Weekend morning runs are the best. I can sleep in a little, run a little extra mileage, and let B. handle breakfast and the kids.
Today was amazing because something happened to me that has NEVER happened in the 2 years that I have lived here. I saw another runner!!!!
I almost could not believe my eyes. I have gotten so used to being completely alone that the sight of someone else up and running at dawn seemed kind of supernatural. I decided to catch up with her and try to chat. She was friendly, I ran with her for a bit and I learned that she lives only a few miles from me. She is training for Columbus and runs part of my route on her long runs. I was too polite to ask her too many questions, but I did show her my house and let her know the times that I am out and running. I am hoping to run into her again-I would love nothing more than to have a friendship with someone local that I can talk shop with and partner with on long runs.
I have been kind of down on myself lately with the running. I have been feeling so slow, and transitioning into evening running has been hard. I have been trying to accept that my goals are often very lofty and meeting them sometimes is not always a possibility within the time-frame I give myself. So this happening today was just the thing to give me a little boost and back into a positive running mindset.

Here Comes the Night

Summer is starting to wind down. The nights are getting a bit cooler, the school bus is passing by my house, my black-eyed susans are curling up and browning. Autumn is my favorite season of the year, except for one very notable thing. The shorter daytime hours mean that I have to transition into evening running. It is just too dark for me to leave the house before 6am without the fear of a coyote jumping on me or the boogeyman hiding behind the trees waiting to get me. It is an irrational fear of the dark I suppose, but one that hinders me.

I struggle with evening running. In order to make sure I get those runs in I have to plan every evening out in detail, and at least a week in advance. Forget about the nights I have to drive kids to ballet or tap or cub scouts, even a magician couldn't fit in a run on those nights. Count in B. working OT on a few nights, and then the dinners that must be ready BEFORE I head out the door, or I come home to a hungry, whiny, demanding family. It is stressful for me, and tends to make me anxious about an activity that usually relaxes me.

I could try to get over the morning darkness fear. Right now it is only dark when I start out, by the time I am halfway done running morning is dawning. I could probably squeeze out a couple more weeks before my runs would be in total darkness-something I would NOT consider doing at all! I am trying to reassure myself that I can do this-I still have two 5k's and a 10k left before my season is over, and I have goals that have not been met~ so I have to find a way to get those runs in and overcome the morning or evening obstacles that stand in my way.

Showing off the pullets

Our pullets are getting so pretty! They are at 16 weeks now, and they fit in with the big girls nicely. The boys are all gone, and the coop is pleasant. Show-off pictures:

This is Penny, our Golden Comet


Sugar, mixed breed of our White Rock rooster and our dark-colored Americauna (Easter Egger)


Fluffy, Americauna (Easter Egger)


One of our three Delawares. I love how she is stretching her wing here and we can see the gorgeous black dapples on her wing feathers

Looks like a good day to butcher

Got up early this morning, and no, it was not to run. Instead, B. and I butchered a couple of chickens before he left for work. We have been so busy around here, and this morning was the only time that we seemed to be able to fit it in. We are hustling because the chickens are nearing 16 weeks, and if we wait much longer the meat may be tougher than we would like.

Now that we have a couple of butchering jobs under our belt, the actual butchering is not so bad. I posted about our horrendous first experience last fall, but now it really isn't a big deal. The plucking though, and the dressing is so tedious and so time consuming. I find myself picking out little pin feathers and cursing to myself. This morning we did two birds, and I was on the second bird when I heard M. screaming from upstairs. We butchered at about 6:30, and it was probably around 7:15 or so. I was hoping that the kids would sleep a little later today so that I could get everything done and cleaned up before they woke, but that was not the case. I had to prematurely shove the birds into bags and stick them in the frige for a little while so that I could get the kids fed and happy. Afterwards I finished up quickly, and now we have two birds clean and resting in the frige.

We still have one lonely Barred Rock cockeral waiting for his turn, but we just could not fit him in this morning. So hopefully this weekend we can get to him. Ugh, butchering is so unpleasant. I dread it. It is nice to have our own meat that we have produced ourselves, but like I mentioned before, the work involved is so tedious and time consuming that it is almost not worth it. I say ALMOST though, because the alternatives involve either buying substandard chicken from the store, or paying a pretty penny for organic chicken from a local farmer. So we choose to butcher our own, endure the unpleasantness and the mess, and just get it over with.

We had some really interesting cockerels this year. We hatched them all ourselves, so they were the offspring of our White Rock rooster and various hens. The best ones, the most meaty ones were the pure White Rocks, the ones with the White Rock mother. The ones with the Barred Rock mother were pretty good sized (this is all relative because they are all scrawny little things), but they had a little more fat on them, and the skin was a more yellow color. We also had a cockeral whose mother was a Buff Orpington. He looked like a true mutt. He was white, with muddy gray and black spotting on his neck, wings and tail freathers. He also had some gold feathers here and there. He had the albino-looking legs, but his skin looked like that of a White Rock. When he was a chick he looked like one of our Delaware chicks, and I wrote a whole post about how confused I was about his looks. I didn't know at the time that he was the offspring of the Buff Orp! We also had a cockeral who was the offspring of our buff colored, bearded Americauna (Easter Egger) hen. He had every attribute of a white rock except for his small comb and his beard! I snapped a picture of him here right before we butchered him. He was the first one we butchered this summer (at 14 weeks), bucause he was the biggest.


I am already missing the diversity those cockerels brought to our flock. B. wanted to keep one of the roos, but I had to remind him how the other roos ended up, and how much more pleasant things are now in the coop. We won't need a roo to give us chicks next year, as I am planning on hatching Welsummers and I am going to order hatching eggs from a breeder. Let's hope Welsummer cockerels are tasty-we'll be doing this all over again next summer!

Here is a picture of three of the boys in the holding pen. We seperated them from the rest of the flock the night before we butcher them in order to keep them from eating. We prefer to butcher chickens with empty crops! From L to R, Barred Rock, White Rock and Buff Orpington cross, White Rock.

I am in a crappy place right now with my running.

I ran a 5k last weekend and I was very disappointed with my time. I tell myself that relaxing and enjoying the racing experience is more important than what the clock reads at the end of the race, but the truth is I get a great deal of satisfaction out of meeting my goals. I have wanted to break 23:00 all summer, and I have yet to do that. I feel like a slow, old mule, plodding along purposelessly. The funny thing is, before I ran that race I felt great. I was very confident, I felt strong, I was sure that I was going to meet my goal that day. I usually don't disappoint myself when I have strong positive feelings such as those, so it is puzzling to me that I ran so slow. I am not going to post my time because I just want to ignore it, but it was slower than any 5k I have run this year.

Also, my darn feet have been hurting me again. I am trying to manage it, but they pretty much hurt all day long now, the left one moreso than the right. I have been pretty pain-free for most of the summer, and I was thinking that maybe I finally had the conservative training model perfected, but no, here we go again with the massaging, the stretching, the ice and the easing up and resting. I am going to have my chiropractor do a scan of my feet and fit me for some orthotics, so hopefully that will help me a bit. It is time for me to do something, as I am so tired of having to deal with this constant distraction.

I am not going to end this post on a depressing note. Instead, I will write about something that happened during the previously mentioned race that made me gloriously happy! B. ran the race with me! He is not a runner, but he did used to run with me way back when we were dating. In fact, he proposed to me at a 5k race! This recent race was in our hometown and since there wasn't any real travel involved I asked him if he would like to run the race with me. Well, surprisingly he did want to, and he did well considering he only runs once in awhile. I was so proud of him, and it made me reminisce about the "good old days" and how even though our life together has changed in many ways, the things that brought us together then, still keep us together today.