This Wasn't on my Bingo Card

"Was this on your bingo card?"

I turned to my wife as we stood behind our Jeep, staring at six 50 lb bags of chicken feed and a massive sack of grit.

It was a Saturday morning. We had a kids' soccer game to get to.

But there we were, at the local feed store, loading enough supplies to feed a small feathered army.

It started with a promise.

Back in the summer, I told my son Charlie we'd raise some broiler chickens out at my parents' ranch.

We'd been talking about it after listening to a great interview with Joel Salatin. I bought and read his book Pastured Poultry Profits and thought, this is doable. This would be a great father-son project, right?

We couldn't make it happen in the fall, so I said we'd do it in the spring.

Winter came. Christmas parties, New Years get-togethers, then a family trip. The general weight of raising two kids and building a brand from scratch.

Spring was just around the corner, and we booked a family trip at the end of May. I looked at the calendar one late night in February and understood, with a sharp and specific clarity, what was about to happen.

I was in serious danger of becoming the dad who doesn't follow through.

That thought sat in my chest like a stone.

So I anxiously searched online and found a hatchery in Texas that had fifty-five chicks available for March 9th. I placed the order before I thought about it too long. Then I sat back and let the reality of what I'd just done set in.

Raising fifty-plus chickens requires a decent amount of infrastructure.

I built a brooder out of a single sheet of plywood and some clever cuts, picked up supplies from Home Depot and Tractor Supply, and set up a warm little world of pine shavings for the chicks to arrive into. I spent precious spare hours watching YouTube videos about building chicken tractors: those mobile, partially covered coops you move across pasture each day so the birds get fresh ground, bugs, and vegetation while staying protected from predators.

They showed up in the mail on March 11th. Fifty-four tiny birds, chirping away.

For about a week, things felt manageable. Then they started growing. Fast. By week two, they were ready for pasture. I was not.

I spent every hour I could spare out at the ranch, building the tractors. When Charlie was not at school he was right there with me, running the staple gun like he'd been doing it for years.

On March 29th, we finally moved them out to the pasture. Watching Charlie settle those chicks into their new home, handling them carefully, talking to them in a low voice the way you do to make small children feel safe, well that made every Home Depot run and late night worth it. It was one of those moments that really lands.

Here's what I didn't expect.

Standing there watching Charlie, I thought about what it meant to keep your promises. I felt the weight of the promises I'd kept over the years and, more quietly, the ones I hadn't. Not the big, dramatic failures, but the small ones. The call I kept meaning to make. The dinner that stayed in the calendar for months without ever happening. The friend I've been meaning to visit since last year. 

The chickens were urgent. Soccer games are urgent. But my friendships? My relationships with my cousins? Those always seem to wait until next week. 

It always does.

The Surgeon General put a number on it a few years back. A lack of close male friendships is as harmful to your health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Not as a metaphor. As a measured, physical, mortality-affecting fact. 

What got me was a simpler version of the same idea.

In February, I had two weeks to keep a promise before the calendar made it impossible. The friend thing works the same way, except nobody sends you a reminder. There's no hatchery deadline. The window just quietly closes, and one day you look up and realize you haven't seen someone in a year and you couldn't tell anyone exactly why.

I was thinking about this when I made a batch of mango margaritas a few Sundays ago. It took about five minutes. We took them to dinner with friends that evening. My wife brought the rest to a baby shower the following week. There was enough left over for me to share with another group of friends the week after that, and every pour was still great.

Five minutes. 

That's the whole thing, isn't it? When the prep is "grab and go" the excuse disappears. The friction of it being too hard or too time-consuming is what most people are actually saying no to, not the gathering. Not the people. Just the hassle of getting there.

Life is build brick by brick. Your relationship with your kids. The friendships you have. The church you belong to. The community you're apart of. Those are all bricks. A slow year of neglect and you haven't noticed anything missing, but keep going and one day the storm arrives and you find yourself standing in open ground.

The work will always be there.

The chickens will always need feeding.

The people in your life, though? Those take showing up. They take a small commitment, kept on purpose, even when the week is full, the list is long, and the couch is right there.

Be the friend you'd want to have.

The second tractor got finished a few days after the first, which was good, because these birds are growing faster than I can believe. Now they're supper happy eating crickets, clover, and whatnot as we move them around the pasture.

Cheers,
Dallas

*If the prep is the thing standing between you and a good gathering, the Keg It® Keg Kit solves that problem in about five minutes flat.