I Got My Package Today! As it turns out.

I am very very excited about this development!

We've been planning this advancement in our mini-ecosystem for a long time, but it has just now begun to come to fruition.

Today, we got our package.  The seed.

Crickets!!!!!!!

Aren't they cool?!

I know what you're thinking.  No, i really do.  You want to know WHY i would be happy about 1000 quarter inch insects in my home.  That's a good question.

 Lemme splain.

You've seen me toss around the term, "food sovereignty," right?  My husband is in love with that term, by the way.

Ideal food sovereignty is when we don't ever purchase any food product for us or our animals.  We produce everything we need right here.  That's the ideal.  Every little thing is another step toward that ideal.

You've also seen me mention our chickens.....once or twice......

***Rabbit trail***  recently, at a family get-together, we were playing a board game.  At a particular point in the game, the other players were supposed to get a piece of paper and write about something "i have," "i" being me, not them.  Four out of five wrote about my chickens.   

 There's more to me than chickens, people!***Original trail resumed***

Well, chickens require certain nutrients, which they can normally get just by foraging in the yard and the woods.  And sometimes, they require additional calcium and protein, which we don't want to have to purchase.  It turns out, that in the insect world, crickets have the highest amounts of calcium and protein.  And chickens love them.  (Edited to explain:  i do not know whether crickets have more calcium and protein than anyone else in the whole insect kingdom.  They simply have more calcium and protein percentage when compared to the other readily-available-to-be-raised-at-my-house insects and worms that chickens like to eat.  As it turns out, from what i've read, which i cannot verify without spending a lot of money on some sort of college degree and i'm guessing some scientific equipment, so i'm going to take someone else's word for it.)

It also turns out that it is very simple and uncomplicated to raise crickets.  These thousand little crickets can feed our chickens and reproduce and make many many more crickets with little effort from us and almost no food or water.  Basically, if we can eat, they can live on our crumbs.  

Are our chickens really going to eat that many crickets?  Probably not.  Not millions.  But it is always good to be a producer of something that other people want and are willing to trade goods or money to obtain.  It turns out that we live near a lake - where people fish - and fish like crickets too.  See how that works?

So, in conclusion, this creepy little box is the seed for our new cricket farm.  We're becoming cricket wranglers.  And it turns out we're moving one step closer to our goals.  Yay!