ALBANY PARK — So now I'm the kind of person who hangs out at the Belmont Feed and Seed.
Most folks come here to pick up supplies for their birds. I was just looking for straw.
You'll see straw all over the place in October, when bales become a hot commodity, along with gourds and ears of Indian corn, for use in decorative "harvest" tableaus.
But in July, when this gardener needed what she estimated to be a tenth of a bale, not as a prop in some artistic representation of pastoral days of yore but to assist with the actual growing of food, there was none to be found.
This bale of straw cost more than you'd think. [All photos DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]
Dave called every garden center we could think of and the answer to "You got any straw?" was always the same. "Nope."
Supplies are stocked seasonally, and the gardening season, in retailers' minds, has been over since May. I would have had more luck shopping for a snow blower.
Then it dawned on me that there was a niche market for straw year-round. The urban chicken people.
We dialed up Feed and Seed (3036 W. Belmont Ave.), which I'd remembered from an article I'd written about chicken coop tours, and sure enough, they had straw.
You know what else they have at the Feed and Seed, which isn't evident from the words "feed" and "seed"?
The feed-ees.
We crossed the storefront's threshold and were greeted by a cacophony of squawking, clucking and chirping. I wanted to turn and run.
Birds, I should tell you, freak me out.
Not just pigeons, which are gross, but all birds. Something about their lizardy feet, their herky-jerky heads, the way they flit and dart unpredictably, the fact they can attack from land, air and, in the case of water fowl, sea, feels suspicious and vaguely malevolent. To me.
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There's a particularly territorial robin that makes his presence felt every time I water my flowers. I tell you, some day a switch is going to flip in his sub-pea brain and he's going to peck my eyes out.
I took a deep breath and stepped inside Feed and Seed. "Be a big girl," I told myself.
The straw was nowhere to be seen and the shop's owner was tied up on the phone when we walked in, so we were on our own to wander the aisles in search of the elusive bale.
Feed and Seed isn't a large place but the hallway that led to the rear of the store felt endless, lined with cages of hyperactive birds. I would have kept my eyes fixed straight ahead but ... more birds. I steeled myself as I walked the gauntlet — don't look, don't look, don't look.
The straw was stacked high on a shelf in the furthest reaches of the store. Of course. Dave pulled it down from its perch and then we had to navigate the whole house of horrors in reverse. And then I had to make polite chitchat with the shopkeeper while I paid for the straw, acting all nonchalant — "What, we're surrounded by flapping creatures? Why, I hadn't noticed" — when all the while I wanted to crawl out of my skin.
It was the bravest thing I've ever done.
The straw, by the way, was for our potatoes. We've mounded them even higher, which may or may not have been the right thing to do.
The $10 bale, of which we needed 1/100th, was a great investment given the 30 cents worth of spuds we were likely to harvest, Dave observed.
Dude, I thought, you don't know the half of what that cost me. It better be worth the effort, you hear me, potatoes?
OK, potatoes, you'd better do your thing.
Garden overview, week 9. Corn so high it barely fits in frame.
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