Sweetie's Grand Adventure

So here's the more detailed story if any of you care to know it. I thought that after Sweetie's appearance in the newspaper and her being mentioned on a couple of radio shows this morning, that I should elaborate a bit.
Friday afternoon we were in the house when we heard Spooky squawking. That's what she does, so much in fact that we didn't look outside to see if something was going on. That's how she got her name, you know, because she gets upset if a leaf falls too close to her. So that was mistake number two (the first being that we had not clipped their wings since the chicks hatched- this is a learning process remember). The next mistake was not going out until after dark to close up the chicken coop. Adam locked them up and didn't think to count how many were in there (why would he?). So Saturday morning Adam went out to open the coop (We let them out everyday to wander around the yard. Keeping their wings clipped keeps them from hopping the fence but that idea rarely occurs to them anyway, being perfectly happy being close to their food, water, and shelter. At night, they put themselves to bed back in the coop with no help from us.). Only three chickens came out. When you consider the place of the chicken on the food chain you might understand how we assumed the worst from the start. We were upset, but for the most part, we took it like farmers. We said it was a shame since she was the pretty one, the sweet one, and then we went on with our day (I have spent the last couple days trying to explain to my city-centric friends, who assume our relationship with our chickens is like our relationship to our cats, why we're not devastated and trying to explain to my more rural friends why a missing chicken would make a good human interest story).
Sunday morning I got a message on Facebook that Sweetie was seen the morning before by our neighbors a block away. We quickly got dressed and drove around the neighborhood hoping to spot her. We came home and I posted a message on our neighborhood list serve. A couple hours later our neighbors called and said they could hear her squawking but couldn't see her. Again, we drove around and walked around with no luck. Another neighbor called later that day to tell me that another neighbor reported a couple of hens in her backyard on Saturday, one matching the description of Sweetie. So apparently she had made friends. Maybe there's a roving gang of chickens and Sweetie has just fallen in with the wrong crowd.
Yesterday, Dioni Wise from the Greensboro New and Record called Adam after seeing our message on the list serve. That is how Sweetie got into the paper. And apparently into at least two radio show's morning conversations.
So here we are rolling our eyes, muttering "chickens" under our breath, which has sort of become a joke around here. We're hoping she's alive and well and that somebody will see her and call us! And for my part, I'm hoping that this is Sweetie's 15 minutes of fame and not mine. I'd hate my legacy to be that I lost a chicken!

Giving

As the news from Haiti keeps pouring out of our radios and televisions, I doubt that it's just me that has felt the pang to do something. Giving to our community, nation and world is something we all say is a good thing to do, but unfortunately it gets shuffled down to the bottom of the to-do list until there's a real crisis that we can see right in front of us. One of my New Year's resolutions was to give more but I'm very sorry that it had to be under these circumstances.
There's lot of ways we can give, not just with money but with our time also. I have a couple things here locally that I give my time too but I wanted to be able to give a monetary gift (however small) to an organization that works more on a national or global scale. We've all had a tough year and when it comes down to another expense, I know the daunting task of trying to cover it. But if I start adding up all I do have and expenses I manage to cover, I realize how darn lucky I am!
Then I thought, what if I trick myself a little to set aside money to give? My bank rounds up every purchase I make to the next dollar and puts the change in my savings account. It's not a lot of money but regardless of what I feel I'm able to put away, at least there's always a few dollars going there every week. I've been lucky enough to be able to sell a few of the products of my hobby, the thing that makes me happy and keeps me sane when I come home from my real life job. What if I took a little of that and donated it? Then I thought - wait! What if I take $1 from every pendant I sell this year and give that to charity? What about $1 from every item I sell this year? So that's what I'm going to do.
A non-profit that I'm very excited about is Heifer International. Instead of giving money to communities and family in need, they give livestock. Check out the link for the whole amazing process! This organization helps people all over the world (they were in Haiti before, during and since the earthquake), including the U.S.. Based on my records for 2009, I should be able to give some honeybees, some chicks, and a llama. But I'm shooting for the heifer!

Happy New Year!

I said I was ready to put 2009 to bed and start the new year but looking back, 2009 wasn't a bad year at all. We started it with a great trip to Savannah, filled it with farm tours, beach trips, great times with family and friends. I made lots of new friends and rediscovered old ones. I turned a hobby into a part time venture and dove into raising chickens, even successfully performed chicken first aid last month. I planted seeds and trees. I finally got my tattoo. We survived the recession and the snow storm of 2009 with little discomfort and even with some new perspectives of what is really important. I accomplished a lot of my goals, rewrote some, and let some go without sweating it. I conquered some fears. It was a good year.
But it's hard for me not to get caught up in the spirit of New Year's, making plans and resolutions. I mean if last year was good, now we get to start again and make this year great! I think this attitude works for me as I find that every year that goes by gets better and better and leaves me lots of happy memories to look back on. New Year's is a holiday custom made for people like me, people who are committed to grow and learn, people who are optimists, people who believe that life is what we make of it. 2010 is going to be a great year!
What's on the plate for the new year? More seeds and trees definitely - I'm already thinking about my seed order and what parts of the garden need the most work. More craftiness and hopefully more shows and opportunities. More attention paid to my health (more yoga and vegetables!). More new friends and more time spent with dear ones. More good times!
Of course, beginnings also bring more questions too which can be a little scary. Adam is still job hunting but this will be his last year of school (for now anyway). There's lots of work to be done and things to learn if I'm going to let my little venture grow. There's 363 days left in which anything could happen. But it's the questions that bring the opportunities. 2010 is going to be a great year!
I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend starting out and more fabulous days ahead!