Monday, March 25, 2013

03/25/13

I haven't posted for several days, and I apologize for that. This time, however, I have a valid excuse. We were out of town for a few days attending a workshop on sustainable poultry.

I took the day off from work on Friday, and we left for Western Kentucky early that morning. Our route took us through Somerset, where we made a couple of stops. The first stop was at Paul's Discount, which is very difficult to describe. Their motto is "If Paul's doesn't have it.... you don't need it!", and, while that might be a bit of an exaggeration, it isn't as much of one as you might think. We spent more than an hour roaming the store, but only left with a couple of items. I suspect, however, that Andrea would have picked up some fabric if she had been needing any. The store has one of the larger selections of fabric in the area, which is surprising considering that they also carry a nice selection of tools, camping/hunting supplies, and even seeds.

After Paul's we made our way to Amon's Sugar Shack for lunch. Amon's had been suggested to me by multiple people, so I thought it was finally time to try it. We arrived during the lunch rush, and the place was packed, which is always a good sign that the locals love a restaurant. The food was good, although I was a bit disappointed by the size of my burger. That just means, however, that next time I might have to order an extra :-) Of course we couldn't leave without dessert, so grabbed some donuts for the road.

Once we left Somerset we had several hours of driving ahead of us. I managed to miss one of our turns while Andrea took a nap, which resulted in us going an extra 20-30 miles out of our way. Fortunately, however, we were able to find another road that put us on track without having to just turn and go back the way we came. It was still a little early for dinner when we hit Hopkinsville, but I just couldn't bring myself to be that close without stopping at Ferrell's Snappy Service for a burger. This was only my second visit there, but I feel like the place is an old friend. If it wasn't for the five hour drive I would certainly be a regular customer. From Hopkinsville we had a short drive to our hotel in Cadiz, where we had an uneventful evening.

On Saturday morning we went out for breakfast, then on to our primary destination. The purpose of the trip was to attend the Sustainable's Poultry Network's workshop, Raising Heritage Poultry for Profit and Pleasure. The workshop was hosted by John Utter of Fowl Play Pastured Poultry. John certainly knows how to put on a successful workshop. The facility, which he arranged courtesy of a neighbor was a fantastic facility for such an event. Breakfast, lunch, and snacks were provided, which included a couple of dishes made from farm-fresh eggs from John's flock of mottled java hens. The workshop itself was wonderful, but I won't go into detail since I plan to do a post on that later.

On Sunday we got up early and headed home. We took a detour through Clarkesville Tennessee in order to visit Rural King, which is an amazing store. The store was easily three to four times the size of any other farm supply store I have ever visited. I don't think that calling it a farm supply superstore would be an exaggeration at all. We picked up a few items there, including seed potatoes. Rural King has stored scattered across 7 states: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee. The closest one to us is located in Shelbyville, KY, which is approximately 110 miles away. I expect that we will be making a trip there at some point in the fairly near future.

The remainder of the trip home was uneventful. We made it back home in time to get rested up from the trip. After feeding the animals Andrea spent much of the evening working with her seed starting project. A lot of progress was made while we were gone, so she updated her records and did some thinning.

It is snowing here today, although the small amount of accumulation we had this morning has melted. This, combined with the hard rains from yesterday, have resulted into things being wet and muddy outside. I don't expect to even try to get out and do anything today. Andrea did get out this morning to go pick up Jack from the vet, where he was being boarded while we were gone. He was very glad to get home, and actually jumped out of the truck window when he was Luke. I take that as a sign that his leg is no longer causing him any pain.


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