How Awesome is That?

I am never ashamed to promote businesses I believe to be honest and have wonderful products. One of my favorites from my standpoint as a farmer and gardener is Sandhill Preservation Center. I LOVE them. I loved them even before my most recent interaction with them, which is what prompted this blog post. The last two years I have ordered poultry from Sandhill. They specialize in antique and heirloom varieties, and I am a firm believer in protecting our heritage, and through that, our future, by maintaining sustainable farming-hybrids=NOT SUSTAINABLE (but that's another post). I have ordered seeds with them for several years now. Apparently my name has stuck with them (the crazy lady with funky orders and a penchant for the thrifty). I ordered one round of their end of the hatch runs of birds-any birds, no definite numbers, but your money's worth. Last year I ended up with chickens and a few turkeys (see last year's oops on those-I still feel like a dummy for that one). This year was all chickens. I also ordered another round for the fall. These are birds specifically for us. For sale I order through McMurray, simply for ease, though if this year's buyers are going to be regulars, I will transition over to solely Sandhill. I am all for supporting more, smaller, mom and pop type organizations. Anyway, I digress so easily. When I picked up my birds I noticed there were an awful lot of them. I got them home to count them, and wouldn't you know, not in that 20-30 vicinity, but 53. 53 chickens. Wow. I just got them all set up, and then a few days later finally got around to calling Sandhill. I thought I might have ordered my fall birds wrong, and wanted to make sure I could still get a fall order in if I had. I left a message and after only an hour or two, Glenn, the husband in the married couple's duo, called me back. I posed my question, and he reassured me that I had ordered correctly, but they had a busy week and extra birds. They were packing my order and recognized me as a loyal customer from the last couple years and gave me the birds. How awesome is that? Just gave them to me. He said I will probably get extra birds in the fall as well. How often does something like this happen with big companies? Almost never. It is the small ones who can do things like recognize a name because they keep a smaller, more loyal customer base. On top of that, I know God had a hand in it. That same weekend I was camping with the family (another blog post to come on that) so my mom was caring for the birds. Apparently our rooster sensed I was gone and took out 20 of the teenage chicks. Not good. at. all. Those are pre-sold birds. That knocked the number down to an unacceptable number to divide amongst the buyers. But, now I have 25 to help replace what he decided to kill for me. I still may reorder more, but at this point that puts me back up to 17-18 birds per order, which should work out okay. In the meantime, I kicked the roo roo out of the coop, and, though it has never worked out that way before, I came back the next day to find nothing but wings in the back yard. So, he's gone. But a small price to pay for such a huge menace. But the main point of the post:Sandhill (and so many small mom and pop companies/businesses)=AWESOME! They will have as much of my business as I can send their way in this and every year in the future.