Bats, Trailers, and Boxes ... Oh My

Delving Deeper into the Valley

Out in the Valley ... we have alot of mosquitoes. Some are small and some are almost the size of bats or it would seem like it when they eat you alive at night in the summer. A little known fact it that "bats can consume up to 1200 mosquitoes in an hour"... reading this fact we decided to encourage our little black bat (that Akita called to the barn) to stick around. Onto craigslist again ... we found a guy in Dewdney who built bat boxes! We drove out there by Lougheed Highway because we were on our way to Agassiz to look at nesting boxes for chickens. A tough looking tattooed guy came out to meet us when we got there ... he was great ... taught us all about; how to paint and where to hang our bat boxes and even how high to hang them. Never judge a book by its cover. He told us to email him anytime if we forgot what he had told us. On to Lougheed Highway we continued our journey towards Agassiz, it is a loong way when you take the back Highway. We decided to stop into a Deli on the main strip for lunch and then we discovered ... STROOPIES. For all those non-Danish readers and eaters ... Stroopies are syrup-soaked waffle cookies. OMG they are Delicious ... we bought 2 cases of packages. I guess we should say who is on this adventure ... Mama, D-Y and Akita. It's D-Y's fault that everyone who tries Stroopies is instantly addicted ... apparently he had something like these "cookies" in Europe. After lunch we headed off to meet up with the coolest chicken lady (the woman selling the nesting boxes). She gave Akita and Mama a quick tour of her little hobby farm. She showed us her chick nurseries, her heritage chickens and her very fat goats. She told us a couple of funny stories about her goats magically escaping the fences  ... how one minute they were in their yard and the next thing she knew they were eating her rosebuds behind her in the next section of the yard. That's when Mama decided it was time to start getting goats. This story however is about nesting boxes and chickens ... (goats come later). She finally showed us the nesting boxes and like usual Mama had no spacial skills and thought that this huge wooden box would fit into the back of our SUV. D-Y and Akita knew that it wouldn't fit but dutifully carried it out to the truck. When Mama and the chicken lady got the huge box all the way across the yard to the car, they decided that it wouldn't fit. We put it off to the side and the lady offered to deliver the box with her pickup truck the next day. D-Y then offered the lady a Stroopie (another victim down). Oh that generous mischievous boy! We left Agassiz by the no. 1 Highway this time. We drove about a third of the way home when we got a phone call about a utility trailer ... if we came tonight to get it ... we would get it cheap. We did a U-turn on the Freeway ... no just kidding ... we took the next exit, turned around and headed back towards Chiliwack. True to form .... nothing goes smooth when it comes to The Lims. We arrive at the people's house and the ball on our hitch is the wrong size. We head off to the nearest auto part store to get a smaller hitch ball. (The truck had been too small for the chicken boxes and now its ball(s) were too big ... we will let you come up with your own jokes about "size mattering").  We arrived at the store just before it closed ... whew ... another close call. Back to the couple's house and the guy attached the new hitch-ball. The trailer now cost us almost what we had saved by coming early to pick it up. We hitched it up and off down the Freeway we go. We had to take it slow, annoying a few drivers along the way. This was not the usual utility trailer ... this was an old renovated tent trailer. Nothing normal for The Lims. We toyed with the idea of going back to pick up the nesting boxes but since we had already arranged delivery, we decided not to. Our 2 hour nesting box pick up had now taken 6 hours and we arrived home with 2 bat boxes, a utility trailer and no nesting boxes. Another day on the farm well spent ... Teehee

Thanks for reading and welcome to our barns,
The Lims