Wednesday 9 February 2011

Memories, part 1.

Went to our first BBKA (British BeeKeeper Association) Meeting the other evening.  It was a really interesting talk about Swarming,  and I was pleased that we were already familiar with a lot of it (thanks to our course at the BCA), but there was also new stuff which were not (quite correctly) part of our course.

I grabbed my old "chicken notes" notebook to take with me andd, of course, I made plenty of notes.

While we were waiting for the evening to get underway I was flicking through the notebook.  It went right back to when the chickens were just a glint in my eye.  I have lists and lists, of breeds I might be considering,  suppliers,   other stuff that needed to be bought and where sold it for the best price.

It went on to show how I narrowed down my breed (and supplier) choices, and the dilemmas I faced about how to get the birds I wanted when no one supplier supplied them all.

I could see the whole path from starting, to ending up with a Transylvanian Naked neck and a Buff Sussex from Wernlas, and a Bluebelle from Sharon Gould at Pinvin.     I had maps and directions and timings about how I would get from one to the other.   My B&B booking at Ludlow at the "Hen and Chickens" guest house (selected entirely on the basis of its name!)

Ah, nostalgia.

I turned to the back pages of the book, and it raised the biggest smile of all....

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