With out a doubt, they started long before the new-parenthood phase of my life.  In fact, I recall my 90 year old grandmother would apologize for not remembering things correctly.  I’d politely say that she needn’t worry and that she had a good excuse.  All the while, my mind would be racing.  “And so, what’s your excuse Colleen?  If Grandma’s is age, what’s yours??”

Anyway, with a similar display of mind-muddle, I’m getting way off topic.  This post isn’t about not remembering a saying, it’s about the message that my half remembered saying brings:  “The things you want are likely right in your own back yard.”

This has been my turkey experience of the week.  Heck, of the month.  I’ve been desperately casting around to find rare breeds of turkey for at least a month.  The casting around should have been my first clue.  The Universe doesn’t respond well to desperation and random flailing.  Purpose and faith that good things will come, yes.  Desperate flailing, no.

So, in my desperation to find what I wanted, I missed more than one mention of the Ultimate Poultry Source, we’ll call them for now.  I recall a friend who knows where to get just about anything make reference to a local poultry source but I think my difficulty finding any turkeys at all made me discount a local operation that I’d never before heard of as unlikely to be my turkey saviour.

My second missed clue was when I got an email a couple of weeks ago from one of John’s uncles mentioning where he orders his birds from.  I think most people know the old saying that applies to what I did with that good info.  It starts like this:  Never assume.  It just makes an…  You know the one, right?  Well, I did it.  I assumed that the uncle was a straight up big turkey, big dollars, big dinner guy and that he wouldn’t want heritage breeds.

So, here I was, ready to order some Bourbon Red turkeys from the US, a choice which would entail the following:

• having the birds mailed to a border crossing of my choice, at a specific time
• driving to the border crossing in question and dealing with the always easy-going, easy-to-please and reasonable border authorities
• a likely stressful quarantine period for the little birdies
• filling out enough paperwork to crush a small dog with

All in all, not a fun prospect.  So, you can imagine my excitement when John got off the phone with the above mentioned uncle this morning with the prediction that I was going to fall off my chair.

“Wait till you hear where Uncle Steve gets his heritage breed poultry!” he said with a loud clap of the hands.  My hubby:  Enthusiastic bearer of good news.

Now, it took me a few minutes to get the details from him as he was enjoying dragging out the excitement.

I won’t do that to you.  I’ll even tell you the name of the business.  Here you go:  If you’re interested, google ‘performance poultry’.  They are located – get this – in Ameliasburgh!  (For those non-locals, I can drive from Picton to Ameliasburgh in 20 minutes, if I take a long route).

Border crossing?  Quarantine?  What was I thinking?  That casting around desperately got me a really unwieldy plan.  Waiting and John’s lack of desperation got him the name of a business that I can almost hit spitting.

Thank goodness one half of the team wasn’t in a mind-muddle this morning.

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Check out Performance Poultry for a wide variety of heritage poultry breeds and info.