Guineas!

The boys and I went to get Phil on Saturday afternoon. We certainly ran a lot of errands in that time: the post office, the airport, then Lowes for a book on electrical wiring (Phil’s how to books were packed, and he needed some refreshers on how to get electricity to our house, once they hook up on Monday). Then we stopped at Buck-the-hairdresser’s house to get: guineas!

Guinea fowl are beautiful birds. I read Gardening with Guineas which completely overwhelmed me: the author has a lovely barn and a whole system which she expands on in great detail. It sounded very complicated to get guineas, so I put it on hold. When we went to get pigs, the owners had a few guineas, and they gave us the scoop.

Guineas: get them. Don’t feed them—they forage. Don’t breed them—they reproduce on their own. Don’t build them houses—they roost in trees.

Guineas: the self-sufficient livestock, that eat ticks and snakes and act as watchdogs.

Buck-the-hairdresser was an interesting man. He was a bit hard to understand, which made sense when we met him: no top front teeth. He mentioned several times his wife and grandchildren, and how his wife hates his bird hobby. He breeds canaries for pet stores (they go for $100!), and has, apparently, bred champion birds for bird shows. He bought a second-hand brooder that holds 300 eggs and rotates them automatically. Pretty amazing. And this all happens in his modest-sized townhome basement.

Honestly, people are so varied and interesting—it’s been a great honor to get to meet so many fine folk, and one of the joys of moving here and beginning to raise animals.

After Buck-the-hairdresser’s, we stopped at Chipotle for lunch (yay!) and then to Vintage Virginia to get two bushels of apples (almost 80 pounds). They have a very inefficient system for purchasing, so it took an hour, even though I was second in line when we got there. Phil, tired from travel, and myself, trying to juggle an antsy baby and knowing I had three more energetic boys waiting in the car, were almost frantic by the time we left. Buying food should not be quite so challenging!

After a brief stop at home to get the guineas acquainted with our barn (what we call the metal storage shed), we went to a party up the street. The Townsends live in Norfolk, and every year invite all their friends up for a camping trip weekend, similar to what our church, Hillside, used to do on Labor Day. I was hoping to meet some of the people from our street and community, but, other than the Townsends who have their weekend dream home here, it was just the Bessettes. One of the women I met works at the US Attorney’s Office. She lives in Charlottesville and commutes into DC every day, leaving home at 5am (a bit earlier than she must, so she can go to Mass), getting home at 8pm. Six hours of commuting, every day. I can’t imagine.

In a little moment of That Darn Cat, Tiger had been outside enjoying the lovely weather all day. He came in, went straight to our closet and peed on Phil’s sleeping bag. As if!

On Sunday, we spent a lot of time with our seven guinea “keets” (the guinea word for “chicks”). Our keets are six weeks old, which is good because they have feathers and don’t need supplemental heat anymore. (Good thing, because we have none to give—no electricity … quite.) They were all in their box all night, but by the end of the day, the bravest went flying out. I spent a while stalking the escaped keet so it could return to its happy place. When it (or another one) escaped again, I gave up.


Isaiah, as with the chicks in Boulder, LOVES the keets. He happily held them and petted them, talked to them and chased them for several hours. The keets, for their part, were quite pleasant to hold—a solid little handful of warm, throbbing feathers. The way to tell the difference between males and females is solely by their sound, which they start making at about seven weeks. The males, apparently, only say, loudly, che-che-che; the females have a softer, more varied syllabic repertoire. When we picked up a loud keet, we would say, “This one must be a male,” and put it back until we picked up a quiet one.

At about noon, I felt feverish and flu-ey. I took my favorite homeopathic remedy, oscillococcinum (pronounced AH sill o COX i numb). What a great remedy! I felt somewhat better, and better still after a nap. We walked down to the creek, and I was amazed both at how many leaves have fallen and how many green leaves remain on the trees, still photosynthesizing.