Dang. When I worked for the “Silver Star” (see Population 485) ambulance service, we used to stop here all the time.
More than once we picked up an order and got paged out before we could dig in, and I remember working some pretty heavy-duty calls with the smell of broasted chicken hanging in the air. I took it as a good sign that once the patient or body was dropped off and the rig cleaned up and put back together I was still hungry and able to eat on the drive back to headquarters.
Yesterday I got this email:
Michael -
I read your books and now look what happened. Totally illegal by the way.
Anonymous
Attached was this photo:
We loaded them early, in the rain.
Mills ready to roll. He drove so I could write. Thanks, man.
You can never have too many coolers.
Back home, ready to cut and package. Mills with helper. You could call this photo Establishing the Source of Chicken Soup.
So last winter your freezer conks and you find five whole chickens on the outer edge of thaw and you think they’d probably be fine but you just don’t have the gut-based gumption, so you refreeze and wait ’til windfall apple season and you make the following recipe:
5 whole chickens
3 5-gallon buckets of windfall apples
Some water
Boil in cauldron
Stir until repulsive
Let cool overnight
In morning, feed to joyful pigs.
After chores and before beginning the writing day, I butchered a chicken. It’s a meat chicken, healthy enough until yesterday when it lost the ability to walk. This despite it being free-range and not all that big. But I’ve learned the hard way that once their legs give out, it’s just a slow decline and you also wind up with a bird you wouldn’t want to eat. So off I went behind the pole barn. Didn’t take too long, although it helped that last night before going to bed I made a quick review of this site.
Upside? While plucking the chicken I worked out a paragraph transition, which I will apply myself to right now.
But I couldn’t get it to upload.
This is when I really got rolling on the writing, finally. Just under three hours of sleep then it was up to fix the chicken coop (the original one, the one on the cover of this book), move the barred rock chicks out of the stock tank and into the repaired coop, clean the stock tank and move in the 50 fluffy yellow meat chicks that arrived today, then move the new coop and chicken fence, then put up pig fence. Never would have finished without the help of my pal Mills, a friend going way back to the “Silver Star” days. We spent the last 30 minutes fencing in a deluge, but got’er done. Yessir. Got’er done.
Now some more writing. And a heart-shaped thought for my wife, who is running the whole show in spite of my ridiculous hours, obsessions, and avocations.
Raggedy old rooster-pecked chicken got out yesterday. Nowhere in sight at dusk. Out and about this morning. Would-be farmer tries to get chicken back in. Kindness fails, patience nonexistent, farmer defaults to what he learned as defensive end for 3-3 New Auburn Trojans football team in 1982. Chicken wins, farmer realizes why he never got that football scholarship.*
*a football scholarship to nursing school…now that would’ve been nifty.
Finished writing just after midnight last night and on my way to the house I noticed the granary door was open. We have a batch of chicks in there, and although they’re under a screen weighted down with rocks, we secure the doors at night to keep out roaming chicken-nibblers. While shutting the door, I thought, smells like skunk in here. Then I heard a noise, and there he was looking right back at me. I backed away from the door and he moved, but rather than go out the door, he crossed over to the old horse stall where the chicks are. It’s a dead end, basically. So I tiptoe over and peer in, and there he is curled up at the far end of the stall.
I gotta get some work done, so this is the shorthand version, but it took me a while to get that skunk out of there. Somehow he managed to spray everything but me, and we are both out and about our business today. So far no one has told me I smell like a skunk. I cannot speak to whether or not the skunk’s friends and family are accusing him of smelling like a human.
…early this morning and today’s delivery is cheep-cheep-cheeping in the back room. Off to town to pick up a batch of chicks.
(hardcover version here)
First, a thank you to Redbery Books and the Brick House Cafe in Cable for hosting the recent Spring Book Club dinner in Cable, Wisconsin, where the group discussed Coop and Coop. I get so many kind requests to attend book group meetings, but time, geography and calendar generally prevent it. I never forget, however, how much I rely on the word-of-mouth support I get from groups like this. So, thank you.
I am also frequently asked for a list of questions designed to help guide book group discussions. The Redbery Books group came up with one for Coop and have allowed me to share it. It follows after the break (and includes a ham joke). (more…)
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