the idyllic farm life

Or, maybe not. Lest you have too idyllic a vision in your head about farm life, I thought I’d give you a small dose of our reality. Wipe out all those Thomas Kinkade pictures from your head, all those red gambrel-roofed barns with black and white spotted cows gently grazing on fresh green grass, with the farmer and his wife on the front porch in matching Cracker Barrel rocking chairs.

Insert instead our last couple of days.

It started Monday morning when I noticed we had a sick chicken. I sequestered her into her own cage so she would hopefully not infect the rest of the flock. I fretted over her all day, researched, tried to feed her, and generally wondered what I’d done wrong. I realized by the afternoon, I was going to have to make some changes to the coop and bleach the heck out of it.

Monday afternoon, I took apart some old lumber to make a raised flower bed in the front because our dogs would never stay out of a level bed. I flung huge beads of sweat all over our front lawn as I worked. The sun beat down since we have no shade to speak of, and it was a beautiful, clear, 95 degree day with around 50% humidity. I grabbed the weed-eater to begin preparing the ground, but couldn’t get it started for anything.

So I then headed out to the garden to put compost around each of our baby vegetable plants. Our land was farmed conventionally just 7 short years ago and our soil has a lot of recuperating to do. Our garden was stagnating, so I put compost around half of our plants before I ran out. Well, that half nearly doubled in size in just a week’s time, while the other half still sat there piddling along.

Monday night, Sassy woke with a start, very upset. Turns out, she had pinworms, suggested by intense nighttime itching of her bottomly region, evidenced by a quick flashlight in the dark. I sat up until 2:00 a.m. doing online research on pinworms to see if I’d have to drive her to the doctor (an hour one way).

Tuesday morning, I woke to a dead chicken. Jeff burned it in our fire barrel. I resisted the urge to crack a joke each time I went outside: “Hey, why does it smell like KFC out here?” (It did, too.)

Apparently, Jeff found the potential joke as unsavory as I did, since he’s usually good for stupid jokes, even if they’re a little off-color. I guess we can only go so far.

After we burned the chicken and I spent an hour cleaning their coop, the pinworms sent me on an impromptu trek to purchase pinworm medication 30 minutes away, in our truck with nearly 20 loads of tainted laundry packed in the back. I stopped at the Pharmacy, then headed over to the Laundromat. Of course, I lugged both children with me throughout the tasks. While the laundry was tumbling, we went over to Big Lots since we’d lost Magpie’s pacifier somewhere between the truck and the truck. Your guess is as good as mine. It was present when we ventured into the pharmacy; gone when we ventured out. Big Lots had nothing to speak of in the pacifier department, so we bought a few snacks and headed back to load our wet laundry into the truck.

This long, long trip landed us back home at 7:00 p.m. I hung as much laundry as I could fit on the lines outside, then weeded some of the garden before it got dark. When we came in, we had no bedclothes to speak of – they were all on the line -- so we drug out blankets and laid them on our beds with uncovered pillows. I still had not found time to bleach the bathrooms and this bothered me. I also hadn’t eaten dinner, so we made grilled swiss on salty rye, put in the movie Elf, and I fell asleep at 11:00 nursing my Magpie.

Wednesday morning (today), I knew I HAD to bleach out the chicken coop, but in my research I’d come across an idea to make a droppings pit for the chickens. I loved the idea, and could see how it would help me keep the coop cleaner. So, first thing this morning, I went out and dug a pit under their roosts. Then, I drug all of their stuff out of the run. Their nesting boxes, their roosts, their water container, their ladder. I dumped them all out, then bleached them all out. I loaded all the soil I dug up from under their roost into a wheelbarrow to use for my raised flower garden. Sadly, the torn apart lumber is still sitting outside my front door, warping in the sun.

Jeff had to leave for work the minute I finished this task, so I didn’t get a chance to hang more of the wet laundry. I put Magpie on my back in a backpack carrier and started hanging laundry. The sun was just all full of itself again today, practically bursting like a barrel-chested fitness freak, and I knew poor Maggie was getting too much sun, even with her hat. I brought her in to see her arms starting to redden, so I had to let the rest of the laundry wait. I put a load into the dryer since that was the best I could do.

I nursed her down for a nap, started a batch of kefir, and ate a very late lunch. I bleached down the master bathroom, nursed her again, cursed myself for losing her pacifier, worked on the bathroom more, nursed, cursed, bleached. She wouldn’t sleep. She is officially a paci addict.

My dad came around 3:00 p.m. and took Sassy to buy a new bike she’s had her eye on at Tractor Supply. When he returned, he sat with my Magpie while I took down and folded dry laundry, hung all the wet laundry I could fit, lugged in all the dry laundry, fed the dogs, and put the chicken coop back together. At 9:00 p.m. we all went out for a nice treat of ice cold water. Because we’re living with only a dorm fridge and a chest freezer and we have no ice.

And we have clean water that is rather annoying to reach. I have a nice expensive filter that dad bought me for Christmas, but I had to put it in before I had a chance to put in a spout – our water normally tastes gross so I was in a big hurry – and without a spout, you have to get in under the sink, hold your glass (or pitcher) next to the water filter ready for the spurting water that will follow, and literally turn the cold water valve that runs to the filter to “on.” You wait until your container fills, then turn the valve off.

My deer-shy dad drove, if you want to call it that, to get our H2O treat. I believe it was probably more like “cruised,” or maybe “inched.” We returned home at 11:20. Yes, that’s right. 11:20. We went 15 miles away.

I loaded the dryer, put Maggie down to sleep. Dad had bought her a new paci so she finally got her fix and dropped out. I had a snack of potato chips, followed by Macadamia Nuts and a Dove chocolate bar, then finally decided I’d take the Pin-X medicine myself. I hadn’t been able to decide since I’m still nursing exclusively.

At midnight, my dad had to leave and Sassy was ready for bed. This was an unusually late night for her. But I still had to dress the bed with new bedclothes. I didn’t want to sleep on its nakedness another night!

I forced my poor tired child to wait while I returned her mattress to its proper condition, then finally let her lie down. She was asleep after one “hand-hug.” I dreamt of Thomas Kinkade farms and how I need to get me one of those.

Personally, I think famers are far too busy to sit on their porches at all. That’s why those Cracker Barrel rockers stay so pretty and nice. Nobody gets to use them!!!

Now, for a couple addendums.

First, Jeff and I have been talking about big plans again. We’ve decided we don’t want a mortgage at all, so if and when we build, it will have to be mortgage-free.

Instead, we want to travel more and have this nice wiggle room in our budget that had become so unfamiliar. Next year, we are thinking of taking one of those all-inclusive vacations to Costa Rica since Maggie will fly free all next year.

And finally, I’ll conclude with the Top 5 Reasons to Get Pinworms in the Family

#5: It’s a good way to quickly figure out what your priorities are when everything else gets crossed off your agenda.

#4: Recent research shows that having pinworms at an early age can reduce your risk of colon cancer. (really, true fact)

#3: Your bathrooms are clean and sparkly from copious amounts of bleach.

#2: Nothing teaches humility like having to announce to your group of friends that your child might have infected their children with itchy butt worms.

#1: The laundry is finally, finally all caught up!

hey ladies

The ladies (as Jeff calls them) are here! My dear husband spent about 20 hours working on their pen, nesting boxes & roosts this weekend and the results were great.



Of course, who are we to decide? The hens themselves will decide if their quarters are adequate, and when they decide they are pleased, then the eggs will come. So we’ve been waiting, watching, searching & ta-da! Our first egg. This is Jeff’s finest compliment.





Sassy is now begging to go search for eggs a couple times a day. I can usually get her to couple it with feeding the chickens or watering them or feeding the dogs or watering them, so I’m liking this daily-plus egg hunt. It’s a lot of fun, looking for eggs. It takes me back to childhood Easter Egg Hunts. I think I’d forgotten how much fun they were.

Sassy and Jeff are busy naming our ladies. So far, we have Bella, Sarah & Sweet Pea. The brown ones are friendlier than the white ones, but they all lay brown eggs.



My poor Magpie has been sick the past couple days. Her coos have turned to little groans & she wants to be with me so much I think she would climb back in if I’d let her. I’m so glad I can be with her at home when she feels this way. I can’t imagine having to go to work or school and leave her with a day-care provider – not even my own husband. She’s very clear that she wants to nurse & be held by Mommy & that’s about it. I’ve given up all expectations of getting things done & nurse & rock her as she wishes. I think the best antidote to her illness is going to be a stress-free healing time where she doesn’t have to cry for Mama at all.



Whoever thinks babies can’t communicate is obviously crazy. She communicates more clearly & honestly than most adults I’ve met.

We watched Marley and Me three times this weekend. It was so much better than I expected based on the previews. I can’t recommend it enough. I was told it “had a sad ending.” Don’t let that dissuade you. It’s not stick-with-you-sad. More heart-warming sad, if that makes sense. And it’s not slapstick humor, despite the dumb commercials.

Hope to see you all soon. Please consider coming to our “farm-warming party” on Saturday, June 13, or anytime the week before. Well, or any time in the month of June for that matter.

a birthday and a mother's day

Sassy had her birthday party this past weekend at the arboretum park. She had a wonderful time, as did I. Thanks to everyone who came! We’ve been busy making projects she received as gifts. So far, she has painted two of four birdhouses, made two cat toys, put together a doll, written some notes on stationery with her new art set, sketched in her sketchbook, fixed her hair with her new barrettes, played snake family, explored a photo album (wow – so many cute pics there), tied string to her new kite, helped Daddy build a Mother’s Day present for me with her new tools, and of course, rationed her chocolate to herself and us. What a great food sharer she is. So very unlike her mother.
















For Mother’s Day, Jeff built me a lean-to to help keep our lawn tractor dry. I had to laugh to myself, thinking how many mothers out there would be happy to have a lean-to for a Mom’s Day gift. I’m quite happy with it myself! I promptly put all my gardening tools under there along with the John Deere.








We worked and worked and worked on the garden Monday & Tuesday. I am still sore! I didn’t get much planted, but we have quite a bit of soil prepped for more planting on our next dry day. I planted all seeds, no starts, and got maybe 4 tomato seeds in, 8 beans, a few squash, a couple cilantro, a couple cabbages. We’ll see what comes up. We had to first lime the soil, since it’s a heavy clay soil. Then we mixed in some cow manure and finished with some leftover topsoil. I thought I’d be able to plant without tilling since the ground had been turned over last year when our septic field went in, but alas, no. So when I went out to plant, I realized how compact the soil was & decided I had to turn it all over first. Unfortunately, we don’t own a tiller, so I had to do it with the shovel. It felt good to go to bed physically exhausted – it’s been awhile, probably since my Magpie was born – and wake up with sore muscles.

What else this week? A woman from our new homeschool group is probably going to give us some older chickens. She said they are no longer laying every day, but usually every other day. She has 12 to unload. I don’t think I need a dozen eggs a day anyway!

We have to get a coop and a run set up within the next 2 weeks to take them, so I’ll be busy on that next week I’m sure.

I made cottage cheese for the first time this week and it turned out really well. I could see it becoming a regular task for awhile. Another homeschool mom up here made some farmer’s cheese that she brought to group last week and I’m excited to try it next.

I visited a farm about 2 miles up the road yesterday that had an organic asparagus sign out. There I met my first organic farm activist out here. The guy has to be pushing 50 years old – his youngest child of 3 is 20 years old, he told me -- but doesn’t look a day over 35. He sells organic veggies and grass-fed beef. He also distributes a newsletter and seems intent on educating the community about “nutrient-dense foods,” his words. Even better, he’s a native to the area so people likely trust him more. How wonderful it would be to get to know him better and do work with him when my Magpie is ready for it.

Oh, and the homeschool group up here had their planning meeting on Tuesday, which I attended. They decided my skills would be best used as a writing teacher for the high school age group. I am so excited. I remember first wanting to be a college writing professor (for English Composition 101) when I was around 12 years old. I’ve designed curricula in my head for years. I tutored English Comp when I was in college myself. I know most professors find 101 to be a burden, with kids in there that would rather not be, nary a writer in the bunch. I think that’s precisely why it’s always appealed to me. I’ve dreamt of turning an intimidating process into an easy one for them, and now I’ll get my chance! Many of the kids in the group are struggling with the essay component of their SAT’s, so I’ll get a chance not only to teach them and use my curriculum ideas, but to also be held accountable by their scores on the SAT test. It’s almost like I’ll be taking the test myself! (And now my true nature as a d-o-r-k shines through, hee, hee.)

I finally feel like we’re about settled in now. I’m back on cloth diapers. No longer allowing myself the convenience of disposables seems to be the defining point. :-)

Our house on James, dare I say, dare I say, is set to close next Friday. DARE I say. The buyers actually asked if they could come in this weekend and start cleaning up the backyard and painting inside. We said no to the painting but heck yeah to the backyard. Why not?

It sounds like they’re pretty certain it’s a go, dare I say.

Hope everyone else had a great week! I’ll be checking everybody’s blogs now to see how many other friends got lean-to’s for Mother’s Day. Ha ha!

maple

We have a new pup! We adopted Maple, a Basset, Jack-Russell mix from our local humane shelter this weekend. Sofie is thrilled. I hear her saying, “You’ve given me a sister!”

They run and tumble, wrestle and play-growl, then trot along together checking out the property. When they’ve had enough, they plop down near the house to rest and ready themselves for the next adventure.

Maple is probably around 4 months old. She still has her baby teeth, but is no longer teeny-tiny. She’s a goofy, stout little thing with a wagging tongue and lots of love to spread. She has made a wonderful addition to our family this week.

Will next week bring chickens? If so, we won’t name them.

Jeff has decided he no longer wants to be a vegetarian. He is going to eat chicken and fish. I believe he might even eat the chicken we raise ourselves. He has decided that chickens are stupid enough and not pet-like enough that chopping off their heads when you’re hungry does not constitute a breach of animal/owner trust.

He has been a vegetarian for as long as we’ve known each other, so this is a big diet (and dogma) change for him. He is citing a desire to get his body clean again. He wants to ditch the processed crap that’s been making him sick, as well as the copious amounts of cheese and beans that he has to consume to get enough protein in to maintain muscle. He thinks a diet of some meat protein, perhaps once/day, plus lots of vegetables, cleaner carbs, and very little fake foods will do the trick. We have agreed to only local, humanely-raised meats with no factory-farmed suffered meat at all.

Sounds good to me, since it makes my life in the kitchen a heck of a lot easier and can make us more self-sufficient, too. It’s darn hard to support the bulk of your family’s diet off your own land unless you include some eggs or poultry, at least. And since he doesn’t like eggs, then dumb chickens it just might be.

And deer meat. My husband, vegetarian for the past 15 years, has decided to start hunting deer. He has always said, for all of those 15 years, that he isn’t against eating meat, but only if you have the cajones to kill it yourself, not distance yourself from it. Now, he’s walking the talk.

He put up some laundry posts for me yesterday and I s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d my clothesline across them today. It was such a beautiful day for it. Reaching high above my head, I would look up and see huge blue sky with big puffy white clouds resting here and there. Nothing but blue and white and bright sun beyond the clothesline. It made me smile. Then I grabbed a sunhat for my Magpie.

My little Magpie…..finally, a screen name. Why Magpie? Like the magpie -- the crow -- she watches. Her little eyes dart here to there to there to here. She is aware. She makes connections. She is knowing and observant.

Tomorrow Jeff will pick up our new washer and Tuesday I can (hopefully) run a load of clothes. Expect a lovely picture of clothes hanging on 4 clotheslines behind our house to follow.

Perhaps I will also include one of Jeff’s first non-vegetarian meal. He’s planning on fried chicken – from Tewes’ of course.

where art thou newman-o's?

Lack of quick access to my few vices was of the things I was nervous about moving “so far out,” as everyone likes to say (leaving me wondering how exactly that is defined, since the closest store that sells, say, milk is less than 2 miles from us, though the closest Wal-Mart is 30 miles, and I’m certainly not complaining about that one bit). My vices these days consist of little more than coffee and sweets, especially chocolate. It’s just that I’m picky about them. They have to be organic. Oreos are off limits. Newman-o’s are devoured by the box full.

Well it turns out funny things happen when you simply cut off easy access. You don’t need the things you used to depend on. You think about them, salivate over them in your mind. You think how delicious they would be. But then, you get over it and eat something you have on hand.

It’s weird, because living 5 minutes from a store that sold all of my favorite things made my mind games play out very differently. I would think about something I wanted, and then I couldn’t quit thinking about it until I gave in and drove myself to Kroger or Graeter’s or Blockbuster, if it was a show that was catching my addictive bone.

So now that option is off the table, unless I want a 60-minute drive, round-trip, to do it. And it truly surprised me that my brain just says, OK then, not going to happen, let’s move on.

When we ran out of cookies, we ate Easter candy with nuts. When we ran out of that, we ate toast with honey. When we had no food in the house to speak of, I used what we did have to make a delicious meal that could easily become a regular part of our summer suppers. Looking around at empty cabinets, I sprouted half a bag of mung beans, roasted 2 beets, and mixed it together with a can of kidney beans, some oil, salt, honey & 2 packages of restaurant-swiped mustard. Yum.

In the city, I would have been running to Kroger since we had “nothing to eat!”

I guess that’s why it seems so much more relaxing out here. I can’t remember the last time I sat in my chair in the morning, internet-free, TV-free, with no obligations on the day’s calendar at all, and said to myself, “Hmmm….what should I get into today?”

I hope that this more relaxed lifestyle will lead to me being a devoted homeschooler next year. This year I’ve been less than disciplined, and I’ve forgiven myself because it’s “just kindergarten.” To an extent, I believe that. On another level, I’m nervous that I don’t have the self-discipline to ensure the job is done properly.

I will say the opportunities for learning are always there if you look for them, though. Sassy and I walked to the mailbox yesterday through puddle after massive rain puddle in our driveway. On the way back, we played an odd-even game. I gave her a quick primer: 1, 3, 5 – odd. 2, 4, 6 – even. It goes every other, I said. I stepped, saying, ODD, EVEN, ODD, EVEN, as each foot went down. “Time to play!”, I told her.

Each time I said an ODD number, she could jump into a puddle as hard as she wanted to.

Each time I said an EVEN number, she wasn’t allowed to jump. It was an ODD-EVEN Simon Says, I suppose.

She got it after about 2 minutes and only a handful of mis-jumps. Then we played all the way back to the house. “Do it again!” she kept begging me.

It is a wonderful thing to embrace the mud and the dirt because it’s a fact of life. It’s a wonderful thing to put into practice the adage, “If they’re not muddy when they come in, they weren’t having enough fun.”

I can’t wait to have all of our friends to visit, and I'm looking at the first weekend in June to have a big old, weekend-long housewarming party. Mark your calendars & dig out your tents, if you'd like.

And please stop by Kroger on the way and bring some Newman-o’s if possible.

happy alive again day

This is the first Easter since I’ve had children that we didn’t have family functions to shuttle between, trucking 50+ miles to pick up baskets of candy. When did Easter become the Spring Christmas, I’ve often wondered. I usually find time to attend a morning service each Easter, even in my CEO years (Christmas Easter Only). This year, we decided, we were busy enough! We were going to spend Easter on our land, in our new house, all together. We were not going to send Sassy away with Nana for the Easter Egg Hunt or with Grandpa for the morning breakfast. We would be calm, we would be together, and we would be Just Us.

So Sassy made it clear the day before that she was expecting an Easter basket from the Easter Bunny. She said something like, “I hope the Easter Bunny can find me in my new house!” Then she went on to describe the places she remembered the Easter Bunny hiding her basket in previous years. I didn’t have the heart to skip the hidden basket, so off to Kroger I went on Saturday morning.

As I was going to bed Saturday night, I was thinking (of course) that I didn’t want her to think Easter was only all about candy and a giant hiding bunny. (Though that was good fodder for jokes Saturday night, as we wondered if Sally our cat, brilliant hunter that she is, would hunt the Easter Bunny and leave him decapitated on our front stoop. Yes, we have a sometimes sick sense of humor, and yes, Sassy laughed right along with us.) And since we weren’t planning to attend Easter services anywhere, I felt somewhat responsible for her education on the subject.

I decided that Sunday morning I would take Sassy on a Easter morning walk, just the two of us with baby strapped on front. I would explain to her a more meaningful Easter that wasn’t all about candy.

So, we started with Jesus dying on the cross and coming to life again on Easter. I explained that things can die, but then come back to life. Look at the trees, I told her, see how they died over the winter and now they are coming back to life in the Spring. Look at their tiny buds (shush please, botanists, on my lack of differentiating death and dormancy on this). I explained how people in our lives have died but they have become alive again in Heaven, just like Jesus became alive again here on Earth. That’s how we know it will happen in Heaven.

Talk about simplicity! In bringing it down to a five-year-old’s level, I think I actually made Easter more meaningful for myself.

We renamed the day “Alive Again Day.” We hiked the woods and found tiny spring buds. We took pictures of some and collected others. We decided that next year, when we had an oven to bake in, we would bake a cake on Alive Again Day and celebrate all the people in our life who have died and had a second birthday in Heaven.

Here are some pictures from our walk. I hope everyone else had a very happy Alive Again Day!

the state we're in

No pictures this time (I forgot the camera), but I wanted to update on our progress because it seems like we've been dragging, dragging, dragging along & then bam! It's all going to happen at once. Maybe building always happens like this?

We could be moving as early as this coming weekend. Wow.

We now have: water from the road back to the house. A septic tank due to be installed early this week. A leach field already installed for the tank. Electric sign-in fees paid, paperwork notarized & filed, and flags set to indicate the underground line-to-be. We're still waiting on them to dig the line.

We have the skirting ordered and estimated delivery to be this coming Friday here at James. We'll have to move it out there in the truck. This is probably the biggest stickler to moving out there over next weekend. We would be making multiple, multiple trips with the truck unless we break down & rent a moving van.

I don't mind moving in without electric for a few weeks, but we have to have water & septic installed. We won't have a landline phone for awhile either, most likely, so we'll have to depend on our cellphones. We probably won't have internet for awhile, although I'm sure I'll be making lots of trips to the library to make up for that.

We met our first neighbor yesterday. We had to install a mailbox on the corner of what we thought was probably their property -- the mailtruck runs on the opposite side of the road from our house -- so we bravely (it's hard!) went over & knocked on their door to say hello & tell them before we started messing around their property.

Turns out "they" is a mom who has recently separated from her husband and her three older children, 1 in high school & 2 in college. She lives in a gorgeous house on 5 acres. I don't know how many square feet, but it looks smallish -- just our style -- and it has that lofted ceiling with open great room & balcony that I've always loved & seems to be common in the area among newer homes. It has a wrap-around porch that runs the length of two sides of the house. It made me think sadly of our log cabin plans...briefly. I think my desire to not be straddled in outrageous debt right now outweighs my house-envy.

She seemed to be a friendly woman. We talked about gardening, canning, going without chemicals. She too is allergic to chemicals. She invited us to come and have popcorn while we watch TV in her finished basement during tornado warnings.

Our contractor was out for awhile yesterday too. He was discussing our storm shelter with us. I told him we had a budget of $2000 & to do as much as he could with it, then gave him "creative control." Ha! He's making it so we can put shelves in to store canned goods, apples, squashes & root veggies overwinter. He described the details to Jeff (which I didn't particularly understand) and Jeff reported to me that we're going to have a bunker that will survive a nuclear holocaust. Hee, hee.

Ooh -- I do have one picture to share. This is a Photoshop creation of our plans for the house that I worked on all day Thursday. I think I needed a break from real work that day!



The big dirt patch in front represents our garden. We'll be planting our vegetables in front over about an acre. It will extend to the halfway point between our house & the road. I spent the latter part of Thursday doing a scaled plan of the garden on graph paper. I'm planning a 4-year rotation, with the 4 plots belonging to: salad veggies, brassicas, roots & cucurbits/squashes. A permanant rhubarb/asparagus bed will run the width of one end & a permanent strawberry bed will run the width of the other.

I've been thinking about where I want this blog to go after we move & I've decided it will morph into the traditional homeschooling/farming blog we all know & love. I'll describe what steps we're taking on the farm, what stupid mistakes we make & what brilliant things we discover from the old-timers. I'll record the cute things my kids say and leave out the parts where I lose my temper. I'll take lots of pictures to share. LG will remain the place where I can share my true thoughts & feelings, my struggles & weaknesses. I'll not share that blogspot with many people. This one's different; it's meant to be shared.