After letting it sit quietly for two days to kill off any potential coronaviruses that clung to our mail, we finally opened the bag of mail we picked up this weekend. I was pleased to get a catalog from Murray McMurray hatcheries, which we consider to be a premier source of chicks and other poultry. Looking at their catalog is like looking at a seed catalog: you can check out all the varieties and plan your future.
I’m thinking of buying a dozen or so layers and seeing how they do as a test. Then later, we can purchase some larger meat birds and raise them up for eight weeks and fill the freezer. It’s definitely a plan, I’m just not sure it’s one we’ll execute this year. We’ve got quite a few balls in the air and I’m not sure if we want to add another one to the mix, but my wife is in favor of chickens, so that means its probably going to happen.
I also received my favorite firearms magazine and the latest edition of Backwoods Home Magazine, which I have been reading since the year 2000. If you have any desire to homestead or be more self sufficient, Backwoods Home is chock full of useful information and a must read. They also have a good web site and sell a variety of useful books.
I’m happy to have more reading material as I am beginning to run out of library books, too. In fact, I had to fire up the Kindle just the other day and started reading a few free books.
Food Shortages
I’ve talked about issues related to food shortages and issues with grocery stores on numerous occasions, including yesterday. Today I came across a recent article I would encourage you to read from the End of the American Dream blog that talks about the breakdown in the food distribution system. What is especially interesting is the section about warehouses and missed trucks. Here a quote from that article attributed to someone in the grocery business in Idaho:
“We had a hard time filling our store back up even one time. We missed three scheduled trucks that week alone. Then orders finally came they were first 50% of the order and have dropped to 20%. In normal circumstances we receive 98% of our orders and no canceled trucks. Now three weeks later, the warehouses in the Western United States have all been taxed.“
His information on people planting gardens and buying seeds at record rates is also of interest. We’ve also seen articles that baby chicks are selling faster than ever before. Sounds like some folks are seeing the writing on the wall. While neither gardening nor raising chickens is as easy in practice as it is in theory, just adding a few hundred calories to your diet per day could be very useful.
Amazon Pantry Report
As I mentioned in an earlier post, we ordered from Amazon Pantry late last week. Delivery is expected 14 days after the order was placed, which is more than twice the length it took for delivery prior to the coronavirus outbreak. Clearly, as the Wall Street Journal said in its article Amazon Struggles to find its Coronavirus Footing, “So far, it has been a bumpy ride.”
I think Amazon Ppantry is the a good program, but it fails during the high demand/low supply situation we are facing with the coronavirus. This is simply not the right time for it. If your looking for food on Amazon, stick with Prime.
