Overachievers

Things have been very quiet, indeed, lately. All the chickens we bought in the spring have either been assimilated into our flock or into our freezer. Since we got the new layers in early April, we expected them to start doing their thing in early October, but obviously, one of our Myras (the name given to all the new araucana hens) has been inspired by her proximity to the older girls and has decided to give this whole egg thing a go.

Her first attempt can be seen here. It's about the size of the first Lucy egg we got. The Baby Goddess was wondering whether it would have a minuscule little yolk inside it, or no yolk at all (we've been told to expect that). I'm curious too, but not curious enough to open it just yet.


You can see it here next to both a regular brown hen's egg (it would be called "large" if you bought it in the store) and the other araucana's egg. Sarah (the white araucana) lays creamy, light green eggs. This egg perhaps an inch in diameter and is a much darker, almost sage color (seriously, I'm not at all sure how to capture this with my camera), and its shell is a little more pebbly. I'm anxious to see whether the other Myras are also overachievers, or whether it's just this one. I'm also curious to see if she continues to lay regularly, as everyone seems to like the green eggs best.

And speaking of overachievers, while I was at the post office the other morning I saw a giant caramel-colored bug with white stripes. The bug itself was a giant beetle, about an inch long. It was just lying there on the walk. I had to call the Pirate out of the car to come and look at it. He duly unfolded himself from the car, pronounced it interesting, and got back in. Isn't he indulgent?

The next night, the cat was out on the porch with something she had caught. I thought it was a mouse, because it was about the right size. She was holding it in her paws and worrying it with her nose and when I chased her away, it turned out to be the same beetle I had seen at the post office. Okay, maybe it's not exactly the same beetle. Maybe it's just his cousin or something, but it looks suspiciously similar.


I'm thinking seriously of submitting pictures to that website that identifies your bugs for you so that we can figure out what it is. It's definitely cool looking. And it wasn't dead when I finally got the cat to leave it alone. She had dislodged one of its legs, which poked ridiculously up above its back, looking sort of like a gear or lever on the poor thing's back to make it move. It still wasn't dead the next day when I was pegging up laundry on the line, which meant that I ended up paying more attention to where I stepped than to where I was putting the pegs. Ouch!

I finally decided that enough was too much and put the natural adventurousness of the Baby Goddess to work. I exhorted HER to pick up the giant beetle, which she did after some initial squealing and a few false starts. I then picked her up and dangled her, Michael Jackson-like, from the railing of the porch while she flung the bug into the chicken yard. He didn't last a second.

Amazing Data

Aoibheall and I are perennially trying to get the house organized. Thermodynamics is against us, but we still put up shelves and file papers away. One thing that's been on our minds recently is our freezers. We have two - one in the kitchen, next to the fridge, and a deep freeze downstairs in the basement. The deep freeze is currently full of frozen chickens and some other things which we won't know about or get to until after the chickens are out of the way. (Subject of another post: how many freezers do we really need? Some say three, others five...)

I looked around and it seems that Knowing What Is in the Freezer is a problem that lots of people have, and they all solve it the same way: they stick a piece of paper on the freezer door along with a pencil on a string and they log stuff in and out. Now, low tech is good. Low tech tends to work during a blackout, and that's increasingly comforting. However, it's inconvenient. I am almost never standing in the basement when I'm wondering what's in the freezer (and whether we need to buy a whatever-it-may-be on this trip to the store). And I am never standing next to both freezers while I am thinking about the week's menu.

What I want is to have some kind of centralized inventory system. Maybe we print barcodes on Avery(tm) labels and stick 'em on the freezer bags as we put things in. "2 quarts of blackberries - ID 245612154334" Then when we pull things out of the freezer we scan 'em and say, "Removed!"

This system ought to be able to attach expiration dates to things. "Hmm...look here, do you really want to use figs that have been in the deep freeze for two years?"

The best would be if the inventory were on some kind of web server so that from any of our computers we could see it. It would make assembling the grocery list much easier. Heck, get a few scanners and we could extend the system to track the pantry and the fridge and the spice cupboard and the ingredients cupboard and...

So with this on my mind, I read yesterday about an application for Mac OS X called Delicious Library. I downloaded the demo just to try it out. It doesn't do the kind of inventory I'd been thinking about, but the technology seemed cool. Instead of needing a barcode scanner, it can use the little camera built in to my MacBook (or any external webcam) to scan barcodes. It integrates with Amazon.com to look up movies, albums, and books. It will even offer to sell stuff for you. Within five minutes of playing with it, I was sold. Bought the software and went to work on the CD shelves.

Aoibheall and I are looking forward to being able to say to the girls, "Oh, you're working on a report on whatever-it-is? We have three books about that, look on the second shelf in the living room..."

Delicious Library. Dang, that's good software. Now if only you could publish the inventory as a web page...