the quail are coming

Somewhere out there in Georgia there lives a woman who probably works a full time job and is a bit quirky so on the side raises quail.  She sells the eggs on E Bay because her husband says she already has too many weird hobbies.   
Somewhere out there in Florida there lives a woman who probably works a full time job and is a bit quirky so on the side she wants to raise quail.  She buys them on E Bay even though her husband says she already has too many weird hobbies. 
In the wee hours of the morning a few days ago I was sitting in my office with my dog and a boy asleep at my feet while I wandered into a dangerous section of E Bay, the farming section.  Like a middle aged man with a porn addiction (sorry for the graphic nature, but I have a problem) I stared wide eyed at the screen.  Then I did the unthinkable and typed “quail hatching eggs” into the search fields.  It was the exact right combination of words to bring up, not eating eggs, not quail egg crafts, not pictures of quail, but the actual listings for fertile eggs that one could actually place in an incubator and hatch out their very own amazing little quailies.
Math is not my strong point so I spend a great deal of time figuring out just how many eggs I wanted.  I would like to end up with 1 male and 6 females.  So if roughly half of my eggs turned out to be male and half female I would need approximately 12 eggs right?  I figure some might not hatch so made an attempt to read the reviews from previous egg buyers to feel out the probability of my hatch rate and got overwhelmed, so just assumed maybe four wouldn’t hatch.  Then I just figured that since this is my first time around and I’ve never actually been the captain of an incubator there is a decent chance that user error would maybe cause some to hatch but die shortly thereafter or maybe be still born.  Can that even happen in quails?  I do not know.  You may be losing faith in my ability to come up with an accurate set of statistics or actually raise quail altogether but rest assured that 24 is the magic number of eggs that a family my size should order.  Statistically I would have had a better chance of getting the number of eggs correct if I would have just drawn a number out of a hat instead of putting an hour of half witted predictions into some made up equation where half my input was not logical and several mathematical errors were made.  But 24 it is.   
Next I sifted through buyers until I found a handful willing to sell in quantities of 24.  I located a seller in Georgia, read the listing and then…  Clicked the Add to Cart button.  I’m sure many of you have added quail to your shopping cart.  This sounded perfectly reasonable to me and the sleeping boy and the sleeping dog did nothing to stop me so I went ahead and paid for my purchase. 
I have been wanting quail forever.  In the way that a mother longs for a baby, I have had their little coop set up for months and walk by it everyday staring at the empty hutch imagining little quailies hopping around.  I’ve always had an excuse for not being ready.  An upcoming vacation which would require a quail sitter, a job that required me to travel for weeks at a time leaving my less than quail enthusiast husband home to care for my babies etc.…  I was never ready and then the other night I pulled the trigger. 
It’s done, the quail are on their way.  We can’t undo this.  It’s happening.  I am really gonna be a quail momma (assuming nothing tragic happens).  I also have to figure out how to operate my incubator, build a brooder and figure out how to possible dispatch (that means kill to any newbie farmers like me) all the extra males.  Oh yeah and figure out how to clean them, cook them and stop crying long enough to eat them.  I had a long talk with my mom about all the things that could potentially go wrong.  She brought up some valid points like 1 year olds that might squeeze fragile quail and a dog that may eat them.  All things I will consider however, I prefer to live in my little farming fantasy world and am predicting that this adventure is gonna be fantastic.  I can hardly wait.

a new season

I often find myself in the middle the novel that is my strange little life turning the page and starting a new chapter.  Like any worthy novel, I’m usually so excited to get started that one chapter just melds into the next with out missing a beat.  This new chapter is full of change. 
I am not longer in the go live arena traipsing across country assisting hospitals implementing new software.  I feel incredibly blessed with an opportunity that has come my way.  Well, not exactly that easily, but regardless I won the prize.  I am still supporting surgeons, anesthesiologists, doctors and nurses with EPIC with one tiny, incredibly important, difference.  I support them over the phone and by remoting into their computers.  This difference means very little to all the struggling EPIC babies, but it means the world to my boys and my deserving husband.  I am able to do all my work from home.  I play with the boys all day and then slink off to my office (usually with one or two of them in tow) and log in.  I take calls from 5 pm to 1 am.  I’m three weeks in and already feel like I’m on top of the world.  I love the challenge of a seething physician or a crashing patient with an equally crashing computer. 
Huck isn’t too much of a baby anymore.  He’s in size three diapers, eating everything his brothers eat and doing his best to keep up with the pack.  He turned one yesterday.
We are finally settled in the new house and have taken some time and money to make it ours.  Scott has a honey do list a mile long and whips through it at an amazing speed.  I think he’s at Lowes every week.  We’ve painted the outside, replaced the front door, sodded the front lawn, put in a new mailbox, remodeled the kitchen, painted most of the rooms and a few weeks ago he built me an office.  It turned out incredible.  If I had all the money in the world it would be completely decorated, but we’re not quite in that position. 
The boys are getting ready to head off to school in a few weeks.  Gavin will be entering middle school this year which was a real turning point for me.  I loved the elementary school the boys all attended, but the middle school we were assigned to I was far less comfortable with.  We explored the always nagging thought of homeschool, which for the first time ever would be a real possibility with my new job and we toured private schools.  We fell in love with a small private Catholic school with a ridiculously large tuition.  Scott wanted to send them all there, the budget however, did not.  After lots of thought and prayer, I turned this matter over to GOD and low and behold, our boys will be attending Catholic school.  Finn, Tommy and Gavin will all be together in an amazing school with fantastic classmates.  We are pleased and blessed that we belong to a parish that appreciates moms who teach religion (and that make incredible dreams come true for said moms).
I have been cleaning and organizing and cooking all day long.  Being home has been amazing.  I have charts for everything.  Meal planning, zone cleaning, chore charts and calendars make my stay home days most predictable. 
We have been working really hard to adopt a more Paleo approach to food and cooking.  It’s been a super exciting journey, only three weeks in to wean the boys off sugar and onto some more beneficial foods.  The side effects are most welcome as well. 
I look forward to what this chapter holds.  I have a few plans that I am looking to execute including the quail, some potential small scale fish farming, the explosion of a planned September planting and maybe a few other surprises.