It was the rooster’s job to make the sun come up every morning. He would stand atop the fencepost, thrust his chest out, and crow, just as the sun first began to light the eastern sky. With each crow, the sun inched a little higher in the sky, until it was fully risen. Then the rooster would hop down, and strut off to boss the hens around. That was his job too – if he didn’t do it, the hens would not lay. But making the sun come up was his biggest job, and he took great pride in it.

He wasn’t a terribly old rooster. This was his first spring, and the only other rooster on the farm was several months younger, and only just beginning to crow. Obviously HE was not the one making the sun come up with his cracking and squeaking crow – the older rooster sensed the value of his existence, and looked with pity on the younger rooster.

It didn’t take long for the older rooster to notice that EVERYTHING on the farm centered around the rising of the sun.

When the sun rose, the farmer would appear to milk the cows, and to hitch the horses to the plow, whistling a tune, a little off key, as he worked. The farmer’s wife would come out to gather eggs and to feed the smaller livestock, smiling and talking to them as she moved through the farmyard. The older children would run for the schoolbus, and the younger ones would help the farmer’s wife, and then swing in the yard and torment the cat, laughing as they played together. The farm bustled with constant activity as long as the sun was up. When it went down, things were quiet, and the farm rested. Somehow, that bothered the rooster. He thought that it was so much more interesting and productive when the sun was up.

As the weather warmed, the rooster woke a little earlier each day. He felt a thrill of excitement at the power he had to command the sun to rise a little earlier, so that the farmer was compelled to begin his day at an ever earlier hour, day by day. It pleased him that not only was the sun obedient to him, but that it was there, waiting and ready for him each day, a mellow light already spreading across the horizon. The whole farm was at his command, the horses, cows, sheep and pigs all came under his reign, because he made the sun rise earlier, and so must they.

The hens were laying strong, for which the rooster also felt responsible. After all, he not only commanded the sun to rise, but he scolded the hens to make them lay. Without him, there would be no eggs. He felt warm all over as he thought about how much the farmer’s wife must appreciate his services. Soon, chicks began to pop up around the hen house, and he took great pride in his status as a father. He did not share in the care of the chicks, nor did he feel any interest in them – but he took great pride in their existence anyway. Every once in a while, he would order one around, just to make sure they understood that this was his job.

Soon the gardens were lush with fresh produce, and the chickens enjoyed a bounty of scraps of fresh greens from the garden. Of course, the rooster felt that he had provided well for the hen yard, after all, wasn’t the garden his doing as well, since he made the sun come up so the farmer’s wife could plant?

Then one day, the sun was no longer waiting for him. He was on time, not even early but he had to crow to get it out of bed enough to see the first light on the horizon. Within weeks, the sun began to ignore him the first time he crowed. And it grew worse as the summer progressed –  he stood on the fencepost at the appointed hour, and the sun had to be wakened from an ever deeper slumber. He determined that he must simply explain more earnestly, and insist that it rise on time, so each morning he crowed until the sun felt shame for hiding, and slowly roused itself from sleep. That lazy sun! This, surely, was proof of how desperately the farm depended upon the noble rooster, for without him, the sun would certainly fail to rise at all!

Each morning at 5:00 am, the rooster began to crow, and as fall approached, the sun took more and more coaxing to begin the day. First it took one extra crow, then two, and more!  The rooster was not pleased! The work on the farm was obviously suffering, since less work could be done in the shorter daylight hours. The hens began to lay a little less each week, in spite of his scolding. This was clearly the fault of the lazy sun!

The horses and cows began to grumble about the rooster’s crowing. The sheep and pigs baa-ed and grunted their discontent at being roused from their dreams by the piercing noise. The farmer’s children began to squabble and annoy one another in irritation over the early wakenings, and the cat was tormented more than usual, leaving the cat in a perpetually bad mood. The smiles left the faces of the farmer and his wife, and they grumbled as they did their chores, no longer talking cheerfully to the animals, short tempered and tired. The rooster noticed the change, and shook his head sadly, reminding himself that he must redouble his efforts to rouse the sun on time, because obviously the entire farm was experiencing negative effects because of the shortened days. He ignored the snide remarks of the horses and cows, and thought to himself how easy it is to lay blame in entirely the wrong quarter – the other animals were simply lazy, that was all.

One morning, several weeks after the crops had been harvested and stored, the rooster climbed up to his accustomed morning perch, and began to crow. The sun, lazier than usual, was even slower than the day before.

After about the fourth crow, the farmer stomped out of the house and threw an old boot at the sun, making angry noises as he did so. The rooster had to duck, because in his anger at the sun for not rising on time, the farmer had thrown carelessly and had nearly hit the rooster! The flustered rooster persevered though, and brought the sulking sun forth, in spite of resistance. It took some time that morning for the rooster’s ruffled feathers to settle, and each time he had to smooth his feathers back down, he pondered what to do to make the sun obey.

That afternoon, the farmer passed the hen yard, and pointed his finger in the direction of the rooster. He then spoke very sternly, and turned to walk on to the house. The rooster quickly looked behind himself to see who the farmer had been scolding, and determined that it must have been one of the hens. After all, they had not been laying as much lately.

At 5:00 am the next morning, the rooster began calling to the sun, bidding it to rise. It was so lazy by now, that it took a full hour and a half of crowing before the lethargic sun finally began to rise. The farmer stayed in the house, and did not yell at the sun again.

That afternoon, the farmer’s older boys came into the hen yard, and captured the rooster. He swelled with pride – the farmer must be preparing to thank him for his selfless service! The boys carried him to a wood block, placed his neck on the block, and chopped off his head. The farmer’s wife prepared chicken and dumplings for dinner that night, and the farmer said, “Well, that stupid rooster won’t be waking us at 5:00 in the morning in the dead of winter anymore! The only time we get to rest a little, and he stands out there crowing his fool head off when the sun isn’t even up yet!”

The next morning, just as a soft glow began to light the eastern edge of the farm, the younger rooster climbed atop the fencepost, gave a funny wobbly little crow, and bade the sun rise.

Moral: Tyrants usually come to a bad end, and nobody ever misses them.

THIS STORY and many more can be found on Amazon, for Kindle, in Laura’s storybook: A Little Romp Through Laura’s Storyland

 

This is actually a rather involved topic, so I’m gonna have to see if I can be concise, and coherent enough to get a few points across, without covering the entire spectrum… Hmmm…

First off, we have a myth in society that if the government did not protect our food, that we’d all be slain in a matter of days by foodborne illness, harmful chemicals, or deadly plants or substances masquerading as food.

This is purely a myth. In fact, the truth is precisely the opposite.

The government SUPPORTS, and actually MANDATES that our food be polluted with harmful chemicals, it PAYS growers to ENSURE that your food is contaminated with superbugs, and it approves for human consumption, chemicals and substances which are provably deadly. Yes, all of these statements are substantiated, and completely unexaggerated.

The myth that food is a dangerous thing without government involvement is a lie which has been perpetuated BY the government.

Here’s an example: On every box of eggs, there is a notice that you need to keep eggs refrigerated. And government legislation requires that eggs be refrigerated from the time they are gathered, until the time of sale.

While this is a great boon to refrigeration suppliers, it is completely unnecessary. Eggs have a natural protective coating. If the eggs remain UNWASHED, they will keep for two months or more at room temperature. After they are boiled in the shell, they’ll keep for about 4 days. The eggshell is a marvelous natural protective container, which is much better than any manmade device at keeping eggs fresh.

Now, it IS true that eggs, once broken, or cooked out of the shell, will pick up contamination, as will any other food. They DO require refrigeration at that point.

But up until the mid-1900s, fresh eggs were kept on the counter, boiled eggs were carried in pockets as travel food, and the human race not only survived, it thrived.

About the same time our government started requiring refrigeration for eggs, it also started requiring producers to WASH all eggs intended for sale in the US. It is actually illegal to do so in some other countries, because of how important that protective layer is on the outside of the eggshell, in reducing food contamination. But because our government seeks to encourage factory farming and mass production, it determined that in order to keep the playing field level for larger companies (which cannot survive without government intervention), they would intentionally ALLOW a contamination issue to survive – then not only to ALLOW it, but to REQUIRE it.

YOU think that eggs require immediate and continuous refrigeration because our government has told you so. But they lied. They created a problem, then insist that you take action to keep that problem under control – only you can’t. You will still have more contamination issues from your refrigerated eggs than you would have from unrefrigerated eggs that had been unwashed.

Another myth is drinking water. A whole nation of people now think that if the government did not mandate safe drinking water, and require chlorination, that we’d all die of cholera. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Polluted drinking water is caused by careless handling of wastes, and by overcrowding in population centers, NOT by failure to chlorinate. And drinking water in the Middle Ages (when it was completely unregulated) was actually SAFER than it is today. People lived more spread out, without the huge densely populated cities of today. They drank from wells, rivers, springs, streams, and ponds, and nature is a wonderful cleaner of water. The bacteria they did ingest was typically of low concentration, and merely served to strengthen their immune systems. In fact, today, chlorination itself causes far more harm than contamination by pathogens ever did.

Chlorine is a poison, and when consumed daily in glass after glass of water, it slowly kills you. It is a prime causative factor in all forms of Irritable Bowel Disease, and causes auto-immune disease over time as wells. Long term consumption of small amounts of chlorine contributes to heart disease, diabetes, persistent obesity, chronic fatigue, cancer, asthma, and many other conditions which are on the rise.

Our government not only disseminates false information about our risks, it mandates and supports harmful actions in many other ways, besides just chlorine in your water.

Commercial baked goods are REQUIRED to be treated with preservatives. Preservatives are just like chlorine – poisons, which slowly destroy the human body, one cell at a time. They contribute to the same long term disease processes. The irony here is that the preservatives do NOT reduce foodborne illness. They merely extend the shelf-life so bread can be shipped across the US and stay on store shelves longer before it develops HARMLESS mold, that looks unsightly, does not taste good, but which poses no health risk.

Factory farming is supported by the government, while safer small farming is actively persecuted. Government subsidies are only available to large farms, not small ones (which they were originally designed to help). Large scale factory farms COULD NOT financially sustain themselves without government subsidies and without regulation enforcement entities being willing to ignore compliance requirements for larger farms (many regulations are in fact written to EXEMPT larger farms from food safety laws – the very farms that cause the problems are the ones exempt from them). They can ONLY exist because of dishonesty and funneling of taxpayer dollars into the corporate farm coffers. And yet, virtually ALL serious food contamination issues stem directly from factory farms.

The conditions which cause the development of superbugs, or which cause mass-contaminations in serious enough concentrations to actually make people sick, only occur in large scale operations, with the attendant supply chains.

Hence, our government is CAUSING the very safety problems they are claiming a NEED to prevent. Their increasing regulations in the name of “food safety” have served consistently to protect large farmers, chemical corporations, and to persecute and harm both small farmers, and consumers. Every time. It has invariably done the opposite of what was promised when the legislation was proposed. And it was designed to. If there were no more serious issue of foodborne illness, there would be no more capacity to use this issue for political gain, and that is all it has been used for.

Foodborne illness was simply NOT a serious problem prior to the 20th century. It became an issue precisely when the government became involved in promoting mechanized farming.

Mechanized farm equipment is expensive. In order to make a mechanized farm profitable, the farm must be many times larger than a man and animal powered farm. Thus, mechnization of a farm creates a large scale factory farm, where things get seriously out of balance.

Don’t believe me? Most people scoff at the idea that horse farming can be profitable, yet we have living proof that it is more profitable than factory farming, AND without government subsidies. The Amish are probably the most visible example – they have horse farmed for centuries, and still do. The average Amish farm is 80 acres. This is the maximum amount that a family can manage successfully. Most Amish farmers make a good living from their acreage. No, they do not have Television, or cars, or other expenses which we consider “necessary”, but they do have financial security, nice homes, are well fed, and their communities thrive.

Many other small farmers have returned to horse farming, and are profiting more from their farms now than they did with a tractor.

It is not only POSSIBLE to profit more from a small farm, it is MORE LIKELY that a small farmer will profit without intensive mechanization.

In contrast, the average factory farm is thousands of acres of land, and the debt load is crushing. They typically have literally a million or more dollars worth of un-paid for equipment being used on the farm – and it may not be paid off before it reaches the end of its useful life. Profits per acre are very low as well, because mechanized farms produce less per acre than horse farms, and sell wholesale through costly distribution chains.

To scale it down further, a farm that is managed by hand – without either horses or tractors – is statistically even more productive per acre, with even higher profits per acre than horse farming (up to 20 times more productive than a factory farm, and up to 10 times more productive than a horse farm). Generally, only 2-5 acres can be managed this way, but it is enough land to provide a comfortable single income within a family.

These smaller farms do not market through supply chains (the supply chain – from farm to store shelf – is responsible for 90% of the store shelf price), they market direct to the customer, and therefore can earn a higher amount for their labor than larger farms are able to do. If you can sell your eggs for $3 a dozen on the farm, you can earn far more by your labor than a factory farmer who has to sell his eggs for $.30 per dozen to a packing house.

Small farms also typically run livestock and crops side by side, providing a synergistic environment that more closely mimicks nature, and which reduces the costs of outside purchases for both fertilizer and feed. This more natural way of farming is advantageous to the farmer, the crops and livestock, to the land, and to the community, and it has a powerful effect on reduction of harmful pathogens due to the increase in helpful microbes in the more natural environment.

Small farms do not develop superbugs – they typically use far less antibiotics, and their stock runs in lower concentrations, which reduces incidents of widespread contamination. Since superbugs and high concentrations of contaminants do not develop, cross contamination to vegetables and fruits is not a problem.

All of this means that with small farms (the kind the government wants to put out of business), not only are the initial risks lower, but the customer and producer are close together, and very little time passes between production and consumption. That alone is responsible for a 1000 fold reduction in foodborne pathogens. Bugs simply do not have time to develop. With industrial ag, crops and food often spend many weeks in the distribution chain, or on store shelves, often exposed to moisture, in conditions which allows a small contamination to become a massive one.

Many of the regulations which our government declares to be necessary are NOT supported by governments in other countries (putting the lie to their claim that “science” is the basis for the regulations). In fact, in France, for example, washing eggs is forbidden. They recognize that more harm than good comes from washing eggs, yet our government requires this dangerous procedure.

There are many other examples – pasteurization of milk, which kills all beneficial bacteria which would normally help in keeping harmful bacteria in check, while all sales of raw milk are becoming criminalized because the government has declared raw milk to be “dangerous” (more foodborne illness occurs yearly from contamination of pasteurized milk than does from raw milk, because once pasteurized milk becomes contaminated (and it always does, just a matter of time), there is nothing to slow down the growth of the harmful pathogens – which is why raw milk left on the counter gives you good tasting and healthy buttermilk, but pasteurized milk left on the counter gives you nasty vile stuff that will make you sick if it stays out for too long). Organic farming requirements which make true organic farming disqualified for the label are the brainchild of our government under the guise of “protecting” us. Another law involves requirements for “grading” eggs, which merely measure size, yolk age, and shell quality and which have NOTHING to do with food safety, yet which our government routinely labels as a safety issue – all it does is increase the price of your eggs, hinder farmers, and keep the egg graders employed in a useless trade. And many more illogical, stupid, and harmful regulations.

Government regulations and enforcement do not keep our food safe. In fact, they CAUSE foodborne illness and food related disease, and then use the resulting chaos as an excuse to burden the industry with more regulation, which invariably lets the offenders ride, while punishing the farms which were not the cause of the issue in the first place.

And lest we mistake this for capitalism run amok, it is not. This is NOT capitalism. If it were, the government would not be involved at all. True capitalism lets the buyer learn for themselves, instead of expecting the government to protect them. This is socialism creeping in – preferring one industry over another, handing out money taken from one source to benefit another. Redistribution of money to benefit favored classes of industry. That is not capitalism.

Hence, government regulation of our food is making the situation WORSE, not better.

We would be much better off with no regulation of the food industry at all, because what we do have is either ineffective, or counterproductive.

I ran across a statement in a study recently that discussed the ways in which farm kids were healthier than city kids. Lower infection rates, and lower allergy/sensitivity rates. I hope nobody takes offense at the labeling of “farm kids” and “city kids”. I offer no definitions, so you are free to fit in whichever category you like!

Well, there’s usually two big differences between farm and city kids.

1. They more often eat food produced at home. That is, food that is NOT sterilized to death, and coated in preservatives, detergents, and artificial colors and flavors, with the good stuff stripped out and a handful of enrichments thrown in.

2. They are usually exposed to WAY more natural germs, allergens, and things like saliva, manure, blood, raw milk, etc.

So how can it be, if they are AROUND more stuff, and that stuff is (according to the USDA), not as clean, how can they be healthier?

For one, the absence of even a portion of the chemicals that load your food is a health boon to anyone. That alone will strengthen your immune system and reduce your allergies. Commercial organic foods are still laden with a host of contaminants, but they are usually a fair bit better than non-organics, so this may be a way for you to test and see if this makes a difference for you.

But beyond that, it is that very EXPOSURE to germs that MAKES farm kids healthy.

Not all germs are bad. In fact, about half the germs out there are actually GOOD for you. Another 40% or so are neutral – they don’t hurt you or help you. The other 10% are the ones that give germs a bad rap.

The good news about those bad ones is, that most of the time, even THEY are harmless – because you are usually not exposed to a lot, and you normally have enough good bacteria to reduce the effect before your immune system even has to handle it, and what is left is easily dispatched.

So from that paragraph, maybe you start to understand that even bad germs really aren’t that much of a threat most of the time. And there are more factors than just your immune system at work. And one of those factors is….

Ta-da…

Germs!

That’s right. Good germs.

Normally, the world has a pretty good complement of good and bad germs. And the good germs do a lot to keep the bad germs in check. They are a great ally. This is why traditional fermented or aged foods are able to be safely consumed, even though they’ve not been refrigerated. Traditional fermented and aged foods include:

• Sauer Kraut
• Pickles (salt brined pickles, not the vinegar kind)
• Sourdough Bread
• Yogurt
• Buttermilk
• Cheeses

And all kinds of other ones that most people don’t know about anymore, but which used to be traditional foods in ethnic homes across the world.

If you keep conditions right, the good germs will grow, and the bad ones won’t. If you leave it in the wrong conditions, the bad ones will grow and things will get nasty. So certainly, there are rules about keeping those bad ones from taking over.

Recently I made cheese. I left fresh, unpasteurized goat milk out on the counter for about three days, until it was nicely curdled and separated, and smelled about like cottage cheese (at this point, it was safe to drink – it is just buttermilk – that is how buttermilk is traditionally made). Then I dumped it into a pot, heated it up to a certain point (which, incidentally, killed all the good germs in it). I added some lemon juice, stirred it until it curded up, and then strained it. The lemon juice went out in the whey, leaving me with cheese that tastes a lot like very expensive chevre.

When I recounted this on FaceBook, someone expressed surprise. “Won’t leaving the milk out make it get sour?” Yes, it does. But…. If you leave out raw milk, you get buttermilk because of the natural bacteria – those natural bacteria grow faster than the opportunistic bacteria floating around in the air. If you leave out pasteurized milk, you get nasty sour milk, because all it has are those opportunistic bacteria. Raw milk naturally contains a lot of GOOD bacteria, so even if it is left out, it is still very healthy because it just means you get more good bacteria in it. Beyond a certain point it will get nasty – when the good bacteria use up all the available food for themselves, the bad bacteria will move in and feed on the good bacteria and what is left.

Outside the body, germs do some pretty cool things, besides just making interesting patterns on things you leave too long in the fridge (please don’t eat those things, they are NOT the good kind of germs). But INSIDE the body, they do even cooler things.

Inside your body, there are all kinds of germs that help your body function better. Most of them live in your intestines, and aid in the process of digestion, but they also function there as the first line defense against foodborne illness. That’s important, because a lot of the things that hurt bacteria OUTSIDE the body are also things that hurt it INSIDE.

Preservatives, chlorine, detergents, pesticides, herbicides, and all those things that are designed to kill life outside your body can also kill it inside – first the intestinal bacteria, then the cells that line your intestinal walls.

If you have a healthy colony of bacteria in there, it serves to protect your body a little against occasional exposures to such contaminants. On regular exposure though, not only are the friendly bacteria killed off, your intestines sustain damage as well.

Those bacteria do a lot of things. They help keep your intestines healthy and your immune system healthy. Good bacteria is responsible for a portion of the digestive process – it helps to break down food into the nutrients that are absorbed by the intestines. If you become deficient in intestinal bacteria, you also become nutritionally deficient.

Good bacteria also help maintain a balance in the fungus in your body. You have various yeast strains (candida is common) in your body. They are always there. Too little bacteria means they get out of control, and you’ll get painful fungal infections on your hands, armpits, legs, etc. It can create a weepy, swollen red and painful rash, or it can cause dry cracking on the ends of fingers and toes. Fungal infections usually show an outward set of symptoms, and a few cartons of yogurt or a bottle of kefir can often clear them right up – eat the yogurt, it works just fine from the inside out.

So… what about those neutral bacteria, and even the bad ones?

Regular exposure to them, in small amounts, helps to strengthen the immune system. You are expose to salmonella, e coli, shigella, and other bacteria on a daily basis. Farm kids are exposed to even more of them. Most strains are not even harmful, but even when they are, it is in such low concentrations that it doesn’t make you sick. What it does do, is give your body practice in recognizing and destroying that kind of invader.

So why do people get sick with those illnesses? There are several reasons:

1. Usually it is from a fairly high exposure. Modern food handling means that if food is contaminated, a LOT of it is contaminated in a large facility, and then it will spend a significant amount of time in transit – time enough for it to incubate and grow.

2. Often, it is a superbug. More aggressive, and nastier than normal. Those bugs were created in mass farming and processing facilities where chlorine and other disinfectants are used on a daily basis (so pathogens become immune), and where the bugs come from animals that have been treated regularly with antibiotics so the disease is also antibiotic resistant.

3. If you are eating foods with preservatives and drinking chlorinated water on a regular basis, your own intestinal bacteria may be depleted, giving you no front line defense.

4. If your immune system has not been exposed to small amounts of normal germs on a regular basis, you won’t have much strength with which to fight a heavy exposure.

5. Antibiotics from either a prescription or passed to you through meats or dairy foods, can upset the bacterial balance in your intestines.

Now, I’m not at all suggesting that we never wash our hands. But I am suggesting that most of the time, water is all we need. Food should be washed in water, not detergents – those detergents are harmful to you in more ways than one. And homes should be kept clean, but do not need to be kept sterilized – that ends up backfiring on the entire household. The use of anti-bacterial soaps should be avoided except when you have a need to sterilize your hands, for instance, when you need to bandage up a child, or if you’ve just helped a goat give birth (sorry, I couldn’t resist…).

Certainly there are times when disinfectants are required. After handling things that are specifically high risk, absolutely. But for day to day living, most of the time we aren’t doing that. Peeling a potato is not a high risk behavior. Handling meat that has spent a few too many days in the fridge, is because it has become a pool of concentrated harmful bacteria. Use some judgment and clean up with water, unless you feel there is a reason to believe there is a high concentration of germs all in one place – like washing the dishes.

There’s no such thing as perfectly sterile anyway, and if you are bent on killing every germ in your path, you are going to kill more good ones than bad ones, and it will come back to bite you.

So get some good germs into your life. Not only will it help you, but it will make those unplanned encounters with the bad ones much less risky!

We started trying to get quail. Wyoming goes out of its way to make it particularly hard for someone to raise a few quail in their garage. Quail, you see, are gamebirds, and gamebirds are “owned” and managed by the state, even if YOU buy them from OUT of state, and they are regulated by the state. Even if they are essentially domesticated Quail that are non-native to the area, the state manages them.

So, quail take time. Lots of time. File for the permit, find a company that will comply with Wyoming’s certification requirements, wait for them to ship, hatch them (wait for that too), brood them, grow them, and finally they start laying. And then you can only have 100 of them. The eggs are so tiny that that is just about enough to keep a family in eggs (about 80 females, 20 males, for fertile eggs).

Quail would not meet our needs completely, for meat and eggs (they could, if we wanted to get a Game Farm License – $130 per year… maybe someday so we can sell quail eggs, but not now). So we were going to need something else. Keeping in mind our requirements:

1. Has to be able to be cage raised, in a small space.
2. Has to be productive for both eggs, and meat.
3. Has to produce small eggs (easier to digest than big ones).
4. Needs to be domesticated, not considered wild game (leaves out pheasant and some other options).

So we were left with Bantams. The do ok in cages, produce small eggs, and some breeds are good layers.

But it is very hard to find them this time of year. We can’t order chicks (several companies have them available), because they’ll die in the box before they get to the Wilds of Wyoming. So we have to order eggs, or find live animals near enough to go pick up. Both have proven difficult.

Getting chickens is easy. Getting a specific breed, is not so easy. Getting them when you want them, out of season, can be hard too.

I’m getting an education. But I’m also very persistent, so I’ll eventually get it done, in spite of the obstacles.

Because I’m now reacting to one of the ingredients in the B-12 supplements… so I need eggs that I can actually digest. It is causing enough problems to be  a daily reminder that we need chickens. Soon.