Quail hatchlings, Mama’s event in Chico, my slow day, Grandpa’s ills

Friday afternoon quail began to hatch out of the eggs we have had in the incubator. In 24 hours twenty-two of the little hatchlings struggled free of their eggs. We followed protocol and left the hatchlings in the incubator for the next twenty-four hours. That gives the wet hatchlings time to dry out sufficiently before being put into another container. To house the little ones, I assembled the crate given to us by the Burns’. I put two large trash bags under the crate and covered those with some puppy pads, placed a heat lamp to give the chicks enough heat to be comfortable and early Saturday morning, placed the chicks into the crate. With the twenty-two hatchlings out of the incubator we were left with sixteen eggs to watch over. Sunday two more hatched out and Mama tells me that two more hatched out overnight last night. With three deaths, we now have a total of twenty-three live chicks to rear. Fourteen more eggs remain in the incubator. I will give them until tomorrow evening and if they do not hatch, they will be discarded. So far, we have a 68% hatch rate. That is excellent!

Also, early Saturday morning, Mama and I got her booth set up at the event in Chico. While we were setting it up, we noticed that there were not very many vendors attending – at least not that early. Mama’s neighbor at the event was a couple we know for our Wise County Bee Club selling their honey and various honey related products. That gave Mama some good company throughout the day as the event progressed. It was a slow day according to Mama until early in the afternoon when two ladies bought a couple hundred dollars of her nail strips. That one sale made her day, but she had to wait through many empty hours to be available to make that sale. I went back to help Mama pack up about 3 pm and by 3:45 we were home and unpacked. It was nice to have the event so close by, especially since I had to make several round trips to get things to Mama that had been forgotten in her haste to prepare for the event. She was struggling to get things together since she and Victoria had just recently gotten home from West Virginia.

Back at the farm, I had a very slow day. I was not feeling well. I seemed to have no energy to do anything, so I focused on tasks that did not require high energy to accomplish. I weeded a flowerbed. At least, I spent all the time my knees would allow me to spend pulling weeds from the bed. I cleaned the shop and straightened up the garage. I disassembled one of the first cages I made for housing chicks. I had taken a rabbit cage we had and built a wooden structure around it to give it legs and a more secure opening, but it was not one of my better products. When I took off the legs to return the cage to its original shape, I reattached the wooden face of the cage leaving the more secure door access to the cage so when we use it in the future, it will be more resistant to any snake seeking entrance. All the cages we had been using that had accumulated under the garden shed were returned to the equipment shed attached to the barn. One side of the coop was cleaned and the growing chicks in the West side of the coop were allowed access to the yard built on to their side of the coop. They are still separated from the adult chickens for now. That integration will happen in a couple weeks.

Mama and I moved the ducklings into the grow out pen and relocated the recent chick hatchlings, cage and all, into the West side of the coop. We made that move after dark so we did not have to contend with the resident chickens dashing wildly about while the door to the coop was opened to bring the cage inside. The little ducks love their temporary home. They will be there for less than a month. Once they are big enough to move into the duck pen, they will become part of that flock. We just have to be sure the young ducks are large enough that they cannot easily get out of the enclosure the mature ducks are in. So, now we have only the tiny quail in the garage. That greatly lowers the flies that had taken up residence in our garage.

For the past few days Grandpa has not been doing well. By his description he has no energy, and because of that low energy, he has little strength and no sense of balance. So, to compensate, he spends the day either sitting in a chair on the front porch or lying in bed. I think he prefers the porch both for the sounds and sights of the outdoors and for the respite of entertaining Grandma as she also lays in bed throughout the day. Grandma is a chatterbox and more often than not now her chatter is hard to follow as she tries to speak a coherent thought. That, and she has music playing loudly on her phone almost continuously. That is not really an issue except when she insists on carrying out a conversation over the music constantly reminding us that we have to speak up because she is hard of hearing.

Last night as we were driving home, Grandma asked why the road we were on was so high up in the air. It was dark, but we were on the same road we have almost always taken home from Decatur. Mama and I were not sure what she was asking, but as we came downhill to a lower part of the route Grandma stated, “Oh, there’s the ground. Now I can see it.”

We just smile.