Eating local

We got a dozen eggs today and they couldn't have been more local. They were laid about 150 feet from Nikki's parents' house. There is another house here next door where Nikki's uncle's farmhand Eli lives. Avid readers of our blog have previously seen Eli in the video where we are dumping grain from the truck to the auger. He's a tough old farmhand but he's been incredibly nice to us all and incredibly patient with showing me some bits of farm life. He even taught me how to drive a stick - he just pointed at the clutch and said to hold that down and then pointed at the stick and said 1-2-3-4. And that was on his own truck. And he is an ex-Hutterite so he speaks with a funny sort of German pirate accent.

Anyway about the eggs -- Eli is raising about a dozen chickens (and one turkey) in the old hog shed across from the house. He gets about 10-11 eggs a day. Today we stopped by to give him our condolences on his dog that just got hit by a car and paralyzed. He invited us in and gave us a dozen of his eggs. Then he gave us fresh tomatoes, then fresh peaches, then fresh cucumbers. Then he gave us an entire frozen chicken. Apparently he gets a lot of free food for helping out the Hutterites. He knew we just got a new place and wanted to help get us started there. It was very kind of him.

And by the way, Georgie went nuts for the chickens. The whole time we were in the coop she was kicking her legs and waving her arms. I forgot the camera but it would have made a nice video.