March 22, 2014

I took this picture last night out side of Tractor supply. 11 bags of chicken, goat, and horse feed, and on another cart not pictured were other supplies. This was a bit less feed than what we normally buy every three weeks, as we had a few bags of goat and chicken feed still left unopened at home. Not pictured is the pickup filled with 25 bales of hay that we also go through in about three weeks, but had gotten last weekend.

In the store, waiting in the aisle while Kath was looking for clippers for Zippy, I was looking down at the loaded cart and thinking that this is the result of two chickens, and I smiled a bit at how things come to be.

Back around ’99 a chef gave me two pullets from his flock for me to take home. We named the girls Bob and Homer, and set them up in the backyard with a plywood hut made of scrap and the fenced in yard to range in. Because of the fun we had with these two gals, soon came more baby chicks and then pet ducks for the kids, and the plywood box was now set in a large, netted run I had built to contain them all and keep them safe, as raccoons, possums, and hawks realized that my back yard was just as good as an Acme as far as they were concerned. Luckily, the neighbors didn’t care, and I think they had a few laughs over the farm in our back yard. The Owners Association never came by…I think they liked the novelty of it all.

As you could expect, the backyard got smaller and smaller as we dreamed bigger and bigger.

So we bought the farm where we now live, and named it Seventeen Farms. Seventeen was always a favorite number, so I used it as the name.

To make a long story short, because I think everyone knows the story from here, we added horses, goats and bees, along with a garden market with a hoop house.We haven't had one regret.

It’s interesting as how something as innocuous as a few friendly chickens evolved into what we have now. Waiting in that aisle I couldn’t help but to think back to the days when there were no trips to Tractor Supply, but to a little local feed store when once a month, or maybe it was every six weeks, I would buy one bag of chicken feed. It was all I needed back then.

I also began to think of friends who have visited the farm and have now begun to raise their own chickens, wondering if in a few more years will I see them at Tractor Supply every few weeks with a cart as loaded up as ours….