It's been a YEAR!

I can't believe it's actually been a year since I posted anything on this blog. It was a pretty busy year.

It's probably time to at least hit last year's farm highlights:

February we finally found our farm. We began packing up our house and preparing to move.

March we moved in with our houseful of things, plus two storage areas full of things, and the promise of more things from my husband's parents who were downsizing.

April we welcomed our first guests and work crew: my mom and sister from Arizona. They helped kickstart the house decorating. We also bought our first farm animals. Meat chickens - roasters to be exact, in chick form - and four turkeys, in poult form. This means they were only about a day old. We also bought our first beef cattle and got a surprise heifer in the bargain. The day we bought the cattle it snowed. A bit late in the season. Joe started building chicken tractors for our soon to be big chickens so they could have a mobile home on the pastures. And he prepared a pen for the turkeys outside where they would be able to do some contained roaming too.

May we bought our laying hens and an eglu for them to live in. I also started my first ever square foot garden, Joe built compost bins, and we bought our first growing salad bowls. The farmers markets started and we began to settle into the community a bit more. I also was down for a week with my first cataract surgery. I began seeing things much better.

June we welcomed into our home the furniture, decorations, pictures, appliances, etc. from Joe's parents when they moved into their beautiful assisted living home. We also started helping them clean up and clear out their huge four bedroom home to get it ready to sell. By the end of the month we hauled our first ever group of meat chickens to the custom meat house. I had my second cataract surgery this month and finally saw what was really around me. What a huge blessing that was, although both times I was wobbly on sight for a few days.

July we had more guests. First we had our three grandsons come to stay for an extended weekend (ages 3-4). It was really fun. My oldest daughter came to visit with them from Vancouver and helped keep us from pulling our hair out at the roots. Then my sister and her husband from Arizona came and stayed a week.

August we had more guests. Joe's mom and dad came to visit for a day from Vancouver. Then my mom and her husband, Tony, from Arizona came and stayed for just over a week. In between the visits we were desperately trying to fit all the new furniture in and start to unload an incredibly full garage. Well, garages. We have a five bay garage and no place to put a car because of all the stuff still boxed and stored in there. We also finally sold our house in Seattle. We felt really blessed - two house payments was difficult.

September we began to breathe and market the beef cattle. I set up a web page and used Craigslist to get buyers. We also started building a home for goats in and around our barn. It was time to begin harvesting the garden crops and, how could I forget, I also started 'preserving the harvest'. I made applesauce, pear jam, plum jam, pickled beets, sweet pickles, and canned pears.

October we bought our first goats, two boer goat does. We also bought a wether for meat. He was joined on our farm by two other wethers that we kept for a friend. We finished picking the last of the golden delicious apples and cleaned up the gardens.

November we started the month seeing our beef cattle and the wethers head to the custom meat house. Then we sold Wendy our heifer to a great new home. Our pastures were empty again. I bought a spinning wheel and the lady who bought Wendy began teaching me how to spin fiber. I also started and completed (over 50,000 words is completion) a Nano novel. Nano stands for the National Novel Writing month which is November. We had a nice Thanksgiving. In mid November I spent a few days in Seattle for the birth of our second granddaughter. She is healthy and beautiful.

December we prepared for the holidays. We adopted a dog, Bailey, from the local animal shelter. We also got hit by a big snow storm and were stuck on our hill for a few days. Luckily we knew it was coming and we had prepared. I'm also still working on my Nano novel, trying to get it done by the end of the month (hummm getting close here). We are still committed to trying to finish clearing out Joe's parent's house, too, so it can be listed and sold. There is still a lot of things there. Also, winter is our interior repair time for the house. We've worked outside so much this year that we decided to put aside winter for the house. I started on the pantry two days ago and hope to have it looking lovely by the end of the week. We need a big pantry here.

In between all of these 'big' events there were hundreds of little events. Both types were full of laughter and tears, good and bad, funny and sad. It was a year of big changes and carousel emotions. So many things somehow piled up, however haphazardly, into a new way of life for us. Sitting here now I can honestly say it has been one of the most notable and best years of my life. I wasn't sure I would like being on a farm before I got here, now I wouldn't want it any other way. Our course to get here was so twisted, full of disappointments and waiting. But it was worth every minute to be right here where we are. We've made new friends, established a life we love, and invested both emotions and effort into simple things that have made a difference not only in our lives, but many others.

Our cattle alone brought wonderful, healthy grass-fed beef to over eleven families. One of those families had eight children alone. We don't know exactly how many people were and are being fed by them, but it feels wonderful to have helped make that happen.

Did you see that? I noticed it. It was slow but, in small ways I am thinking like a farm woman. It would never have occured to me before this year to marvel at what it might feel like providing healthy food to people. Now it seems natural. Wrapping my mind around country living, farm life, and simple things is slowly coming to me. Not that it's a done deal.

I still manage to complicate my life way too much. Like this decorating the house thing. It was easier to build and grow my first garden, then to know exactly how to make the most of this house. I can't wait until spring. When the 'interior' life ends and the 'outside' life begins again. I think that's another sign of a change. But it really is a good one.

Moo-ving and Redefining Moments (8/7/2007)

Important definitions for this blog entry:

Waiting – long lengths of time consumed in agonizing uncertainty about vitally important life issues.

Sweating bullets – the product of waiting; esp. when sane action is prohibited for insane reasons.

First we made an offer on a farm and then we . . . . waited.

Then we discussed various counter offers and . . . waited.

We sweated bullets, made a second offer and quickly proceeded to . . . wait.

We engaged the services of an attorney in an effort bring order to the issues (now that is an oxymoron) and we are still . . . . waiting and sweating bullets.

To-date we have been waiting for acceptance of our offer on the farm of our choice for the last three weeks. Naively I assumed when I retired from work that life would become stress-free.

How wrong.

Waiting, as defined by this blog and recent events in my life, embraces stress with an enthusiasm that is frightening. And, when the waiting is finally over, I’m highly suspicious that a repair-desperate 40-acre farm will be all ours. A property that can single-handedly overcome any threat of peaceful moments with an abundance of stressful problems (welcome to farming).

On top of all this, I have been punctuating my quiet time with educational reading. My nights have been filled with books about the many and varied aspects of farming: like chickens and eggs. I could tell you some interesting stuff about that pair and let’s not get started on roosters, no sir bob.

And there’s organic and heirloom vegetables which are right up there with gardening techniques. I now know the secrets of organic gardening, much of which centers around seeking out and removing nasty pests with heavily gloved fingers to drown them in a jar of kerosene. Apparently, bugs are not covered by the laws of humane treatment for living creatures. No PETA advocate is going to throw himself in front of me to save a plump grub that is threatening my tomatoes. My guess is vegetarians don’t defend critters that threaten the food they want to eat.

My education didn’t stopped there, however, I watched a film that should have been rated MA for Mature Audiences about goats (of all things) and I know more now about hay, soil, and tractors than I ever dreamed I would. . . yep, I’m very certain of that, I NEVER dreamed I would.

Let’s not forget to mention too, that I’ve even been to a livestock auction. No, we didn’t buy anything. This was an educational field trip. My first face-to-face meeting with the type of critters that will someday surround the house I will call home. This was a dairy and feeder cattle auction (feeder cattle refers to meat cattle – where steaks come from. Since the only ‘feeder’ critter I’d ever encountered before this were “feeder fish” I was concerned and confused by the term “feeder cattle” . . . at first).

In an effort to learn all I could, I watched the ranchers who were buying. These knowledgeable farmers would eye their prospective purchases carefully and then casually reach down to check out a cow’s udders or grab a bull’s . . . well, privates. I was secretly glad that the cattle portion of our farm was not going to be my responsibility. They were selling goats, too, but after watching the MA goat film I wasn’t overly anxious to see them.

Needless to say, life has changed for me. My mind has turned from spreadsheets, financial statements, invoicing and agreements to how to choose the right hens for laying eggs or to eat. How to construct just the right coop, prepare just the right free-range, caged environment for happy hens and how to swap unfertilized eggs from beneath a brooding hen for a batch of purchased and overnight shipped fertilized eggs. And to think I once thought magicians with their fake and swap tricks were good – now I know where they learned their stuff.

I’d like to think that all of this is broadening my mind, deepening my appreciation for life, and opening new venues of interesting metaphor for my soon to be penned novels. But I haven’t thought of writing in weeks, hence, the long length of time since my last blog.



Really, I think the writing cessation is due to two things: the overall farm purchase issues (the waiting and sweating bullets moments) and my frantic need to learn everything I can about farming so I won’t feel desperately out of place after the move from the city to the farm.

The first cow we saw at the livestock auction was agonizingly made to stand in the small sunken corral for about twenty minutes before the auction started. She looked around frantically scoping out the sounds, the smells and the audience. Not recognizing anything she knew, she began to moo. . . loudly, looking for her herd. In the distance, there were responsive moo’s that sounded just as desperate and lost as hers.

I don’t want to be that way. I don’t want to get out on the farm look to my left, look to my right and see no comforting neighbors. I don’t want to find that my cell phone doesn’t have a signal, the stores are appalling far away (and none of them sell Writer’s Digest) and that my questions about where the nearest Starbuck’s is invoke blank stares from fellow farmers.

I don’t want to start longing and moaning about my missing herd. Especially not if the night is as dark and quiet as I’m afraid it will be. Most of all I don’t want to disappoint my dear husband whose dream I’m trying to support.

This last week we visited a John Deere store and he climbed onto a spiffy new tractor (just to try it out). He had that look again. The one that told me he was where he belonged. Later we bought the all important royal trappings: a cowboy hat and farm boots. I know that if I am agonizing over the farm buying issues, he’s doing so ten times more. After all this is his dream. It reaches down into the parts of him that mean the most.

Let’s hope that God, who created chickens and overnight shipped fertilized eggs, can pull off a good fake and swap trick with me between the city and the farm. With luck, no one will ever catch on that I’m out of my element.