New Life Old Farmers

Our collection of Offspring have been to their fair share of cast parties, team parties and the like.  We’ve never been the hosting parents.  We’ve usually been the parents that roll into their warm cozy bed with admonitions that the Offspring be home by curfew.  This is a home to share and we were kind of excited that we were hosting the cast party for the Fall Play.

My Loving Spouse and I made our very own brand of luminaries for the driveway, using wide mouth large jars.  (A friend has given us a dozen large jars so we can pickle eggs, as soon as the darn chickens get around to laying them).  We didn’t have any sand to set the tea lights in, so we used… chicken meal.  All in all, it was much cleaner than sand and made it very easy to clean up the next morning and feed the chickens at the same time.

Aunt Nancy was making the trip to see her only niece in the play, so she had been adequately ‘warned’ that there would be a teen party going on afterward.  Aunt Nancy likes it quiet when she goes to sleep, crazy I know, and teens aren’t actually known for being quiet.  Especially, 44 of them….  The teens were fairly quiet and didn’t start to play the piano, until Aunt Nancy went to bed.  Luckily, all Aunt Nancy had planned was to ‘go to bed’, not to sleep for quite a while, so it was all good.

The Pastor had been to The Teen’s play the night before and turns out he is an excellent photographer.  He’d given her a CD with an amazing photo montage of the play.  We were able to run it on the DVD player to share with all the kids.  It was wonderful to watch them enjoy how they’d looked and see their hard work come together.  The Cast of Characters were impressively nice and quirky, surprisingly tidy and…. polite!  As they were all raised with Harry Potter, the cupboard under the stairs brought ‘oohs and aahs’.

We are merely the current care takers of this old house.  Our home is to be shared and we are so blessed.  The Cast loved this old house.  I did my best to act like a mature adult when they told me how amazing they found the house.  I act humble and nod my head politely, but inside I am still stunned that this is where we live and I really want to say, sort of in a loud teen voice, “I KNOW!!!  Isn’t it something else!”

In our 6 months here, we’d never seen Our Friend the Farmer take a day off, so we were happy to hear that he was going off to Seattle for the day to watch his Seattle Sea Hawks.   The Farmer’s herd of cattle had recently been moved to the hay-field behind our barns.  The hay-field is just that, a hay field.  The cattle are moved there to eat the bits of hay still growing, thereby keeping the mice from taking up permanent residence.  However, the fencing is not actually set up for cattle.  Prior to his leaving, Our Friend the Farmer called My Loving Spouse asking him to keep an eye on the cattle and appointing him ‘Bull Goose’.  Honestly, neither of us know what being the ‘Bull Goose’ means, but we (and especially I) took the job of ‘cow sitting’ very seriously.

“How many cows does he have?”  I asked My Loving Spouse.

“I don’t know”.

“Well, how do we know if we’ve lost any, if we don’t know how many we are watching?…  Where does the field go?”  I asked.

“I don’t really know.”

Clearly, the ‘Bull Goose’ was under informed.

We might not have actually known what our job was, but we still intended to do it well.  On our way back from church we drove by the hay field as best we could and looked at the cows.  On the way to an errand we went the back way, so we could drive by the hay field and look at the cows.  On the way back from the errand we looked at the cows and some of them seemed…. well, out of place, or they might have been out of place, since we weren’t really sure still what place they were suppose to be in or not be in.

These cows were not getting loose on our watch!  My Loving Spouse and I turned around and proceed to drive down the canal road.  The canal road is an elevated dirt strip with canal on one side and fields on the other.  It is very narrow and a bit curvy.  We parked the truck at the gate and proceeded to investigate the cow action on foot.

We found about a dozen ‘loose’ cows just beyond the gate, being led astray by one very big old cow.  The trouble maker-lead-astray-er cow was a lot bigger up close.  Luckily this big old girl did not try our cow wrangling skills, but turned around as we walked closer and closer.  The cows moved back toward the field in a flurry as My Loving Spouse whistled for our imaginary cattle dog and I barked at them a few times for good measure.  We got the last of the trouble maker cows back into the field using one of the cow wrangling skills learned from Our Friend the Farmer, we threw rocks at them.  As our arms and our aim is not what it use to be, it took longer than expected, as did backing the truck down the narrow canal road.

All in all, it was a good day, the Sea Hawks won and the cows are still in their ‘place’ (I think), but the next time I cow sit, I really want to know, exactly what I’m suppose to be doing….and what’s the ‘Bull Goose’.

Number Two son and I bonded on his recent time at home over moles.  Not a dermatological situation, but an invasion by the nasty rodent population that is too lowly to stick their heads above ground and insist on making their presence known by burrowing through our yard and our pasture leaving behind piles of dirt which seem to get more prolific by the day.  Dressed appropriately for the operation as the pasture is muddy and dotted with horse poop, we armed our selves with multiple bombs, fuses and matches.

I love working with Number Two Son especially when we don’t really know what we’re doing.  We share a sort of sweet, comical bumbling.  We are fairly satisfied with our endeavors and call it ‘good’, if we haven’t broken anything or shed any blood, and if we’ve accomplished our original goal, well that’s even better.  As we’d never bombed any moles, we did break down and read the directions, not that they helped all that much.

Gently remove the dirt from the hill and find Mole’s tunnel.  Insert the fuse into the bomb, light the fuse and place the bomb in the tunnel, fuse down.  Cover the tunnel gently with a rock or dirt.

Mole hills are easy to spot, but finding the actual tunnel is down right difficult.  We possibly had more Mole bombs than sense, and so after digging at multiple hills, decided to just start bombing anything.  Well, not anything, but any spot under a mound that had at any time the presence of a mole.  Of course it was a windy day, so getting the fuse to lite was aggravating.  We used up 7 bombs and almost a box of matches.  I am fairly confident that we got a few of the nasty rodents, smoked to death or just possibly a few died laughing at us.

I’ve filled the wood stack by the back door.  Made by My Loving Spouse with two left over andirons.  One day and nights wood at the ready.  I am enjoying that most of our heat comes from our wood stove.  Unheard of from where I came from, I am enjoying the change.  The warmth is soft and gentle and there are no arguments about where to set the thermostat.  I can see how much wood we have and I appreciate that there will be no surprise bills at the end of the month.

As I make my way back to the wood shed, it starts to snow.  Soft, fluffy white flakes.  They don’t last long and the white flakes are particularly difficult to photograph against my pretty white house.  So, I capture them on the sleeve of my jacket and think…. just for today… this change is good.

Perhaps, just maybe, I lived in the city too long.  Perhaps, just maybe, we’ve moved to the nicest place ever.  Whatever the answer is, I am still shocked at how things are done here.

We had an electrical issue that My Loving Spouse could not fix (a rare occurrence).  The Electrician came out within a few hours, not days city friends, but hours.  Not only was the problem fixed, but as I reached for my check book, he said some very strange words, “Oh, they will bill you.  It shouldn’t be too much”.  That is exactly what the man from the nursery said when he came to winterize our sprinkler system.  “We will just bill you”.  WHAT???  They didn’t want cash, credit card, pay-pal and my first-born son.  What kind of place is this?  We were shocked and stunned!

While playing with the youth group at church, The Teen had a Dodge Ball incident and the Ball won.  One of those pesky jammed hand injuries, that hurt like heck.  We gave her our best nursing skill advice, “Ice, Advil, want some ice cream?”  After a few texts from The Teen at school the next day, I called the doctor’s office.  “We can get her in, in 15 minutes, can she make that?”  Yes, she could, but the clincher was she didn’t have her co-pay with her.  “That’s okay, send her in.”  WHAT??? Again, it happened again….

I received word to call The Pastor.  Hmmm, what could it be?  It never occurred to me that he was checking on The Teen.  What??  Yes, he’d heard she got hurt, “That’s kind of crummy.  Is she okay?”  What?  For a Dodge Ball injury?

We are still shocked, stunned and we like it!  What a blessing.

Oh, and as for The Teen, the doctor’s advice, ice, Advil and a cool bandage (which is almost as good as ice cream).

Number Two Son is home!   I/we/us have all been missing him.  As The Teen was playing the White Rabbit in the school play, it was a good reason to bring him home.  The fact that he’d just been through a hurricane and his work was closed made it even better.  With the Newlyweds here, all my chicks were in the nest, which makes for one happy Mama.

My boys (now officially men) had not yet had the chance to ‘work’ on the farm together.  Number One Son was anxious to share with his brother all the wonderful things they got to do as an adult in the country, things that had been strictly forbidden when they were boys in the city.  Burning the slash pile was top on the list.  I was ecstatic to have the large, large pile of debris, that had been growing since July and measured roughly 10x4x40 feet finally meet its match.  They were happy that they got to play with fire.  They worked out a shared system in figuring out who got to put the gasoline on the structure and who got to light the match.

With the bonfire in control under the watchful eye of The Bride and a few cats, chain saws were gathered.  As our main fuel for heat in our home is a wood burning stove, we try to take any opportunity to fill the wood shed with ‘good’ wood.  The field next to us had downed trees that we were welcomed to procure as fire wood, all we needed were a few strong men and some chain saws.  The ‘boys’ worked on the wood procurement, chainsaw fun, until they declared it lunch time.  At some part in the day, I saw Number One and Number Two Sons with rifles in their arms headed to the hay barn to hunt down the last of the dirty, nasty, stinky pigeons.

Axes, sledge hammers and wedges, I mustn’t leave out, that there were ample opportunities to swing axes, as a cord of wood needing to be split was added to the mix.  I only said, “Be careful” once, because as Moms know, really just saying it out loud, somehow relieves a bit of the responsibility and somehow makes them ‘safer’, even if they are wired to no longer hear us.  However, it was a good day and no blood was shed or band aids needed.

Stunned and happy, today was just one of those days.  There are a LOT of days we work hard and at the end of the day we end up with progress that takes the form of a bigger mess, aching muscles and a huge pile of laundry.  Today was different.  Today we are exhausted (really tired), our muscles are aching and we’ve got a huge pile of laundry, but the mess for today is tamed and it felt like progress was made. We gathered to have a drink and toast the end of the enormous slash pile.

We watched with happiness as the White Rabbit took the stage and we collapsed at the end of the evening on each end of the couch, but not the ‘boys’.  Off they went with The Bride as designated driver for Number One Son to help his brother, Number Two Son celebrate his recent 21st birthday.  Oh, to be young.

I knew we were doomed.  Any sentence that starts out with, “Sweetie, I know we said no more animals, BUT” is destined to lead to…. more animals.

Our Friend the Farmer had called My Loving Spouse offering us a calf with a bum leg.  The calf was a twin and born with a frozen hind leg making it hard for it to keep up with the herd, especially in the winter.  The Farmer thought it would get along fine with our two horses, thereby giving it a new ‘herd’.  I answered My Loving Spouse in the manner of the Teen Boys, “What?… Hun?”, cleared my brain, then asked a very important question, one I’ve learned while living here in the country.  “Is he intact?”  In other words, did he have all his cattle man parts?  Would he grow into a Bull?  I am learning a LOT, but castrating cattle is not on my list of ‘Stuff I Still Want To Learn’.

Our Friend the Farmer advised us to go and have a look at the calf, so we dutifully went to look at it.  Our going to ‘look’ at it was a bit ironic as, we don’t know anything about cattle.  We looked at it and it looked back at us.  It definitely looked like… a calf with a bum leg.   We said, “Of course we’d like it, thank you very much.  Is it intact?”  This is when we learned that he was a she, so we were safe from the whole learning to castrate cattle issue.

The Grand To-Do list was amended once more and out we went to work on our fences.  The fences that keep horses in do not always keep cattle in or in this case one small calf in, even if she doesn’t move very fast so we dutifully made the improvements to our fencing for our ever-expanding herd.

This calf is to be fattened and eventually suppose to make it to, well, to the dinner table (yes, stay tuned for that adventure), so with this in mind, some people told us, “Just don’t name it”.  Oh, right, good advice to this family that named their vacuum cleaner!  The odds of us not naming an animal are lower than low!

Upon being informed that we were getting a calf, the texts back from the offspring were just… precious….

“What? A cow?”

“YOU’RE GETTING A COW….”

“A three-legged cow?!”

“If you haven’t thought of any names yet, there’s always Tripod, Double-Double Sirloin or Charlene Roast”

“You can call her Tri-Tip”

“CAN WE NAME THE COW ELSIE???????????”

“Does this mean I can get a bunny?”

Welcome to our world, Elsie Gump.

There is nothing like family and friends coming for a visit to Glory Farm and saying those few precious words, music to my ears….”We’re bringing work clothes”.  Ah, gotta love it when we get to share the magic of the farm. Especially when the magic includes some of my favorite things…. dismantling, cutting down and getting rid of!  Good bye Big Ugly Dog Run, you’re going down!

Many of our friends in So. California are comfortably entrenched in the So. Calif life and could never understand why anyone would ever want to go anywhere else, especially to live.   Explaining to these kind of friends why one would move anywhere, let alone a climate that had seasons other than warm was difficult.  I finally found words that they understood… “we have family there”.  “Oh”, these friends would then say and nod their head in understanding.  End of explanation.

Just over the hill in Seattle I’ve a fun bunch of cousins.  I have been especially looking forward to having them explore the farm with me, climb through the barns, sheds and old chicken house.  As kids, we did the same thing together at our Great-Grandparents Ranch, and I am sure it was there that the seeds of my farm life desire were planted.  They showed up on a rainy Saturday.  Our family history would have dictated that I tease them about the rain, as coming from Seattle they were always blamed for inclement weather where ever they went, but I would like to think I am more mature now than to perpetuate those old childish habits, besides they’d brought work clothes!

We toured the farm, ate a fun pub lunch and then the Chain Gang tackled the Big Ugly Dog Run.  We each found our niches, some went  to taking down and rolling up miles and miles (literary exaggeration) of the chain link 6 ft fence, others to pulling up the wire fencing enmeshed into many years of mud to keep the previous digging dogs inside the run and My Loving Spouse & Jubal along with the help of my Cousin who speaks ‘tractor’ tackled the many multiple fence posts set in concrete.  6 adults times a few hours of work = a LOT of progress and the Big Ugly Dog Run is 80% gone!  Woo Hoo, I am so appreciative.

It is more than just ‘nice’ to have ‘family in the area’ and I really am very grateful.  We sent them home with muddy work clothes, pumpkins (of course) and a farm to share once more.

“Sisters… sisters, there were never such devoted sisters”  (singing or at least humming should go here and if you don’t know the song, then you need to watch White Christmas).  I was going to say, “Sisters are an interesting breed”, but that sounds like I was born on a farm or something and we all know that is not true!  I started off in life with just one sister and luckily I’ve been collecting them ever since.  My folks adopted my little sister, which was lucky for us.  My brother married my Sister Sue, which was lucky for me, and although the marriage was not meant for ‘forever’, the sisterhood was.

Sister Sue was one of those who was hard to leave behind in So. California.  She was glad for us, that we were moving to our farm and wished us well through her tears.  She said they’d not be able to visit us for a year and a half or 18 months or 6 seasons or a really, really long time.  I’m sure I tried not to whine as I said,”That long?” but chances are I did, just a bit wistfully, a longing whine, not a bratty whine and she could hear it.  She hasn’t missed a post from this Blog, so she’s well aware of the amount of work we have here to say nothing of the amount of animal poop, mud and cats.  But all that just made the year and a half wait much too long for her as well and so she came!

She came to see, touch and feel our new home, to snuggle her God-daughter the Teen, to make sense of where we are now and of course to learn to drive our tractor.  Her tutorial from My Loving Spouse went well, and the tractor chores were dutifully done, which mostly means neither Jubal or my Sister ended up in the pond.  As requested, the ‘Green Acres’ theme song was sung out LOUD and proud, it just kind of happens when you’re up on Jubal!

I was smiling from ear to ear and so delighted that Fall was here in all its wonderful colors to share with her.  Sister Sue is an artist and I knew she’d be bowled over by our valley.  She’d just picked up a new camera, and was truly like a kid in a candy shop as she worked with her new tool.  If we couldn’t find her in the house, she’d be out ‘shooting’ the leafs, the barns, the chickens, the trees and of course the pumpkins.  We did our part when driving around and pulled over at a moments notice when required to ‘catch the shot’.

So now we have a new common bond, our time together here at Glory Farm.  There is something very special in being able to share our farm with those we love.  So, to all my other sisters, come… soon!

To appreciate the beauty and art of my Sister Sue… enjoy just a few….