"I think I know a short cut"

A few days ago we were delivering funds for a friend so that he could purchase a freezer.  We got talking and learned how they had more chickens then could fit in the freezer they had.  They also have egg layers they would like to sell. 

A little back storey; when the pandemic hit, we did not have the funds right away for food hampers so we started giving away chickens from our  flock.  The idea was that when things started to stabilize, I would buy new ones to replace them. The chickens on the farm are not just for eggs, but they are the natural bug control in the orchard.  Well we went from 100 chickens to just 18, and just when we went to get new ones, the bird flue hit, and we could not risk bringing chickens from the bazar. What I needed was to find a grower that we could buy direct so that they are not infected .  

Talking to our friend we decided that we would purchase 20 meat birds right now, and order 60 egg layers. We also will have them grow us some meat birds that we will have in our Christmas catalog that will be ready just in time for Christmas food hampers.. more about this on the 14th . 

His village is in Sarafemofka ... it is a little village that we pass through on our way through the mountains between the farm and Bishkek, so we arranged to meet him there at 3:00 yesterday. Here is where the storey takes a turn. and a nasty one at that . 

We arrived at the village at 2:50 .. right on time for me. but could not find the farm. That is when we found out that there are two Sarafemofkas .. a Mountain Sarafemofka and a Valley Sarafemofka .. and the one we wanted was not the one we were in !  When I checked my GPS I was given two options .. both went around the mountain and both were almost an hour away . But there was a third option .. The thing is we were only 8.9 miles from the farm through the mountain and there was a ridge pass that looked like it would get us there.. Every adventure begins with "I know a short cut" 

The J is where we live , the red dot is were we thought we needed to be and the white arrow is where we needed to be .  The red arrow I will share more about latter 

So we struck out across the mountain , 8.9 miles , how long can that take , and I don't like to be late so off we went. About two miles in we lost all phone and GPS reception. and the semi paved road had quickly turned into a dirt path along a river gorge .. The sides on the right where starting to collapse and the gorge on the left was starting to cut into the path where it was slipping away .. But we had too much time invested in this and were not turning back.   Julie was concerned that we would be found at the bottom of the gorge so she quickly recorded our last will and Testament 

when the GPS kicked back in we were just a couple miles from the end, but the road started to be more and more washed out ... but we pushed our way through . 

Then after about 35 minutes and what seemed like a life time , we found Artrum and the frozen Chickens 

We also met up with the Christmas hamper chickens. They will hatch today  

 We made it ! 

So we were now about 75 minutes behind schedule as we would have to take a different rout home.  and had a meeting back in Rot Front. So we needed to make up time ..  As we started out on our way, we came to a lovely newly paved road that according to the GPS cut across the base of the mountain and was about half the distance as the journey.  And what I just learned was that every adventure begins with " I know a short cut" . 

Buy the time we had invested too much time and distance to our short cut we were back into mud paths and puddles. Then once again the GPS started acting up and we could not tell which cow path to be on.  I said that maybe we should stop for a minute so I could get out of the car and scream, Kamalla kep saying Yes Dad do it, you need to do it.  But I was not sure I wanted a video of that to surface on the internet 😀.

After about another 40 minutes of this we came out to a road we recognised and were only about 15 minutes to the farm . 

After all that we arrived at the farm .. we even made it in time for the meeting.  I had to go up to the yurts later that night and lock things after the guests .. and realized that our road up to the yurts despite driving up the mountain and across the river bed , really is not that bad.