Agvocacy, Heinlein, and chicken butchering

I’ve waited awhile to publish this, because I know that it reflects a pretty delicate topic. That being said, I think that it is my responsibility as an agvocate and a person to try to explain to others where I’m coming from.

Here goes: growing up on a farm I’ve always been fairly in touch with my food sources. I knew that hamburger came from cows, and that chickens are in fact, made of chicken. So, I guess compared to many I was already more involved with my food than a lot of people nowadays.

That being said, I had never knowingly eaten one of our cows. (Who knows what happened once they were shipped – surely they ALL went on to become someone’s herd bull, right? RIGHT!?!?!) Or any other animal that I had grown. I can remember scoffing at an acquaintance when she suggested that I butcher my own chickens. “I could never do that!” I thought it was horrible. She was horrible. She was heartless. She was cold. But she was right. Somewhere along the line my thinking changed. I guess I’ve got to eat some crow, or more literally chicken.

That’s right. Captain America and I butchered 20 chickens.

Based on the reactions of the two friends I have shared the experience with already I’m guessing that you’re either going to tell me that I am “as extreme as the people who climb Mt. Everest”, or stare at me slack jawed in abject horror. So, before I get started, let me share with you WHY it was important to me to butcher chickens.

A few years ago I went on a cruise with friends and the captain of our little catamaran caught a fish for dinner. I had never seen a fish killed before. Actually, I had never seen anything butchered before. It was a very eye opening experience. I said a prayer for that fish and I swore I would never again take any life for granted – fish, fowl, bug, or beast. Previously I was content to live with a nice protective layer of cellophane shielding me from the reality that there is a smidge of accuracy to the whole “meat is murder” bit, but no longer. I decided that if I was going to continue to eat meat it was my responsibility to make sure it was as ethical as possible.

Basically, if I couldn’t stomach seeing a cow turned into burger, I needed to stop eating them. If I couldn’t actually be a part of my food chain then I didn’t respect the creature that had given up its life for me. I don’t think this is right for everyone, but for me being raised around and loving animals it was a choice I had to make. I felt like I owe it to them.

That’s the number one reason that I had to do this. I love those critters, and I want them to have great lives and then suffer as little as possible. I can eat those roosters and know that they spent their days running around the yard, eating bugs, annoying the dogs, and doing rooster things without ever being locked in a tiny cage or treated cruelly (except by each other because roosters are MEAN). I know that their deaths were as swift and painless as we could make them.

That cellophane wrapper on a frozen package of chicken breasts is the best insulation from reality that I know. Thin clear plastic sanitizes the world. It keeps the messy reality at bay. Those tenders were once living, breathing creatures. Every bite of chicken wasted is a death in vain.

After watching them die and doing my part to turn them from roosters into packages of chicken, I feel like I can better appreciate their lives. My life. The world. How delicate life really is. The careful balance of things.

Yeah. I’m kind of a melodramatic hippy about it.

**Warning: Things might get a little graphic and disturbing from here on in, so if you’re the kind of reader who would respond to butchering chickens with abject horror you should probably not keep reading.**

So, what was it like? This was our process: CA creates a headless chicken and my job is to simply grab the chicken corpse and hang it up so that the fluid drains. That sounds easy enough, right? I got the easy job. The clean job. I didn’t have to murder anything so I thought I choose correctly. Ha. By the end of it I looked like an axe murderer, and CA (the actual axe murderer) wasn’t even stained. Go figure.

I had always pictured “running around like a chicken with your head cut off” to mean running in circles, maybe some zigzags; but the first time I saw a chicken with its head cut off I understood that what I pictured when I heard that colloquialism was dead wrong. Chickens don’t run with their heads cut off, not even a little bit, or at least ours didn’t. They leap four frickin’ feet in the air and flop all over the yard like bloody Koosh balls. Have you ever tried to catch an uncooperative dog? You know where you’ll run up to it and then suddenly it practically teleports 20 feet away? It’s like that, only ickier. Much ickier.

Heinlein was right, the purpose of laughter is to keep from crying. 

Faced with the horrible landscape before me I started cackling like a mad woman.  I’m pretty sure it was either that or start sobbing uncontrollably.

After the fluids drained out, we would cut one down, dunk it in 165 degree water a few times to loosen the feathers and drop it in CA’s homemade chicken plucker (that worked like a fricking champion). If you ever plan on doing this I would highly recommend looking into a Whiz Bang Chicken Plucker. It made the process much more efficient. The spinning tub with rubber fingers removes the feathers very easily. I plucked one by hand in my great-grandma's memory, and that was enough to convince me that some things are DEFINITELY glorified in the sustainable living magazines.

After that, I would remove the feet and pass it on to CA to clean it the rest of the way. He has been field dressing deer and other wild game for years, and I’m guessing that’s a transferable skill because he rocked. We discarded the organs to become dog food. As my grandpa would have said, “waste not, want not.” Also, by home butchering we were able to be sure that every usable bit got used.  That made the hippy part of my head very happy. 

The next step was to place the chickens in a circulating cold water bath until we finished cleaning them. Then we wrapped each one in butcher paper and put it in the chest freezer.

We easily could have added another step and boned the birds, but I prefer to roast them whole so that I can toss the carcasses into a crock pot and make my own broth. Plus, truthfully, I was exhausted. It was only about six hours of work, but it was pretty draining. Though, now I have enough chicken to last for about six months which is pretty cool.

So, yeah. That was my weekend. How was yours?

Don't hate.

My dad called me as I was headed out the door for work to tell me that there were calves in the neighbor's yard and I needed to check the fences. Sadly, this isn't an entirely unusual occurrence. You see, the same fluff that makes calves so freaking adorable also insulates them pretty well against the zapping power of the electric fence. It has to be pretty dang hot to keep those bouncing bundles of joy contained and safe from the dangers of the blacktop. And also keep our neighbors happy, because even though I think calves gamboling around in my flower garden would be the most perfect photo op ever; it isn't everyone's cup of tea. There's no accounting for taste, ya'll.

So anyway, I had a lovely morning playing farmer, fixing fences, and attempting to find all of the cows as they happily munched their way around five acres of two foot tall grass. While it is true that cows will "bunch" around a feeder, when they are grazing they spread out man. Regardless, I think they're all there, but a herd of all black cows moving around where you can barely see them makes it hard to be sure. The IL farm doesn't ear tag anyone so it is hard to know if they've been counted or not when I can't see their faces to know who they are. 

I got the fence hot, and rigged it in a few places because I didn't have the tools with me to fix it permanently. That's going to be tomorrow morning's project. Dad has promised to teach me how to restring a broken high tinsel (really heavy duty steel wire that doesn't work like the light duty wire I am used to) section.

Now here is where things divulge from farm life to my personal beliefs, so if you don't really care about that then I encourage you to take this cow picture and go with my blessing, or file this one under knowing your farmer. Either way.

Have a Crooky!

After I finished up with my farming for the morning I made a decision. A decision that I knew would have some repercussions, namely  that it would make feeding later a bit of a difficulty. A decision that I don't regret in the least.

I decided to wear a maxi dress and jacket, and I believe that EVERY person other than Captain America had something to say about it. Please note that I still hadn't done my hair, or worn make up, and this thing was like the yoga pant of the dress world.

What I did not anticipate was the barrage of questions: "Why are you so dressed up?" "Who died?" "That jacket doesn't go with that." "You can't work in that." "You're overdressed for feeding aren't you?" This and comments like them, from at least eleven people.

My inner monologue had a field day. "Because I wanted to mess with your world view." "I'm actually my own evil twin." "I wanted to spend all day defending my clothing choices." "It was hot." "It was easier than trying to find a clean pair of jeans," as most of mine have some sort of marking on them whether it is a stain from the cows or from farm equipment repair. "I just got the dress and I delight in it." "I just wanted to?" "It is coral, so I probably wouldn't wear it to a funeral." "Overdressed? Pioneer women pulled plows in dresses, you know." The list goes on and on, but it raises the question, why do I have to defend my choices?

As long as I am not indecent or breaking any policies on my dress, of course. If I was running around like Lady Godiva on a four wheeler I could see someone stopping me and asking what made me make that particular clothing choice for the day. (Ease of cleaning by the way, that is all I can come up with. Or maybe a severe mental break...)

I just wrote about my realization that I was a farmer, and you know nine times out of ten I dress like one, but I am also a grown woman who likes to wear something that flows around my ankles when I walk every so often. So what if I have to hike it up and tuck in in my bra to make it a mini and keep it from getting puppy prints on it? That's my prerogative.

I guess what I am trying to say is this: when did it become our job to judge one another, and not just delight in each other and the unique qualities that we each bring to the table?

I think that goes far beyond clothing choices too. I am PASSIONATE about what I do, and how I think that livestock should be raised; but I have to appreciate what other farmers do and why they make the choices that they make when it comes to their life and livelihood. Grassfed beef, free range chickens, and organic gardening are clear choices for me, but I don't have to bring anyone else down to bolster that belief.

I'm not sure all other farmers could rock a coral maxi/mini dress and muck boots, but I can; and similarly to my beliefs about the food industry and animal husbandry I respectfully refuse to apologize and make excuses for that, even while acknowledging that it isn't for everyone.

Now, if you don't mind, I am going to go spin circles in my flowy skirt to Taylor Swift's "Shake it off" and see if the cows try to eat it.

This is why I can't have nice things.

That is what my legs looked like at the end of Friday's feeding.

Why?

Because the ole gals have been chatting around the hay feeder and decided that the new fangled birthing options out there sounded like they'd be great to try. Here's a hint, cows shouldn't have water births.

They should also not have births close enough to the lake that the calf could fall in and make it look like a water birth.

They should also not ATTACK people who happen by on the tractor in the nick of time, strip their shoes off (because I have lost boots by wading in lakes before), and jump in valiantly to save their newborns from hypothermia or drowning.

You'd think they'd be grateful, instead I'm nursing a few bruises and pulled muscles from running away from an angry momma. Fortunately my dad heard all my yelling (something along the lines of: "You stupid witch! I'm trying to help! I'm not the one who decided to have a baby in a f-ing lake!") and interceded with the four wheeler and a big stick. 

Everyone is fine, other than me with my lower back which was twisted in the getaway - or by face planting because I didn't put my boots back on (which really, look at my feet, you wouldn't either) and slipped on the "cow mud" by the feeders. 

Friday was not my day.

This is why I can't have nice things...

But Saturday was. Isn't he the sweetest? Really, who needed a decent pedicure anyway?

They make me crazy. *Explicit*

Last night I went a little crazy.

A few years ago I was with my friend V at a bar in Florida. We had been talking, drinking, and having a good ole' time when one of the guys we were chatting with did the unthinkable. He made V's cousin cry. As soon as she found out my hands were thrust full of a purse and I was watching, mesmerized slightly confused and definitely a little bit mortified, her run/hop down the boardwalk removing her heels as she went. She got in the guy's face about not making her cousin cry and I was pretty sure she was going to stab him with her stiletto. For the record, V is half Mexican, and we frequently joke about her going "Mexican chick crazy" on the guy. Also for the record, she didn't actually beat him to death with a high heel. He backed down and apologized. I have always been a little in awe of her passionate side.

I tell you this story so that you understand where I'm coming from on this one. Last night I went "Mexican chick crazy." On a cow.

For the last three feedings the cows have gotten out when I have begun moving them hay. The first time they banged against the gate and it came open accidentally. The second time I noticed that the tractor had a flat and they escaped while I was backing it up to try to fix the tire. I swear, there was nary a cow in sight, but as soon as the gate was unattended it was like a Goddamn military attack. "Alpha team: go, go, go!" "Beta squad, flank! Now! Go! We've rehearsed this people!" I hopped off the tractor to see a stream of black pouring out of the gate. Both of those times I kept my cool. After all one was an accident and the other was my fault. Plus, they both happened on Saturday mornings when I had help to put them back in.

Oh, but last night. Last night they ran out of the gate while I was trying to get the tractor through it. Note, they still have had hay in their feeders. They are just (rightly) convinced that there is a smidgen of grass in the yard (since, you know, eating it Saturday morning). They would rather have that than the icky old alfalfa and grass bales. Also, they are a bunch of jerks and just kinda suck.

So last night I decided to use the tractor with a cab because I mistakenly thought it had better headlights. Turns out that it has headlights that point directly on the hood of the tractor, producing glare the likes of which you cannot even imagine. Add to that a dusty tractor windshield and I already am cranky because I can't see worth a damn. By the way, the cows are black. So it is perhaps the worst combination ever for not running them over.

Anyway, I open the gate and run back to the tractor to lift the bale, put it in gear and move forward, which admittedly takes longer than it does with the cabless tractor by a few seconds, when like a bunch of ninjas the freaking strike force pours out of the gate. Ten cows run out before I can block the opening with the tractor. I wedge the gate closed on one side, blocking the rest of the herd between it and the tractor so cows can come in, but not out - hopefully. Then I run around the barn and start screaming like a drunken sailor banshee.

I am certain that if anyone had heard me I would have been committed. I always joke about farmer's cursing, but this, this was the pinnacle. I wasn't being clever and calling them "line breeders." BTW, that is when you breed a son to a mother, thus making him a...I think you get it. Or shouting "Son of a Brisket!" I was shouting something along the lines of: "WhatTheFuckAreYouDoingOut?! YouStupidSonsOfBitchingCows! GetYourAssesBackInTheGoddamnFence! RightNow!" and  running at them. Note that at this point I am just pissed. I haven't crossed the line to crazy yet. Then Twoface's daughter turned and stopped. She looked right at me like, "Yeah? What are you going to do about it?" I charged her and pulled the knife out of my pocket that I use to cut off the bale strings while shouting, "You wanna go? I will fucking cut you, heifer!" She turned and fled, but that right there is when I went "Mexican chick crazy." I'm pretty sure I leapt at her with a knife. Yup. That happened.

That's right, V. I'm not always a passionate person, but when I am I contemplate shanking a cow with a bale spear. Boom. Mic drop.

In other news, they didn't get out again and the rest of my feeding went very smoothly. Perhaps cows respect the crazy?

Ninja Skills

Have you ever felt the feeling that you were being watched? That slow niggling feeling crawling up the back of your neck? You cast your eyes around behind you, willing some shape to form out of the darkness. Something, anything to explain the sensation away. But there is nothing in the black. No sounds alert you to the fact that you are being stalked. Still, your skin crawls and you can't relax. The primitive anticipation of danger is especially intense when you're alone in the country.

What is it out there? A coyote? A bob cat? A cougar? A Sasquatch? A bad case of reading too many Lets Not Meet stories on Reddit and being somewhat convinced that there is a deranged person living in the barn loft that you wouldn't even know about until the jump down and attack you from behind?

Okay, probably not those last two, but Tuesday night I definitely knew something was off. I shrugged it off as my overactive imagination, or perhaps being watched by an opossum. It was dark. I was at my parent's home feeding chickens and playing the ever popular "try to count black cows in the dark" game. I had just started pouring grain for the horses and stepped out of the grain room to grab a bag of sweet feed when I saw her.

She peeked her head out of the inky black and into the light of the horse barn, causing me to scream like a little girl and experience heart palpitations. All that was visible was her white blaze, as my scream caused her to turn tail and run. I ran from the barn to find, nothing. She had vanished again. How 1,200lbs of horse can be COMPLETELY SILENT, and invisible is the mystery of the week.

Meet the creature that stalks you at night, Zippy. The horse ninja. Schrodinger's horse. 

If you put a horse in a fence, but don't see the horse; does the horse cease to exist? 

No, the fence ceases to exist. . .

Screw the cat who walks through walls. She is Zippy, the horse who walks through fences!

Horses are a$$hats.

My life, the horror movie.

It is an overcast day. The air is misty with the first chill of fall. Leaves are beginning to turn. There has been enough rain recently that the ground is slick and muddy beneath the falling leaves and short grass of the pasture. The hike out to check the fences begins easily enough. Squirrels rustle through the treetops, chattering away at each other as they rush to pack away their hoards. Slowly the wind begins to blow colder. The overcast day becomes dreary, dark, foreboding. The lone woman checking the fence hurries her pace, slipping and sliding. She feels watched, but she sees nothing. The constant itch at the back of her neck doesn't lessen as she hurries up the hill towards home as fast as her boots, heavy with mud, will go. Suddenly a twig snaps and she turns. Her eyes widen as she sees what is behind her.

She is surrounded. 

Duh. Duh. Duh. Will she live? Will she die? Will she successfully use the word "Hangry" to describe the herd of unruly bovines? Will she secure a Snickers bar for the bull so that he stops attacking the tractor? (Brisket, you aren't you when you're hungry!)

God, I could work in Hollywood!

FACT: farm women are like muddy superheroes

A few of my friends have been posting about the “So God Made a Farmer” speech again. It got me thinking, while it is true that the majority of farmers are men where is the love for the women farmers and the farmer’s wives, and daughters? We are out there toiling away in the mud and muck too, ya know.

Seriously ladies. Farm women rock, and anyone that can have patience enough to keep dinner warm until an hour after dark o’clock deserves some accolades. I am convinced that Job has nothing on a farmer’s wife. My own father was late to his wedding because the cows got out, and mom had to wander around the pasture looking for him when her water broke because he was out fixing fence. True story. I was not almost born in a barn. It was definitely the back forty.

A rural life breeds a level of independence, self-reliance, patience, and empowerment that many of my feminist college professors would applaud.

There is just something about those times when you are left alone with all those animals or other responsibilities and Murphy’s law starts rearing its ugly head that makes for empowering moments. Is there a horse stuck under a hay feeder and no one else around? Yes, yes, you can grab two hooves and flip that sucker over so he can stand up before he dies. You've got this. Is the automatic waterer not working? Well, grab a tool kit because no one else is home this weekend and you are gonna find out how intuitive plumbing is whether you want to or not. Scared to death of driving a piece of large machinery? Tough luck buttercup. You’d better buck up, because it is nine o’clock at night and there is hay down and a storm on the way. Learn to drive that tractor on the fly. You are needed. You must rise to the occasion and freakin’ overcome lady.

And when you do? Well, you realize that there literally is no such thing as I can’t. You can do anything. Some things you may not like doing (ahem, mechanical maintenance), and some stuff that is easier with help from others (hello, fence building), but there is NOTHING that you can’t do when you put your mind to it.

That, that, is why farm women are awesome. We may bend to, or break from traditional gender roles; but when push comes to shove we know how to buckle down and just make things happen. I can roll out a made from scratch pie crust and cook a roast whilst washing dishes, and then step outside and perform “guy” jobs like mowing, or operating heavy machinery, or tend the livestock without missing a beat. Because I have had to stretch myself past my comfort zone, and because now I know that I can stretch that way I can't go back. And every farm woman I know can too, because we are amazing strong women and because we aren’t confined to a stereotype. We are, and can be what we want to be, who we are, and we are pushed to become even greater than we thought possible.

So while “God made a farmer”, he also made us. He did a pretty amazing job too, might I add. Pat yourself on the back. Even if you don’t see how awesome you are, someone else does and chances are they are either too intimidated to tell you, or think that you are so mind blowingly on top of this that you don’t need to hear it. But I know better, because I need to hear it too sometimes. For once don’t think of your failings, think of your successes, and feel free to be impressed!

Hayday.

You know that phrase, “make hay while the sun is shining?” With all of the pop up thunderstorms that we have been having lately this past weekend was one of the first good stretches of haying weather that we have had around here. 

Mother Nature does not seem to care that it was the yearly antique tractor show, or that maybe I would have liked to have not hayed on the holiday, but oh well. Part of the freedom that our founder’s fought for was the ability to own and work this land, and I am immensely grateful for that. Well, and I get to hang out with Captain America for hours at a time (at least until he wises up and makes me rake the dried grass or something!), and bring him lunch and do all those other farm support tasks that I so enjoyed watching my grandma do for my grandpa when I was young. 

Oh, you're going to be mowing all day? Here have a whole roast chicken and a peach pie. Do not argue. That is just how things are done, son.

Despite spending the morning of the fourth in a tractor cab it was a great weekend. I think CA is doing a great job starting his custom haying business. He is probably the only person I have ever met who can look out over a freshly baled field being ruined by a pop up rainstorm and just sigh, shrug, and shake the bales out to dry the next day. Resilience I tell ya. He has it. 

I however have a wide variety of very creative curse words and the sneaking suspicion that Mother Nature is gunning for me, but that is part of the fun. Right? Right? Where would I be without some sort of movie plot in my head?

Anyway, I hope ya’ll had a great fourth! I really can't complain, theatrics aside! It was a fantastic weekend. Well, let’s just say that I’m living in my hayday! ;)

hay·day                /ˈhāˌdā/               noun

noun: hayday; plural noun: haydays

A day dedicated to any of the aspects associated with haying 

(mowing, raking, baling, inevitably fixing the mower-rake-baler, or spent 

crying over the sudden storm cell that just ruined your hay). 

See also, any damn day that it isn’t raining from June until September.

GOOOOOAAAAALLLLLS

I would really appreciate someone following me around with a vuvuzela and blowing it wildly anytime I accomplish anything. It would make life oh so much more exciting!

Anyway, goals! Since drunk me decided to blab about my weight loss goals to my boyfriend (see my other blog). I figured I might as well share with you all my gardening and farming goals for this year. Something about transparency and accountability go hand in hand with accomplishment, right?

I want to be able to can enough tomatoes, pickles, and preserve enough potatoes that I don’t have to buy any all winter. Because well, I'm cheap and  I don't like eating pesticides or BPA. Plus, I always played "pioneer" when I was little and I am a little curious to see how hard it would have been to survive only on what I could produce. I'm just ramping up to it. SLOWLY! I’m not sure how it will work out with the potatoes yet, but here is to hoping!

I also want to make several more batches of jelly and herbal preserves. The house I just bought has a crab apple, apple, and apricot tree; in addition to the apple, peach, and pear trees up at my grandpa’s place. So canned and frozen fruit, jams, and jellies should abound! Provided I don’t kill myself mowing all the danged grass. I am so glad that I am going to have a bigger kitchen to work with!

Granted before I can play with that shiny big kitchen I have to gut the bathroom, add a second bath, rip up carpet and refinish floors, and repaint; but by God when I get all that done I will be up to my eyeballs in jelly!

Well, after I still manage to fix fence, get hay put up with Cap, and try to clean and repair the barn and grainery. Oh, and help dad clean out and sort all the stuff in my grandpa's sheds and greenhouse. But after that!

Or it will be next year and I can start my grand plans all over again. Whichever comes first, right? There is always tomorrow!

The difference between want and need...

I hear lots of my friends talking about wants and needs when we are out and about. I struggle with them too. Do I want or need those new boots? That purse? That replacement bale ring for the cows? Then there are the wants and needs that aren't material: more free time, more rewarding experiences, vacations, weekends with friends, or exercising. I'll give you a hint. That last one is probably a need, but I really don't want to!

A lot of times the difference between want and need is painfully apparent when you live on a farm. Fortunately, this week began with them coinciding quite nicely. I wanted to be outside because it was sunshine-y and almost sixty degrees. I needed to move hay. I needed to fix the fence because the cows can easily get on the highway and die tragic bovine deaths.

 

But there are obviously times when the opposite is true and my wants and my needs are opposed. Like when it is -20 and I need to move hay. Or I want to leave for a vacation, but things will starve to death. Then there are times when my wants turn into needs.

 

For years I have wanted to clean up the old barn that stands on my parents’ property. It is a thing of beauty – all hand hewn oak beams and hand cut stone quarried from the property is stands on. Though it is home to six stalls and a great amount of space we really only use it for the hayloft and storing a few wagons. The space has been underutilized my entire life, but especially in the last five years since we started feeding the cats in the newer horse barn. The old barn has not received much TLC. We don’t really go in there unless we have to throw hay to the cows.

 

My grandfather recently passed away, and I am staring some massive barn and house renovations in the face starting around September; so, I have felt a huge push to try and get all of the little things off my to do list at mom and dad’s farm. Some of those things require more than one set of hands. Yeah. I’m talking about you Mr. Corner fence post that is washing away and needs to be fixed before taking the whole fence row down. We are gonna tango mister. Mark my words! Or are made easier with multiple sets of hands like trimming the fence line or replacing white boards in the danged vinyl fence. But one of them that didn’t need many sets of hands was cleaning up some of the trash in the old barn.

 

I mentioned that we used to feed cats in there. I have a confession. I’m lazy, and rather than cutting the weight circles off the bags (you can turn them in for rewards with Purina) I just threw them behind a partition. Out of sight, out of mind. I am really hating myself for that one. I have spent maybe two hours cutting off weight circles so far, and I am not even close to being done with that project. In the course of this though I have found that my desire to clean the barn might not be a want so much as a need.

 

When I took Captain America in there to show off my progress three weeks ago we heard the sound of running water coming from the barn basement. Yup. We had a pipe burst right outside the basement wall. The good Captain got right to work and dug a trench that appeared to go halfway to China before I could so much as blink. He and my dad fixed it, and it was all good. Well, if anything like that can actually be good. However, I had this thought in the back of my mind saying,  “How long would it have leaked if I hadn’t started cleaning in there? If I hadn’t wanted to show it off it could have run for months without anyone noticing.”

 

Then it got cold again, and it wasn’t until yesterday that I snuck away from my desk job and out to fix some fence. I got done in the daylight and decided to let the chickens loose for awhile. I won’t leave them out of earshot anymore since the Great Defeathering Incident of 2013 so I went back into the barn to clean up more feed sacks. I opened one of the stall doors to try and shine a little light on my project and started rocking out on my iPod and cutting out weight circles like a boss. I don’t know what drew my attention to it, but after awhile I looked up and noticed that one of the support beams, one of the support beams that is under the hayloft mind you, was sagging. The oak beams it was sitting on have splintered and rotted into almost nothing.  

 

Suddenly cleaning the barn is not a WANT, it is an EMERGENCY. AGH! So much for wanting to go to Captain America’s house this weekend.

Life

I am exhausted. I am energized. I am up at 6 starting a load of laundry, pulling weeds and picking tomatoes. I am late to work because I get distracted by the bees meandering around my mint plants and my perfect moment of joy, being in tune with the universe, makes me not care one bit. I take a break to have breakfast with my grandpa and tell him about my day so far. We talk about his childhood and how much quieter things were when all he had to worry about was whether or not the harness was mended. I revel in being a part of his story. I am home at lunch with the dryer going, dusting counter tops, vacuuming my floor, chopping watermelon to throw in the food dehydrator with one hand and eating a sandwich with the other. After work I’m on the mower at my grandpa’s for two and a half hours before coming straight home to hop on a different mower to mow around paddocks until dark and then feed horses and chickens and stumble up the driveway under the most brilliant moon I have ever seen to take a quick shower and grab dinner before I turn around to finish up watering the horses to the sound of a tree frog chorus. Then it is home again to chop tomatoes and chat with my loved ones for an hour or two before falling blissfully exhausted into bed and waking up to start in again.

This is my life, and it is perfect.

Batwings and Lake Monsters, oh my!

What a weekend! We were surprise attacked with a load of hay Friday night, which is why it was a really good thing that I had decided to have a stall cleaning party while the horses ate.

Ice down the water trough. It's a barn party!

I don't know why none of my Facebook friends took me up on the invite. Seriously. What else could they be doing at nine pm on a Friday? Sheesh. I know where the party is at. We could have thrown down... some hay. Because it was stacked so high on the trailer that the guys bringing it by took out one of the overhead lights. Can't wait to fix that one. Or watch dad fix that one. Tell you what, I either need to get a lot handier, win the lottery and buy a farm hand's service, or get on the whole boyfriend thing. My poor dad has way too much to do.

Which is how he talked me into facing one of my biggest challenges. Spatial reasoning. I royally suck at anything having to do with trailers, spreaders, mowers, you name it. If I can jackknife it, I will. Can I misjudge the width and wipe out fences? Yup. I am all over that. I give a new meaning to the phrase, "Cleaning the fence row."

Duh,duh,duh, na, na batwing!

Despite my poor driving skills and complete lack of spatial reasoning. I successfully learned how to use the batwing mower, and I only hit a gate a little bit! Given the fact that I single handedly ripped all the downspouts off the barn with a manure spreader I am going to count it as a win! I didn't even jack knife it and bust the turney shaft thing (PTO). I am such a good farmer's daughter that I scare myself sometimes. And probably the neighbors too because I wear a bikini to brush hog. Hey, a girl has to get her tan on some how. Don't judge.

It isn't as if I can lay out all day on the lake. Well, I could, but we seem to have a lake monster.

I was innocently taking photos of the horses to show Captain America when I noticed it in the background.



Duh na. Duh na. It looks like we have our own Nessie. Can you hear the jaws music?



Duh na. Duh na. Duh na. Duhna. Duhna. Duhna!

Seriously, who knew cows could swim that fast?

Reduce, reuse, and recy - play yard pong!

A few months ago a friend and I decided that we wanted to have a Cinco de May-O (spelled that way because we were going for a redneck theme) party. Because who doesn't want to celebrate a Mexican holiday with beer in a water trough? That party was on last Saturday, and I am pleased to say that it went very well.

One good and bad thing about hosting a get together is that it motivates you to get all of your little projects done. Like installing new laminate flooring and learning how to miter quarter round so that you can put a bed in your newly remodeled back bedroom two days before you are going to have guests staying in it and you also have to get all of the herbs planted that you bought at the botanical garden and mulch them in so that your yard doesn’t look like you held up a garden supply center at gun point.

Which is kind of what mine looked like at the start of last week. I hadn’t mown, there was a large pile of brush that I had earmarked for a bonfire along with a bunch of extra newspaper and empty cereal/cat litter boxes that I had saved for fire starters, I had probably close to thirty or forty plants laying around, ten bags of mulch in my back seat (Mercury Milans are surprisingly spacious. I can fit about four straw bales in there at once too.) and I had laminate scraps and the carpet I had ripped out laying around the yard. Actually, given the theme of the party I probably should have left it. Though redneck and white trash aren’t exactly identical…

Long story short, I was a little stressed but it all came together with the help of my friends from out of town. They took to helping me set up, cut trees, and cook with the kind of enthusiasm that makes me want to cry tears of joy. They even helped me put a stallion out on pasture the morning of the party. I have the **BEST** friends.

Having a party like that means that I have been slacking on the blogging front, and I am sorry. But it was a great time, and a fantastic way to develop new games. Like Yard Pong. Which combines the classic drinking game beer pong, with finally finding a use for all of the empty mineral tubs we have laying around. Sustainability and alcohol. It was a great combination.

Yard Pong

2 beach balls

12 empty mineral tubs

Drinks of your choice

Four players

Set the tubs up in a triangle (one, two, three tubs per row) with the tops of the triangle about 10-20 feet apart depending on your athletic ability. Take turns trying to hit the beach balls into the tubs. Use one ball per person on two, two person teams. The scoring is as follows.

If you hit the ball into the tub the opposing team drinks one drink for whichever score it is, first tub = one drink & sixth tub = six drinks.

If you don’t hit any tubs you take one drink.

If you bounce the ball off of a tub the opposing team drinks once for every time the tub is hit, beach balls ricochet well.

Two re-racks are allowed.

Needless to say we had a ball, and I am going to start selling used mineral tubs to college students. That’s one way to recycle and recoup the costs, right? Maybe? There is a whole market here just waiting to be tapped!

DIY Electric Shock Therapy!

Last spring my horse started having problems with coughing. He is a stallion, so we can’t run him out in the pasture with everyone else, and he has some special fencing requirements so I started out building him a pen from steel t-posts and electrified rope fence. I am not a very good fence builder.

After numerous afternoons of struggling to shove the post upright with the post hole driver on it, slam the post into the ground, and drop the driver on top of my head while pulling it off of the post (Okay, until I started driving the truck or four wheeler around to give myself the extra height I needed. Thank God no one saw it and put it on YouTube.) I finished it. Then the heat and drought made the grass die so I took a break.

Another month or two passed and I hung the wire. Then it was winter and well, Moon stayed in his private bungalow through the winter months. It was better than than kill the potential grass this spring. Then about a month ago everything finally fell into place! I was so proud of my gates. I wired the new fence into the existing system and felt so bad ass and accomplished that it was ridiculous. It might be crooked, but it was all mine! So, I tested the fence Saturday and guess what!

Yeah. It didn’t work. So frustrating. I spent my Sunday evening getting it hot, and in the process took down and replaced all of the old electric that had been lining the ladies’ front pasture fence. It was almost dark when I finished so I just threw the old wire in between my two new fences and I went back to get it all Monday.


Hot wire to left of me. Hot wire to the right! Here I am stuck in the midle with you!

Great plan right? Yeah. I tired to pick it all up without turning off the fencer. Because I’m dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

At least the fence is hot? Maybe?



All of the pain for this.
Maybe I can put a lightbulb in it and sell it as a piece of modern art?



SPRING!

Some people would say that this is oregano poking through straw. I prefer to call it SPRING! And it is about damned time!

Although, now instead of a to do list made up of cooking, eating, and catching up on my reading I have made a monster. My to do list looks like this:

Why am I excited it is spring again?

Oh yeah, BONFIRE!!!!!!