Blog #7--Putting all of my eggs in one basket: an EGGciting weekend

            On the road again!  Oh, how I love road trips, especially when I go someplace exciting and new.  When my friend Mary asked me if I’d like to ride shotgun on the way to the National Poultry Show in Columbus, Ohio, I came out with a resounding YES!  Of course, I didn't know what I was getting into, but it sounded exciting, and I was happy to go with her, as we are kindred spirits with many similar, however some dissimilar, interests.  Chickens are Mary’s primary interest of late—raising chickens, watching chickens, telling chicken tales (tails?), giving talks about chickens at the local library, and showing chickens.  

            The National Poultry Show was set for a weekend in November, and I found myself getting really excited about going on this long—550 miles one way—trip to the Ohio State Fair Grounds.  We’d be driving it all in one day, with the requisite pit stops for gas, food, and bathroom breaks.  The event lasts for almost three full days, and Mary expected to be there for at least two of those days—the show part on Saturday—oohing and aahing at all of the birds—followed by the swap/sale between attendees and the awards part in the early afternoon on Sunday.  Friday evening was some kind of meet and greet thing that she’d rather avoid.  We’d be driving all day on Friday and really wouldn't have time to do whatever it was on Friday anyway.

            My first experience with live chickens began when Mary got her first six “girls” and gave each one a name.  She chose the seven brides' names from the Rogers and Hammerstein’s musical “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”  Well, she only got six hens and there were seven names—Milly, Dorcas, Ruth, Martha, Liza, Sarah, and Alice.  She had yet to get a hen to name Dorcas, since she wanted a specific breed of chicken and was waiting for that to happen.  

             Dorcas was reserved to be a Malay hen, the breed that one of Mary’s daughters chose.  A Malay chicken is a little bit strange looking in that it stands up tall versus the typical chicken that is always stooped, squatting and pecking near the ground.   A tall chicken—standing 24” to 30”—is quite a sight to see!  That’s almost the size of a one year old child!  Finding a Malay hen was not as easy as Mary anticipated, so Dorcas is yet to be.  In the meantime, the other six “girls” found happiness in Mary’s backyard, complete with a coop made from her daughters’ old playhouse, now retrofitted with roosts for sleeping, a caged-in chicken run for, well, running, scratching, and pecking, and the nesting boxes for all of those lovely and colorful eggs.  No, brown chickens don’t necessarily lay brown eggs.  No, a rooster isn't needed for a hen to lay an egg; a hen of egg-bearing age will lay approximately one egg a day for the duration of its laying lifetime. 

             Back in 2010 Mary and I had attended Chicken Stock, which is kind of like Woodstock, except the only music you hear is the sound of hens clucking, roosters crowing, geese honking, turkeys gobble-gobbling, and ducks quacking, etc., all under the same barn roof.  After all, chickens aren't the only kind of poultry that people are raising these days.  It was held at the private farm of a young couple in New Tripoli, Pennsylvania (near Kutztown).  The event was sponsored by BackYardChickens.com (BYC), an online forum devoted to the care and proliferation of chickens.  Mary’s been a member of BYC for quite some time.  The membership at BYC is currently over 280,000 now!  That’s a big flock of followers!

    We arrived at the farm (owned by Steph and Jason) on Friday evening.  It was a "by personal invitation only" evening, which Mary got from Steph.  We did the traditional meet and greet with everyone already there, most of whom Mary knew only by their screen names on BYC…they didn't really know Mary either!  We wandered around the farm yard for a while, getting to know the dogs and pet pot-bellied pig trailing behind us.  It looked like the pig thought it was a dog, so the pig did what the dogs did, or was it the other way around?  Hmm?  Steph had so many chickens that she kept separate coops—I think I counted 4 coops.  Among the chickens was a lone hen turkey, who decided to nest on top of a pile of chicken eggs.  She was an older hen turkey, and she probably was past her egg laying years and didn't have any chicks to call her own, so she must have been trying to hatch the little darlings.  She didn't know if the eggs were or weren't fertilized, but she was going to give it a try anyway.  After roaming around and introducing ourselves to the horse, the pony, and the goats in the corral, we wandered back to the house, where there was a full blown party happening, complete with Jason at the barbecue grill, cooking everything from ribs and steaks, to hot dogs and burgers, as well as grilled corn on the cob.  There were plenty of other vittles on the table brought by some of the other guests—I brought my “world famous” broccoli slaw, too.  Everything was yummy! 

   After we ate our fill, and while the groaning was going on, the fire pit was loaded with wood and lit to a blazing glory of warming flames, since the cold of the November  evening started to chill us.   It was getting very late and most of us couldn't keep our eyes open, so Mary and I skedaddled to our evening accommodations at a nearby campsite.  Mary isn't much of a camper, but she had reserved a one room cabin with 2 sets of bunk beds.  We were prepared and brought our sleeping bags to roll out on the bunk mattresses.  It was clean, very wooden and log cabin looking with a covered porch.  There was a separate building for the communal toilets and shower facilities.  At the evening meal with Jason and Steph, we met another BYC lady member who mentioned to us that she planned to sleep in her car for the weekend, so we offered to split the cost of the cabin with her, and she was all prepared with her own sleeping bag.  The cabin was a dry and reasonably comfortable place to lay our heads to try to sleep.   We was cozy for the night and out like a light.

   When Saturday morning arrived, the drizzle was steady and at times turned to a teaming rain, so it’s a good thing I brought my raincoat and a book to read.  Our initial plan to arrive back at the farm at 9 a.m. was daunted by the fact that the limited shower facility was being used by other campers, so we had to wait our turn until there was an available spot to get showered.  Breakfast consisted of what we packed in our coolers from home, and we ate that in the truck while we drove back to the farm.  As we approached the farm at around 9:30 a.m, it became apparent that there were lots of people at Chicken Stock, with their cars lining the street and in the farm's open areas.  The whole place was packed with several hundred BYC members and other folks who just loved a good poultry sale and swap meet.
This particular Chicken Stock event was even written up in Time Magazine’s “Postcard” section.  Mary was interviewed for the story, but her bit didn't make it into the article, though the mention of her bumper sticker did—“My Pet Makes Me Breakfast!”  Mary is so chicken crazy that even her license plate reads GTCHKNS (Got Chickens?).  A day doesn't go by when she doesn't hug and kiss her girls.  I draw the line at kissing a chicken; hugging is one thing, but not kissing.  Yuck!   

   At this stage of the game, Mary has about 3 dozen hens, in either standard or bantam size, and one bantam rooster named Armand.  Armand is quite spectacular in his own right.  His feathers are quite a few colors starting with his black face and neck, which looks like he’s got a ZZ Top kind of beard going down to his chest.  Then he’s got these long, thin feathers that cover his shoulders, sides, and part of his lower chest, which is mostly salmon in color.  The rest of his body is the wider feathers, blending from brown to black, mixing with the salmon colored feathers at the base of his tail.  The magnificent part of his appearance is the really tall tail feathers, which are brightly colored in a black/green iridescent pattern and standing high in a plume, as is traditional on a Faverolle rooster of the salmon variety. 

   The rest of Mary’s hens in the flock have names, which are usually appropriate to their particular breed.  For example, for one of the Brahmas—an Indian breed in her flock—she has given the name of Jasmine, taken from the Disney movie “Aladdin” as an Indian princess name.  Brahma chickens come in lots of colors, but Mary has the ones I like to refer to as the color of a Golden Retriever dog.  It’s that caramel color of other breeds of dogs, too, but looks especially nice on these chickens, which are fluffy and plump, and also have feathers on the legs, which resemble pantaloons.  It’s pretty funny to see a chicken with pants on its legs.  Most would expect to see the wrinkled-looking, lizard-like legs of a chicken, but not on the Brahmas.  Nope!  There are feathers instead; very cool to see.

   One of her chickens, which has the name I suggested, is a Speckled Sussex—a breed from England—named Daphne.   I took the name from Daphne Du Maurier, who was a famous writer from England, one which I’d read at some point in time, and who also had several of her books made into movies.  Perhaps you remember Alfred Hitchcock’s famous movie “The Birds”—a real creepy movie from 1963—Daphne Du Maurier wrote it!  

   Daphne seemed like a good name for an English girl.  Daphne, the chicken, has a really pretty feather pattern.  Heck, most of Mary’s girls are quite beautiful with the variations of color and pattern.  I find the feather patterns of chickens to be quite interesting and amazing.  I don’t know how Mary tells all of the similar breed girls apart, but somehow she does.  Daphne is mostly brown, with specks of black, white, and a little bit of blue.  The thing I like most about Daphne’s feather pattern is that it looks like she is wearing a lace apron around her mid-section from the lower part of her neck down to just before her tail feathers.  It’s just the cutest look, and all because of the way her feather pattern is arranged. 

          
             In 2011 Mary and I attended another Chicken Stock up in Onchiota, New York.  When she first asked me to attend, and when I asked her where it would be, she laughed when I told her that I knew exactly where Onchiota was, since my best friend since first grade lived in the town right next to it—Loon Lake.  There are two Loon Lakes in New York, but this one is about an hour from Lake Placid, 20 minutes from Saranac Lake, and about 45 minutes from Plattsburgh, all of which are way up in New York state and only about two hours from Montreal, Canada—basically in the middle of nowhere and very rural.  Great for people with livestock and, of course, chickens! 

   I called my friend and asked if we could stay for the weekend to attend this Chicken Stock event.  It was all arranged.  The weekend we went up was kind of rainy and drizzly, so we weren't surprised that it wasn't as well attended as the first Chicken Stock in Pennsylvania.  Of course, the location in the middle of nowhere didn't help either, since accommodations were few and far between out there in the woods. There were a few attendees who took advantage of the invitation to camp out on this farm, owned by Natalie, but with the seasons in this neck of the woods being June, July, and winter, having a Chicken Stock in October didn't help matters any.  So, those of us who attended had fun chatting, learning how to “process a chicken”—basically cutting off its head, watching it flap and jump around until its body finally realized it was dead, plunging it into boiling water to make the removal of the feathers easier, and then gutting it, saving the heart, liver, and gizzards for further use—and eventually ended the evening with a campfire and a s’mores roast, albeit with wine and other libations to imbibe.

         
            We arrive at our hotel in Columbus, and it’s really late, since we left later than originally planned.  I was ready on time, but something unforeseen happened and Mary was delayed a bit—like 2 or 3 hours delayed.  Our trip across Interstate Route 80 was pretty much uneventful, and we spied a couple of quilt shop signs along the way—thanks to the shop owners for putting up those billboards—but we would just have to wait to visit those shops on our way home.   We were on a mission to attend the Ohio Nationals, as the National Poultry Show has come to be known, and nothing would deter us from getting there on time, barring any more unforeseen events. 

Saturday morning came early, since Mary had brought along six of her girls to be in the competition, and the rules stated that any competing chickens had to be “cooped in” by 9 a.m. so that the judges had time to view all of the entrants.  After getting to the show and cooping in the girls, we wander around the massive building, which houses approximately 40,000 birds.  The racket is deafening, to say the least; never mind the odor.  I spent about an hour roaming the aisles and quickly looking at various birds. Who knew that “show chickens” and poultry was such a big thing.  Here in New Jersey a poultry show may not be considered a big event, unless it’s a chicken eating contest, but out in the mid-western states, it seems to be the national pastime.

Mary gave me the keys to her pickup truck, and I headed off to the Longaberger basket company headquarters in the Dresden, Ohio, area, which is about 40 miles from the Fair Grounds.  I was excited to be going to Longaberger, as I had heard so much about it and own several Longaberger baskets.  Its main office building is in the shape of a basket.  It’s really exciting to see that 7 story building with the basket handle way up on top as it looms above the landscape when I round the bend in the highway.  I’m sure there have probably been some accidents in the vicinity if a driver isn't expecting to see that massive building and its unusual shape.
The interior of the building was decorated for Christmas, complete with a 6 story Christmas tree made from probably thousands of Longaberger baskets and greenery.  It was a very impressive sight.  Around the lobby were little vignettes set up as living rooms, dining rooms, and bed rooms, and a kitchen, and all had an ample number of Longaberger baskets in each room, put to good use holding magazines, napkins, fruit, and hair brush sets, etc.  It’s a retail company, so why shouldn't it show off what can be done with some of its baskets?

After visiting the main headquarters, I set off to see Longaberger Home, just a short drive from the main office.  It's the factory and a mini strip mall, where the baskets are made and sold.  Mary’s mother had given me some money for something Longaberger and asked me to get whatever that would buy.  I hunted around and found the perfect things, which I bought for myself, too.  I found a small rectangular basket and some Mason jars with the Longaberger logo embossed into the glass.  I had just enough money to buy her 2 jars and the basket.  

As I roamed the factory, I observed several people making the baskets, but with the aid of an experienced basket maker.  I really would have liked to do that myself, but it was a bit out of my price range, so I just watched for a while.  I was taking photos of one woman and a master craftsman, and for a moment the woman excused herself.  The craftsman asked if I’d like a photo of myself pretending to make a basket, so, what the heck!  I said, “Yes!!!”  I stepped up behind the basket the woman had worked on, and the craftsman took my camera, told me where to position my hands, and he photographed me in that pose.  It was fun and felt a little deceptive, but I didn't plan to share the photos with anyone, so it really didn't matter if I was really making that basket or not.

It was nearing dinner time and I needed to go back to pick up Mary, so I headed out to the truck and found my way back to the Fair Grounds.  Even though I’d never been to Ohio before this trip, I found that it was really easy to find my way around.  It helps that I’m really good with directions and maps and am extremely observant of landmarks.  When I got back to the Fair Grounds and eventually found Mary among the noise, she made sure her girls had feed and water before we went back to the hotel for a while before meeting up with some of her BYC friends for dinner at the Red Lobster.  It had been a very egg-citing day for both of us!