Country Life in Georgia in the Days of My Youth, by Rebecca Latimer Felton, 1835-1930. This seems to be a facinating account of life on the frontier. Western Georgia was, at the time she starts her story, on the very edge of the settled United States. I’ve only skimmed this, but it looks like a good read.

When I get a farm, I plan on selling more than just vegetables and eggs. Fresh cheese, chile sauces, and other canned goods would greatly help bring money in. But, to sell these kinds of things, you have to satisfy the state, and more often than not, these laws were actually written by large commercial operations, such as the large dairies, with the intent of keeping the little guy out. Georgia is no exception. Even the limit on egg-selling is shockingly low – more thn 40 dozen a week and I’d have to have everything the large outfits have. 40 dozen may sound like a lot, but 70 hens in full production would pass it. So, should I sell certified organic free-range eggs at $2.50 a dozen (the local going rate), my egg income would be limited to about $400 a month. In Georgia, it appears, there’s no allowance for dairy products at all.

The lab results are in, and it appears my rooster died from lymphoid leukosis, a once-common poultry retro-virus. He probably contracted it at conception from his mother. It can spread to other chickens through contact, though that’s rare. I will have to watch the others, though. Unfortunately, the exterior symptoms are subtle to non-existant, and the disease is untreatable. Most chickens fight off the virus, but those that lose the fight always die with tumors in the liver and other organs. I notified the hatchery, and they’re looking in to the problem on their end. The chicks were vacinated for Marek’s disease, a more prevalent and nasty virus, but not for lymphoid leukosis. Meanwhile, much like amphibians, my number one hen has switched sides to become my new rooster. Yes, I thought that was odd, too. Penny is my favorite hen. She was always by my side in the garden, eating the grubs and bugs I found for her. She’d let me hold her with hardly a stuggle. She and the rooster were childhood best friends, but when the rooster matured, he preferred the company of the early-maturing white hen to Penny. A couple weeks ago, the rooster was crowing mightily in the yard and I heard a tiny, whispered echo crow. Several times. I looked around, and there was Penny, mimicing the rooster. He’d flap his wings, puff up his chest, and let one rip. She’d flap her wings, ruffle her feathers, and in the faintest possible voice she’d cockle-doodle-doo. I thought it was pretty cute, but it made me wonder. Was she mimicing, or was she an extremely slow developer? Once the rooster died, though, everything changed. Her comb tripled in size in just a couple days. Already the largest bird, she filled out even more. Her crows changed from a whisper to a yell. And now she’s mating with the other hens. So now… she’s our rooster. Penny – short for Pendleton?

For a while there, I was afraid they were fading away, but this last week the Brunching Shuttlecocks were back in full force. And today’s bit ranks with the best they’ve ever done: Your Roommate Plays The Indigo Girls.

I hate it when people I know die. Even people I really didn’t get along with. In my social circle in college was a woman named Bonita. I saw her at least several times a week for eight years or so. Though we never argued or clashed in any way, we never really got along. She had a habit of telling people completely made up stories about things she claimed I had done, and did this for years. I don’t know why, and I never confronted her. Her storied never did me any damage, and while I saw her often, there was no need to be more than sociably friendly. But when I just learned she drowned in an accident, I was sad just the same. I’m sorry, Bonita. Good bye.

I just found this article about the new theater I’ll be working in dusing the next two months. Auditions for Bus Stop are tonight – I’m looking forward to meeting a slew of new people. It’ll be a bit odd because many of them know all about me though I’ve never met them.

My old residence, Socorro, New Mexico, is on CNN again. The last time I saw Socorro on CNN, it was because of a massive tire fire.

It was a sad morning at the farm today, as we woke up to a dead rooster. It was laying in a heap underneath its roost in the coop with no wounds or anything. It looked like it died in its sleep and fell. I took it into the poultry necrology lab in town to get a cause of death. The West Nile Virus has made it to the area, and birds have a rather hard time with it. Georgia’s the number one chicken producing state in the country. If that virus takes a liking to chickens, that’d be bad news for everybody.

I was informed that the large images in my How I Spent my Birthday Weekend photo essay became corrupt during the domain transfer last spring. I must’ve done an ASCII transfer instead of a binary one. No matter, they’re fixed now. They’re the best images I’ve got online of the property we’re renting, so if you’re a Kestrel’s Nest newcomer, please enjoy.

When I got back from vacation today, I found a box from Amazon on my desk. Inside was a book I’d ordered sometime in 1998. It wasn;t their fault, of course. It was out of print and near impossible to find. They found it, apparantly, in the discard box at the Tuscon Public Library, and it was even full of photocopies of related material helpfully placed by a nameless library patron doing a research project. The book is color and greyscale plates of illuminated manuscripts from the sixth through sixteenth centuries. It’s a very pretty book, and was surprisingly cheap. It was the second time I’d used Amazon’s out-of-print service (The first was for a copy of the 1930’s science fiction sequel After Worlds Collide. The sequel was good, but not as good as the first, When Worlds Collide. That one is a must-read, and when you do, keep reminding yourself how early it was written, because you’ll forget.), and I’ve been pleased both times.