incubator holds 42 eggs; why not take advantage of the space? Yesterday afternoon, Fred put 35 of the eggs we’d gotten at D0g Days and 7 of our own eggs into the incubator. In three weeks, we should have some baby chickens.
Yes, it’s an illness.
When my sister and Brian were on their way here at Christmas, she saw these license plates in a gift shop and sent me the picture.
(More George & Gracie pics up over at Flickr.)
Three and a half years old, and brudderly love lives on.
Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: “Oh!” he said, with a big smile. “You’re pregnant!”
2006: A SHELL ON A STICK.
2005: Every movie and every show we watch, he’s in there deconstructing it.
2004: Memes.
2003: A day in the life of Spot J. And3rson.
2002: No entry.
2001: Blech.
2000: I now officially have too damn many books to read.
Can you guys maybe post a sign saying something to the effect of “Sorry–chickens are not for sale!”?
I am married to an overexplainer too. It is cute sometimes, ok, not really.
Just tell them where you buy them from or just tell ’em to buy their own damn chickens! LOL
I was going to suggest what Kay said – something like “No, we don’t sell them – but you can get some of your own at…”
I have been an overexplainer most of my life. I read a “Dear Abby” article that suggested you counter nosy people’s questions (“Why don’t you have children?) with a look in the eye and a “Why do you want to know?” response. I plan to use that and your no explanation response too. My Aunt said one is less willing to put up with bullshit with age and I in menopause am finding it to be true.
In response to 2007 pregnant/magazine salesmen entry. I was a cahier/service desk clerk and a customer asked if I was pregnant. I replied, “No I’m fat and infertile.” I was in a bitchy mood and upset about my infertility so I decided to teach her a lesson. She was embarassed and she said” I was just worried about you being on your feet all day.” That did not make me feel bad people need to learn not to get in stranger’s business. I do not open the door for strangers anymore-I go in my hallway and hang there for a bit until they give up and leave. A sweet elderly woman let a magazine salesmen into her house for a drink of water here a couple of years ago. He robbed her and bludgeoned her to death. Scary.
I’m an over-explainer, too, and i know better and I hate it when I do it. I guess I want to be liked and don’t want someone thinking something about me that’s not true, even completely minor things. REading the book “Pulling Your Own Strings” by Wayne Dyer has been a big help to me and now I don’t do it nearly as much, but I still catch myself sometimes. When I’ve ordered something without chicken I feel the need to explain that it’s not because I’m a vegetarian but because I’m allergic to chicken (really am), because I don’t want a perfect stranger thinking I’m a vegetarian. Why? I don’t know, but I’ve tried to stop explaining and just let it go.
My husband is an overexplainer, but I think it has to do with the way he thinks about things. Like when someone asks us for directions, he might start off, but I always take over. He gives signposts when they are not necessary. He thinks the extra information is helpful. I think it’s confusing.
I’d be soooo tempted to toss out a casual, “Sorry, but we need them all for the Santeria festivities!” to the nosy bastards, but I’m ebbil that way. ;-p
Tell Fred to “Just say NO”. The old anti-drug thing. This can be anti-selling-chickens thing. I don’t think you two are weird for not wanting to sell the chickens even if you eventually eat said chickens. Raising them the way you do is very humane and chickens can’t ask for a better life (other than not ending up in your oven). Last time I was over in Decatur, I saw a truck with some sort of poultry (guessing chickens). They were stacked in these tiny cages with no protection from the wind and noise and I felt so damn guilty for ever eating chicken in a commercial restaurant that probably buys them from a factory farm.
I planted an ash tree in our previous backyard and my 2 dogs chewed it down to about 6 inches but it must’ve had a good root system–it started growing again the following spring! Maybe your weeping willow will do that too, I imagine that would make a great shade tree for them.