New Life Old Farmers

Even vegetable gardens have ‘rules’ or ‘guidelines’ or ‘advice’.   ‘Advice’, ‘don’t put your garden in until Mother’s day’, and since we’ve had frosts recently this is good ‘advice’.  Then there are the ‘rules’.  My Loving Spouse informed me that you must ‘never plant your garden on Sunday’, (this one is new to me, and is an old wife’s tale, but  I am thinking it might have been started by a wife/mother who didn’t want to spend Mother’s day planting her vegetable garden, just wondering…)

Our garden is almost ‘in’.  We’ve a few items to plant still, but the bulk of the work is done…except for the fence and except for the pumpkins, which we know need a spot to wander and grow big and except for figuring out the watering and except for the growing and the eating!  I will be working on fencing, as the dogs like to run right through the garden and the cats like to poop in it, which is sort of gross.  My vision is for another picket fence, the antique bed I scored at the farm auction for a gate, nice markers, straightly planted lines and poles for beans to climb, a whimsical scarecrow, oh and a flower bed across the front… a Pinterest pinning fantasy.  Yes, well, this is what we really have:

Beds for a gate – check

Nice markers – check

Straightly planted lines – sort of check

Poles for beans to climb – check

A whimsical scarecrow – no

Any kind of scarecrow? – no

Flower seeds planted – check

Flower seeds stepped on and stomped on while dealing with fence issues – check

Picket fence – NO

All it will need to be complete is mostly patience……figures.

I did start to work on the ‘temporary’ front fence on my own.  (‘Temporary’ meaning… I don’t want this to be here for next year’s vegetable garden, but I am practicing patience).   I am sort of proud of my new-found fencing abilities and banging the fence posts in with the fence-post-banger-inner is always kind of fun.  I put in 4 and had to move 2, moving them is actually the hard part.  I had to rely on my trusty assistant, Jubal to help pull the fence posts out and trust me, I was a tad bit more careful the second time I banged them in.  I installed the front and side part of the ‘temporary’ fence with left over wire netting (I don’t really know what it is called) that we saved from the ugly old dog run.  It worked well and I love re-using the stuff we have here.

The back fence will begin to be built tonight.  This will be the non-temporary picket fence, as we have the wood and we want the protection for the plants as a sort of wind break.  Digging the post holes is an easy job for the two of us, but I could well mess it up on my own, so occasionally I get smart enough to not try something, that will have to be redone… not always, but sometimes.

The vegetable garden has been an item we’ve been talking about and dreaming about long before we packed our first box to move.  To have the seeds in the ground has been immensely rewarding and exciting for us!  Turning the old dog run I found “not particularly pleasant to view” (which means I found it ugly and I hated that I had to look at it right out our bedroom window) into something that will be growing and exciting and someday… Pinterest pin-able….is what they say in Ellensburg… ‘even better’!

Saying ‘yes’, when the question is “Can we come help?” seems to be a no brainer, after all we’ve lots of work to do here inside and out, if we are to someday complete the restoration of Glory Farm.  However, the truth is I am only comfortable with help for small jobs… ripping stuff up, weeding, painting, burning stuff up…. work that takes hours, not days.  Becoming comfortable with even that help took time and was not easily come by for me.

Saying ‘yes’ to sharing Glory Farm is not hard.  This home is to be shared with our family and our friends…and our friends we haven’t met yet, which is what Dear John was last year when he expressed a desire to come to Glory Farm and help.  He wanted to do a project.  We were to meet at Number One Son’s wedding to Dear John’s niece, but we hadn’t met yet, when we said, ‘yes’.  I was learning to say ‘yes’, but somewhere still down deep was that little voice screaming…’are you crazy?  You are not supposed to ask for help, or take it when it is offered.  What were you thinking?’

But here’s the thing… I/we did say ‘yes’ because Glory Farm is a very beautiful place and we know we need to share it.  I guess that means sharing all of it… the fresh eggs, the poop, the dust, the dogs that bark, and the restoration as well.  So, we offered, or rather asked Dear John to help repair our windows in the family room…windows that hadn’t been opened in 100 years and had layers upon layers of paint and then some, windows that had a 1950’s trim complete with a fake wood grain paint job and it was a job that I did not understand…it wasn’t a big job, it was a huge job.  The truth is that by the second day into it, I realized what an enormous job we’d asked him to undertake and it made me extremely uncomfortable.  What was I thinking?

But the thing is… when you say ‘yes’, there is an opportunity.  To take a mess and make it better, and I do not mean the windows.  I mean me… because I said ‘yes’ we spent a week with positive, hard-working, encouraging people, that we did not know and who now I count as dear friends.  I could have missed the blessing…..

and the windows…. absolutely gorgeous!! 

My Loving Spouse is smitten with Nelly.  He thinks about her, talks about her and is making plans for her.  It is a good thing she is a very old, rusty truck or I could be just a wee bit jealous.  I guess for him this truck is a bit like my cow obsession, a lot of our conversations begin as if we’d both been talking about her or at least thinking about her, when really it was just him.

“Sweetie, can you imagine that NAPA has the parts for that truck just sitting on the shelf?” he said, with awe in his voice.   I agreed that it was indeed amazing, well, because I am a good wife and eye rolling is not nice, not when one of us is obsessed.  After all he went and sat looking at cows with me for a very long time, the least I can do is be encouraging when it comes to truck parts.  After all, even I can admit that parts being easily available for a truck that is older than I am is sort of incredible.  (Note to the offspring: NO eye rolling!)

His friends old and new are also happily into his truck obsession.  This week we have Dear John and Dear John’s Wife with us and in the middle of a perfectly good conversation one of these men go off on a truck tangent and start speaking in a completely different language.  It happens so regularly that Dear John’s Wife and I now just look at each other and say, “oh, there they go again”, the change in language is often followed with a change in location and before we know it, they have stopped rebuilding our windows and have pinched the battery out of Jubal again and are putting plugs and cords and stuff into Nelly.  Tonight they even made the truck turn over and sound like a truck for a minute, quickly followed by lots of male whooping and hollering… ah, it was a glorious moment.  Dear John started to hatch more plans about fuel pumps and towing it to get it to go even farther with My Loving Spouse in the driver’s seat, at which point My Loving Spouse reminded him that there is no driver’s seat.

This picture is actually a few weeks old, as after it was taken My Loving Spouse opened the glove box to find the last registration for Nelly 1973, the original manual 1952 and a plethora of wasp nests.  The wasp nests were also in what was left of the seats, which are now sitting in back of the truck with at least one full can of wasp spray being used to protect all Nelly-lovers from their nasty sting.

 Nelly was bought for fun and so far she certain is.  There is now great debate amongst the male Nelly-lovers… paint her red again or leave her rusty with a clear coat for protection.  Big decisions here, big decisions.

Phew!  We are having a very productive time here and there is work happening everywhere, inside and out!

Number One Son and The Bride (who will need a new name soon, as My Mother would say that you are a ‘bride’ for one year, and she knew stuff like that or at least she said it with such certainty, that everyone believed she knew stuff like that) were here to spend time with family, as well as knock stuff down & burn it up.  The old cattle feed in the North 4 has been reduced to a pile of ashes and singed barbed wire.  What a difference a day makes and it is looking so much better.  Last year this time, we were just starting to clean up and burn, so it is really exciting to think we might possibly be nearing the end of this phase, except for Number One Son as this is his favorite thing to do…

Dear John (no, not John Deere) has been working non-stop ripping out our windows, sanding, measuring, planning, double checking and configuring.  He keeps saying he is having ‘fun’, and I just hope it is true as we could never, ever cover the work he asked to do for us with anything like mere money.  We are grateful beyond measure and worry only that when he is done these windows will look so good, that the rest of the house will need a window upgrade too.  (For his side of the adventure you’ll need to go to his blog).

I have gotten to spend time with my new friend, Dear John’s Wife.  She is a card craft lover and has gotten some of my paper craft stuff out, which beacons me so temptingly!  When I get a minute or two, I’m going to sit down and make a few cards, which I haven’t done since moving, and is always more fun to do it with a friend.  We also weeded the big flower bed, it was sunny and hot and if left on my own, I’d probably have quit somewhere in the middle, but she excels in SAR (Search and Rescue) so she kept us moving forward, slowly and diligently, searching out each weed and ripping the little sucker out!  I was so grateful and we were so pleased with our work, even though weed pulling is one of those jobs that is only noticeable when you don’t do it.  However, we both know it is looking good.

Meanwhile Turk The City Dog kept watch from the safety of the shady porch, safe from all the farm things that scare him…chickens, horses, cow, other dogs…however he did find one thing on the farm he likes…cow poop…prefers it fresh and rolled in it after a small romp in the pond.  Just goes to show you can take the dog out of the city, but you cannot take him too close to the cow poop.

PS: Yes, Turk The City Dog promptly had a bath, as he is staying in his home away from city, a trailer and his owners did not relish the idea of it smelling like cow poop.

This weekend there were many split seconds of recognizing the blessing… It seems that in that split second when I acknowledge the blessing, my gratitude grows and my appreciation for where we are, who we are with, how we are loved, blossoms.

The Teen went to the prom…. with a nice group of kids…. with a nice young man…. and she looked great, but 4 days earlier we had an extreme dress crisis, (and in case you are wondering, there is no mall in Ellensburg), so we put out the ‘call’ that a dress was needed… and she ended up not only in a beautiful dress, but with multiple beautiful dresses to pick from.

The curfew was extended because it was Prom, and in the morning I was surprised to not see some Prom ‘mess’ laying about… I went to feed the animals and was more surprised to not see her car in the garage…. gulp, but I stayed quite calm and went to her room, where there was a big lump of sleeping girl…who rolled over said she’d had fun, but had been too tired to drive home….good decisions…woo and hoo!

We gathered up our new ‘family’, that we happily and gratefully acquired when Number One Son got married….who’d been enjoying the beautiful Ellensburg morning and went off to church together….such a blessing to me.

Sharing the same ‘language’, the guys come home to work on the ‘new’ truck, which does have a name… Whoa Nelly Walton…but she’ll be called Nelly for short, unless she is in ‘trouble’ then it will be the whole string of names.  Notice Jubal standing by, because the guys stole her battery for their ‘work’.  Luckily, Jubal’s pilfered parts have been replaced….

For me… more split seconds of gratitude… that we could share in this life together… the things that we treasure…our faith…our children….our journey in this adventure….our animals…our work…our mess….my gratitude blossoms.

It has been a full week.  I’ve been working (substitute aid) at the Developmental Pre-school.  The teachers are amazing, the kids are mostly adorable, (interspersed with occasional moments of not so adorable).  I became a human swing for one, ran fast enough to catch another 5-year-old trying his best to run away, refereed the problems of sharing with little people who have no oral skills and really have no desire to learn to share as everything is either ‘theirs’ or it ‘should be theirs’, and helped a 5-year-old get play dough out of his nose.  Yes, it has been a full week…

…. and I have missed the farm.  The weeds have tripled in size outside, while the dust has joined hands and danced viciously around the house inside.

We tend to look at all grass growing now and think…how can we possibly get the horses to graze that down.  My Loving Spouse set up this temporary electric fence around the orchard to get them to clean it up, thereby saving us some mowing work, and filling their bellies at the same time.  The only problem is that the darn animals seem to be picky eaters, eating the grass but leaving the weeds.  Sheesh!

We reached a wonderful milestone and it felt like a ‘ta-da’ moment.  My Loving Spouse and I were going on an after dinner trail ride, together, on our horses, finally, and there was a huge smile on my face.  We left The Teen to deal with the dinner dishes and saddled up Dolly and Beau.  Dixie was extremely unhappy about this and the normally quiet little filly was very vocal about her feelings, neighing and whinnying so loudly and so long that it could be heard far down the trail.  As well as fence kicking, running about and great heaps of equine unhappiness… she did survive however.

We only have to trot out the back gate to get to this trail, so it has long been beckoning us.  With the nights getting longer, we have more time for work, but I want to make a bit more time for play as well.  My Loving Spouse mentioned, that the next time I want to go on an after dinner trail ride, if I could not wait until 8:00 pm to ask him.  Oh, he exaggerates so… I know it wasn’t any later than 7:45 pm….

The views are different from the trail, the sounds of the frogs coming out to croak and the sun setting… it was wonderful!

Except for a few things like Dolly possibly hurting her hoof and My Loving Spouse having to walk part of the way home….

And one of life’s great mystery’s…

why one day I can try on a host of new pants all too tight, proof positive that my back side is not petite and then one week later sit in the saddle for the first real ride in a long time only to confirm that my back side is certainly not nearly padded enough!

Yes, I am still enamored with cattle and will admit, that many a conversation with My Loving Spouse starts out with, “So, how much do you think a heifer costs?”  I have been diligent in my efforts to spot cows calving and those efforts have been rewarded as I have seen 8 calves born this year, some of my non-farm friends have lived here for 12 years and never seen a one.  This makes my count impressive, of course I did put a tad bit of work into it.  A cow’s tail up is one of the tale tell signs that she is in labor.  I am now highly attuned to any cow that has her tail up.  I admit that I’ve been known to pull off to the side of the road all over the valley whenever I see a cow with her tail up.  The problem is that, a tail ‘up’ is also how cows poop, so I have also managed to stop and watch cows all over Kitittas valley do an awful lot of pooping.

When Our Friend the Farmer ‘worked his cattle‘  there were 10 cows that hadn’t yet calved.  I thought they were the cows that played hard to get, “No”, he said, “They were the shy ones”.  Whatever, the reason, there were still 11 calves to be ‘worked’, vaccinated, branded and little bulls turned into little steer.  I was given a real job, as a vaccination shooter and I did pretty well, as I managed to vaccinate all the calves, only bend one needle and most importantly did NOT vaccinate any of the humans.  I was very excited to help and ‘work the cattle’, which is the proper country way to say it, even though I really only got to ‘work the calves’.   The calves got their shots after being put down on the ground, by the farmer’s Top Man and Available Teenage Grandson.  The grandson I noticed was the most like me, with a smile on his face the whole time he was grabbing calf ears and doing his part to wrestle them to the ground.

My Loving Spouse was there to help as well, giving the calves a different set of shots and to be on hand for a little farm shenanigans.  I think by the look on their faces, this picture was taken just after Our Friend the Farmer removed a no longer ‘required’ part of a baby bull thereby turning it into a steer, and then handing the bull part to his friend….men!

I still cannot believe how much I have learned about cattle, but mostly I’m thinking I have an awful lot to learn… so I wonder, how much does a heifer cost?

If I said it was a bit ‘blustery’ out today, that would be an understatement.  The truth is that the wind is blowing so hard, that our small pond has white caps, the chickens are afraid to come outside, the dogs have perfected the art of lying down flat like a pancake and it is actually hard to walk in a straight line, actually it is hard to walk outside at all.

It has also warmed up!  Spring is really here, Ellensburg style where one must literally hang on to their hat.  (My Loving Spouse’s cap has blown off his head 3 times today.  At this rate, I won’t be surprised to see it on someone’s cow on the other side of the valley).

I was gone for one night and spring seemed to settle in while I was away.  The tulips are up with a beautiful display and our little orchard sprouted into full bloom.  The hay fields are bright green and the hay is high enough to be waving in the wind.  The trees are budding out and the birds are almost a cacophony of noise as they go about their bird business of building nests and eating bugs.  The change seems to happen so fast and I must say, that I LOVE living where the seasons change so dramatically!

Cleanliness is next to godliness.  Okay, really????  I think that old saying was invented by a OCD type, who never stepped outside on a beautiful spring day.  The truth is that I am learning a few things about keeping an old farm-house clean and I have come to realize that there are only three levels of cleanliness here and they are:

1. sort of clean  (so if you visit and it is sort of clean, then you are special)

2. sort of dirty  (you are now considered family)

3.  filthy (you live here and you probably helped make the mess)

That’s it, that’s all there is and I’d have to say our home usually varies somewhere between ‘sort of clean’ and ‘sort of dirty’, except for now, right now it is down right filthy.  It is not going to get better until the Grand dogs return to their home and we’re accepting of that fact.

Besides, yesterday was beautiful!!  A day to be spent outside working, which is what I did.  Our arena is dirt and weeds and we’d like to transform it to lush grass for our herd to eat.  I started by sowing oats (not ‘wild oats’, just regular oats given to us by Our Friend the Farmer), then added grass seed, harrowed (official farm term) and irrigated.  The farmers here have impressive irrigating systems, gated pipes, pumps, overhead water sprayers (which I don’t know the name for), canals and  ditches.  I had 5 garden hoses and a rain bird, which was not impressive at all.  (A  better watering system is on the to-do list, but the seed could not wait).

There were breaks to let the 4 hounds out and run.  All dogs are dirty, no filthy (just like the house, which came first?  the chicken or the egg?  The dirty house or the dogs?… the dirty dogs for sure!)  The brown and white dogs are now, brown and browner, our white dog is now white and green (as she has discovered the delight in rolling in fresh horse poop) and the black and white lab.  So at the end of the day, they are all happy, healthy and exhausted, which is all that really matters and which I hope is going into my future ‘Grandma’ file for being a good babysitter, as someday I hope to be left with grand babies to take care of, not just grand dogs.  Probably the same level of mess, but hopefully a tad less barking.

Three dogs sharing one bed, because:

a.  They like each other so well.

b.  This is the best bed.

c.  They are too tired to care.

d.  Even the dogs do not want to lay down with the dog who rolled in the horse poop.

e.  All of the above!