There's talk about finally stopping daylight saving time, which didn't save anything, just messed with well meaning people and enhanced the bottom line for anyone selling 9volt batteries for smoke detectors! POTUS Trump, says it's, 50-50 on keeping or abandoing it. Can't remember changing the time on a clock growing up, maybe my parents sat up half the night, careful to change the clock at 1 or 2 am... while we kids were sleeping. All I had was a wind up alarm clock with 2 bells on top - and - a wall clock, a Kat Clock... a beige colored Kat clock, with the tail hanging down, swinging back and forth. You can't imagine, a pre-teen kid, climbing up on a chair or chest, or brother, pulling that thing off the wall, changing the time, and then... struggling to get it back on the nail on the wall.
It didn't purr like a kitty, just made this gutteral sound, like a mouse or sparrow was being digested and burped up in 2 second intervals... we somehow managed to sleep, probably swearing to hunt sparrows for Black Fat instead of letting him chase mice. Every power outage, we'd end up either climing up the wall to reset that Kat clock, or ... if the hour was right, unplug it and try to get it timed just right, one kid at the plug, the other downstairds, watching the house clock, "Ready? 5-4-3-2-1 - plug it in!!!" It wasn't a precise operation, but, close enough.
The wind up clock pretty much stopped, slowed down, sped up - what a useless piece of metal for us. This sort of Brass & Sea Green thing sat there, across the room, the only thing we could see at night, because of it's luminious dial.
Living in the country, that was the only thing that made any noise, tick-tock tick-tock when you went to bed, as the night wore on, and the 'bladder alarm clock, insisted, you gotta get up NOW', the sound changed. There you are, stumbling down the hallway, bleary eyed, knocking into everything, stubbing toes @ 3am, to the bathroom. Finding your way back, that old Oak Floor in the middle of the night, barefoot - it felt as cold as a cement floor. Crawling back into bed, after sweeping the cat off your pillow... getting back to sleep, impossible with that wind up torture device! The bedroom seemed lit-up by it's glowing dial, and it no longer ticked & tocked, but had morphed into a Vincent Price's, 'Pit & the Pendulum' horror movie! Terrifying to a 10 year old with an active imagination! You're laying on your side, one eye checking up for a razor sharp, swinging Pendulum! The windup clock was a necessary evil in the farmhouse, power went off and nobody knew what time it was - the school bus was showing up at 7:15am ... 2 hours for chores, then breakfast, and there's the bus! "Click-clang click-clang"... better take another look, did I wake up in a Vincent Price dungeon??? Just about the time you're falling asleep from exhaustion, the air is filled with this now ear-splitting ringing - "Heck no, you're now under a WW2 air raid, in a London Subway Tunnel, and your brother is gasping & moaning from a gut wound, "Turn that darn thing off! Which one of you idiots wound it up again? It's Sunday, and we've changed the clocks last night!" mumble-mumble, covers rustling, little feet hustling across the floor to the dresser as it rang - silence.
She's sleeping in, having been up with the owls, chatting with the girls... it's good to have a daughter or two home for a few days. Gives her a good diversion from the Farm. We call it PQFarm, because we hatch & raise Ducks. Heritage breeds, keeping their lines alive, Silver Appleyard, Welsh Harlequin, Buff Opingtons. Whenever we've gone to the hatcheries for day old chicks, they're bound to throw in a few of those, "Surprise! We're Pekins! Lousy egg layers, & we like to EAT a lot - forarging, what's that..? Not for me! Just feed me! Aflack-aflack-aflack!" One of two Drakes (males) is good, they're likely to do guard duty for the Ducks (hens) who are the egg layers we really wanted. Big eggs, I mean twice the volume of a medium/large egg, a 2 Duck egg omlette is same as a 3 egg chicken omlette. Pekins, when they do lay, are even bigger!
Yesterday, the farmer gave the girls the word, start laying ... or else! 2 eggs this morning! Welsh harlequin size eggs. It's cold enough, they're not fertile, so clean them up a bit, and into the fridge. We'll wait till it warms up and everything is in full lay before we start setting eggs in the Incubators. One of them we bought, it holds180 duck size eggs, the other I built, about 8x that size... but, we've never filled it that full. Having the capacity is always good. We've loaded up the small incubator many times, with a mix of Chicken, Turkey, Duck, Bob White Quail & Ring Neck Pheasants. Those days are over, the kids were pretty involved with the bird operation & selling them at the farmer's market. Farmer's markets were a 100% loss for me - I wanted to kids to learn how to SELL, it was for their education. Sometimes, they came home smiling, sometimes a little bumed out, but it was always there to learn from, how to sell & barter. They'd sell day olds, week olds and hardened off chicks - the latter didn't need any heat lamps... prices went up each week as our input costs rose. Once the kids starting figuring out the initial pricing, adding in feed & heat lamp costs for older birds - I would just back away, and let them figure it out, occasionally getting a call, "What do you think about this price for ...". They got better and better at Farmer's Markets, often selling everything they took.
The boys managed to turn the Turkey chicks into Pet's ... they'd follow them accross the yard, while free ranging, begging for easy treats! One of the boys would be laughing, 20 or more Turkey chicks at his feet, pecking away at his shoes, or anything shiney, to the point of becoming annoying. He'd sit on the glider of the Front Porch, half a dozen Turkey chicks surrounding him, asleep... "I can't move, dad! I'm covered in Raptors!" What??? "Raptors have me pinned down!" A peek out the window, 'Oh, his Turkeys are napping on his lap again.' The next month, they'd all sell at the Farmer's Market, and there was little doubt, bringing joy to another buy. "You guys like to hand-tame your birds, we really like that, about your family!" - so did we, a repeat customer. I hope they managed to serve those birds up for Thanksgiving... Those broad-breasted birds could be well over 50-60 lbs if you'd let them go till Christmas! 36 lbs was our biggest we ever tried to squeeze into our oven, even 20 of us, couldn't finish that bugger off.
Thanks to the neighbor's dogs... we're down to 3 Pekins & 3 Welsh Harlequin Ducks (1 Drake & 2 Ducks, of each), unfortunately, they are near 4 years old, so..... we're going to try and get some new birds, just incase these guys are sterile. And... I wanna get a tray or two of Bob White Quail eggs to set. The Fillet Mignon of the Sky, like a Florida Pompono is to fish, Wagyu Beef to cows - so is Bob White Quail to birds. Most of them will wind up as Owl & Hawk food as we release a bunch of them. Quail are like little birdie buddies too! One of the girls would hang around the incubator, opening the door, so they would see her face right after hatching, "Are you my mommie?" - and follow her around like baby kittens. They'd grow up, loving people. Hearing them calling in the morning & evenings, or suddenly flush in the tall grassy areas - man-o-man, that's real country living. It's a reminder for me, God has/had a purpose in everything, even allergies.
The sun is high, warm sunny day. Ducks are just peacefully floating around the front pond, frockling is over - I bet they'd like so fresh popped corn! Ya know, as many days & hours spent sitting in a saddle, I can't ever remember dozing off. At my height, 6'3", with that much weight leverage over a horse's center of balance, knowing shifting my weight around they'd stagger like a drunk - we could both fall over! Often said to the Students in Riding lessons, "you gotta fall 1000 times before you're and expert" - I might have reached half of that if you rolled all those falls in, as a kid on a pony. Time to go pop some corn...
