Q is for quest…

And also for quail (let’s not kid ourselves).

Today was a bit of a journey, if only in the ups and downs. My wife and I were discussing places to get live quail and had begun to worry that we wouldn’t be able to find any at the places we’d expected, NB Feed and/or Tractor Supply, due to the random nature of their inventory. In previous years, when we’d only been interested in chickens, those two places had always had a few quail. Why would this year be any different? We’ll likely never know the answer, but we had taken this as a sign that we’d need to order some eggs and start the waiting game.

As I was lamenting the lack of birds to my business associates, one of them said they had seen chicks at their local feed store over the weekend. It was on my way further into town, so I stopped by only to be told that they do not have quail, but that they’ll also be getting a shipment of animals on Wednesday with no forewarning about what’s actually in the shipment. I don’t understand how stores can operate like this, but maybe that’s why I’m not in retail.

Luckily, I had one old trick up my sleeve: Google. “Quail near me” was all it took to find a quail farm in our city. After a little deliberation over how to contact them, on account of our somewhat intending to out-business them at some point (don’t mock my dreams!), I started a brief email exchange. This was followed by a brief text exchange, a brief phone call with the Mrs., a few more texts with the farmer… rancher?… proprietor, and, finally, an agreement. Cash for eggs. I took the littlest bit with me and, 12 minutes later, picked up the package. They threw in 8 extra eggs, putting us at 32. The realness is creeping in. Let’s get these babies in the incubator and see what’s next!

• Josh