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It’s come to that. My life is an Abbott and Costello routine and it’s not even “Who’s on First?”

It looks like my hatch rate from the first incubator run will be zero. Unless I get a hatching today, which is about as likely as me being named the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby. I haven’t even seen her naked in a magazine, which, I understand, is possible. Thus, no hatching eggs. I may have left them out in the cold too long. Doomed from the start, I’m afraid.

Also, Sean the Bull figured out that if he leaned against the front gate hard enough it would pop the latch and he (and his posse) could exit the pasture and graze the grass in the front yard and along the road. Of course, this happened while I was at work. Luckily, Fred White of Fieldstone Farm was driving by and rounded up the Highland diaspora and tied the gate shut with a halter. (Note for city folk. A halter isn’t women’s top. Its the thing you put on a horse or cattle head to lead them around with.)

AND, I ran out of wood again. Yes. Again. Methinks we need to work on either supply or efficiency on this thing.

AND, its still too cold to order poultry, plant trees or a garden.

It all adds up to one thing: you can change your life in a moment, but changing everything else takes a lot longer than you think. They say that when you start exercising, it takes about 6 weeks before you’ll start seeing changes in weight and ability. It takes 3-5 years for a fruit tree to start bearing fruit. It takes 7-14 years for a walnut tree to produce. It takes 30 years to grow hardwood to firewood size. This kind of planning is not my strong suit. I mean, I’m not even sure how our land will look in 30 days. Especially since I’m going to burn some brush in a weekend or two. That might change all sorts of things. Like my home insurance policy.

The pace of change often seems glacial. Dauntingly so. What’s the hurry to plant a tree that’s going to take 30 years to do anything? Even 5 years sounds like forever. My second grader may be entering high school before I get a really good apple harvest. Sheesh. What’s the point? Well, how about I’ll never have apples if I don’t plant the tree now. And one of the reasons I moved out here was to have apples, among other things.

Of course, the devil is in the details. I am slowly turning as fast as I can, but its the step by step part that really makes it a grind. To plant trees, I need a place. To make a place, I need to cut down other trees. To cut down other trees, I need a cherry picker (they’re tall trees). To fell the trees, I need another place so they don’t hit the power line. To bury the power line I need a ditch witch. All these steps are good, long, weekend plus projects. By June it might be to hot to plant the trees. Now, I’m in a massive hurry to plant trees that won’t bear fruit for 5 years. The whole thing has been causing a bit of analysis paralysis around here. We’re about to break out of that, but dang if it’s not a total logjam.

In the mean time, I try to console myself that if you keep plugging away at it, you can do anything. Small steps, one after the other make big gains over time. Today at lunch I bought a couple of stainless steel clasps to chain the gate shut, for instance. Tonight, I’ll secure the gate and throw out the unhatching eggs. Tomorrow, I’ll stain some wood for the back room and the day after that I’ll plant sugar maple seedlings and start a new batch of eggs. Step by step, I’m turning.

I just got done jogging for the first time since oh…before Christmas. It might as well have been Christmas of 1998. I’m beat. How quickly we lose our physical edge. I was pounding out 3 miles in 21:30 this time last year. Now? I won’t even share it with you. Let’s just say that it involves the same digits and starts with three. Ugh. The amazing thing is that I feel really beat up, but not dead. Two years ago you would have had to scrape me up off the pavement with a forklift and then call the Life Flight. Thus, while you can quickly lose your edge, you can also change if you want to. Moral: Put down that second doughnut, go jogging and learn to raise chickens. Well, maybe not the chickens thing, but hey, I can try. In the tech field they used to have a guy who’s job it was to tell everyone how great his company’s new product was. This was the “Technology Evangelist”. I guess I’m the Chantecler Evangelist…or something.

For those of you playing along at home, I’ve postponed the fruit tree order for a few weeks. The weather has been a bit unpredictable lately and I’ll risk the nursery being out of stock in order to have time to do this right. I’m booked this weekend trying to do stuff in our new family room AND my brother is in town from Virginia AND the chicks are set to start hatching Sunday or Monday AND it might be time to bottle our first batch from the Mr. Beer (or as Cath calls it, “Uncle Beer” She is demented, of course). The weekend after that is filled with birthdays and anniversaries and the week following with trade shows. So…Cinco de Mayo or the week following. Of course, by then, I’ll have a million other tasks, but if life were perfect, Cath would be married to Cary Grant and live in Manhattan. Me? Probably not to Cary Grant, but I digress.

Life is not perfect, however, so she is stuck here on the Blue Line Farm with ME ME ME!!!! BWA HAHAHAHAHAHA. She’s looking over my shoulder right now, so I better make sure it sounds funny, eh?

In any case, my Mom just got back from Miami via her sister’s in New Orleans. Her sis drove back from Miami to check out the Gulf Coast. She lost a lot in Katrina, but they’ve done better than most. It reminded me that there are no guarantees in life. Even for Justin Wilson. There’s no guarantee that your home value will always go up, that your 401K will have enough in it for you to retire well, or even that an act of nature won’t flatten the entire Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans that happens to be where your home is located. There’s also no guarantee that you won’t blow out your knee stepping in a pothole on an old country road or that some trailer dweller’s dog won’t try to chew your leg off as you run by, but if it happens, I won’t blame cruel fate. I’ll kick the dog in the balls and carry mace next time. That won’t help me if I just wrenched my knee in a pothole, but you can’t very well mace a pothole.

But I digress. Big happenings next Sunday or Monday. That’s when we see if I set our new incubator up right and our first batch of chicks should, in theory, if all goes well, barring disaster, assuming all the t’s are dotted and the i’s crossed, in fact, hatch. We should get some mixed Java/Chantecler and full Chantecler chicks. I expect about a 30% survival rate and we should get a couple chicks a day for several days. I’d hope for at least a 50% hatch rate, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to be there for the initial hatchings.

Ok. Enough for today. I have to go find the Ben Gay.

It was nearly 80 degrees yesterday. Today its about 33 with plenty of wind to make it feel even colder. I just heard that it’s going to be colder on Easter (38) than it was on Christmas (63). Yeesh. Too warm for Christmas and too cold for Easter. Must be the Lake Effect. Ah well. Now that the TV/family/play room is nearly done I can really tell where the drafts are. Time to get some weatherstripping!

I’m finally getting ready to order some fruit trees. The problem is that I have no idea when they will show up and/or how big the holes will need to be. This is no small question for 6-8 trees. I need to know if I should rent a mini-excavator. Say what you will about fossil fuels or global warming: a backhoe or mini excavator can do a massive amount of labor! This is probably why CDR charges what they do to rent one – another reason to find out *exactly* when the trees will show up.

Actually, that isn’t the only problem. I have no idea how to plant, prune, pollinate, or otherwise care for fruit trees. Join me on my big adventure as I learn what the hell I’m doing. At least I won’t accidentally get gored by a rogue Bing Cherry tree. I mean, I don’t think it’s possible. I should read more. I’d hate to be happily pruning the apple trees while listening to Deerhoof on my iPod and suddenly feel the hot (but sweet!) breath of the Bing Cherry on the back of my neck.

“Run! Get the kids out of the yard! Rogue tree! Call Asplundh!”

That won’t happen with potatoes. I bought some seed potatoes at Tractor Supply Company (motto: Your Land. Our credit. Or something.). They’ll probably get disaffected and join the vegetable underground, but a good whack from a shovel – or an electric mixer – and they’ll see who’s boss.

Cath is out of town, so I’m getting a little loopy. She gets back soon, and in the meantime I have to figure out how to dye brown eggs. And read up on herding trees.