New Life Old Farmers

The hardest part of painting a cow, is getting her to stand still.  The paint, of course, can be purchased at Amazon.  No, I am not painting Agnes.  She is perfect just the way she is, just a perfect black cow.  (Well, she’d be a tiny bit more perfect if she were ‘in the family way’, but we are working on that.)

There is a trend lately, to join together sip wine and paint on canvas.  We might live in the country, but these opportunities come to us as well.  The art we paint, just has a bit more meaning to us, than say a rendering of Monet’s ‘Water Lillies’.  We joined together to paint cows.  (Oh, be still my heart).

A night out with My Loving Spouse to do something fun and different.  It was just what we needed.  We showed up to the Blue Rock Saloon.  My Loving Spouse with sharpened pencil in hand.I had a different set of tools.

I had never painted on canvas, so I was both a tad nervous and quite excited.  We were given some simple instructions.One of us had been practicing their reality cow rendering.

Then it was time to add some paint.  I am sure you’ve noticed that there is a disproportionate number of black AND WHITE cows in all cow art.  Black cows do not receive the recognition that they deserve.  You can be sure, that my art would reflect my cow.
My Loving Spouse on the other hand was just having fun.

What fun it was too!  If you get the chance to join together with friends or people you don’t even know, who become your friend when they pass you the black paint, to enjoy a night out painting, I highly recommend it.  If you get to paint cows, well, as they say in Ellensburg, that is ‘even better‘!

I took a walk down the road the other day.  I had some produce to deliver to Agnes.  Agnes has been on sabbatical this summer.

Black Angus Cows have really one job, which is to produce more Black Angus Offspring.  Agnes took this summer off.  All you cattlemen, should now take a collective gasp.  However, it is important to remember that in 3 years, Agnes calved 5 living calves, so she is sort of ahead of schedule.

Last fall, when Agnes went to the ‘prom’, there were 4 bulls in the field.  We think, quite possibly, that all the bulls started arguing, fighting and showing off (as intact male animals are sometimes capable of doing) thereby preventing each other from getting to ‘dance’ with Agnes, when she was really ‘ready to  dance’.  Anyway…no calf this summer.

Agnes was not happy.  She was bellowing for bulls and seemed lonely.  She is a herd animal and she refuses to recognize the horses as her ‘herd’.  Our Friend the Farmer said she could spend the rest of the summer down the road with some of his young cows and…..a bull.  I gave Agnes a fresh set of shots, we loaded her up in the trailer and dropped her off in the field down the road.  Agnes came out of the trailer and ran across the field to meet up with the herd.  I felt sort of sad for her, that she had been alone.

I have checked on her and brought her a few bananas, which makes the other cows wonder what in the world is going on.  I think they sort of roll their cow eyes at us.

We are hoping she got the opportunity to ‘dance’ a bit with the bull.  She should be home soon and with any luck, she’ll be ‘in the family way’!

This might sound a tad ‘bossy’, and because I did not fall far from my mother’s ‘bossy tree’, I do try to be careful.  (Yes, it is true.  My mother had nicknames such as, “that bossy blonde” and “Bossy Aunt Betty”, just to name a few).  I am going on record here as not being bossy, or preachy or pushy.  I am being encouraging.  

Grand-parenting is fairly magical.  I love THE Grandchildren with a passion.   They fill my heart with joy, which is not really a surprise.  Here comes the really cool part…I feel the same way with Mr. T and Z.

When I see those little people, my Grand-parenting kicks in.  I do things like spend my dinner money buying them treats at the fair, even though it might be right before their dinner time.Things come out of my mouth without planning, that are pure Grand-parenting.  I saw Z the next day at the fair with her friend.  She called to me and I hugged her and said, “Do you have enough spending money?”  Those words do not usually come out of my mouth.  Because I was able to offer, my heart was filled with joy.

This post is to encourage some (not all) of you (and you know who you are) to go find some Grandchildren.  Since I have never seen a Grandkids R’ Us, you may have to work at it, but trust me, it is easier than you’d think.  Go to a nearby elementary school and ask, if there is a teacher there who would like an adult to sit and read with students.  Be willing to go every week, maybe for an hour…then just show up and wait for the magic to happen.

Trust me, you will be blessed.

A few years ago, I talked My Loving Spouse into making some chalkboard pigs.  I LOVE ours!  It hangs over the kitchen sink, where a window should be.  

Apparently, the pig speaks Chinese.

We leave our special/random messages for one another.

I think everyone should have a pig.We did have to glue his tail back on, after an unfortunate tail incident.

Even with a few scars or a glued on tail, we can still be a positive messenger…tell the family what is important…

This message may be up for a while….

…and we are blessed.

I say, find yourself a pig.

I have been painting the barns.  Well, I have been painting as far as I could reach comfortably with a ladder (a tall ladder), a paint sprayer and a can of wasp spray.  All of which did not get the job done, enter My Loving Spouse with a plan.  We attempted the plan yesterday……it didn’t work.

Today, we had a ‘new’ plan.

This plan included my driving our tractor, Blue, while he painted on a ladder…that was in the bucket of Blue.

Seriously, what could go wrong?We carefully went over our signals for when I was to lower the bucket, raise the bucket, move the tractor….not drop the bucket with My Loving Spouse in the bucket!  

Check.

I sat in the tractor careful to do everything exactly right, and thought…this truly is marital trust.  He did a great job painting the white trim.  I did a great job driving the tractor.  Any little white paint marks that dropped onto the barn red, we are pretending is bird poop.We got it done.  It looks great.  More importantly…no husbands were harmed in the painting of this barn.

We are a darned good team…and we are blessed.

The end of summer is in the air, in a way I’d never experienced in the first half century of my life living in Southern California.  There, the end of August meant very little, other than the prospect of a month or more of continued hot weather.

I have stopped watering the vegetable garden in fear of rotting my plethora of pumpkins…and all my green tomatoes just keep staying green.

The geese are in the air, taunting My Loving Spouse, as if they know, that it is not hunting season…yet.

While we are still barbecuing, our croquet games start before dinner rather than after.  The season stats would show, that although I’ve played the most, I’ve won the least.  No wonder Team Offspring just laughs, when I remind them with my ‘pre-game’ admonishment of “No Crying When I Clean Your Clock”.

The garden projects are not really complete, just broken into phases called ‘this year’ and ‘next year’.

There is a ‘Hoedown in The Down Town’.  Lights are strung and the community comes.  The event is fun, festive and free.  Folks in sandals, boots and sneakers are all one, when the music starts.  As we have finally reached the point, where all of his bad joints have been replaced with new ones, My Loving Spouse gets home from work early, to take me dancing.

…and I am blessed.

Our pups have been making their transition from Glory Farm to their new family.  These families are so important to us.  This is a huge reason to do this litter…helping good homes, get good dogs…

“June” and Carl….a second ‘family’ set.  Carl’s sister has Remi, one of our puppies from last year….  I cannot even count the number of times Carl thanked us for this little pup.

We love for our pups to go to friends, or friends of friends….

This darling girl will go to live the island life on Whidbey Island, via a Southern California friend of ours….

Speaking of Sisters…These 3 cried when they heard they were getting a puppy, but which pup?  Big sister is holding their pup, while little sister is holding their Aunt’s pup!  Sister’s getting darling black girls…Here she is…

What about the boys?  Brother’s getting our only set of black boys?Diesel and Maverick are off to great homes….these boys just make us smile.

and before we knew it, then there were 2…

..and we are blessed.

When I think of last week, I can only think…chaos.  The best kind of chaos and I smile.  There is that warm feeling in my heart, contentment and joy.  The house was full of family and dogs (14 to be exact, 4 adults and 10 puppies).  The puppies were socialized.

The weather was hot.  Hot for here, hot for anywhere and no Ellensburg breeze/wind, 100 degrees, an old home with no A/C.  However, here it does cool off at night and the mornings are lovely and it is only the afternoons that are nasty.  We appreciated the mornings and by 4:oo pm, we instituted the ‘Mike hour’ and daily worked our way through a different Hard Mike’s Lemonade flavor.  The people were socialized.

There were birthdays to celebrate.  

Cousins came from over the hill with their Grandson, brothers came, friends came….kids and dogs and chaos…the best kind.  The family from different branches, with different names were socialized.More cousins came, San Diego cousins, because after all they were only in Portland and we had puppies.

We found them beds and said, ‘Just stay’.

The pond was played in.  THE Grandson helped me put the candles on his Mama & Daddy’s cake.

Water balloons were launched, because when I saw the launcher, complete with 100 self sealing balloons, I knew that my son, needed it for his 29th birthday.

The San Diego boy cousin rode the mini bike…and rode it into the barn, cut his leg open and it was time for stitches, ‘real life’ was in session!  They changed their flight, and as their Mom got them organized, I took these younger cousins into town…for ice cream and bought them books, because I like doing both of those things with kids.  I told them stories of My Special Uncle, their Great Grandfather, who taught me to do those things with kids, by doing those things for me.  I told them stories about their Grandfather, my cousin, the funniest man I have ever known, who died too young, and they’ve never know…

I guess, that is my job now, my gift…to be the family story-teller and help paint the family picture…and probably, to buy water balloons.

…and I am blessed.

I do not really like to paint.  I do, however, like the results painting brings.  I hadn’t planned to paint this summer, but as we know here….plans are often over rated.  I have painted enough this summer to pass on 6 really crucial tips that will make any painting job you tackle better than ever!

1.  Paint Value  Buy good quality (possibly pricey) paint.  High quality paint makes the job easier and looks better, which is the whole point.  Sherwin Williams and I are pretty much best buds.  I would love it, if they were paying me big sums of money (or even small sums of money) to say that, but they do not really know this blog exists.  Sherwin keeps track of everything I buy, so I can get the same color again when I need it, because if you think that I might keep track, you’d be wrong most of the time.  My Loving Spouse and I had one of our biggest discussions/arguments about the cost of buying paint for the barns for me to paint them this summer.  Decent paint for me to do the painting is not a frivolous expenditure.  Someone/My Loving Spouse was acting (only for a little while) like I was buying myself diamonds or cows or something!
2. Appropriate tools  Summer time, farm, wasp spray…enough said.
   
3. Crisp lines.  Good painting outcomes are always the goal, especially when you don’t really even like to paint.  Getting crisp lines in an old house was always problematic.  My Loving Spouse heard of a new way to get sharp edges and let me tell you they worked!  I zipped to Sherwin’s for some Alabaster White for ceilings, (after all Johanna Gaines loves it), so I figured I could not go wrong.  The room had already been painted green, but we needed to clean up the trim and the ceilings.  My Loving Spouse applied painter’s tape, a bead of caulk, ran his finger down the caulk, painted over the tape and caulk, then pulled the tape off to crisp lines.  We were practically giddy with excitement!
4. Cleaning paint brushes.   Not everyone will agree with this tip, but let me tell you, it has made my painting life sooooo much easier.  Since I am the one who does most of the painting, making it easier on me is important.  I state this up front, because My Loving Spouse does not actually agree with my use of this tip, but I am standing by it.  The best way to clean your paint brushes effectively is to just throw them away.  No, I am not wasteful, this is just practical.  I cannot get them clean, and it drives me crazy and no, I do not want to learn how.  Remember, I don’t even like to paint.  New paint brushes are a small price to pay to have me do most of the painting around here.  P.S.  I think Sherwin probably doesn’t mind, that I buy new brushes.
5. Find a Friend  I am blessed by a Sweet Friend with a love of painting.  No, I do not understand it and you can bet, I am not going to make fun of it, because she likes to help me paint!  I don’t like to paint, but I do like spending time with my friend.  I have even spent time painting her fence, because she needed help, and because every job is better when you do it with someone you like.
6. Pat Yourself On The Back  Painting old barns is a lot like pulling weeds.  No one else will really notice that you’ve done the job.  People (other than you) will only really notice when it needs doing.  Sit back, enjoy your hard work and maybe…buy yourself something special like wine…or a cow.