"Do you smell anything?" I asked my husband expectantly as we entered the door after church. There is nothing better than coming home on Sunday and being greeted by the delicious aroma of dinner in the oven. This morning I had put in a chicken to roast, with carrots, onion and potatoes, but without much sense of smell, I could only rely on him for a mouth-watering description.
"No," he said, "not yet." My heart sank as we headed toward the kitchen. The house was cold, and so was the oven door! Looking at the oven dial, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was set on the lowest temperature! The food wasn't even lukewarm! How could that have happened? I had double-checked it, but misread the direction of the indicator! How disappointing!
"Well," I said resignedly, "let's just make a sandwich and eat this later." He looked doubtful, but I reminded him that we could go out to the farm and feed the chickens, and hopefully our feast would be done when we got back. I ate rather glumly, but I had to admit the grilled ham and cheese tasted good. I hoped I would be hungry later.
My spirits about our poultry project had been a little depressed, too. A couple of weeks ago, we had taken a drive to Stillwater to eat lunch and visit a couple of stores. Since I found some items for myself, I couldn't protest when, on the way out, Howard said with satisfaction, "Now we are going to Atwoods and see if they have any guineas!" We saw lots of baby chicks at the farm supply store, but he wanted guineas. Finally he asked the attendant and she directed us to the right cages.
Howard selected two brown "keets," as the babies are called, and then he expansively pointed to a white one and said, "I'll take that one, too!" They were about six weeks old, but the saleslady said they still had to be on a wild bird food. We had spent about $20 before we left. Howard kept them in the basement for several nights, then in a warm spell, he put them in cages in the backyard.
Everything went fine, until one evening sitting on the front porch I tried to read the words on a white truck that was slowing in front of our house. "Does that say 'A-nim-al Control?' I murmured. When it stopped and a man began walking toward the house, Howard went to meet him with a friendly greeting. They talked awhile, and when my husband came back, he said there had been a complaint that day about a rooster crowing in our backyard! We had moved our chickens to the farm weeks ago! Nothing came of it, and although he told my "farmer" it was okay to keep the guineas back there, we moved them to the farm the next day.
After a few days, my husband and son decided the flock, including the guineas, could be "free range," and let them out of the chicken pen. The brown ones were missing the next day. I hated seeing the disappointment on Howard's face. We dutifully penned the white one we'd found cowering behind a bale of straw, but a few days later it went missing. Charting it up to a hawk or something, we tried to put the fiasco out of our minds.
Driving up to the farm, we saw Greg working on the chicken house, adding new nesting boxes. "Your white guinea is here!" he announced. There it was, pecking among the chickens! Thank you, Lord! (It probably helped that Howard had caged the abusive rooster!)
Our dinner tasted great when we got home a couple of hours later, followed that evening by a wonderful church singspiration and fellowship. What a great day the Lord had made!
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