I went to the Chickie-Doo meeting last night. It was 'interesting'. I am not totally sure I will continue to keep going. There was two ladies there that I was really fascinated with. Lynne, one of the ladies, has a 5 acre working farm!! 3 types of goats...meat, fiber, and milk. Sells the fiber and makes goats milk soap to sell. She has a small shop on her farm. She said she sent the fibers out to NJ and had them made into blankets and sells the blankets in her shop. The shop is supposed to be in her laundry room. She sells whole roaster chickens (processed meat chickens) for $20 EACH!! Dude! I would love to get that price! She has meat rabbits, several different kinds of geese, chickens, horses, ect. ect! I want to go to her farm in the worst way! She made it very clear that her farm was a business and not a hobby...she pays taxes and everything! This is her job! She sounds like she has the type of set up that I dream about doing on 5 acres!
Chantell (pronounced Shawn-tell) was another lady I enjoyed! VERY knowledgable! She has a PhD in ecology/biology...something like that! Has done TONS of research on all of that. She has a hobby farm....a few turkeys, over 150 chickens, can't remember what all else.
The I am not sure I will go back part...a STRICT NO children allowed policy...not even the baby. With nursing it is just hard to leave her for several hours at a time. I HATE getting that agitated phone call that ALWAYS comes from my DH to get home NOW because he has had enough of her crying. While they talked a LOT about chickens it was clear that one of the ladies in charge wants it to be a Ladies Night Out. 5 or the 10 women brought a bottle of wine!! I get out enough...and it is a lot less stress for me to go out if I can take the baby with me. I thought they were going to talk about other things...according to the flyer...like SS, canning, harvesting, ect. they really didn't. I have BYC if I have chicken questions. I am not interested in having 20 different chickens like most of these ladies have. I have just my one breed (until my laying chickens hatch). Also the one lady in charge wants to charge $5 so they can put an add in the paper for more people to attend. I personally think 10 people is enough because you are expected to take turns hosting it in your own home! Plus with word of mouth the group will naturally grow. And for some of the ladies in the group money is no object and they want to have field trips...like overnighters and such...things I just will not be allowed participate in because of the strict no children policy. Most of the ladies have children that are grown and are just at different stages in life than I am. I never felt out of place last night, I really did have a great time and learned a lot! Perhaps as the baby gets older and I can leave her at home the meeting would be more enjoyable for me personally. I think I will try a couple more meetings and if it is clearly just a Ladies Night Out and they do not talk about other productive things....like SS, canning, ect...I will probably not continue to go.
