Things I've Learned on the Farm...

There are things I thought I'd learn and things I never thought of in a million years.

I thought I'd learn more about astronomy and yet the moments I've had to stare up at the sparkling night sky, while overwhelmingly beautiful, have been fleeting. I could wish for more time, but if I did it would be for more time inside snuggling with the babies. Their childhood is way more fleeting than billion year old stars.

I can tell you what that smell is and from which animal it came. Some people can sniff the bouquet of wine, I can tell you which manure came from what animal based simply on smell.

I was quite proud of my garden until it just withered and died. I know where I went wrong and it was almost exactly when I was marveling at how I never had to water. I should have. I should have mulched better too. I did get a fair amount of dry beans and pumpkins though.

I thought pig poop was the most foul smelling substance on the face of the earth. Bog of eternal stench material, as it is called when one slips in and gets thoroughly slimed with it. But no. The most foul smelling thing ever is dog vomit, after he's eaten a belly full of pig poop. Worse yet, in my kitchen the night before my sister's wedding just as my lovely aunt is unloading her bags from her rental car, bringing them in through the kitchen to the adjacent guest room. Not just poor pup, poor everyone. I thought dog skunked was bad. Seriously.

Pigs are interesting animals. More affectionate than I anticipated. Quite a bit like 4 year olds. They have an insatiable appetite, are ornery as all get out, and escape at inopportune times. They will find every breech and run gleefully to the pond or the road. They respond poorly to threats and ignore frantic pleas. They love fruit. They love milk. They really should have a bath after every meal and when they get muddy somehow manage to ruin my clothes too. All of that exactly describes Lil'Bug's summer. The only difference is that the pigs will be bacon in three weeks and she'll still be 4.

I love our small town. I love the people here, the town square, the parks, the weather, the kindness and curiosity, and the ice cream. It all fits us so very well. So many of the people we have met are just like us, recent transplants who are thriving in the fresh air. Thriving we are.

There were times, weeks at a time where I was just having impossibly bad days. Nothing that would make me give up on farm life, but still difficult. Many involving poop of various degrees. Abby and Jill and Prairieland Herbs got me through some rough times with advice, friendship, and clean smelling hardworking soap. This summer has tought me that we are in exactly the right place, but also that I really want to, perhaps, need to, focus on the trees and bees dream and not try so hard so fast to expand into all possible farming ventures. A CSA is not likely in my future. A berry and fruit and pumpkin stand perhaps sooner than our full out farm/orchard operation will be ready.

Review and check your insurance policy. Better to do it now than after something burns down. Nothing has here, but our friends up at Sugar Creek Family Farm know first hand. My Lil'Bug has been praying for her friend to not be so sad about the baby chickens that were lost. I am grateful none of our friends were hurt.

So those are some late night thoughts I thought I would record before the summer slips away into the fall again......

Facebook Crashed My Blog

I can make the claim that we're just really busy, but you know what? That's only half the story. The other half is that Facebook steals my time, lures my thoughts into a tweet like trap and leaves me with nothing at the end of the day.

As an experiment, I am going to open a draft folder here on blogger in the morning and every time I wish to FB tweet I will enter the line there instead. My days really are funny and silly and full of things every day and FB is getting all the good parts. For example:

Little known fact: my dream as a child was to be an ER trauma surgeon. I worked for 3 years as a "volunteen" (assistant nurses aid) and saw first hand the work of rural volunteer fire fighters and EMT's. I know firsthand what death looks like, both traumatic and lingering. I chose instead to study architecture.

found 6 keets wandering back this afternoon. That's something at least. Harvested 6 pumpkins too. Tomorrow heading to DM.

Yup, I homeschool just to annoy you. comment by Dearest: We're sorry, but your child does not meet the qualifications for enrollment in the ***** Family Academy for the Talented and Gifted. We do however donate annually to a fund for public institutions that work to keep kids like yours off the streets. Thanks!

thinks Coraline is frightening on a very personal level. Other Mother. Shiver. Also, setting the mood for contemplation today. Found the cat but none of the keets. Pigs fed. 1/2 the laundry put away. Figuring out dinner. Soup sounds good.

Ug, my kitchen smells funny and not a funny ha ha either.

is worried about the 25 missing keets and the one, precious, missing cat.

I give in just a bit and check FB, AND SCORE A FREE GLASS GREENHOUSE! W00T!

I think my house is sliding into shangri la/ we are surrounded by fog it looks like we are in a cloud

6 inches of standing water at the pig gate. Blueberry grabbed her poopy diaper and flung it. Slipped in chicken poop. Today's theme?

is a bean picking dancer la la la la la.....yeah a bean picking dancer la la.

Funny that the rain soaked maggoty picnic was the highlight of my day. The picnic was great! Thanks H B for organizing it. :) It warmed and dried up as soon as A and S R. left. Um, the caterpillars were in fact maggots. Lily found a nice home for them in the bushes. Ug. All 10 of them....the caterpillars J gave LB were actually maggots, which is freaking hilarious. I so did not freak out. I mean, she had already played with them for HOURS.

So you see, last week was pretty freakin' hilarious. Lots of pictures too. We made ice cream, cheese, and canned tomatoes. We started getting eggs from the chickens, first egg was a double yolk!, got a batch of guinea chicks, raised them to 3 weeks and set them outside. Lost all the guinea chicks. Made brownies for the FIRST TIME EVER. BLUEBERRY STARTED WALKING! I wrote about all of it, just not here. Such is the plight of facebook to destroy blogger apologetically and in the process steal all my personal information. Hmph. Ironic that this blog will now feed into my FB page and belong to them FOREVER. But enough complaining, on to action!

Our Busy Busy Life

Bye bye station wagon. We are still awaiting diagnosis, a third opinion. The second opinion was that the car model was junk and we should junk it. I hate driving the truck. I hate driving Dearests car. I hope there is something we can do and not junk it just yet.


Sisters asleep.
Lots of color. The new orange.

Fried zucchini cakes with fresh local goat feta, a little salty but perfect with fresh sliced tomatoes.

This is Wilbur the pig. Her pig. She tells people we have 5 pigs, 1 pet, 4 for bacon.


My little swamp elf setting crawfish traps off our dock. Grampa T. made these for us. She is warming up to him quickly and we are enjoying his visits a lot!

Pawpaw painting the old house the new blue. This blue is the color of the sky on a perfect day. It is also the color that I painted our first house when we were first married. It was a color scheme I loved on a house in the Drake neighborhood, one day I pulled over and knocked on their door and asked them what colors they used, the paint chip names. They gave the old cans and I went to the paint store and got the colors exactly. Newport Blue and Academic Navy. Now that Drake house is purple and our old house is a different blue with white trim.

But something about these colors moved me then and what better than to color our home with the memories of how our marriage began!


And last, but not least...queso blanco. Yum. I'll post more when I figure out what I am going to eat this with.......

Iowa State Fair 2009- in pictures

Pick a Peck of Pickles......

The lovely dress

Abby of Sugar Creek made this beautiful dress for Holly. Last night while watching the Firefly episode, The Message I noticed that Jayne's cap that his mom sends him matches this dress exactly. How cool is that? So cool.

I love how versatile the dress is, she'll wear it through the fall and winter too. Thank you Abby!

Blueberry Summer

Dye a-Lot

The New Blue in Progress Plus Bonus Chainsaw Action

Blogging

Soon Lil'Bug will be reporting to the state for our homeschooling requirements. Not this year, but soon. In the last month I have met up with about 6 families new to unschooling/homeschooling and they all have 4 or 5 yo's. What I am getting good at is translating our experiences into school speak for the purpose of the schooly types trying to understand that what we do has value.

Many of those on the unschool journey hit a huge blockage in their path when it comes to explaining it to those who are trying to understand. Knowing the language helps.

So what is unfloding in my thoughts is two fold. One, we have to record a portfolio of Lil'Bug's learning to meet our state's legal requirements. Two, in doing so we will make the blog public to assist others on a similar path. Thrown in will be discussions on some of the struggles too.

So then that led to another idea. We'll be filling out a page weekly for that blog, or more often if any one thing seems to need more documentation (ie I take lots of good pictures). Locally, lots of other families are starting up the same type of record. Why not have a second blog that feeds/links from all the others, to gather the ideas in the same place? An online friend had started doing something similar in Utah, but not quite the same (so I don't think we are copying- Stephanie?).

So that will be brewing in the coming weeks. I'll send out invites once I get it up and running. Viva la Life Learning!

Ps.... now that my summer teaching fiasco is almost over, I will have more time to blog. Sorry about that!

Displacement

My heritage is Cajun. I learned French as a kid and can still understand most of it now, used to write poetry about missing the great big waters during my teen angst years. That bit is ironic given my anxiety over being on a boat in deep water.

Perhaps it is in my blood though to long for a homeland. The Cajuns were themselves displaced from France and then Acadia.It is an interesting history. The few times I have felt at home have been in Louisiana, now and then I will get a whiff of the air and long for the damp chill of a Louisiana Christmas, or end up cooking chicken stock overnight and long for a pot of slow cooked gumbo.

I have BeauSoleil Avec Michael Doucet on Pandora right now. This music makes me feel at ease and creative and so many other things.

I know that one of the things that made me fall in love with our farm was that to get to it the highway rolls through a marsh and a river greenbelt that is very swamp like. There are crawfish mounds in the pasture and a flat bottom boat put up near the dock. I feel at home here in a way that I did not in the city, but a meme I was tagged for on facebook asked, "if you could live anywhere, move there, where?" Immediately I thought of the swamps with the dark, shadowy pines and cypress near Iowa, Louisiana. Ironic. It is pronounced (I-Oh-Way not I-Oh-Wah.)

So as I am up late again while my employers server is down AGAIN, I got to thinking about displacement. I carry this place in my heart, home is where the heart is, and I make my home where I am, where my family is. Luckily we have facebook and the Internet to stay connected, to strengthen bonds faint from distance. There is much to be grateful for.

Tomorrow: Gumbo.

Ok, so the cat caught a really loud mouse last night and tortured it under the bed. It was so loud I thought it was a bat or a bird or possibly a Nutria. Seriously. It woke the baby up too and all she wanted to do was get down to see and her complaints of my efforts to get her back to sleep woke Lil'Bug up. I then woke Chad up to make it stop (kill kitty's victim mercifully) and his antics allowed the tiny little mouse to escape. Then the cat complained loudly for the next two hours.

Let's just leave it at, I am tired. So very tired.

Last night I harvested 5 cabbage heads, 7 zucchinis, a meal worth of green beans, a meals worth of yellow peppers, and a salsa dish worth of tomatoes. Today I will be making pork egg rolls and Nachidotious Meat Pies for the freezer. Yum. Also on the list are pies for my Dad's 2nd visit this afternoon.

Cow Girl Up

My princess. Her first horse ride and lesson. Oh was she excited. She dressed in a special outfit, donned her horse boots, and was so joyful with anticipation she could barely form sentences-which for those of you who know her, you know that is a rare occasion.

A great love affair has begun. Every penny she finds has been going to the piggy bank for "her horse" and she knows it will be years.

Thank you Green Ranching Mom for a delightful evening!

Inertia

So my very wise husband and I were discussing a friend the who went to college for one thing, got a job in that one thing then quit, wallowed for a bit got another job in that one thing and quit again and is now perpetually unhappy in the job they now have in a totally unrelated field. Why on earth would someone go to school for something that's not a good fit for them? I asked. Inertia. Once someone gets going on a path it can be really hard to get off, he so wisely replied. Sometimes it is easier than changing paths or pursuing something else.

I smugly thought, Oh good. I am so glad I am not like that. Whew.

Right. Inertia is a law for a reason. It does not discriminate.

Sure I pursued higher education in my chosen fields and again for grad school and then chose after a bit to change paths and be a mom and a professor for a bit. I think it was easier for me because who I am was not tied up in my degrees. I'm a mom and a writer/creative, external jobs were just extra. Now, those of you who have been reading this blog know that the path for me from there to here was not as simple as that. I did my fair share of releasing those labels to embrace my identity, but the actual doing just happened. But perhaps it is not as easy for others.

What I am getting to though is not about career paths though, that's just a ramble to delay my confession. Inertia kept me on a path away from my family and their conflict. It started with a petty argument and then an epiphany. As a newly pregnant mom about 5 years ago I asked for some boundaries and some breathing room so as to deal with a higher risk pregnancy than normal and those boundaries were stomped on almost immediately. So the lines were redrawn and reinforced. It was hard at first but soon the line was a wall and ultimatums were made on both sides. Honestly the longer we were apart the healthier I became physically and emotionally. I missed my Dad the whole time but I understood the bigger picture and the importance of my well being to becoming a good mom. It was more about me than anything else, but the longer I examined the why's and what's I became angrier and angrier and more set in my decision to stay away from her. Infrequent bouts of hurtful things she'd do reinforced my resolve.

5 years later.....my sister's wedding shifted our perspective. My husband decided in the middle of the reception to leave and go get our girls. It meant the world to Aunt Bee on her wedding day, to my grandmother who'd never met them, to Aunts and Uncles who'd never met them, to my Dad who never met them. There were so many tears.

Perhaps it is time to look at the map again and replan our route out of this brokenhearted place. I am still not ready to have a relationship with the person who creates such hurt and anxiety in my life, but perhaps the healing can begin with other parts of my family first. Inertia is a hard thing to break from so of course this will all move very slowly, like one of those old sci fi robot machines that creaks and rumbles back to life. A little care, a careful path and the old machine works again. Let's hope it's not a Killdozer.

So that brings me to last night. My Dad and I had our first visit in about 5 years. We had dinner at the farm and chatted about school, work, and food. It was so very good in so many ways. Tonight we are eating Boudain, extra spicy with a side of Community Coffee.

Honestly, I am probably not going to write much more about this topic or healing because it is intensely private. But still, that's what is happening down at our little farm.

Here's to healing! (And to wise husbands!)

Our Week in Pictures

This is childhood perfected.

She is growing up so fast, but everyday is an adventure!

The field to the south of our farm was put up in hay this week. I think it looks like a painting. So picturesque...
Dearest with his bonfire. We had friends camping. We love sharing this blessing we call home with our friends. We have so much fun when people come out here, but the Sugar Creek family is a frequent guest and we really love it when they camp!

Oh and the sunsets here this week have been amazing....

We moved the swingset. Summer is all about swinging in the breeze to stay cool!


Grampa (Pawpaw) has been working hard this week too. Porch progress continues.