{"id":1611,"date":"2013-09-29T02:48:09","date_gmt":"2013-09-29T02:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/?p=1611"},"modified":"2013-09-29T11:39:38","modified_gmt":"2013-09-29T11:39:38","slug":"chickens-and-chatting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/?p=1611","title":{"rendered":"Chickens and Chatting"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got to spend some time with one of my best friends from school this week.\u00a0 \u00a0 We went to school together for twelve years from first grade until we graduated.\u00a0 While I was attending college and marrying David, she was attending beauty school and getting married to a farmer.\u00a0 We have kept in touch all these years even if It is just once a year.\u00a0 When we get together it is as if we hadn’t been away from each other for months and months.\u00a0 I love her to pieces.\u00a0 She knows things about me and I know things about her and we aren’t telling!<\/p>\n

My\u00a0friend’s husband raises chickens for the eggs.\u00a0 Not just a few, mind you, but thousands.\u00a0 Ninety-seven thousand to be exact.\u00a0 I have always wanted to go up and see their chicken operation and I got to\u00a0do it this trip.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When we first went in the building, it was cold and on a conveyor belt were hundreds of eggs.\u00a0 There were stacks and stacks of eggs ready for shipment.\u00a0 We then went into where the chickens lived.\u00a0 I was overwhelmed.\u00a0 To see that many chickens and eggs continuously\u00a0coming down a\u00a0conveyor belt was amazing.\u00a0 They were beautiful white chickens with bright red combs.\u00a0 And the eggs.\u00a0 They were enormous.\u00a0\u00a0 They made the jumbo eggs in the grocery stores look like small eggs.\u00a0 The building was so long that you could not see the end. My friend told me if someone was standing at the other end\u00a0 you would not be able to see them.<\/p>\n

Once the eggs are packed and shipped, they go to another company where the eggs are boiled and chopped up\u00a0and packaged for restaurants so if you get a salad with chopped eggs on it, you very well may be eating my friend’s chickens’ eggs.\u00a0 It was so interesting and I am glad I got to see it all.<\/p>\n

We\u00a0didn’t just look at chickens, though.\u00a0 We went to quilt shops and antique stores and talked and talked and ate dinner together before David and I had to get to our motel.\u00a0 It was so much fun.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN6820\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is my best friend forever and no, she is not an antique.\u00a0 This girl can do more work than any ten women.\u00a0 She is always busy.\u00a0 We are bound by something that cannot be broken.<\/p>\n

The next day David brought me breakfast in bed from the motel’s breakfast room.\u00a0 Cinnamon rolls, blueberry muffins, yogurt, a banana and\u00a0coffee.\u00a0 It all tasted so good. I had slept so well that I didn’t get up in time to go down for breakfast.<\/p>\n

We drove to Geneva where the Limberlost cabin is.\u00a0 If you have heard of Gene Stratton Porter you know what I am talking about.\u00a0 She was a famous Indiana author who wrote “Girl of the Limberlost,”\u00a0 “Freckles” and many others.\u00a0 She studied moths and butterflies and wildlife in the swamps that surrounded her house in the early 1900’s.\u00a0 She was saddened to see the swamps being drained for farmland and houses and later in her life she moved away because she couldn’t stand it anymore.\u00a0 She lived in California, built a mansion there and became the first woman to produce movies.\u00a0 She was killed in a car accident when her limo was struck.<\/p>\n

We took a tour through the house and it was wonderful.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN6833\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was a frame house with whole logs nailed to the side to look like a log cabin.\u00a0 It had a broad, airy front porch that made me want to pull up a chair and sit for a while.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN6827\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I could live in this house.\u00a0 I didn’t have my camera to take pictures inside, so you will have to go here sometime and see just how beautiful it is.\u00a0 The fireplaces all had gas logs.\u00a0 Something most houses in that time would never have.\u00a0 It cost five dollars a month to use all the natural gas you wanted.\u00a0 Wow, I wish it were still that cheap.\u00a0 The house cost five thousand dollars to build.\u00a0 In those days that was still a lot of money.<\/p>\n

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This is the guest bedroom’s own private porch.\u00a0 How neat is that?<\/p>\n

\"DSCN6829\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A beautiful bay window with windows that opened at the top and the bottom.\u00a0 Inside the house Mrs. Porter could close off this area and she would allow any animal or bird to come in this area and could watch them through the glass doors inside the house.\u00a0 She loved watching the animals and birds.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN6830\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mrs. Porter hated seeing the trees being cut down in the swamp and when they cut down this big one, she had it brought to her house and used it as a smoke house for meats.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN6835\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This little kitten was wandering around the grounds.\u00a0 He or she was a little skittish and wouldn’t allow me to pet it.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN6831\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the hired hand’s room.\u00a0 Real comfy looking.\u00a0 Our tour guide said his pictures look like Yosemite Sam and that he was just as cranky.\u00a0 Not our guide, the hired hand.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN6825\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My mother always wanted to come here all her life and never got to see it.\u00a0 When the tour guide asked us why we were there I told him I was seeing this for my mother.\u00a0 She read a lot of Gene Stratton Porter’s books and was always telling me how wonderful they were.\u00a0 I guess I am going to have to read some soon.\u00a0 Mrs. Porter was very popular when my mother was a girl.<\/p>\n

We drove country roads.\u00a0\u00a0 We arrived in Berne where I found another quilt shop and saw this clock tower.<\/p>\n

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\"DSCN6840\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It plays music at three o’clock every afternoon, but we left at two-thirty and missed it.<\/p>\n

Then we returned to Geneva to find the marshes.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN6841\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They are returning the marshland to areas around\u00a0Geneva and this is one of them.\u00a0 I walked this path and enjoyed seeing a large hawk fly before me, hear the crickets chirping and hear the swishing of the tall grasses in the breeze.\u00a0 It was so peaceful the farther I went back into the marsh I felt like I was the only person in the world.\u00a0 It was a mile round trip and I walked it twice, then walked another path across the road.\u00a0 I would have stayed longer, but David and\u00a0I had to get home.\u00a0 We drove back roads as much as we could through small towns.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN6817\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Saw this sign.\u00a0\u00a0 Free speech\"DSCN6824\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Where else but in the country would you see a tractor pulled up to a gas pump?\u00a0 This was farm country and tractors ruled.<\/p>\n

We drove past soybean fields being harvested as dust clouds rose from the combines.\u00a0 We passed acres and acres of corn growing brown and brittle in the Autumn sun. The sky was blue, the breeze was pleasant.\u00a0 I love our state.<\/p>\n

We had a wonderful time, but we were glad to get home and see that the automatic door on the chicken coop worked and the girls were all fine.\u00a0 The dogs were hungry and telling us it was time to eat.\u00a0 Nice to come home to pets.<\/p>\n

Here’s to BBF, country roads and wonderful Hoosier authors.\u00a0 Bye<\/p>\n

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I got to spend some time with one of my best friends from school this week.\u00a0 \u00a0 We went to school together for twelve years from first grade until we graduated.\u00a0 While I was attending college and marrying David, she was attending beauty school and getting married to a farmer.\u00a0 We have kept in touch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,11,16,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-memories","category-fun-times","category-health-and-fitness","category-travels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1611"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1618,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611\/revisions\/1618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}