In Search of Nesting Boxes

While perusing the ads in the farm and garden section of Craigslist, I saw an ad for nesting boxes for sale. I clicked on the ad, saw the pictures. They looked pretty good to me and I thought how buying these would save a lot of time, as there is already a fair amount of coop construction ahead of me.

I called farmer Paul and got directions that sounded a little like this, "now go aways past the four-way stop, ignore the streets that come up on you on the left, go up the hill, then down the hill and when you see the sign for a hard 90 degree turn, go straight, it will be a dirt road, look for the orange barrels. I scribbled as fast as I could, then did what any 21st century person does. Mapquested it.

Now mapquest is great. Mostly. But I warn you now, when you are entering into the country DO NOT RELY on it! It seemed so much more straight forward than farmer Paul's directions, but it took us down a dirt track, pothole infested, car and old appliance cemetery private driveway. I was seriously afraid that we were doomed to be on the 5 o'clock news. "Local Couple Vanishes Without a Trace." We u-turned in the driveway and high tailed it out to the main (I use the term loosely) road. My husband asked, "how many shotguns do you think were trained on us?" And I am sure my answer, "at least one" was accurate.

We then turned to Paul's directions and eventually found the farm. The theme from Deliverance began running through my head. And I felt a little like one of those moronic teenagers that always go into the scary, dark basement in a horror movie when there is a mad murderer on the loose, because we got out of the car and looked at the nesting boxes. Made with warped lumber and raw splintery edges, it looked nothing like the pictures. There was some rough handling of a dog, and hollering at a kid who was seriously developmentally delayed, and a trickle of a nosebleed of farmer Paul's that stained his white mustache pink and I had had enough. We hightailed it a second time before we got fed to the pigs.

I think the rest of the evening involved showering with loads of hot water and at least one glass of wine. All this and we don't even have the chickens yet!