Stop being a weatherman.

 

I saw this photo on Facebook last Friday, and all I can do is heartily agree. I feel like my life has been a non-stop whirlwind lately.  I have always enjoyed being busy. It is one of the reasons I love living on a farm. I don’t know what to do with myself when there isn’t some chore or project to work on. I’m not big on relaxing with television or movies (to the point that I am pretty sure it drove my college roommate crazy because I couldn’t sit through a show without leaving to do dishes or something else productive). Tis the season for that to shine I suppose. Spring is always a time of growth and rapid change. There is always a flurry of activity that leads into the growing season. This year’s has just been even crazier than usual.

My grandpa passed away in February leaving me with a bunch of outbuildings to clean and rehab, in addition to a LOT more grass to mow, and a ton of exciting (but overwhelming) opportunities. In addition to that, I bought a house. Because, hey, why not compound that overwhelming amount of yard, with another two acre yard. Go big or go home, right?

Right. Check. Got that. Did that. Own the t-shirt. Damn near started a business printing the t-shirt because I just can’t say no to adding more things to my plate. AHHH! Stress is exhilarating!!! Until it isn’t.

Halfway through getting my garden in last week I about had a meltdown. I had already smushed my hand between the rather large lawn mower and a tree – leading me to believe that prayer must work because the accident really should have removed fingers or at least broken something. My guardian angel has got some overtime coming her way! Anyway, in addition to pain priming myself for a crying spree; I had let myself become obsessed with my to do list. Anyone who lives on a farm, no matter how big or small, should realize one thing about farms and to do lists. Farms make NEVER ENDING to do lists.

Seriously, something is always coming up. There is always a garden to weed, or a fence to fix, a barn to repair, livestock to check, plants to water, grass to cut, invasive plants to kill… I think you get the idea. You will never accomplish everything on the list. Plain and simple. You have to do what you can, when you can, and try to not drive yourself insane by impulse buying ten bags of organic potatoes that were on sale for $1.99/ five pounds and trying to process them during planting season. It does not end well.

 

Though I have found that I can process ten pounds of potatoes over my hour long lunch break, and that Captain America has some awesome potato chopping skills. Yay date night! (Despite this, I still have 10 pounds to go. WHOO!)

Anyway, to summarize: I was trying to mow well over fifteen acres of yard, plant my entire garden, process 50 pounds of potatoes, figure out how to remodel a bathroom, stress about moving things around up at grandpa’s so that the massive fixing spree can happen, and stay on top of my regular chores in the three hours of daylight that I had after work. In three days. Because it was going to start raining Thursday and not stop until this week. Plus, I have plans virtually every weekend. On a side note volunteering at the food pantry in St. Louis Saturday was incredibly rewarding, though a bit disturbing. Who on earth donates opened products (Mm, half used quinoa! Not sketchy at all!) and cans that expired in 1999? Really guys?

I like to call last week my extreme exhaustion challenge. It makes it seem much happier that way. In the midst of it, my mom gave me some very good advice: “Stop spending your life trying to be a weatherman and predicting when the storm will hit. You’re obsessing with when the rain is going to come rather than enjoying the sunshine!” I would like to say that I immediately stopping stressing/crying/working myself sick and really got that statement, but it took me a few days. I was very good about enjoying the little things with grandpa when he was alive. I stopped and admired the clouds and the sunshine with him, but since he has gone I have been (maybe distracting myself from grief?) overwhelming myself with responsibilities, trying desperately to maintain and do things the way he would have wanted. It is the same with the neighbor’s house I purchased, I want to care for it the way Evelyn and Ralph always did.

I want to honor their memory with my actions, but at some point I have to admit that I am just one person and I can’t take care of things the way that three people were able to. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter that the grass isn’t immaculate, because it is just going to grow again. And the land is mine to care for now, not theirs. I need to be a good steward, but by God if I want to rearrange the buildings that are falling down on themselves and have to be rebuilt anyway to suit my goals I should. I shouldn’t make myself crazy over it.

What is the point in having everything to take care of if I can’t stop and enjoy it? If I don’t get in the habit now, I will make a habit of not enjoying it that will be very hard to break. I will always have too much to finish; and this making everything a priority bit that I have been doing lately is only serving to make me insane, and make nothing a priority.

So, here is to better prioritizing, and not making myself sick with guilt when I want a damned pedicure. Ha!

 

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.

Oh, the chickens...

A few weeks ago I let the chickens out while I was moving hay. I have done this possibly a hundred times before. This time though, oh this time was different. I made my rounds with the tractor and it was nearly dusk when I dismounted and found this:

Yes. That is a massive pile of chicken feathers.

And this (and a lot more of the same, but you get the drift):

 

Seriously. Doesn't that look like a whole chicken?

Needless to say I panicked. I ran into the chicken house crying and begging the chickens to be alive. Seven out of eleven chickens were sitting on the roost.

I ran back outside and started trying to track the chickens down. I found a white hen bleeding and defeathered curled up in a pile of grass. There was a caramel colored hen missing side feathers wedged between two round bales. One hen, another red had wedged her head behind a square bale and her slightly less fluffy butt was still clearly visible from the barn door. There was only one chicken missing. Black Bart the banty rooster.

I ran all over with a flashlight, crying, and searching to no avail. I beat myself up the entire night about how scared he must be. He had to be cold and alone and hurting! There were enough feathers out there to stuff a pillow! He was probably dead, but I couldn't give up hope. After all, each hen had lost a lot of feathers and they were traumatized, but alive.

The next morning Cogburn the rooster crowed, and echoing from across the paddocks was Bart's reply. He was alive! Dad and I raced towards him from different ends of the paddock, but General the beagle decided to give chase faster than either of us could keep up. He chased Bart back into the woods. Moments stretched into minutes as we searched high and low for that little black rooster. Suddenly dad shouted. He had found him! All that was visible from between the gnarled roots of a fallen tree was a tiny bit of red comb. Bart had one heck of a hiding spot! I dug him out and returned him home.

I am happy to report that the chickens are all recovering; albeit funnier looking now (Just look at poor Bart! He looks like half a chicken!), and they no longer beg to be let outside their run.

Barnyard Tales Chapter 6. Death Wish

Have you ever pictured the great moments in your life as if they were in a book?

“The weathered barn wood slipped past her fingertips. The texture immortalized itself in her memory even as the sensation flew past. It was gone in a moment, but that moment lasted forever. The sensation of hand hewn wood would be with her forever; always drifting right past the ridges and whorls, always right out of reach. Her body turned with the effort of reaching for the wood. One leg struck a board catapulting her sideways; saving her life.

Milliseconds to outsiders felt like slow motion to her. Every sense was alive. The air rushing past her face. The delicate sensation of her foot slamming into oak and sending her shoe flying helter skelter. The hard shove of a stair upon her back and the finality of her concrete bed as she gazed up towards the heavens from whence she had come.

The girl was dazed, confused. She stared towards heaven wondering that she was alive. Golden straw peaked around the edges of the gaping space. Like a gilt picture frame on her demise. Pain was distant then; but the longer she lay the more her muscles cried out in agony, the stronger came her bodies cry. Soon it would be insistent. Soon she would not be able to ignore the call. The girl debated lying there longer. But who would come? Who would hear her pleas and cries?

No one. She was destined to be her own white knight. She rose, shakily at first, but more confident with each passing second. Rough barn wood was again beneath her fingers and hands she levered herself up and slowly climbed the stairs. Her jeans were ripped. Her body torn. Her eyes swam with concussive force.

Slowly she walked towards the house. Slowly she climbed the stairs. Slowly she entered and stoically she took what came.”

Actually, no, she didn’t take that stoically. As soon as I told my mother that I had fallen through the barn loft it went something like this:

Mom: “Are you okay?”

Me: “Yeah, I think so.”

Mom: “Is anything broken? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

Me: “I don’t think so.”

Mom: “Well, that was stupid. You won’t do that again will you? I told you to be careful up there. Now get your ass back outside and finish feeding the horses.”

And then I cried. Not the pretty stately crying, but the "is that girl sobbing or beating a dying moose to death with a sick eagle" kind of crying. Because I make a sucky heroine. But I did go find my shoe and finish feeding the horses. And I did become really sensitive to falling off of things, like straw bales, in barn lofts, when there are access holes cut in the floor that lead directly to the barn basement. Because, I LEARN.

Except, maybe not because I fell through another barn just last year. Damn. I really am a sucky heroine. I'm like, hand me the flashlight and let me take a shower by myself in the haunted house with a lightning storm. Nothing bad will happen this time. Really! As much as I go into run down barns it is apparent. Clearly I have a death wish.

An amusing side note: I also only landed one half of my body on the step and I got a hematoma the size of a softball on one side of my butt. My parents both thought it was hilarious to say, “Only Lauren could fall through a barn and do a half assed job. It would have killed anyone else.” *snicker, snicker*

They’re so sympathetic.

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?



Barnyard Tales Chapter 4. And I don't even like chickens!

The day the chicken died. We started singing! Bye, bye… Actually, no. That day was the last day I ever pointed a gun at a living thing.

I’m a farm kid. Where I am from we have a group called 4-H. It is basically unisex boy scouts with livestock raising and death. We do lots of things like hunting, and fishing (and those things mean learning about conservation, death, and responsibility). We start fires with sticks and learn how to hold snapping turtles. We show projects and sell rabbits, and go to state fairs and milk cows.

Seriously. Milk a cow at the state fair. So cool! And you get free milk!

One fateful summer my esteemed 4-H leader had deemed us ready to hunt things other than targets. We had completed hunter safety courses with flying colors and were able to spin the small metal pig sign around and around repeatedly with our .22 rifles. Skeet shooting? Ha. We had the accuracy of the Remington clay bird team. We were champions. We were awesome. I thought I was that good. I was amazing! I was the best shot in the history of the world. Like, Annie Oakley get your freaking gun because this girl is gonna make you dance. Twice. With finger cymbals. Cha. Cha. Cha. I rocked.

It was natural that I felt awesome. After all my dad had taught me how to shoot the eyes out of my Troll dolls in our basement with a BB gun from a young age. I had shot a few raccoons and opossums out of trees on our family hunts and none of them had come back to life to claw me to death. Well, okay. One of them had, and I may or may not have a completely rational fear of opossums, but that is neither here nor there. Freaking zombie armadillos…

I looked around as my compatriots took down their rabbits and chickens with ease. The creatures stood no chance against our accuracy and firepower. The steady CRACK of gunpowder left my ears ringing and my anticipation growing. Down the line we went. One at a time. One at a time. Our training was strong on that. Safety first. Finally it got to me. My palms were moist with sweat and I aimed the .22 at a chicken 10 yards out. I gently squeezed the trigger. The gunpowder exploded, expelling the bullet through the air with lethal force. I raised my head anticipating glory, but I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

Yeah. My chicken didn’t die. It squawked in a panic and hid. Snickers went down the line. I glared at my peers and got the nod of encouragement from my mentor. I could do this. I stalked my quarry and carefully lined up and fired again. And again. Five times I shot at my chicken, yet it lived. Had I even hit it? Was it a zombie chicken? Was it an undead creature sent from the grave to mock my in front of my peers  with horrifying cries and loose feathers? As my 4-H leader took my gun and cleanly executed the bird I stared into its beady little eyes and knew that no, this bird was not sent to torment me with life. It was meant to torment me with death. Suddenly, at a tender age of nine I knew guilt like I had never felt before. I knew inflicting pain. In that moment I realized the responsibility that a weapon is, and the heavy burden of deciding life or death of another living creature. I knew without knowing that I did not want to cause undue suffering ever, ever again. To anyone or anything. Even a chicken.

I had maimed a bird and I was forever changed.

I avoid hunting and fishing now, as I have ever since. I absolutely refuse to shoot at anything other than a soda can for fear of not killing it humanely.

And I don’t even like chickens. Like they attack me, and I am somewhat convinced that they are demons. We are discussing getting chickens on the farm  for eggs and such. A small part of me is looking at it with so much trepidation. You don't even know. I am haunted by the ghosts of poultry past. I fear the chickens are going to rise up en mass and attack me like that flock of seagulls did. Or they are going to become giant hybrid chickens and chase me like the damn emu from hell did.

Seriously, there are nightmares.