New Life Old Farmers

Her Majesty The Queen
Buckingham Palace
London SW1A 1AA

Dear Madam,

Could you please check on your postal service?  I realize that you are probably a tad busy, however, do you have any idea how hard it is for My Loving Spouse to keep a surprise a secret?  I mean seriously, it has BEEN KILLING HIM!

I know you are aware of the excitement and joy when a new grand baby is coming.  I wanted to send my Sister-in-law a little something special, for when her newest grand baby comes to her house, so I made her a Grannie quilt.  Quilts are an American art form.  We take old fabric scraps or even perfectly good fabric, cut it up, sew it back together and it is…even better.My Loving Spouse has been barely able to contain himself.  He has so wanted to tell his sister of this surprise.  He often asked if he could tell her, but still I kept him sworn to secrecy.  You see, I wanted to surprise her.  We knew the baby was coming…and we didn’t know what the sex would be…you English are so much more patient than we are, well, except for My Loving Spouse.  I would have even gotten it to them before the baby came, if she hadn’t (yes, ‘she’ isn’t that lovely…a girl) come 4 weeks early AND IF YOUR POSTAL SERVICE COULD HAVE KEPT A SECRET!

Madam, I paid a TON of money to ship one box to England.  I filled out the customs form…

1. Quilt

1. bag of Reese’s mini-peanut butter cups (No, you cannot get them across the pond, you should try them…they are small and sweet, I’m sure you’ll love them as much as my Sister-in-law does)

1. Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme book, because this is what my mother always liked to give new parents, so I kept her tradition going, now I know you know something about tradition.

I was eager for their surprise…I’d even managed to keep My Loving Spouse from spilling the beans for months…and then HRH Postal Service ruined it!  They inquired of my Sister-in-law…was she expecting a parcel from us and if so what was in it?

Seriously?!

…and so… My Loving Spouse got to tell her…that yes, we’d sent a parcel and it was a quilt…a Grannie quilt.

Now Madam, from one Grandma to another…really?  Could you please get your postal service to clean up their act and keep a secret for a change!

Thank you ever so much,

PS: I am sorry that the last picture is fuzzy, but I think you get the idea.

PPS:  Good luck with your soon to be Great Grand Child…would you like a quilt?

PPPS:  I realize that it is tradition that I close this letter with..

I have the honor to be, Madam, Your Majesty’s humble and obedient servant.

…but I am just a bit too American to say that…so I will end by wishing you well.

It is important when living in the country to have a reliable IT department and at Glory Farm it is no different.  Like many people our age we turn to Team Offspring to fill this role and let me tell you, it is helpful to have a lot of kids to pick from.  If you don’t have a lot of kids, I highly recommend adopting some soon, like we have done, especially if you are going to make some complicated technological changes or as in our case, you are just replacing the dead laptop.

We’d asked Number Four Son to Sunday diner, because we’d missed having him around.  We also wanted to give him a packet of pork chops before we ate them all.  (Yes, these pork chops are what used to be our pigs and I’d have to say that they are….delicious).  The fact that diner was 24 hours after replacing the dead laptop and multiple hours already spent irritated at the replacement laptop was just a bonus to us.

The family was gathered with a glass of wine, the pork roast was cooking and the IT department (Number Four Son) was doing their task…already shaking his head and asking those kind of questions…

‘Do you remember your password for (fill in the blank here..this might have happened more than once)’

Whereby most of the other members of the family present started laughing!

Number Two Son mumbled something like, “This is why I don’t help them with their computers any more”.

My Loving Spouse quickly exited the room and I explained that I HAD dutifully recorded and kept my secret passwords hidden on my phone but someone (My Loving Spouse) had accidentally erased them all when he was trying to ‘clean up’ the phone…which might be why it is important to have an IT department.

It was about this time, that I reminded Number Four Son who might have been shaking his head some more, that we were having his favorite pie for dessert.  Team Offspring started shouting out my not-so-secret passwords and eventually the IT department got everything transferred over.  There was more head shaking and a bit more mumbling about stuff (technical computer term that means ‘crap’) that was hiding in the transfer that he got rid off as well.

Our new plan for future family meals might include a glass of wine, make the IT department comfortable and then pull out our laptops…and remind him…we have pie!

Reactive planning…it just sounds so much better than the truth which is usually…’whoops’.  We have had horses since almost the day we rolled in here to Glory Farm, but almost all of them arrived due to ‘reactive planning‘.  The first horse was to ride, easy enough.  The second horse was to keep the first horse company and as it was a baby, it couldn’t be ridden anyway.  The third horse was so that we had two horses to ride, because it isn’t all that much fun to ride by oneself.  The first and third horses had different gaits, so one naturally went faster than the other, which made rides…still, not all that fun…reactive planning.  The second horse (now old enough) was broken and trained, but for mature (old) riders, it is still not a good match…and she needs a lot of time and attention…just like young children…so My Loving Spouse has been on a hunt to find or trade a great young horse for a good older horse…and it seems he has done it.Our sweet curious Dixie should have a fuller life with all the joys a good horse can bring as we now have another old boy with a delightful temperament.  This is what found me spending 2 hours of the afternoon standing in the yard holding this big boy for the fairer.  The sky was unbelievably blue with puffy white clouds and the wind was just a breeze…it was a gorgeous day.His feet were a mess and long over due for a trim, so Our Favorite Farrier had his work cut out for him…trimming, clipping, shaping shoes……and then…ta da…the ultimate pedicure!Words of horse buying wisdom from My Loving Spouse…

‘Never buy a horse named, Killer’

…so ending up with a horse named ‘Speedy’ at our age…reactive planning…horses are not like dogs and don’t really come to their name anyway…so we just change the name…

‘Big Red’…’Big Jake’…’Rusty’…and then My Loving Spouse came home from work and saw the fading sun shinning on his big red boy and it was beautiful, so his name, ‘Sundance’.  We are so hopping our Reactive Planning is at an end and that we finally have two horses to ride on what we hope is many a happy trail!

I left for the air port just as dawn was cracking and in case you are wondering…I am not really a morning (get out of bed) kind of person.  I’m a drink coffee in bed kind of morning person, so to be up early and setting off…well, it meant that it was important.  I pulled out the car and looked at our house and thought…home.

I stood at the air port and waited and sent a message…

Then My Girl was there and we cried.  We hugged and we cried, big fat tears that left streaks on our faces, and we hugged again and again.

10 weeks previously I’d stood in the same air port and seen My Girl set off for Hong Kong alone.  In case you are wondering…10 weeks is a long time…in another country…where the only people you know are the ones you’ve just met… and you have to live with 5 of them in one room…a five girl dorm room…can you say difficult?  And yet, the growing begins…  The school is intense…and she is challenged, but stays strong to who she is…and grows…

There starts to be a realization for her, that she’d like to make a difference by works of service…they want to make a difference sharing God’s word…and to be completely honest, there is some tension…it becomes clear that it is time to go…home.

But, but, but…

What about the difference?  She left to make a difference, was it all for naught?  No, nope, not at all…I’d reached out of my comfort zone and invited a Team to pray for My Girl each day of the month while she was away and it has changed me…and it has changed some of them as well.  As this team has responded to her early return…I am shown what humility is, what faith is, what love is…and it has made a difference to us all.

‘Sweet L., know that God is pleased with you and loves you for who you are, and so do we….

I put praying for L. on my calendar as a recurring event, so I will continue to pray for her on the 20th of the month throughout the year…

God bless you for asking us to be a part of her journey…

her prayer partners are very proud of her…

she is definitely ‘good enough”, in fact, she is pretty extraordinary…

she put herself in a position for God to use her, and did a splendid job…

What happened has been amazing and unexpected.  As I was more and more aware of my commitment (to pray for L.) I began to see/hear the number 7 (that was MY day) everywhere.  On the radio, in addresses, in prices at the grocery store, etc.  I began to pray honestly and actually listen for a response.  I tell you all this because I am grateful to L. for the ripples in the pond so to speak.  I want her to know that she not only impacted the people on the soil so far, far away from home but also someone she has never even met, like me.’

…and this I think…is what home is, sometimes it is a place, but often it just the people..that we connect too…and we are blessed.

Tractors have gears.  I might not have known that a few years ago, and some of my city friends might not have known that as well…but it is true!  Tractors have gears and I don’t just mean forward and backward.  Most of my gear language knowledge comes from My Loving Spouse (The Brit).  When I learn vocabulary from him, I am never quite sure if I am speaking ‘American’, so there you go, that is my very own ‘disclaimer’.  The gears have ‘ranges’ too.  ‘Low range’ for slow and ‘high range’ for not so slow.  Except, here is the problem…everything is trial and error.  There are NO fancy dials (actually even the dials we do have don’t work), to say…Low Range=SLOW, although occasionally there is the voice of My Loving Spouse saying,

‘Why do you have it in that range?’

To which there is no real answer, because a lot of times I am not really sure which ‘range’ I am actually in.

Changing gears is a lot of fun too (enter sarcastic font here).  The gears don’t slide in like they do in a modern sports car (not that I’ve driven many of those) the gears grind like you’d expect on a tractor that is older than I am, here’s the math (56).  I mostly drive in whatever gear I can get my tractor into.

There is a gear called ‘road gear’.  Yep, that’s right it is for ‘fast’…for driving on the road…for getting from one field to another or for visiting your neighbor on your tractor.

What I have learned, is that tractors kick up a lot of dust-dirt-mayhem and it goes down the back of your shirt, on your neck and in your ears…so I always wear a hoody…with the hood up.  I also protect my seat…my seat, not the tractor seat.  The tractor seat is often wet and it is metal, so it is wet and cold…I try to never sit on the tractor seat without a barrier between me and it…usually an old cat food feed bag (feeding all those cats is good for something)!

Driving my tractor is good for my heart…it calms me down, it makes me feel productive and it is best when both my head and my seat are protected.  Every once in a while I accidentally put the tractor into ‘road gear’ (fast), when I don’t want ‘road gear’, I just want go-forward-sort-of-normal-gear and I get a big unhappy surprise, a bit of whiplash and I have to jump on the brakes, before I run into something.

Lately, that is how life has felt, as if I’ve been slammed into road gear when I wasn’t ready for it…or just didn’t plain old want it.  The truth is, I’m just doing my best with a bunch of old difficult gears.  Tractor driving is a lot like life!

Lord,

help me to find the right gear…

keep the dirt out of my ears…

make a productive difference…

do what is good for my heart…

visit my friends…

and not run over or into much…

Amen

Cats are mostly good for one thing…eating rodents and when I say ‘eating rodents’, I mean all of the rodent, not part of the rodent, not a piece of the rodent…NO left overs!  Especially no left overs where I am likely to find them.  That is it, that is their JOB…rodent removal and for that I appreciate their efforts.  Oh, and one more good thing about outside cats is that they hide their poop, that is pretty good too.

When we moved here we had a LOT of mice.  Mice that liked to wave at us, stick out their little mouse tongues and go, “Nanny, nanny poo poo, you can’t catch me.”  We immediately got some mighty barn cats and if you know the story…you know that more cats keep showing up.  I think Glory Farm was ‘marked’ in a secret feral/stray cat kind of way, to say…’free food bring your feline friends’.

My Loving Spouse would assure me in an odd way by saying,

‘Oh Sweetie, don’t worry…barn cats don’t usually live that long’…which wasn’t really a very nice thought either.  I don’t want them dead, I just don’t want too many of them here…to which I have about as much control as I do the wind to not blow (and if you’ve ever been to Ellensburg on a windy day, you will totally get the idea)….none!

So to date we have…Pooh, who is an oxymoron or a ‘nice cat’.

Tigger

RabbitHarvey

The Damn House Cat…and now…

Ginger

What can I say?  I am out numbered!

I certainly hope he finishes his meals!

Quilts are built by blocks.

A bit like life…

Blocks of what we do…

Who we are…

Who we do life with…

A bit of our history…

Our strengths…

…and our not so strengths…

…those times we tend to come unraveled…

or need to be ‘unsewn’…

..the gift of second chances…

I still find it astounding that I sew/quilt…

with passion…even more astounding…

I don’t use patterns, because I don’t really sew so a picture might be my guide…

Like in life, I make a lot of mistakes…I have to stop…

Figure out where I am going…

It is hard…

The fabric does not always co-operate…

I pray as I fill in the blocks…

Lord, help me.

Lord, help me to be…

..the wife my husband needs me to be…

Lord, help me to be the mother my children need me to be..

Lord, help me to be the Grandmother my Grandson needs me to be..

Lord, help me to be the sibling my brothers and sisters need me to be..

Lord, help me to be the neighbor, the friend…I need to be…

Then I start to begin to feel…just a little bit more on track…

…as my focus improves…

…I cannot do it alone…

I receive loving, laughing friendship…

the encouragement to keep going…

…and I am blessed.

I have a love-hate relationship with tractors and trailers.  I love my tractors, the trailers not so much.  The gigantic flatbed trailer that is about a block long, makes a lot of banging noises when you drive it and is impossible to see as you drive it (‘that’s what your mirrors are for’ per My Loving Spouse) is the worst of all of our trailers to drive…and that is just forward.  The thought of having to possibly back that trailer up or drive it in populated areas makes me rather ill.

There are two types of trailer drivers, those who drive forward and backward and those of us Who Do Not Back Up.  We Who Do Not Back Up are sort of like a special club…almost a support group.  We don’t try to fix each other.  We understand and attempt to plan a route that includes no backing up.

We had a problem.  The herd needed more hay.  The best way to buy it is from a big hay company that sells ‘kick out’ hay.  Hay not good enough for exporting, but good enough for the herd.  Except…we have to pick it up…between the hours of 9 am-noon…and My Loving Spouse The Trailer Driver Forward and Backwards Guy is busy…all week…and we needed it now…which is why we ended up in an empty parking lot over the weekend for ‘trailer backing up lessons’ and honestly I’d have to say…I hated it.

Love of the herd found me calling the hay company early yesterday morning.

‘I want to make sure I go the right way’  (which is sort of code to those who belong to We Who Do Not Back Up to really mean ‘Lord have mercy do NOT make me back this trailer up’), I said to the gal who is in charge of telling ‘kick out hay buyers’ where to go what to do, when to weigh the truck, where to go with the truck and possibly making them back up!

‘Oh, I don’t back up my trailer either’, she said on the phone.  Oh, thank goodness, I thought, she belongs to the group (We Who Do Not Back Up)!  I managed to go to the hay company, get the hay, drive through their yard, not get in the way of about 5 gigantic fork lifts, and 3 hay trucks, get home without side swiping anything or anyone.  I did not need to back up until home and then it was only for me and I will say, I did a fairly impressive job.

I stacked the bails in the barn, fed the starving animals (who are all a bunch of liars, claiming to be starving every time they see me) and needed to put the trailer away.  5 back up tries later and I decided to leave the trailer out in the North 4 to be dealt with by My Loving Spouse.  I had to go to town and needed that darn trailer off of the truck, if I was going to do it safely for all of us, except that the trailer didn’t want to let go of the truck.  I could not get the trailer hitch to let go of the ball thing.  I needed more power…in came Blue to the rescue.  I used the front end loader to pick up the trailer, which I had to do twice before the trailer let go of the ball, but it worked…and that is just one of the many reasons why I love tractors so much better than trailers.

It still amazes me that part of my answer to a problem includes driving a tractor and actually knowing how the front end loader even works!  Life is good…as long as I do not need to back up.

Suffice it to say, that chickens cannot count.  They’re not too smart or as Our Friend the Farmer says, ‘There’s a reason why chickens are at the end of the food chain.’

Lucy the red hen has been sitting on her eggs for just about forever!  She had 6 eggs…2 eggs began chipping and … died.  They never made it out of the shell.  Yes, we were a bit sad for her, but…then again…to quote Our Friend the Farmer…’They just don’t all make it.’  Four eggs left and then…there was one little chick, alive…Ginger Chick…a sort of red striped cutie.One more egg started to chip…we moved the chipping egg, two more ‘nothing doing’ eggs and Ginger Chick into the chick box along with Lucy…who to our delight sat back down on everyone…chick, eggs and all.  However, one chick is not exactly a ‘clutch’ and we had little hope of the remaining eggs hatching.

My Loving Spouse has been yearning for some Buff Orpington hens.

‘Oh, Sweetie…when you are on your way back from Spokane, why don’t you run into your favorite feed store and pick up a few chicks.  We’ll slip them under Lucy and then she’ll be a happy hen.  Look for Buff Orpingtons’

“That’s it?  That’s all we have to do?”

‘Chickens are not too smart.’

So, that is how I found myself driving 1 1/2 hours with chirping chicks in a chick carry out container.I kept moving them into the sunlight coming trough the window to keep them warm on the car ride home.  I had the heater cranked up as well and it was one chirpy ride home to deliver the Buffies to My Loving Spouse.He slipped the chicks under Lucy the red hen who now has 1 Ginger Chick, 2 black chicks (because her nothing eggs turned into chicks) and 2 Buff Orpington chicks…and she is a happy mother hen…believing that they are all hers and they are…hers to cluck after, keep warm, and care for now.…and we…have more chicks than we need…but they sure are cute right now and I love how they huddle under the wings of the mother hen to keep themselves warm and protected.  Spring has certainly sprung!