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How can I say this? Worst. Upgrade. Ever. Verizon came out less than 24 hours after we got our power back and “upgraded” my phone junction box. Sadly, part of the upgrade included sloppy workmanship (loose wire on their side of the box that I cannot legally access) and reconfiguring my DSL setup without asking. We got phone and net back Thursday at about 6PM. Only 4 days after they knocked it out! Thanks, Verizon! The guy who fixed the problem was great and a big help. It’s a shame the first guy made him waste his time that way.

It’s been pretty primitive around here, what with no power and then no phone. To top it off, I rented a wood splitter yesterday and split about two cords of firewood. All sorts of primitive. A sort of manly kind of primitive that Cath steadfastly refuses to recognize, dammit! I’ll keep working on it. I mean, c’mon, I even tore down a chainsaw and fixed a severed fuel line! Short of punching out a horse or coding an entire Bloodbowl league management system from scratch, it doesn’t get any cooler than that.

That said, thinks get swanky in September, and not just because of my birthday. Our good friend Costaki Economopoulos (THAT just set off the spell checker!) will be in Chicago and South Bend. We’ll travel to both places to catch his stand up act. Combine road trippin’ comedy with the Allegan County Fair, Leon Redbone and the aforementioned livestock show and we’ll be livin’ high and wide for a few weeks.

Thorndale won Grand Champion Senior Yearling Bull and Thor won 2nd Place in his class at the Kalamazoo Scottish Festival and Highland Cattle Show. Interestingly, the class sizes were one and two, respectively. Thorndale got a good look over from the judge for the Reserve Champion (Overall Champion? I’m still learning all the terms), selected from all classes. The judge said nice things about both bulls, also good. I was more interested in learning how cattle shows worked than winning anything, but the kids LOVED getting giant ribbons for Showmanship in the kids class. They both had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed the “Awards Luncheon” at Arby’s and the various Pipe Bands. Enough tartan to make you worry, that’s for sure.

The rest of the weekend was picking up chicks at the post office Friday morning and then dealing with the cattle show and power outages from the giant storm. Power finally came back up Sunday night, and we gratefully ran the wash, took showers and did dishes. You see, in the country, if you lose electricity you lose the well pump. Cath played “Yuppie Pioneer” and carried water in from the hot tub to flush the toilet.

The chicks survived the varying temperature abuse and we saved $200 worth of groceries (with a $250 – $300 replacement cost), so were exceedingly glad we bought a generator last fall. Saturday night, I even managed to hook up the Mac and the DSL router. At some point, I’ll figure out how to power the whole house, or at least the well pump.

I also cut up a downed willow tree at the neighbor’s place down the street. I got most of it with my 20″ chainsaw, but I’ll need a larger bar (and hence, a larger saw, as mine is maxed out) to get the last six feet of the stump. Today at work, I got an offer to cut up 5 more downed trees at a coworkers’ place. I’m already up to my ears in unsplit firewood, so I might have to pass, but free wood is almost as good as free beer.

(For the squeamish – This might not be a good lunchtime read…) It is done. I killed, plucked, prepped and cooked our annoying rooster. The axing was annoyingly barbaric, but after doing the whole process, I’d rather do that than pluck them. Plucking was *really* annoying. I don’t think I soaked the bird in scalding water long enough or the water wasn’t hot enough. I ended up cutting the wings off rather than trying to pluck that many feathers one by one for zero return on meat.

Of course, the rooster got his revenge Sunday night. Two hours in the pot and it was still the toughest chicken I’ve ever eaten. The white meat wasn’t too bad, but the dark meat was…um….chewy. On the plus side, I hadn’t made chicken and dumplings from scratch before, so it was a good chance to try things out. Savannah was more excited to know that her evil archnemesis was boiling away in the pot than eating the dumplings though, so we’ll have lots of leftovers.

This being the first time we’ve also butchered one of our animals instead of outsourcing the task, I should wax philosophical about it. Cath pointed out that unlike most kids, ours aren’t afflicted with thinking that food comes from a grocery store. The underlying text was “Ok, farm guy, you’ve proved your point. Now, can we move on?” I think she was just peeved that the rooster was so tough. Personally, I was agog at how long it took to pluck the chicken. I can’t imagine having to do this every time I wanted some chicken fingers. Most people would go vegetarian rather than spend Saturday morning dealing with it for a Sunday dinner. I’m sorry if that’s not suitably philosophical. After a small attack of nerves right before swinging the axe, I kind of stopped thinking about it.

Of course, we have 8 broiler birds ready as well. I may farm them out for time constraints, but that seems like cheating. The 13 turkeys present a real issue, however. They all need to be ready for Thanksgiving and last year it cost me more than I’d like to get a turkey done for Thanksgiving – $10. Why? The weekend before Thanksgiving is the first weekend of hunting season. No one wants to deal with turkeys when they can be gutting deer for more money.

In any case, just remember that if your chicken is over 12 months old, it ain’t good eatin’. Nice broth though.