New Life Old Farmers

Somewhere way down on the list of items to be restored is a ‘mud room’.  It was clear the first time we saw the house that this item was lacking.  As our ‘new’ mud room will be on the portion of the home that has to be torn down and completely rebuilt, it is not happening anytime soon.  The  dirt of the summer has turned into mud and is being tracked into the house by paws and feet.  Mud with the occasional yellow Fall leaf stuck to it.  We are ‘enjoying’ the colors of Fall inside and out.

In my fantasy farm dreaming days, I imagined a ‘tidy’ farm.  I like order and cleanliness.  It is probably once again Little House on The Prairie‘s fault.  I never once heard Ma Ingalls complain to her Loving Spouse that he was tracking mud in the house, the fact that the floor of their house was made of mud might have had something to do with it.

So… what can I say, our house is muddy.  Well, not actually ‘muddy’, but there are traces of mud in a lot of places and Fall leaves. I am working on cleaning it up, so which Greek mythology character kept pushing the boulder up a hill?   Now I get the opportunity to practice patience…. again.  I don’t want to be a broom/mop wielding maniac, making my family crazy, but the truth is some days I am.

So if you visit Glory Farm, please excuse the mud…. and the leaves… and wipe your feet.

It has gotten a bit cold and people are running around town doing things called ‘weatherizing’.  I must say I do not really like the sound of that.  For one, it seems like it could be getting colder quicker and two, I’m pretty sure we’re not ready, or at least, I am not ready.  I’ve been hearing things like got my ‘snow tires on’ and ‘putting leaves around my plants in the garden’, just to name a few of the things we haven’t done.

We do have our storm windows on.  That job required help from the Newlyweds and as we had more storm windows than we had windows, a lot of trial and error went into the mix.  Add two alpha males, plus heavy windows and a job no one had every done before, well you can imagine that putting the storm windows up didn’t exactly make the top ten ‘fun jobs’ at the farm list.

We’re busy working to get the dog’s new yard finished so their winter includes the warmth of hearth and home.  So far, we’ve only broken one sprinkler line, so we are starting a new list called, ‘stuff to fix next spring’.  I’m a bit worried about this list as I’m afraid it could be daunting.

With 53 years living in Southern California, my body just thinks this cold is a blip, a weather ‘snap’ and soon it will warm up again.  After all, it is only October and the Ellensburg Realtor told us, that there is usually just a ‘lite dusting of snow’ and I don’t like it when I tell people that and then they start laughing.

How can one really be ready for the complete unknown?

Wood for the fire – check.

New coat – check.

New fancy gloves that work with one’s iPhone – check.

Case of wine for emergencies – double-check.

Weather report claiming snow showers tonight?  Ah… I don’t think so….

“Cats are such ‘clean’ animals”, said by Cat people.  Not when they live on a farm.  Well, let me take that back, our barn cats look fairly clean, but then again, they live in the barn.  Our indoor (outdoor) cat is a fairly horrible cat (said even by ‘Cat’ people), but sigh… we do love her, and since we raised her from 10 days old, it is probably her poor parenting that has led her to be a fairly awful cat or the Damn Cat as she is mostly known.

However, we’ve been so pleased at how Billie Elliot, the indoor cat, has made the transition to farm life.  She spends a lot of the day outside, which was a good thing, until she fell in the pond.  She was one very unhappy cat and of course made straight for the house, ran around until she could be caught and dried off.  A wet cat is not a happy cat.

Two days ago I finally finished cleaning up the pantry closet moving items for storage to the attic.  A few trips up to the attic Billie Elliot accompanied me, but did little to help.  She decided to explore and there was little reason to not leave her there, or so I thought.  When Billie is inside, she prefers to be either on the kitchen table (which is gross, we eat there) or laying on our bed, getting up when one of us goes into the bathroom, as she prefers to drink fresh water out of the tap when we are washing our hands instead of the water left for her in her cute cat water bowl.  (The cute cat water bowl was a waste of money as the cat does not drink out of it.  The dogs will drink out of the cute cat water bowl, but then again, dogs will drink out of the toilet, if given the opportunity).

As I went into the bathroom, Billie came in for her drink leaving black paw prints everywhere she went.  Her spot, well not her spot on the bed, but the one she thinks is hers was black as well.  Our black & white calico was black & black.  I grabbed a towel, a wet wipe and the black & black cat and delivered her to our Cat person, My Loving Spouse for cleaning.  The cat was not co-operative (no big surprise) and was shut into the laundry room/bathroom for the night as she would ‘clean herself’.  In the morning she was a black & grey cat and still pretty dirty, getting most of her cleansing from sleeping on the clean white laundry, which of course was now grey as well.

It seems that from her adventure in the attic she got into the chimney area of the home and managed to cover herself in 100 years of soot.  Even after a day outside the Damn Cat is still dirty and unfortunately does not seem to be heading toward making the transition to Barn Cat.  The current discussion is that Billie will be getting a shower, which is a much nicer thought than throwing her back in the pond, which has been briefly considered.  My Loving Spouse is not currently playing any contact sports, so does not have the protection or support one might need to shower with a cat.  Perhaps the pond is not a bad idea after all…..

One of the interesting farm/ranch/non-city items left here for us was a shiny tank.  It looked like a milking tank, somewhat bigger than anything I’d seen Mary and Laura Ingalls use on Little House on the Prairie, which is where I got a lot of my farm/ranch information prior to moving to the country.  Still, the kids and I thought it was pretty cool, until we actually found out exactly what it was…. a semen tank.  A semen tank for inseminating cows.   I don’t know or want to know how they actually get the semen in the tank.  So, city people are you still with me?

It turns out that a semen tank is actually a fairly expensive item.  We are practical people and we don’t throw away useful items, even when they do or did hold semen.  So we offered the tank to Our Friend the Farmer.  It turns out he doesn’t need one, because he takes care of “increasing” his herd the old-fashioned way.  I guess, if you’ve seen the commercials for ‘Happy Cows from California’, this means there are a few “happy” bulls in Ellensburg.

A friend’s son is destined to be a Future Cattleman of the Year.  A polite boy, not even a teen yet he is very interested in raising cattle, learning all about it and fascinated with Bull sperm.  Our Future Cattleman of the Year is totally legit, as he just recently sold his two calves for $1700.  Not too shabby!!  When My Loving Spouse told him he had a gift for him, ‘His very own semen tank’, his face lit up like a Christmas tree and he asked if he could go see it right away!  He washed it, shined it and couldn’t wait to show his Dad.

Oh, and where did our Future Cattleman of the Year sell his cattle?  Cows r’ Us in Moses Lake, Washington.   It made me wonder, do you think the tank could get filled by Sperms r’ Us?*

*I highly advise against checking that out on the web!

To us, this is a big home.  Our hope is that it be a cozy home, a big old cozy home.   Currently, it is Fall and that has made it a big old cold home and the problem came to a head as we had a chilly Sunday.  Football Sunday and the house was cold.  Well, not the house exactly, just the room with the TV.  The formal dinning room was lovely, warm and welcoming.

I can’t say it is time to re-decorate, because we’re not actually done decorating for the first time.  All I have managed to do inside is paint two rooms, hang a few pictures and put out our furniture, then move it all around.  It is time to re-organize the furniture arrangement (again).

The warmth and the TV need to be in the same room, well at least as long as it is football season.  My Loving Spouse generously said, “Maybe we could have the furniture one way during the summer and another during the winter”.  Now, I know he was trying to be nice and helpful, but I also know that there is a finite time husbands and sons for that matter will move the furniture (1 couch, 1 love seat, 1 table, 5 chairs, one bench, a rocking chair, an easy chair, a storage cupboard and ottoman), move the TV and move all the electrical bits that go with it.  My Loving Spouse is a very classy guy, but I have a hunch that once the basic ‘man decorating’ needs are met (where’s my chair, can I see the TV and where is the remote) even he will be reluctant to haul the furniture around twice a year.  Nope, I know I had better get this right this time.

Good bye formal dinning room.  Hello, cozy family room, which would be the room I haven’t painted yet, the window frames need to be replaced, there is only one electrical outlet in the room and it is not on the wall we need it on, if in fact we are going for ‘cozy family room’, not just basic ‘man decorating’.  All the cable hook ups were on the west side of the house and we’d just moved the TV to the east side of the house.  I’d like to say that this situation is a rare ‘hic-up’ and we usually get things right the first time, but it is not.  This is exactly how we do things.

My worry was that in trying to get heat and football together, that would be the sum of our efforts.  My deep desire is to have a big, cozy home.  Cozy in all the rooms, inviting to friends and family.  As the dust on the current rearrangement settles, I’d have to say I’m really pleased as it seems that all the rooms have settled into cozy inviting spaces.  Ready for family, friends, Thanks giving and of course we are always “Ready for some football”!

Cozy…. I think this shot of the Teen and My Loving Spouse speaks for itself.

A few more shots for those of you who care…

The reason the family room is cozy… wood burning stove.

Beautiful Living room…

Dinning table’s new spot… decorated with… pumpkins and a rooster (of course).

I love roosters.  As home decor they have been a part of my decorating style for years.  I have a rooster clock, an iron rooster door stop, a rooster door mat, a fruit bowl with a rooster on the side, a rooster ‘statue’ that doesn’t do anything, but look ‘rooster-ish’.  I was delighted to move into our wonderful old home and find a brass rooster wall art-hook that we don’t really hang anything on as it is up too high, but we have learned to not lean back on that wall or the sharp beak will get you in the head.  You can have a lot of roosters inside.

Our roosters outside are pretty birds.  Dumb, but pretty.  As our Friend the Farmer says, you don’t get to the bottom of food chain by being smart.  Our collection of roosters eat a lot and they poop a lot and I mean a LOT.  City friends, let me tell you, the next time some awful person tries to insult you by saying anything about… sorry here, but I’ve got to use this word… shit you need to find out what kind.  If for instance some one says you are ‘full of sh@!, well do they mean horse or chicken?  Horse  is not too bad, big piles but horse doesn’t even smell too bad and it dries out quickly.  Chicken/rooster  is awful, runny piles of sh@ and when you have ‘free range roosters’, you have it, sh@! in lots of places.  So, if you are being insulted and called ‘chicken sh@!’, the insult-er is either really mad at you or just doesn’t know their sh@!.

Our outside roosters are “Surplus to requirement”, which we know is British for ‘too darn many’.  As it has been determined, that the Teen and I are not quite adapted to country life enough yet to actually eat our roosters, we’ve more roosters than My Loving Spouse can consume.  In an effort to cut down on both the amount of chicken meal we’re providing and the amount of chicken sh@! we’re dealing with, we’ve been trying to lessen the flock by attempting to sell, barter, or plain give away some birds.  Luckily, for us our neighbors are deep-rooted country folks and would be happy to take a few.  My Loving Spouse was on the phone handling the fine details, “How do you want them?  Dead or Alive?”

We had no idea what to expect from the Barn Sale.  However, the excitement of the Barn Sale Gals (vendors) involved was satisfaction enough.  A beautiful clean barn to open and enjoy with all was something I’d never dreamed of.  The fact that it was cold and I mean colder inside than out only helped the Teen’s hot cider and hot coffee sales, as her darling brownie skeleton treats pretty much sold themselves.

My favorite part of any sale is when people ask you for things you don’t have, like you might be hording a separate secret stash and if they ask for it, it will somehow magically appear, and sold just for them.  Oh and at a ridiculously low price too, that is important.   “Do you have pole cattle panels?”  A Bargain Cattle Panel buyer asked the Teen and I.  Luckily for us we’d had the Teen Boys this summer so we knew the proper dialog for just such questions.  “Hun?” & “What?” we said looking at each other.  The Bargain Cattle Panel buyer asked the question again, a little louder and a little slower as she guessed she was dealing with uneducated Barn Sale vendors, which of course she was.  This time we raised our eyebrows a bit as we muttered “Hun?” & “What?” to indicate that we’d heard her the first time, but we were not speaking her Cattle Panel language and if we did have some, they’d be out, priced, marked and quite probably adorned with pumpkins.

The Barn Sale Gals had some wonderful items, vintage farm treasures, fresh dill, corn stalks, and antiques all decorating our barn in what I know was its best light ever.  As you can see, it looks ready for Thanksgiving and all my work cleaning the barn was clearly worth it.  For more inspiration I recommend you check out Julia’s website.  For my dear decorating friends down in So. California (you know who you are), you’ll kick yourself if you don’t go and look at the one of a kind table she built.  Long and sturdy, with reclaimed wood on top, a one of a kind treasure.  Priced at $300 even with shipping, you’re ahead of LA prices by $1000 or so….

In my small life the best part was to meet so many people.  Neighbors who are just down the road, over the hill or at our church.  However, in the bigger plan the very, very best part was the exposure and the sales for the Haiti ApParent project.  We’d invited the Haiti ladies, a dedicated bunch of gals from our church who spend a lot of time and effort to help the lives of women and children in Haiti.  Haitian mothers who were so poor, they fed mud baked to look like crackers to their children so they’d not go to bed on an empty stomach!  Pooh (one of the fierce and mighty barn cats) did her part to show how comfortable everything was.  The Haiti artisans products sold well and their story was told to many new people.  Many came to the Barn Sale for fun, for cattle pole panels, for vintage farm items and were glad they came.  However, many left with a plan to hold a fund-raiser, so simple and easy for the children of Haiti.  A few men left saying to me, “Thank you for what you are doing for the children”.  Believe me, we did nothing.  It is the dedication of the Haiti ladies that are to be thanked, I’m guessing they’d probably say something like, “to God be the Glory”.

It doesn’t matter if you live ‘in’ town or ‘out’ of town, if you live in Ellensburg, you know about hay.  I’ve learned more than I ever thought I could know about hay and believe me, I really don’t know very much.  Some of it is ‘normal’ hay and some of it is ‘special’ hay.  The special hay is called “Timothy”.  It is the major export of Ellensburg, going to Japan to feed the Kobe beef.  Now you know why a Kobe beef burger cost so much!

We also, talk about hay and by ‘we’ I mean everybody.  We talk about whether it is being cut, fluffed or baled.   You can’t bale wet hay.  If it rains after the hay is cut, this is bad, so we also talk about the weather.  I finally understand the saying ‘make hay while the sun shines’.  Fluffing hay is exactly what it sounds like and you can’t fluff hay when it is windy or the hay will end up in the next state.

There are a lot of cool driving machines to cut, fluff and bale hay.  Apparently, you can get teenagers to drive the ‘fluffing’ tractors, because they go fast.  The baler has to be driven slowly and teens can’t pay attention at that rate, so the more ‘mature’ workers bale hay.  My Loving Spouse has been working on the nearby farm driving the… baler tractor, of course, hence the back of the baler view.  The baler is a bit like a scooping-pooping machine for hay.  Scoops up the loose hay and then it pretty much poops out the bales of hay.  The bale wagon is an amazing vehicle, it is very big and picks up the bales of hay in the field and then is driven in to deposit the load of hay.  The bale wagons I’ve seen all go very fast, and seem to be driven by the men who are the father’s of the teens in the fluffing tractors and the son’s of men in the baling tractors.  When I asked My Loving Spouse why they drive so fast, he explain in technical terms, that ‘they are the last in the field and just want to get the hell home, also because they can…”.

Prior to moving here, all I really new about hay was not to say “Hey” to my mother and if I did, she’d say, “Hay is for horses”.  Except, now I’ve learned that it depends on what kind of hay you are talking about, so really my mother didn’t actually know her ‘hay’ or even though she was pretty clear on her thoughts about ‘hey’.

We had a big day today here at Glory Farm.  The pumpkin harvest, official count and vine clipping was set for the morning.  Luckily for me, The Bride was here to join in the adventure.  I was grateful for the help, but even more grateful to share the event with someone who has almost been as caught up in this whole ‘pumpkin experience’ as myself.  I see great pumpkin patches in The Bride’s future.  We clipped the vines, leaving as much vine as possible, set the pumpkins upright, marveling at their colors, shapes and sizes.  Then we counted them…twice and the grand total for our bumper crop was 67!  65 beautiful, colorful, unique, fun pumpkins and 2 funny looking ones.

We set the favored ones aside, earmarked a few for the newlyweds, shared some with the neighbor, saved some for Number 4 Son, gave one to the Preacher’s Wife, put a pile in the Barn Sale and… we’ve got a bunch of pumpkins left.  We’ve got 3 porches… I’ve got the pumpkins to decorate them all!

My Loving Spouse had a really big day!  A really lonnnnnnnnng day, starting at 2:30 am, which to me is not a.m. as in morning it is a.m. as in the middle of the night!  Off to fish on the bank of the Columbia river, where he’d been told you could catch salmon.  Catch salmon he did and we’ve been told these are a bit ‘small’, but hey, this was his first trip.   3 big salmon and 1 even larger, made a dinner for us a dinner for Our Friend the Farmer and a freezer with more salmon.  I was delighted.  I was also delighted he decided to clean them outside, as that was a bit messy.  He was watched, encouraged and assisted by every cat on the property, who were shortly gorging themselves on fish tails, heads and stray bits.

Life is good!