Traveling Chickens - Life in a Rural Community

So I thought that it would be a good idea to have my internship committee over for dinner for our second meeting. I planned the menu, went grocery shopping in town on the weekend and got all set. The day of the meal came and I came home from the office at noon to get ready. I had mashed the sweet potatoes the day before so they were all set. When I got home I cleaned up my house, moved chairs up from downstairs and started to prepare the rest of the food.

At about 3:45 I put the chickens in the oven. I finished vacuuming and as I was putting the vacuum back in the closet by the front door the power flickered and went out. The chickens had been cooking for about 15 minutes and so I needed to put them in another oven or throw them out. I called another committee member who had called earlier to let me know she couldn’t come because she was having to pump out her basement because of all the rain. I called her and she told me she still had power, so I packed up the chickens and drove the ten minutes to her house, put the chickens in, saw her basement (only half full of water now) and settled to make phone calls to the rest of the committee and watch some TV.

About 20 minutes after getting the chickens in the oven the power flickered and went out at her house. She had spoken to another friend, a couple that I also knew and knew that they still had power so I called them and asked if I could use their oven. So again I packed up the chickens and headed over to their home.

I hadn’t been able to get a hold of anyone else on the committee and wasn’t sure how many of them had power. At about 6PM (when the meeting was supposed to begin) I drove back to my house to get the rest of the food and to see if anyone was there. Sure enough two members of the committee were just leaving my house and turned around to meet me at my house. On the way to the house I saw that the beaver creek beside my house was so high that the water was now running over the road instead of under it.

When I got to my house I realized that I had left the vacuum blocking the front door and my front door key didn’t work on the side door lock. We had to push open the front door carefully so as not to damage the closet door between the front door and the vacuum.

One of the committee (the daughter of the couple who had my chickens in their oven) also had power (my power still wasn’t on) so we packed up all the food and headed to her house. I got all the other food (chipotle maple sweet potatoes, broccoli & cauliflower, salad and buns) all set up and cooking and drove back up the highway to pick up the chickens. Brought them back and we sat down for a lovely dinner and meeting.

After the meeting I packed up all the dishes and headed home with a borrowed pair of men’s size 12 rubber boots and a copper pole to test out the road by my house to make sure the road was still there under the water. I went to the home of the second oven my chickens had been in (the woman pumping out her basement) and gave her some dinner and then headed to my house where I could still see the road under the water and decided to try it out. It was fine and I got home in one piece. I still had no power so I put all the food away and went to bed to stay warm and called a friend to share my story! As I was talking to her about 10:45PM the power went back on and I went to sleep.