The Agrinautica

   The Saturday before New Years I headed up North for the week. As noted, like seemingly all my trips, it started with a trip to the mechanic.
   My driver-side door had completely stopped working a week prior, necessitating climbing in through the passenger side (and THAT lock is being kind of funky as well). Being as I've always been incredibly unflexible, I find this condition almost unbearably obnoxious. As such the car was brought to the mechanic immediately.
   A week later, the part still wasn't in. And this being the week between Christmas and New Years, there were no rental cars to be had. So I went to the mechanic to spring my car. There I found the entire staff sitting around a grill BBQing and drinking beers. I had some tasty BBQed sausage with them and then clambered into my car. Loaded it up with my two jugs of brandy, a number of honeybears full of my family's honey, and some clothing, and headed up north.
   Hung out with my friend Nidia & her boyfriend Trevor in Berkeley Sat through Tuesday. Went into the City, went on a hike in the hills half an hour east of there. Just realized I have pictures of these things I'd forgotten to edit and put up yet. We collectively somehow drank most of my brandy I think ;D and I got them both addicted to the computer game Civ III after we played it multiplayer.

   Then I proceeded up to Santa Rosa to hang out with the delightful miss Stacey. Her flatmate the Greg is pretty awesome. For New Years Eve we went down to a bar in San Fran with some of Stacey's friend and met there Nidia, Trevor & one of their friends.
   Friday Stacey took myself and her sister and some of her sister's friends to see some of the the wineries & vineyards the winery she works for owns. This was of course awesome and the locations were beautiful.
   At one of the wineries we were ushered in from the tasting room down to a special events room in the basement with red carpet and large casks along the walls, where three bottles of wine and fresh prosciutto awaited us. And then the manager of the facility stopped in to say hi to Stacey and brought us another bottle of rare fancy wine to try. Altogether it felt very VIP. (=
   That evening the group of us all chillaxed at Stace's place, and the Greg and one of the sister's friends Delorean cooked up rib-eye, elk-sausage, and chicken, among other things. The rest of us played this game Fluxx and generally caused a ruckus. Being a huge nerd I made an entry in the middle of it (but its okay because most of them had LJs?).
   Everyone seemed to like my honey-brandy concoction. Compare this to when I got back and brought a sample to work thinking the lads would be excited that I'd found an easy way to make the brandy they had turned their noses up at earlier more palatable -- when presented with it everyone at work acted like the very idea was repugnant and refused to so much as smell it! )=
   To go off on a related tangent though, later in the day Dave mentioned to Jeremy that his coffee tree had beans and he was going to make some coffee of his own. Jeremy responded flatly that he doesn't drink coffee. "Will you at least try it for me?" "nope." I can see flatly refusing to try something if you're say allergic or have moral or religious objections, but lacking that... trying new things doesn't go over well with Jeremy I guess.

   Anyway, Sunday (the 4th) I turned honey into wine by trading Staces my remaining three honeybears for a bottle of wine, and then I headed home.
   The End.

More Pictures

   "Cheep cheep"

   The eggs weren't even hatched yet. Not a crack. But they were cheeping. I didn't know they could do that.

   "Cheep cheep"

   It all started with a previous batch of chickens. Mum is a science teacher, and her class had raised up a gaggle of chickens from incubated eggs. At the end of it we ended up with a rooster named Falafel and a white hen named Tzatziki (I called her Zeze for short).

   Unfortunately, as roosters are wont to to, Falafel had this habit of crowing between 5 and 6 am. This doesn't fly in the suburbs. I really liked Falafel -- he had a lot of personality for a chicken. But he had to go. But we were able to trade him in at the feed store for a bantam hen we named The Seniorita.

   "Cheep cheep"

   Chickens, as you know, lay eggs. Normally they just forget about them and wander off. But the Seniorita would habitually sit upon her eggs until chased away, and purposefully laid them in hidden places.
   It would sometimes take us awhile to find her new place, and then we'd find an egg trove. But as soon as it was found she'd relocate. So it was Easter year round in my backyard.
   Clearly she desperately wanted to be a chickenmom. But she hadn't ever been pollinated, so to speak, by a rooster, so it wasn't going to be.
   Eventually, however, we took pity on her and bought fertilized eggs from the feed store. One by one we replaced her unfertilized eggs with fertilized ones while she wasn't looking. She didn't seem to notice that her eggs were getting a LOT bigger than they formerly/normally had been (bantam hens of course being fairly small).

   About a month later, they started to hatch. She was, I'm pretty sure, overjoyed. Her chickendreams had come true!! She sure showed "you can't have babies if you've never met a rooster" Zeze!
   Unfortunately, in her joy and enthusiasm to take care of her new chicks, she completely forgot about her three remaining eggs!
   So we took them and put them in a cardboard box with a blanket and a lamp for heat.
   "Cheep cheep" -- these eggs were cheeping! Every few minutes, one or the other would let out an adorable muffled "cheep cheep"
   If I recall correctly the first one hatched overnight. In the morning, there was a chick standing there looking damp and confused. We found the chickenmom still hunkered down with all her chicks under her wing and pushed this one under her wing as well.

   One by one the other eggs hatched over the next 24 hours (video!) and were reconciled with mother without incident. However, there was a problem.
   She wouldn't accept the runt. The last one hatched. I don't know if she just had too many babies at that point or he came too long after the rest (probably about a week after the first one?) for her to feel like he was truly part of the same family, but she wouldn't take care of him, wouldn't let him hang out with them and play in their reindeer games -- she'd actually chase him away and peck at him )=

   So back in the box he went. I made sure he stayed warm and fed and took him out and played with him whenever I had a chance because I worried he'd get lonely. I remember watching TV with him on my lap (and I don't normally watch tv!).
   I'd take him for walks in the backyard. Unfortunately I had to guard him from the other chickens, who would charge at him if they got half a chance. Rude. )=

   Eventually a student from mum's school adopted runt. I kinda missed him but hopefully in a one-chicken-home he'll get the attention and lack of pestering he deserves.

   ..at least until they have to deal with...

   "cock-a-doodle-doooooo!"

Some more pictures of the chickens


Note: for those of you not on my friends list / didn't see my immediately previous entry, I actually just experienced a 4.5 earthquake while writing this! Talk about cracking!