Farm Life

Life on a farm isn't like it seems in those Old McDonald picture books.  Our cows aren't all white and black, my chore clothes aren't pristine blue jean overalls and a straw hat, and our farm isn't red outbuildings with white trim.  We don't use a pitchfork to pitch hay, we don't have hay stacks, and most of our cows have numbers instead of names.

The modern dairy farm is turning more and more automated.  Our fields are worked by horsepower (as in John Deere) as opposed to horse power.  Our hay is baled, not stacked, and lines the driveway at the barn in long white plastic wrapped rows. We use skidsteers and tractors with loaders to haul and feed hay.  No pitchforks involved. Our cows are numbered for convenience (ever try coming up with 40 new names each year without overlapping the 120+ names you already have in use?) and are black, white, brown, red, grey, and every shade in between.  My chores clothes are sweat pants, T-shirts, and sweatshirts and on my feet, the ubiquitous blue mud boot found at the fleet supply store in town.  Our barns are more pole buildings with steel siding/roofing as opposed to the iconic red barn with soaring hay loft.  Fields are plowed with tractors pulling plows that cut a several foot swath instead of a single row of sod turned over by a walk-behind plow pulled by a trusty farm horse.  While I do know how to milk a cow by hand, I rarely have to use that skill for more than the occasional cow as our automatic milkers with their automatic take-offs do all the hard work for us.  If you really want to get fancy, you can get a robotic milker for even more ease.

Yet, farm life isn't all mechanical. There's still the charm of seeing newborn calves wobble about on gangly unsteady legs.  There's still that one favorite cow who nuzzles up for a neck scratch. There's still the appreciation for the land and the animals.  Farmers still sigh with satisfaction when the last load of grain is in the bin and harvest is done for another year.  While things have gotten more automated and farm life has changed considerably since the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the essence of family farming still remains.  My kids will grow up on the same farm their father did and maybe someday V and/or A will farm with their own children here.  Til then, they'll ride tractors with their daddy, watch the calves gambol about in their pens, and grow up as honest-to-goodness farm kids.

Mother's Day musings

This past Mother's Day, as with the last few Mother's Days, I celebrated my journey into Mommydom and I honored my mother, my mother-in-law, my grandmother(s), sister/sisters-in-law, aunts, and friends who have been blessed with children. Since I've had kids of my own, I've come to appreciate just how much my own mom did for me.  Thinking about it, she's had 27 years of washing seven kids worth of stinky gym socks and dirty underwear, picking up toys unnoticed until stepped upon, attending musical concerts from kindergarten choirs to high school band performances, disagreeing over chores not getting done and homework not being finished, tending to sick kids, planning high school graduation parties, navigating the minefield that makes up the teenage years, and more recently, sending her children off into the big bad world.  All while working nearly full time hours.  Now, some of us have married and have families of our own.  Some of us have gone on to college, graduated, and now have (or are looking for) 'real' jobs in the 'real' world.  It all makes me contemplate my own future as a parent.  I see my son wanting to do more for himself and if Daddy is heading out in the tractor, it's like I turn invisible. "Mom? What's a Mom? Dad, let's go.".  I see my daughter ready to launch herself out into her future (or at least off the living room couch) even though she isn't even two yet. It's my job to give my children the tools they need to succeed in life but I can't help my kids use them.  That's something they have to learn on their own. I can cushion my daughter's belly flop off the couch but I can't protect her from life and I'm learning to trust she and her brother can venture into life without me being there 24/7.  I can't stop every bump even though I want to.  So, Mother's Day has become a day of contemplation and a reminder for me to take the time to enjoy my children now because they are growing up oh so fast.  They can't stay little forever.

And on this past Mother's Day, as I honored my own mother as well as the other moms in my life, I also said a prayer for all those women who yearn to be moms, feel they are a mom yet have empty arms, and have troubles (whatever they may be) making their dreams of motherhood come true.  Why do I do this?  Simple.  Because I was one of them just a few years ago and I still am one of them, in some ways.  It took two years and three miscarriages before I successfully carried a baby to term.  V was my miracle baby in more ways than one.  A has just reinforced my idea that children are gifts from God because, despite numerous tests being run, I'm still having problems sustaining a pregnancy and my doctors can't say for certain why that is.  I would love to have more children and I don't feel that our family is complete.  Yet I'm content with the two children I have. Knowing what it's like on both sides of the coin makes for a bittersweet yet joyous holiday.  There's joy in knowing I'm a mom because of V and A.  And there's bittersweetness in knowing I have six (yes, six) other babies who aren't here with me.  So, when I celebrate the motherhood of all the moms I know and love, I also honor the ones who-like myself-have empty arms but yearn to be a mother more than anything else.

Little Green Box

My kitchen isn't very big and, thus, I have very little storage space. If you were to look in my cupboards, there isn't much in there that I don't use regularly because I simply don't have room for extra stuff. (To put it in perspective, my crockpot is currently being stored in our bedroom because there isn't room for it in the kitchen.) Still it's the usual assortment of dishes, pots and pans, and pantry items.

However, if you were to sneak a little deeper peek, you might just find a small olive green tupperware container and a small tan box with a bumpy clear lid.  These are oddities in my kitchen because I've yet to use anything in either container since I got married.  Even before I got married, these two small boxes were often dust collectors in a box under my bed. I think I've used them about three times since they were given to me.

So what is so special about this little green box and tan container?  Simple.  They were the last things my late grandmother gave me.

When I started college, I moved in with my grandparents to help out.  In exchange for free room and board, I did the occasional load of laundry, washed a few dishes, and played chauffeur on weekends.  It was an idyllic time for me.  I was moved away from home (no pesky little brothers to bother me), had no rent, and my grandma did most of the cooking.  That's what I thought at first. Slowly, I started to actually talk to my grandparents and I realized they were some pretty cool people.  My grandpa talked about his beloved HAM radio buddies and his favorite bluegrass singers.  His memory wasn't the best but he had his favorite stories to tell about the three F's and the P-growing up on the Farm, visiting Finland, surviving the Fire, and being stationed in Panama. His stories always got more outrageous with each telling but that was how my Papa was. My grandma, recognizing I needed a hobby and some encouragement, took me under her wing. We spent hours talking, often late into the night, about everything from my class schedule to boy troubles to how to make bread.  She taught me how to cook by sight and taste, knit cozy socks and sweaters, and showed me her photo album of cakes she had decorated over the years. 

I have fond memories of those cakes.  Each birthday during my younger years, it was a special treat to get a decorated cake from Grandma. We looked forward to that cake all year because, even if you chose what the cake would be, you never quite knew what it would look like in the end.

Towards the end of my time at my grandparents, she was beginning to teach me a bit about cake decorating. Unfortunately, my grandparent's health took a sudden decline and they were unable to live at home anymore even with my assistance.  Before leaving the house that very last time, my grandmother made a point to give me her cake decorations and her decorating tips so I could continue my cake decorating lessons on my own.  I've had little opportunity to use them since they were handed to me that day but I can't bring myself to simply pack them away again or pass them on.  They are one of the last links I have to that very special grandmother and, now that I have kids of my own, I hope to one day pull out those battered old decorating tips and aging decorations to make their birthday cakes as special as the ones I remember from my childhood.

But most importantly, I'll remember that it isn't about the cake or the decorations.  I'll be passing on the love my grandmother shared with me.

*I wrote this essay in honor of my late grandmother for Mother's Day last year but tucked it away in a folder and forgot about it until I found it during a Spring Cleaning spree.

Life with a Chicken Coop

In the last few days, the old adage "In springtime, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love" has come true in our chicken coop. Due to a territorial new momma dog in the fall and two marauding (and apparently hungry) puppies this winter, the population in our chicken coop has dwindled down to two quite large roosters and a lone laying hen. Ms. Hen was being 'wooed' quite vigorously by her two suitors the other day and V just happened to get in the way.  The more ardent of the two roosters took exception to the fact V was blocking his (the rooster's) view of his ladylove and proceeded to make his feeling known.  Luckily, L was only a few feet away and managed to get the rooster away from V before it could do more than flap it's wings a few times and try jumping on V's back. Aside from a slight scare, my little boy was unhurt although he did want to put 'that mean chicken in time-out'.

The rooster, on the other hand, was a tad worse for the wear.  L knocked it out when he grabbed it away from V.  The slightly bedraggled rooster was up and about in a few minutes but he spent the rest of the day in the coop. Sulking or recovering, I'm not sure...All I know is that rooster makes a wide path around my kids when they are playing outside now.