The Chain Gang

There is nothing like family and friends coming for a visit to Glory Farm and saying those few precious words, music to my ears….”We’re bringing work clothes”.  Ah, gotta love it when we get to share the magic of the farm. Especially when the magic includes some of my favorite things…. dismantling, cutting down and getting rid of!  Good bye Big Ugly Dog Run, you’re going down!

Many of our friends in So. California are comfortably entrenched in the So. Calif life and could never understand why anyone would ever want to go anywhere else, especially to live.   Explaining to these kind of friends why one would move anywhere, let alone a climate that had seasons other than warm was difficult.  I finally found words that they understood… “we have family there”.  “Oh”, these friends would then say and nod their head in understanding.  End of explanation.

Just over the hill in Seattle I’ve a fun bunch of cousins.  I have been especially looking forward to having them explore the farm with me, climb through the barns, sheds and old chicken house.  As kids, we did the same thing together at our Great-Grandparents Ranch, and I am sure it was there that the seeds of my farm life desire were planted.  They showed up on a rainy Saturday.  Our family history would have dictated that I tease them about the rain, as coming from Seattle they were always blamed for inclement weather where ever they went, but I would like to think I am more mature now than to perpetuate those old childish habits, besides they’d brought work clothes!

We toured the farm, ate a fun pub lunch and then the Chain Gang tackled the Big Ugly Dog Run.  We each found our niches, some went  to taking down and rolling up miles and miles (literary exaggeration) of the chain link 6 ft fence, others to pulling up the wire fencing enmeshed into many years of mud to keep the previous digging dogs inside the run and My Loving Spouse & Jubal along with the help of my Cousin who speaks ‘tractor’ tackled the many multiple fence posts set in concrete.  6 adults times a few hours of work = a LOT of progress and the Big Ugly Dog Run is 80% gone!  Woo Hoo, I am so appreciative.

It is more than just ‘nice’ to have ‘family in the area’ and I really am very grateful.  We sent them home with muddy work clothes, pumpkins (of course) and a farm to share once more.