New Life Old Farmers

A beautiful summer evening, the weather has cooled and the wind is blowing.  The sound the wind makes in the tall trees is becoming familiar, a ‘home’ sound and I like it.  It is not lost on me, that this time last year, I was a few weeks out of cancer surgery.  My scar was fresh, I tired easily and I felt like I was swallowing a golf ball.  To be here now, in this beautiful valley, with neighbors whose kindness knows no bounds, and a place to share with our children is a blessing beyond words.  It is probably why so many cats keep turning up, just to keep me humble.

Our dogs have had a hard transition.  Luckily, they have a large dog run, if in fact they wanted to ‘run’.  The problem is that the old deaf dog only wants to run, when she is out of the run.  Then she is happy to run off down the road, scaring us all that she’ll get hurt or end up in the next county.  She is also at that stage in life where she is a bit incontinent, and as they do not make ‘Doggie Depends’ this limits her ability to be in the house, due to my strange desire to not have our home smell like dog pee.  Our lovable Lab when out is happy to run in short bursts, picking up horse poop, eating the cat’s food and lifting his leg on my pumpkin patch.  (If you receive any of my pumpkins, I highly suggest you wash them before use).  For most of the day though the dogs are in the run, which sadly limits the number of pats on the head they get.  We believe we’ve finally come up with an option for them which will include a radio fence and a doggie door into a small area of the Fat room.  (Yes, I really did say ‘Fat room’.  This is an old addition and the walls are about a foot thick and the inside filled with sawdust.  It is the original cold storage room in our historical home.)  Our friend the farmer, informed us that when cutting into the Fat room, make sure to start cutting from the outside.  It would seem that the odds of there being a few mice living inside the walls is highly probable and when they come out, they’d better be outside NOT inside.  (Note to self, when the cutting starts, collect all cats to be nearby and present and then go to town.)

Our long-term plan includes a creative place for me.  As lovely as it will be, it is a long way off from happening.  This has me feeling a bit ‘adrift’.  We’ve been here 4 months, but 2 of those months have been filled with teens and seem to have been lost to ‘crowd control’, so it feels as if those months don’t really count toward getting settled inside the house and certainly not toward finding a space for me.  The kids have their rooms, my loving spouse has a large workshop, the dogs have the run, the chickens have their coop, the horses have pastures and the barn, the cats have anywhere they decide they want and I need a spot.  No, the laundry room does not count.

One of the great things about living in Ellensburg, is how close we are to Seattle.  A quick and easy 2 hour drive and we’re there.  One of the great thing about moving out of Southern California, is that we still think a 2 hour drive can be defined as ‘quick and easy’.  As we declared Sunday a ‘clean’ day, we went to the Seattle Mariners game.  We used the drive over as a lesson in all things baseball and attempted to teach the English teen all the words to “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”, interspersed with a round of “Rule Britannia”.  The game held a host of firsts for us, my first deep-fried Twinkie (and as disgusting as it sounds, I have to admit that it was kind of good), the English teen’s first baseball game AND first taste of Cracker Jack, the first time to Safeco field and their specialty… garlic fries.   Being allergic to garlic, it would seem that I was the only one present who didn’t partake it the juicy mess.  I’d have to say, it was truly the stinkiest crowd I’ve ever been with, good thing they were fun.

My true summer favorite though is to be out on the farm in the evening.  Especially after dinner, when everybody and every animal is fed, the breeze is blowing and the sky is beautiful.  Tonight we were moving the horses to a ‘greener’ pasture.  (I’m quickly learning where a lot of these age-old sayings originated).  We took the mares out of the pond pasture, and since we look out at the pond, go through this area for just about everything, I thought it would be ‘nice’ if it wasn’t all dotted with large piles of horse manure.   My goal was to at least spread it around a bit.  I decided to use my ride on mower, known affectionately as John D. to help me with the job of spreading the manure by ‘mowing’ it.  I am not sure why, but things have a habit of breaking when I use them.  A few days ago, my loving spouse ran John D. over a whole roll of wire and bogged it up, but it kept on mowing.  I run over a bit of horse poop and the darn machine gives out.

Well, I may have a poor track record with breaking farm tools, but I am excelling in Pumpkin Patch 101.  With all the chain saw gardening we were doing, planting pumpkins sounded like fun.  Yes, that is really me inside the pumpkin patch, where the plants are higher than my knees.  The vines are starting to really take off and go just about everywhere they can.  I have been known to check on them multiple times a day, water them, attempt to count them (odds on now at over 100 pumpkins) and press all visitors into viewing them.  I have even figured out the female and male pumpkin flowers.  We have a patch of male flowers, that I call ‘Fraternity row’.  Our friend the farmer wondered what my plan was when I planted them.  Ummmm, my plan?  For fun, and so far, they are.

 

 

With 100 degree days it seemed the perfect time to work at cleaning and repairing the barn.  We gathered the tools, pitch forks, brooms, dust masks, shovels, leaf blower, pressure washer, pry bars and we used them all!  In some places there were three layers of flooring laid over the original floor held in with nothing but dried on and very old cow manure, in other places a small board held in with a long metal spike and in other places nothing but a worn hole with kittens popping in and out.  We were a productive, but ugly bunch being quickly covered from head to toe in barn dust with sweat running through it capped off with the back fire from the pressure washer which worked well to spew old bits of cow manure all over us.  We were hot and stinky.  Don’t you wish you were here?

My loving spouse continued to mutter, I don’t know what they were thinking.  We unearthed what looks to be an old milking parlor, painted yellow complete with a poop trough for sweeping manure out the door.  We will level the floor reusing the old, charming and manure-removed boards and build new stalls appropriate for horses.

There are rusty nails everywhere, so it was only a matter of time before someone stepped on one.  (Note to reader, if you visit Glory Farm we recommend you are up to date on your tetanus shot).  Unfortunately, the rusty nail stepper on-er was our English teen whose tetanus shot seemed to be right at the expiration point.  With protests that he was ‘fine’ and it only bled a little, I whipped him off to the clinic to get an updated tetanus shot.  Checking him in was a fairly humorous event as they asked him simple questions like, “How much do you weigh?”   “I don’t know, 7 1/2 stone.”  Then they looked at me, where I explained that I didn’t speak ‘British’ and they should probably just weigh him.  He took his shot like a man, yet acted like a typical teen, when I tried to take his photo.  However, he was completely co-operative upon hearing about my tradition of taking my kids for an ice cream after trips to the ER.  Thank you Dairy Queen.

We’ve declared this a ‘clean’ day, not for cleaning, but for staying clean.

We are as back to ‘normal’ as possible with a fire still burning at the other end of the valley.  We keep a wary eye on the smoke and stay updated as best is possible.  We are thankful to be in our home, to have all the kids and animals with us as well and have appreciated your thoughts and prayers.  They are making headway on the fire and have not lost any more structures.  Even better, there have been no injuries, and as the mother of a fire-fighter, this always hits home.

Many people and even more animals have been displaced.  Driving into town, I passed a house with 3 horses in the front yard.  Yep, three horses trimming the grass and not a fence in sight.  Now, I might not have lived in the country long, but even I know, that this is not good.  No one was around but me, so I stopped to ‘help’, just as one of the horses decided to go out and stand in the road.  As horse wrangling skills go, I’m still pretty low on my learning curve.  Mostly I know to be quiet, be careful and stay away from their back-end, also I was outnumbered.  I figured, if nothing else, I could at least keep other cars from hitting them.  Luckily for me and the horses, two girls soon stopped to help, so at least we were now evenly numbered.  The girls clearly did posses the ‘wrangler’ gene, so I quickly offered to be the phone call ‘wrangler’ as one of the horses had a phone number written on their head collar.*  We horse ‘wranglers’ got the animals back into their pasture, put the fallen gate back up and I awaited their owner, as the girls went back on their way.

I was keeping an careful eye on the rickety fencing while waiting for the owner, as I knew keeping them in the pasture would be easier than getting them back in, especially by myself.  During my ‘watch’, my loving spouse texted me about ‘something’, but I explained I was ‘wrangling’ loose horses.  Knowing exactly just how much experience I really have at this, it wasn’t long before he showed up with lead ropes completely ready to assist in the operation of rescuing myself as well as the animals.  The owner had arrived by this point, and my loving spouse was so impressed with his city wife’s wrangling skills that he took me out to lunch.

 

*Due to the fire, people are writing their phone number on their horse’s head collar or even spray painting their phone number on the horse.  Most everyone around here will help the lost animals, but finding the owners can be tricky.  Two of the escape artists did not belong to the owner and were displaced due to the fire, which is probably why they all got out.  The owner had just put her number on her horse’s head collar.  It was a lucky thing, as this was the only way we had of contacting her.  A great idea and our two mares will now also be sporting our phone number on them, just in case.

 

Living in Southern California for 50+ years, left me no stranger to wild fires. I’ve known the ash in the air, the orange glow of the sun, the burning in your eyes and the feeling you’ve been breathing through an ashtray.  None of that prepared me, however, for a fire here in the country.  Initially it seemed so far away, and although we were concerned about the farms that were in danger, we were not stressed.  With the wind blowing and the fire burning, we quickly became stressed, we just pretended to be calm.

Why do things happen at night?  At 9:00pm we started ‘talking’ about what we would do ‘if’.  At 10:30pm we were out in the pens filling up water troughs for a friend who was evacuated as we welcomed their 2 horses, a pony and 2 goats.   We gathered the items that most needed to be saved if we indeed had to flee.  At 11:30 we decided to go to bed and I wondered, exactly which pajamas were the most appropriate for possible evacuation wear.  The sheriff woke us at 2:00am, telling us that we had about 45 minutes to leave.  I really pretended to be calm then.

The horses were the most agitated and not pretending to be calm at all.  We do not have a horse trailer, so we couldn’t get them out alone.  A friend came with theirs, yes at 2:30 in the morning, and helped with the loading of our two very stressed mares.  It was not an easy process as the younger one had only done it once and never with ash blowing in her face.  Pat got stepped on and has a black & blue foot, but fortunately that was the worst of the loading event.

The cats in the meantime actually were calm or like myself, just pretending, either way, they were easily gathered up and stowed in the teen’s car.  The friend then took the horses, the teens and the cats to their home for the rest of the night.  With the kids and the animals safe, it was easier to really be calm, not just pretend.

My thought process during the night was helpful and bizarre.  “Get the English teen’s passport”, “I wonder if I brushed my teeth”, “Get the cash”, “If all my clothes burn up, is this the one pair of jeans I really want to be wearing”, “Get my diamond earrings and Pat’s antique watch”, “This bathroom is filthy, well, don’t clean it, it might burn down”.

Our neighbor was staying in contact with us by phone, her husband as Fire Captain was out on the front line.  We were told that we could stay until we saw the fire crest the nearest ridge, if that happened, we would grab the dogs and go.  We watered down the house, made coffee and pretended some more to be calm.

In our country, a 123 year old home is a rare thing.  It cannot be replaced and it was this thought that made me the most sad.  I was grateful for all the chainsaw gardening we’d done, the cleaning up of debris around the house and especially for the new roof, which had replaced the wood-shake tinder trap that was on it just 3 months ago.  I cursed the Spruce trees so near to it, as I knew that if the fire came, it would be the Spruce that would light up in flames and endanger our home the most.

We have been lucky, the fire came too close, but did not crest the ridge.  60 homes have been lost and so many more saved because of the work of the fire fighters.  The fair ground is filled with rescued and evacuated animals, everything from rabbits to horses, brought in by their owners or neighbors just willing to help.  We’ve only lived here 4 months, so we really don’t that many people.  Yet the number of folks who have helped us out, checked up on us, from Farrier to Pastor has us amazed.  Our neighbors have been gems and we love living in a town where everyone is your neighbor.

Yet, until the fire is out completely, we will just continue to pretend to be calm.

Fun was ageless this weekend as we celebrated the Newlyweds birthdays, and invited the Bride’s Grandma down for the day.  At 83 she walks with a walker or cane and a smile on her face.  What fun to share the farm with her.  Her walker goes over rocky ground pretty darn good, so the first stop was of course to check out the chickens, the horses came to be given a pat and an occasional cat dropped by for some attention.   I knew she would enjoy being here, but what delight it was to see her willingness to take advantage of the fun.  Announcing she’d like to sit on the swing was  no surprise to me, our porch swing is a peaceful and popular spot to watch the life of the farm.  However, she meant the swing that hangs in the tree.  Grandma is just a little thing, so getting on the kids’ swing was the hardest part, then she leaned back, threw her legs up and began pumping away!

The farm opportunity holds many surprises.  Not the least of which is the city born, gun averse Groom, who now never misses the opportunity to help eradicate the stinky, nasty, overly pooping pigeon population in the barn.  The biggest surprise was his announcement that he’d like to go bird hunting, much to the delight of my loving hunter spouse.  Grandma as well, decides she’d like to try a little target practice.

The offspring too believe, no one is too old to have fun.  This weekend I was hit with water balloons, we played golf on the pasture, I lost at cards, and jumped into the (cold and a bit slimy) pond.  Getting into the pond was actually the easy part. The dock needs a few more rungs on its ladder so climbing out is a bit of a challenge.  With the Groom’s help I managed to land on the dock with all the grace and agility of a beached whale.  I am glad we stopped some of the work for fun and really wouldn’t have changed a thing, well, except for the kids aim with the water balloons.

My grandfather use to say, “Any fool can break an ax handle”.  Well today we did it twice.  Those involved in the actual breaking of said handles shall remain nameless as they were indeed working at their level best at the time and no, it wasn’t me.  We tend to break a fair amount of ‘stuff’ around here.  Just ask my loving spouse, who claims half his day is spent repairing the tools we farm-neophytes use.  We seem to be on the low-end of the learning curve.  What we lack in ability, however, we do make up for with enthusiasm and a sense of accomplishment at the smallest things, which is a fairly endearing quality.

Cleaning out the pasture of dead trees, tree limbs and debris has long been on the to-do list and with Number One son here, now seemed like a good time to make a start.  Knocking ‘stuff’ down is his all time favorite thing to do, but running the chain saw and cutting stuff up runs a close second, believe me, we are blessed!  With the chain saw running, I went off to procure more ax handles, even upgrading to a fancy new sledge-hammer with a fiberglass handle, which is supposed to be harder to break.  (Oh, be still my soul, who knew they made such cool stuff.)  At my return the work force was found to be fishing at the pond, but only because they’d worked the chain saw into over heating.

Our little work crew quickly jumped into see how well the new sledge-hammer and axes worked. The best part of the day was watching the English teen learn how to swing an ax, cut the wood, overcome the learning curve, have pride at the accomplishment and at the end of the day have all his fingers and toes still intact.  Perhaps Number One son did not fall far from the tree, as I was quite eager to whack up those logs into tidy wood burning sized wedges as well.  I’m sure it will get ‘old’, but secretly, I’m sort of looking forward to more log whacking again today.

The after dinner game of croquet was a slow event, not because we were sore from log splitting, (which I was), but because it was declared a one-armed game.  The teen’s boyfriend broke his collar-bone and has one arm in a sling, so to be fair we all assumed the same handicap.  Let me tell you, croquet is a two armed sport.  Still at the end of the day, the old folks were last standing, with my loving spouse declared the winner.  A nice moment for him, as today he’ll fix all the stuff we break.

 

 

It is amazing what can happen in three days.  I was away on business and in my absence spectacular changes were made.  Our pumpkin patch exploded, our English teen grew (his mother will not begin to recognize him when he gets home), the sprinkler system is working and the damn tree is finally and completely off the front lawn!  We still have a long way to go before this tree is keeping us warm in the winter and exactly which winter it is crackling in the wood burning stove is yet to be determined.  It hasn’t quite made it into the wood shed yet, but it is closer, lying in huge mounds of tree trunk wedges that cannot be lifted, but require splitting and stacking.  For those of you who rise early to go to ‘boot camp’ type workout groups, feel free to come to the farm.  We’ll be happy to run you ragged and ‘let’ you split, stack and haul wood.  We’ll guarantee beautiful scenery, blue skies, wind in your face and plenty of animal therapy be it horses, dogs, hens or of course cats.

Walking around the farm to check on all the creatures with my loving spouse, I felt great gratitude and peace to be home.  Emotions quickly replaced by adrenalin and anxiety as we realized the gate behind us had swung open, offering both horses the opportunity to go out and explore!  Most of you watching the Olympics had seen many lithe, athletic figures doing amazing fetes with grace, speed and strength, well nothing beats we two old people moving about the farm to find and secure our wayward horses before they got out onto the road, it was truly a gold metal performance.  Luckily, we really only had to catch Dolly (our elder mare), as Dixie (the yearling) has great separation anxiety and follows the herd, which at this point is just Dolly.  The girls were found happily trimming a bit of the grass around pumpkin patch.  Dolly was secured and led back to the pasture as Dixie came bounding behind her literally kicking up her heals at the bit of fun.

Today promises another peaceful day on the farm, the cats are chasing each other, the lawn is filled with birds, the teen boys are cooking breakfast and the smoke alarm is working, loudly.

We have tried very hard to put our best foot forward here in our new town.  Done our level best to be polite and considerate, wave to tractor drivers, plan to do our share, goodness knows, we’re even signed up to teach Sunday School (in August and just once).  Still there is a rumor going around about us.  I’m sure it will die down, and in our defense, they really do not know us yet, we’ve only been here 3 1/2 months, but it has happened anyway… they think we’re ‘cat people’.

Now all you ‘cat people’ don’t get mad, my loving spouse is a ‘cat person’, well actually he is a ‘all animal’ person.  I on the other hand am a ‘dog person’ and this is nothing more than guilt by association.

Okay, the kittens are cute, really cute, but they are not cats (yet).  So we’ve posted a few cute cat photos, so we’re feeding more cats than I ever imagined (which is any number over one), so they keep turning up here, so we laugh at them daily, so…

that doesn’t make us ‘cat people’ that just makes us ‘non-mouse’ people with a sense of humor.