06 Nov 2005
A Day I Could've Done Without

This normally active blog was pretty quiet yesterday ... and there's a reason for that.

It was "Chicken Day" - Friday evening we loaded 41 of our older laying hens (who were no longer laying) into the livestock trailer, and made the rounds of the neighborhood, picking up 26 at Kevyn's and another 40 at Pam's. We were supposed to be back home by 7pm, but we didn't even get started until about 8 - a sign of things to come, I'm afraid, but we didn't see it at the time.

Since our regular processor was not able to get us in (they process too many turkey's in November to have any time for chickens), we had scheduled an appointment at another Amish-run facility, this on east of us in Cambridge City, Indiana. We were supposed to arrive by 8am - Kris was driving our big pickup (a 1999 Dodge Ram 155) towing the livestock trailer, and I was following in the reefer truck. She was going to drop the chickens off and scoot back home to get started on cleaning up the barns, and I was going to wait for the processing to be done and bring the birds home all nice and chilled in the reefer truck.

We were actually running pretty much on time yesterday morning, until about 7:30am. When the engine in the big Dodge blew out. Completely. Looked like the Exxon Valdiz had cruised down I-70. Luckily, Kris managed to get the whole rig off the road before the final freeze up, but we were stuck on the interstate with a hundred chickens and a dead truck. We pulled the dipstick to check the oil and there were metal flakes visible on it - not good, not good at all. We've had some sensor problems all along in that vehicle, and they became the automotive equivalent of the little boy who cried wolf - when they showed wildly fluctuating oil pressure just before the incident, we ignored them. Except this time, there really was a wolf, and as a consequence our truck, with a Blue Book value of about $4000 yesterday morning, is now a block of rusting metal in a tow year, that'll probably cost me $25 to get to a scrap dealer.

But meanwhile, we had a big problem: how to get the chickens to their destiny? Kris called the AAA tow truck, and I went on ahead to the processor. I found another customer there, waiting on her turkeys, who agreed to come and fetch our trailer load of birds - so back we went, got the trailer, delivered the chickens to their fate, and began to try to figure out how to cope with the loss of our main vehicle.

We still haven't got everything in order: the chickens are in our freezers, but the trailer is still parked beside an Amish barn in Wayne County - we have no other vehicle that can pull it, so we'll have to borrow a truck this week and go fetch.

And while we still have two vehicles, because the seat won't adjust correctly in the reefer truck Kris is unable to reach the pedals, and so can only drive the S10 to work. Which kinda cuts me out from using the little truck for running around here - and it's tough to pick up feed and straw, for example, in a reefer box, muck less haul muck to the compost pile. But at least I can still make my delivery runs, so the business hasn't been killed. And that's a HUGE thing.

Step one is obviously to fix the seat in the reefer: that'll take care of things for a bit. But we can't be dependent on others for something as basic as a truck - we're going to have to try and find the cash somewhere to get another, bigger pickup that can town the trailers.

It's going to be interesting, that's for sure.

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