Mouthful

I’ve been using a metaphor recently to answer the usual question and greeting: how are you doing? It is a common question, and often we mean it as in hello, how are you without much more than a one word response. So it is with a sense of humor that I launch into my longer than usual answer to this common question.

A good metaphor gets better with time, I’ve been using it for a week now and the story and details have grown to make a good story. Here’s my answer:

Friend: Hey there, how are you?

Me: 

You know how sometimes you go into a sandwich shop and get excited about all the options. You arrive well after lunch time so you are feeling extra hungry and order a big delicious sandwich. While watching the highschool kid in the back at the prep table you begin to wonder, did I order too much? 

The sandwich arrives and you’re feeling hungry, so you grab it with two hands and tip it side to side, scoping out the best place to dig in. The corner? Right down the middle?

You take a bite, the all-in kind of bite. There’s no turning back, you’ve committed. The sandwich is piled high to begin with and the act of taking my first big bite causes most of the sandwich to slide out the back. You hold tight with both hands and take the full bite…

That is how I feel.

And yet the sandwich is so tasty, maybe what I ordered was too much, maybe I should have taken a smaller bite to begin with? But here I am, deep into a messy sandwich, hands covered with mayo and tomato juice, probably more like a hand-which at this point. 

By the end of this week I am beginning to really enjoy the sandwich.

The race has been on this week. We have chicks in the brooder that need shelters to go into the field, chicks arrive every week, and every week for a month we need a new field shelter. So we’ve been prepping the pieces and getting all the parts together. 

We finished our first Mobile Range Coop (MRC version 2.0!) on Tuesday, brought the chicks out to the field, got them settled in their new and improved MRC 2.0, and started on the next MRC. Lewis and Lovett have been helping on the second one this week as we get into the groove of putting these together.

The MRCs have a roll up side, like a greenhouse does, to let us control airflow and ventilation. Like a greenhouse we have what’s called a billow cord, which runs zig-zag along the side of the coop to hold the roll up side in place; to keep it from “billowing out.” 

I gave Lewis and Lovett each a box of screw eyes, and a 5” carriage bolt for leverage, then I went ahead of them with the drill and pre-drilled holes and they came behind and screwed in the eyes. In the midst of a project that has consumed so much of my time, energy, and focus, I felt a renewed sense of joy to have them here with me, finding their way through this task. 

I love to watch and work alongside them both as they puzzle through a task in their own way. Lewis is taller, stronger, older and his struggles are his own. He is learning patience, and forethought, and Lovett is still finding wonder in the world as she figures out the way things work.  

Here are a few more pictures from the week:

I finish welding the base frame of the coop outside the shop where I use the tractor generator to power the welder. Our welder is not suited for welding in the wind and so I have a makeshift windshield with a saw horse, metal roofing and a blanket.

Here is the first finished MRC 2.0. The new version is big enough to hold a whole batch of 450 chickens at 1.6 square feet per bird. This simplifies things and makes chores easier with less coops to move. They are bigger! And luckily traffic was still able to make it past us when we brought it down the road to the field.

Happy Memorial Day.