New Life Old Farmers

Thursday morning we wake to find that the dog ate the wedding cake.  Yes, really.  Two cakes had been made to layer together for a tall, special and delicious cake.  I was woken very early to be asked, “Where was the second cake”.  ‘What second cake?”  All that was left were some slobber marks left by one black lab.  We didn’t agree on what to do, but did agree to ‘not tell the kids until after the wedding’!  The cat is out of the bag only because Pat made another cake, cooled it, frosted it, packed it and continues to hope that the dog has a belly ache.

Two cars packed and ready to go, the best man notices that the baby bird has actually made it through the night and is demanding fresh flies to eat.  No one can bring themselves to leave it or ‘dispatch’ it, so it too gets packed for Spokane in a soft sided lunch box with a stop at the pet store for some meal worms.  This slows the second car down a bit as they are now stopping every 30 minutes to feed the bird or ‘Moses Squeaker Pants’ as he is now named.  (Moses is a well-traveled bird by now going to the bachelor party and the rehearsal dinner in his lunch box).

Friday morning began with the groom being shuttled off for the white shirt he forgot to buy, hair cuts for the girls, normal wedding rehearsal stress added to by the fact that in my effort to be helpful to the wedding party, I made copies of the directions to the restaurant with the wrong address, sending people on an unplanned sight-seeing tour of the more ‘colorful’ parts of Spokane.  The wedding day will start in the same fashion as the best man, realized he’s left his white shirt in Ellensburg, my boys are nothing, if not alike!

The truth is that this is our life with many mishaps the more people and animals we add to the fold, yet how delightful it has been to continually run into friends and family at the hotel who are here for this one special day.  What fun to watch the groom (the same guy that really likes to ‘knock stuff down’ on the farm) put together the flowers for his bride’s bouquet.  There is stress and mess, forgotten shirts and shoes…… and laughter and tears and joy.  I am grateful.  When my son was a small baby, I worried like new mothers do.  I knew I could worry really well and imagine all the dangers that awaited his life, it would have made me crazy.  In those moments holding my small sweet babe I chose to imagine this day and dancing at his wedding with a smile on both our faces.  Today, I am so grateful.

I irritably declared a new rule at Glory Farm yesterday.  There will be no cutting down of large trees the week prior to a wedding.  It will be obvious to all who is the Groom’s family, they’re the ones with all the spruce tree scratches on their arms and the occasional bit of sap that stubbornly refuses to wash off.  Just when I should have been relaxing with a mani-pedi, I was actually wheedling the electric chain saw like a lumber Jack’s sister Jane.

Remember that old conundrum? If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise?  Well, let me tell you, when a tree falls in the front yard, it not only makes a noise, but more importantly it makes a big mess!  We’ve worked and worked.  The mess is not really any smaller, it is just spread out about the farm more.  Most of the small limbs ready for the ‘slash’ pile.  (Slash is a farm word for trash you are allowed to burn when the wind is not blowing, so in Ellensburg that is not often).  The mid-sized tree limbs cut for fire wood and stacked nicely (on the lawn).  The bottom third of the tree still needs to be cut down and the big trunk of the tree not only still on the lawn but on a power cord, tow strap and various bits of rope.  We had a huge lightning storm here this week. The funny thing is we’ve heard there is a rumor going around that it was the lightning that took our tree down.  No, it was the groom!

Number 2 son (the best man) is here, MUCH to his mother’s delight.  I had visions of enticing him with farm life, unpacking his beloved books and sipping tea on the porch swing.  Instead, he helped to pry open his painted shut windows so his room would cool off, calm down the teen (whose lost her life line… her phone), drive Jubal and haul the damn spruce tree.  We also tried to feed the baby bird the teen rescued, but so far the only one who can do this is Pat as it requires procuring freshly swatted flies to pop in its open mouth.  We did drive out to have a look at the little filly.  Yes, she will be the next addition to the farm as  Pat spoke words I never realized my husband would say, “Honey, you got yourself a horse…I traded a gun for it.”  Number 2 fell in love with a few other horses as well and commented, “Well, we’ve got more guns”.

(Note to city people – we’re in the country it is different here and yes, I married a British Red Neck).

As you must know by now, the first-born son is getting married on Saturday!!!  My daughter-in-law to be is a Princess, so this is our official Royal wedding.  My son is a hard-working fire fighter and a Prince of a son, except when he squirts his mother with the garden hose like he did two days ago.  We are however, so very blessed by these two!!

The wedding is at Whitworth University Spokane, Washington, the Presbyterian school where the two met.  None of the family members live in Spokane, so air plane tickets have been purchased, routes planned, the bags are being packed and soon the hotels will be filling up.  The father of the bride’s brothers David and John as well as my brothers David and John are on their way, to say nothing of the host of others who will bless our time together!

The Uncle Johns have never met or even met the other family, yet both have similar characteristics.  My brother John built a wooden sail boat in our back yard in high school, built a beautiful teak mirror for me and is making his way to the wedding on a Ducati motorcycle 1473 miles (one way) from San Diego, CA for the wedding.  Having thought it thorough, he’s mailed his suit and shoes for the wedding ahead of him.  I just hope he’s still able to walk!

The bride’s Uncle John does wood working as well, and set out a week or so ago on a 3500 mile camping trip, pulling his scamp trailer with canoe on top, I believe he builds kayaks as well, but as I haven’t actually met him yet, so I could be quite wrong.  The Uncle Johns clearly differ on the use of technology with one not even owning a cell phone and the other with a wonderful blog of his adventures called http://justfinding.blogspot.com/.  The Uncle Johns take the cake on their travel plans for this one.

With a wedding cake to bake (Pat), rehearsal dinner items to finish off (me) and two more kids to gather from the air port, you’d think we’d be doing just wedding tasks, but no.  There’s a little filly that has caught Pat’s eye, and yes I do mean a horse!  Dolly is lonely and as she is a herd animal it is not fair to leave her alone, so it is a good thing we have a large pasture and perhaps more patience than sense.

I’m sure there is an easier way to do things, but so far we haven’t found it.  What we lack in planning, we make up with in perseverance.  We spent a lot of the last two days watching the ‘boys’ play lumber jack.  We had an 85 foot spruce tree that needed to be taken down and let me tell you this sucker was tall!  Ever since we mentioned this to the first-born son and his brother-in-law-to-be, they’ve been consistently asking when they were going to ‘get’ to bring it down.  Corey arrived with a small used electric chain saw, I thought it was a ‘girl-saw’ and thanked him for the present.  I then made my first mistake, I went to Fred Myer (of course) for more food and mole bombs.  I have a hunch that as my car turned out of sight my two men hatched their tree taking down plan, actually I don’t think they really had a ‘plan’, they probably just looked at each other and said, “She’s gone, let’s take it down”.

I came home to find tree limbs strewn about the lawn, my husband saying everything was ‘fine’ and  my son 60 feet up in the tree with my “girl-saw’.  Clearly he’d had no intention of bringing that saw here for me.  I quickly asked the other women (his fiance and his mother-in-law-to-be) if they’d told him to ‘be careful’, because we all know that some how saying it out loud will hopefully make it so.  I was assured that they had, but they were praying none-the-less.

I’m not sure how many trips up the tree he went, but it was a lot!  The ‘plan’ was to take the tree down in thirds.  The cutting went well, until the saw got stuck, in the tree 70 feet up.  Time to bring in the tractor to pull the top 15 feet down, then  a trip to the store for stronger rope, then a lot of knot tying and a lot of rope breaking.  Day two saw reinforcements arrive when the brother-in-law-to-be learned we really were in the process of taking that sucker down.  The three men discussed how to get it down now that the job was a bit butchered up, climbed the tree, drove the tractor and snapped a lot of rope.  As it was hot, the rest of us watched them from the porch swing, calmly playing with the kittens and praying no one got hurt.

Eventually the top third came down!  Timber!  Which brought new enthusiasm for the ‘plan’.  More saw cutting, more pulling, more tree not budging…. the boys needed to leave.  The job half done somehow resurrected my girlish tree climbing skills.  So with Pat telling me to ‘be careful’, up the tree I went.  Who knew at 53 that I’d literally be up a tree.  All the youthful muscles gone, Pat and I still managed to get the second portion down.  With sawdust down my back, spruce needles stuck in my bra and sap in my hair, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of proud of myself for getting the job done.

Time for the Motley Crew (10 chicks) to move out to their newly renovated hen-house.  Chicken Little, Lucile, Lionel and the ‘back ups’  had out grown their brooder (fancy farm term for chicken box with a light).  We called in a semi-professional team of chicken movers to take up the task of transporting them across the yard.  For most of us, this was our first chicken wrangling job and we were thrilled that all 10 chicks arrived safely to their new home.  The darn chickens then immediately tried to launch themselves into the fence and do what they do best, jump on each other’s heads.  This is not the smartest group of chickens you’d ever find, ‘dumb’ I am told is ‘average’ for chickens.

With the chickens in the hen-house, the fierce and might barn kittens are back in the barn.  They are now beginning to explore the farm a lot more and I’d have to say that they too still like to jump on each others heads.  The kittens stay together which makes it easier to find them, but not necessarily easier to catch them, especially if they don’t want to be caught.

The weather was warm, the animals were settled, the dishes were done and the home made ice cream not yet served.  We had a full house, so it was the perfect time for the first official croquet game.  We needed to teach the youngest teen how the game is played and in the process we learned just how lumpy our lawn is, how far away the out of bounds are and how ruthless a group this is.  My first-born son AND my loving spouse took their turns knocking my ball to kingdom-come.  All to no avail, for at the end of the day there was only one thing I had to say… “Winner, winner chicken* dinner”.

*Not our chickens of course, but you get the idea!

A delightful but different 4th of July for me!  It has only just gotten warm here, which is fine with me.  My California collection of sandals have been mostly gathering dust in my closet.  I did break them out for the 4th and the BBQ we were going to, until the teen informed me that the ranch we were headed to was ‘not a sandal’ place.  Probably a good thing as the only one who has gotten a pedicure around here is the horse!

The ranch was gorgeous!  A view of our valley, sitting up high over their old barn, lush lawns with goats & chickens wandering about, cattle, horses and the family dogs.  A beautiful and stately home, yet I knew I had found a kindred spirit when I walked into their family room to see a table with so much interest and character, I thought it might be an old barn door.  Turns out it was a table she had found in an old barn.  Cleaned it up and brought it in, my kind of gal!

We’re still not use to the way they do things here, but believe me we are adjusting!  The community fireworks show was in a beautiful new park built by the Rotary club with ball fields, soccer fields and plenty of grass.

The parking  – free, the admission – free, the guy riding around handing out glow necklaces – free.

I am grateful to be here, to be making friends, and to live in a country where we can change our life if we chose.

Prior to moving to Ellensburg, we did our home work, checked out the town and secured all the local literature.  We learned that there is a major professional Rodeo, a jazz festival, art walks, rivers, lakes, wineries, wind farms and so much more.   Our favorite ad campaign was called “Putting the Ellen back in Ellensburg”.  Darn, they beat me to it!  I was planning on ‘putting the Ellen back in Ellensburg’.

You have no idea what it was like, to tell people, especially those in California, that I was moving to Ellensburg?  Their most common reaction was, ‘what’ or ‘are you serious?’  Now that I am here, it has only gotten more bizarre.  Oddly enough the people in Ellensburg seem to have no conscious link to my name and their town!  When they meet me they do not even bat an eye!

“What’s your name?”

“Ellen”

“How do you spell that?”

“Are you kidding me?”  E-l-l-e-n… like…. your town!!!

So I am Ellen in Ellensburg and this will be my first trip to the rodeo.

And then I found out that the ‘Ellen’ they were ‘putting back in Ellensburg’ is named.. Sandy.

Our home is really a combination of more than one old house.  A common practice not too long ago.  You settled your land and built your home.  Your neighbor did the same and then you both farmed or ranched and made it work or not.  The one who didn’t make ‘it’ moved on to greener pastures leaving the home behind.  The neighbor left behind went and helped themselves to the left over house, moving it and adding it on to their home.  This old home has had at least 3 other homes pieces added on to it, which shows up in our roof line and the height of the attic floor.  It also explains why we have 3 front doors (although we can only get 2 opened), a door for very small people that does not work at all in the mud room, 3 porches, and no foundation under our pantry and cold storage room (which we call the ‘fat’ room as the walls are ‘fat’ being a foot thick).

Living in a historical home in a small town is a privilege and a responsibility.  We don’t feel like it is ‘our’ house, rather we are the home’s current caretaker.  It is our job to restore it, improve it where needed and share it with others.  We are so delighted with the comments and praise we’ve received for the hard work we’ve done so far.  Our home needed (and still needs) a lot of work.  The previous owner’s son came by and was impressed with the work we’d finished.  He expressed how grateful his parents were that we were willing to restore the home.  It pleased us both so much.

From one family to another…

On the kitchen porch a well used croquet set was left behind for our family.  Our lawn will host an incredible game of croquet!  Growing up, many of our family gatherings included a game of croquet and more than one of our mallets bore the mark of my brothers’ zealous competitions.  One of our projects here has been to remove a giant bush with lots of thorns.  It took a chain saw, a tractor and 4 days working on it to finally level the old bush.  Peaking out of the dirt was a spot of bright green.  Ah, the green croquet ball!  I can just imagine a bigger brother knocking his younger brother’s ball into the monster bush of thorns.  Slamming doors, crying to the parents, no one willing to dig for the ball.  It was gone… until now and another family takes their turn.

I have been meaning to make a check list for feeding the animals.  As the number of teens we will be feeding this summer is increasing as well, I’d better get on it!  We left California with 2 dogs, a cat and one resident teen.  We are now at 2 dogs, 1 cat, 2 kittens, 1 horse, 10 chickens and the teen rates will swell between 2 to 5 for the next two months.  More importantly Pat, our chief cook will be gone at dinner time for the next few weeks, which sadly to say for everyone, just leaves…. me.  I’m going to need a plan.

I never knew chickens had an awkward phase, but our 10 have to be the ugliest bunch of fowl I’ve ever seen.  They are half way between their chicken feathers and their chicken fluff and their feeders emptying quickly especially when the gawky things knock it down!

Our beautiful paint Dolly, is a white horse with brown patches and loves to roll.  So she often looks like a brown horse with browner patches.  Luckily, she can feed herself from the abundant pasture grass we have.  However, this girl drinks like a sailor, so keeping an eye on her water trough (farm word) is a must.

The kittens are still pretty small, but do come into the house sometimes for some people time and to annoy our other cat.  More on this another day, however, their bowls empty quicker everyday as well.

The dogs have an amazingly accurate internal clock and begin barking for their super at exactly 5:00pm.  It is pretty hard to forget them, which right now is a good thing!

Billie Elliot the inside cat just annoys you until you feed her.  She is not beyond jumping up on the table to snack on your food or drinking out of the faucet.  (I’m never going to get use to having an inside cat).  She has become a better mouser.  Most of the mice are outside (I like to tell myself), however there are nights one wanders in.  Yes, there was a dead one left just outside our bedroom door and unfortunately I was the first one up.  (I have tried to rectify that whenever possible).  I was a tom-boy growing up, so I was actually quite proud to learn at that moment, that I am quite capable of ‘screaming like a girl’.

I know that the teens can feed themselves, but I have raised a few boys who often ate for a snack what was planned for dinner.  I also know, you can come home with a couple hundred dollars of groceries and there is “still nothing to eat in this house”.  Wouldn’t parenting be easier if feeding them was more like doing the laundry?  Give them a really big meal on Sunday, that could hold them over until Wednesday.

I’m guessing that it is a good thing that two of my favorite stores are Fred Myer and the Feed & Seed!