New Life Old Farmers

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!

Just when we think we sort of know what we are doing a few more animals show up to prove us wrong…dead wrong.  Oh, and the wind blew (and I mean really blew), just to add to the general mayhem.

We are watching the Grand-dogs this week while the kids are on their delayed honeymoon.  The Grand-dogs are 6 month old energetic German Short-hair pointers.  They like to chase anything that moves, so the cow has been moved to a different field, the chickens have not been let out of their yard, the barn cats are on their own and the inside cat has had a few narrow escapes.  The kids have been working hard with the pups, so unlike our unruly two, the puppies actually come when they are called.  We cannot have them ‘out’ of the yard with us without our other two dogs, as the ‘damn white dog’ does her best to break the new dog yard, when left alone in it.  Having all four dogs out of the yard is a bit like letting 4 toddlers loose at the zoo.  The puppies think this means it is time to bite and wrestle with the black lab, the black lab thinks this is a bad idea who then sticks right next to my legs to get away from them, so the only one to get bitten/nipped was me.  We are finally settling into a rhythm.  They ‘help’ me feed the other critters, have only fallen into the pond 3 times and sleep in our bedroom, which does break all the dog sleeping rules of the house, but as long as Billie Elliot the inside cat doesn’t try to sleep in there at the same time it seems to work best for all of us getting the most sleep possible.

Our ‘herd’ of horses have quickly become a tight-knit group.  Going from 2 to 3 horses is a bit of a learning curve for us.  They do not want to be separated for any reason or for any length of time.  Hopefully, this will settle down and/or we will learn better ways to handle it, the more they see that when one of the horses goes off for a ride, it shortly comes back.  However, everything seems worse with the wind blowing as the horses are a bit on edge when the wind blows and it was blowing like a ‘wholly (Bad British word)’ this weekend to quote My Loving Spouse.  I did manage to have a short ride on Beau and let me tell you, this is going to be one very fun horse to ride!

The Teen decided to go for a ride on her horse Dolly, the next day as well, except the wind was blowing even harder and the young filly Dixie was not happy about being separated from Dolly one little bit.  I was off doing the grocery shopping when I received the following text from My Loving Spouse.

“Just had a bunch of excitement!……  The Teen decided to ride Dolly so took her out to pond area, Dixie freaked out and jumped the water tank, while trying to get her back Beau escaped!”

So, how was your weekend?

Number Two Son is coming home!  His family is delighted!  His older brother is almost giddy with excitement thinking of the fun he knows they will have together.  (Number One Son still cannot quite believe that we live in a place where I actually ask him to burn stuff up and shoot nasty pigeons.)  My Loving Spouse cannot wait to hear our piano playing again.  The Teen plans for them to start an Improv group together and his mother…. just happy down to the tips of my muddy boots.

Number Two was at a ‘Cinderella’ school on the East coast.  He was singing, writing plays, acting in plays and finishing up his sophomore year.  Life was good until the school actually turned into the ‘ugly step-sister’ school, by doubling his tuition, whereby he said… “I don’t think so…”  He has been in Brooklyn since, working, paying his own bills, feeding himself and figuring out what he should do next.  We are proud of the way he has handled this set back.

One of our rooms upstairs is his room.  It was important to us that he felt he had a ‘home’.  I reminded him often that, “Home is where your mother is” (and I even saw it on a sign, so I know it is true).  He has visited, but not lived here until now…  There is an old black lab that will be very happy to have his boy home, the horses will get ridden more, there will be fewer eggs to share with others, there will be more singing in the house and more hugs.  I have done my best to be supportive, encouraging and occasionally patient while he was figuring out his next move.  I am excited to see what God has in store for him next and that at least for a time it includes Glory Farm.

Glory Farm is getting a ‘new’ farm truck.   It is a bit older than I am, but otherwise, we have a lot in common.  It doesn’t run, has most of her original parts, could use an overhaul, but My Loving Spouse thinks it is special.

She doesn’t have a name (yet), but is a 1952 International Pick Up.  I can see her all fixed up with a beautiful red paint job looking very cute and we’ll drive into town for an ice cream (some day).  

If you’re wondering what on earth we are doing buying another project???  And don’t we have our hands full???  And do we need to have our heads examined??? The answers are… what, yes and maybe, but sometimes in life timing is everything.  Often the timing is messy, (if you live here then it seems to always be messy).  The truck was bought because it is a project.  It was purchased for the farm, but with the kids in mind, especially Number Three Son, who will be here this summer.  Number Three is mechanically inclined and we wanted him to have the opportunity to bend some wrenches with his Dad.  My Loving Spouse is hoping a bunch of the off-spring will join in the rebuilding/refurbishing of the truck…. so come on by as the party is in the workshop.

My Loving Spouse had a three-day weekend, so we promptly crammed three days of work into the first two days.  Sunday was to be 55 degrees and still (which means – not windy, to those of you who live where the wind does not blow), so we eagerly looked forward to our first ride down the trail (with perfect weather) on our horses and a luxurious, relaxing day.

We opened the shades in our bedroom and looked out on our beautiful surroundings, like we do every morning.  Except this time, the job of moving the dog run fence caught (someone’s eye, okay it caught my eye).  When we built the dog yard, we built it a bit too short and the gate worked poorly so an adjustment has been on the ‘to-do’ list for a while.  After all, all we had to do was dig 8 new post holes, move the fence 5 feet, add two ends, re-do the gate and move the wire netting we put under the pickets to keep the digging dogs from digging out.

“How long do you think it would take to move the dog run fence?”  I asked quite innocently.

“Oh, it will be easy, just 2 hours”, My Loving Spouse assured me.

“Well, the weather is going to be 55 and still.  Should we just get it done this morning?”

Moving the dog run fence, when you already have dogs is one of those projects that once started, must be finished.  It is sort of like putting in a new toilet, you cannot stop in the middle of the job and get back to it when you feel like it, you must keep going no matter the desire or the weather.

So suffice it to say that the weather was 55 and still for about 13 minutes at around 3:00 in the afternoon.  Otherwise it was cold and the wind blew, making it… colder.  It didn’t take 2 hours, it took 8 and by the end of the day we were cold, tired, and achy with both of us declaring we were never ever-moving this dog fence again in any way shape or form.  Time to stock up on Advil, because Spring has sprung…. so today it snowed.

One of the things I love about our home is that it ‘evolved’.  Major ‘additions’ to the house came over time and probably came about less due to planning and more due to simple opportunity.   Our pantry/fat room/dog room space is quite wonderful and I love it’s very usefulness, however there was probably more ‘hopefulness’ than ‘planning’ when it was added on without a foundation.  Even I could tell it was sort of ‘pulling away from the house’ and when you went inside, it didn’t take an engineer to sense that the room was sinking down in the corner, in fact it felt like you were walking aboard a ship that was listing.  No worries, My Loving Spouse can fix anything!

Someday the pantry/dog room will turn into a proper mud room/laundry room/pantry – thought out space, but for now shoring it up was the goal.  We got a head start from the Grand-dogs who decided to do a bit of excavating under the rotting siding corner piece.  With the job begun, it was time to get busy and unearth the dept of the problem.  My Loving Spouse started by attaching two 2×6 beams to the side of the house, as there was a fair amount of rotting wood and we needed to be able to lift against something solid, then he broke out every jack he owned (4) and we went about the process of jacking up our house, okay not the whole house, just one end.

I was very impressed with our progress, until My Loving Spouse started saying things like… ‘watch out in case these jacks don’t hold’.  I was the brick fetcher, big jack cranker, trash picker-upper and saw-dust mover.  The walls are about 12 inches thick and filled with saw-dust, which was the age-old solution to insulation.  Every time we raised the walls up more saw-dust came down, and I mean a LOT of saw dust.

Snickers, best dog ever, watched the proceedings without worry.

 My Loving Spouse lifted the house walls up 9 inches, which is a lot of inches for a house!  It even looks level!

Out of the walls fell stuff!  5 old burlap sacks, old newspaper and an old pair of overalls.  We hauled approximately 12 wheel-barrow loads of saw dust out to the front garden, the wind took care of some of more, and I’ve washed a fair amount of it in the laundry.

The interior wall of the dog room has crumpled a bit due to the lifting of the outer walls, so more saw dust has fallen into their stinky dog haven.  Unfortunately, we have one little glitch, as the outer walls went up, the floor in the dog room did not, so there is a gap, a hole, a parting of the ways which needs some more attention.  The other evening the dogs were inside having their after dinner sleep by the fire when we all heard some noises coming from the dog room, but all the ‘inside’ animals were account for.  Barn Cats!!  Cats that had never been inside before were prancing into the kitchen from the hole in the dog room floor/wall.  We had cats everywhere and more sawdust and dogs..  I’m just glad it wasn’t skunks.  The hole/floor/wall thing needs fixing/finishing, so the right animals stay in or out, the wall boards put back, the jacks returned to the shop, but My Loving Spouse can fix anything and so for tomorrow’s project.. I am just hoping he will.

One of our blessings here is that we have been growing our family and acquired what we think of as a 4th son.  He is already grown, which is sort of a bonus, we didn’t actually have to go through child-birth, braces or college tuition.  Number Four came by on Saturday to see if we needed any help at the farm.  He’d read about all the digging I’d been doing and was concerned that we needed assistance.  I think he might have also been double checking that we hadn’t broken down and rented another backhoe for him to play with, I mean work with.  Number Four took one look at all the trenches that I’d dug and said, “Wow!  Your pictures do not do justice to the work you did”.  Yep, I love this guy.

(Number Four, The Bride, My Loving Spouse

The Teen, Number One Son, Me)

It might have started with My Loving Spouse buying another saddle.  Well, he’d gotten a great deal on it, but still we only had one horse that can be ridden.  Dixie is too young and she gets really upset when the rest of her herd (Dolly) goes off down the trail without her.  Maybe we are just herd people too. We don’t really like going off down the trail without some of our herd/family coming along as well, so only one horse to ride is not that fun.  So, when we were offered a great ‘care-lease’, we jumped at the opportunity to grow the horse herd, besides we already had the saddle!

Mr. Beau-jangles or Beau is a 19 year old gelding that needed a good home.  He has been a consistent 4-H winner (under the name Bones) and is easy to handle, great with kids and loves a trail ride, a perfect match!  We are so delighted to have two horses to ride and take off down the trail together!  When we told Number Four that we were getting another horse, he said “I thought you said, ‘no more animals’.”

Yes… well I did say that, but it was a long time ago and besides, what I really meant was no more cats!

We are all so aware that it was one year ago this weekend, when we’d finally made it to Ellensburg.  Holed up at the Hampton Inn, awaiting our ‘stuff’ and the access to our new home.  My Loving Spouse had made the 1100 mile trip with a loaded truck, two dogs and towing a car all in 21 hours.  The same journey took The Teen and I three days, but of course we were traveling with the Damn Cat.

Good bye to our sweet little house and my beloved garden…  hello New Life Old Farm.  Wow, what a year it has been!  Thank you for joining us on the adventure…you do bless us so!

And to my really old (or rather ‘long term’) dear friends, remember my first short lived blog?  The one about dating in mid-life.  Mostly about internet dating?  It was fairly funny and you encouraged me to keep writing, except then I met My Loving Spouse and so the best part of my material dried up.  I didn’t have much to write about anymore and you were glad for me, but sad for you.

I’m sure you really, dear old friends, my faithful fans, my wonderful encouragers are saying to yourself, what will happen to this blog?  What if she (which is me) runs out of material?  What if I get use to the country, the weather, the animals, the poop and we finish all our work on the house?  Then what???

All I can say is….

hahahahahahahahahahahaha