Barnyard Tales: So, I'm basically a cow version of La Llorona.

Sometimes I struggle with anxiety. I don’t know if you have ever seen the web comics of the heart and the brain arguing or the two Kermit the frogs, but that is almost always how mine manifests.

PSSST! There is an emergency.

No, there isn’t.

The beacons are lit. Gondor calls for aid.

WTF, I need to sleep. Nothing is wrong. Shut up.

Yes it. Is. There is something terribly wrong. The house is on fire.

No it isn’t. Go to sleep.

Okay, maybe this house isn’t on fire. I bet someone’s house is on fire. It might be the barn that’s on fire. I meant barn. The barn is on fire.

I call bullshit. Someone would see that and call me. Nothing is on fire, and even if it is what can I do about it? NOTHING. Go the F to sleep.

Hmm, good point. In that case the chickens are open. I bet raccoons are even now slaughtering them. They’re peeping their last peeps. Crying out for a savior that will never come!

… Ugh. Fine. I’ll go check.

YASSS.

The chickens were shut, b****. Can we go to sleep now?

So the other night when I tossed and turned and restlessly threw off the covers at 11 o’clock because I was *certain* that the cows were drowning because we had gotten a lot of rain and they were in the bottom paddock, and 29 was giving birth in a torrent of water and everyone was going to die if I didn’t go look at them; I was pretty sure my anxiety was just screwing with me. Eric, being the awesome husband he is, looked over at me with what I will politely dub "sleepy exasperation" and asked if I would be able to sleep if I didn’t go look. Knowing myself, I figured I would sleep faster if I just drove down to check them. Usually he just lets me go, but this time he sighed and got up to go with me.

So, here we are, driving to the pasture in our PJ’s. I was rocking flip flops and no bra. We have one flashlight between us because this is just my anxiety. We will be asleep in like 15 minutes and laughing about how dumb my brain is over tea in a few hours. HAH.

So, we drive down and glance at the river. It is going down. Perfect. I knew I was just crazy.

Then we look up and there is Harriet, in all her bald faced glory, standing in the middle of the f-ing blacktop. About the time my sleep addled brain registered her, here came 33 trotting out of the black. So Eric goes down to open the gate and get them back in. I pause my herding to fix a downed fence wire, because the water had risen enough to short it out. Joy. As I’m carefully guiding the wire back into the plastic jaws of the insulator I feel the wire tremble.

You know that scene in Jurassic Park where the ground starts to shake and the main character realizes that they’re royally screwed? The camera pans over their face and you see the dawning realization that they aren’t in control? Well, as the wire vibrated its’ way out of my numb fingers that was my face. Suddenly there was a swarm of cows running through the fence to the black top. What I sensed to be the entire herd, because it was dark and starting to rain and I wasn’t the one with the flashlight,  let themselves out of the fence to join Harriet and 33 and started heading down the roadway.

“Incoming! Incoming. You’ve got incoming!” I don’t think Eric could hear me over the wind at the hooves clacking down the road because the next thing I heard was a big ol’ “WTF?!” Miraculously he got them directed into the paddock across the road and safely contained without fuss.

But you know who we didn’t see? That’s right. Freaking 29, the cow who I was convinced was having a God damn water birth. So we started out across this incredibly muddy river bottom. My flip flops made it about five feet before becoming so encrusted with wet clay that every step was like walking on KY Jelly and I had to toss them. So we are wandering around a 25 acre field with one shitty flashlight, in the rain, and I’m barefoot. Every few feet I slip and sprawl like a 19 year old in a mud wrestling contest, and when I wasn’t slipping I was jamming sticks and particularly pokey bits of grass into my bare soles. Lovely.

We make it halfway around and see no evidence of 29. Maybe we just missed her? Then, as we are about to go to the next section we see two sets of eyes. Two calves bedded down away from the herd. Great. Lovely. Perfect! Naturally they run. Eric keeps the flashlight and continues looking for 29; while I try to track two calves in the dark, with only the light from his cellphone (which illuminates just enough of the ground around me to *hopefully* keep me from stepping on a snake). 

It is now almost one am. Screech owls are talking to each other and I am convinced they have killed and eaten the calves, also that they are not screech owls but probably some sort of Sasquatch creature. My world is mud. Nothing has been before, not shall be after. Just rain, and mud, and trying desperately to not impale myself of any wheat stubble. I am herding these calves by the sound of them splashing through puddles, which is getting more and more difficult as they get farther away and as it starts to rain harder. Eric eventually catches back up to me, as I have lost the calves and am now just wandering the pasture next to the river like some sort of parody of La Llorona, wearing incredibly muddy yoga pants instead of a white dress and cursed to search forever for these lost and presumably drowned calves instead of my children.

I slip and slide my way back up to the gate and we see the babies, but do they go in with the herd like good calves? Of F-ing course not. Because they are cows, and it is after one am and raining. So we chase them up and down the blacktop before they disappear into the black of the slightly larger paddock next door and we decide to say F it. We put the slinky gate up a little higher than usual and pray that they figure it out their own damn selves.

We are back over first thing in the morning, you know, when we can see and I have actual shoes; and what do we find? Twelve hundred pounds of beautiful black cow grazing alongside the blacktop. Somehow 29 eluded us on our jaunt around the pasture. We get her put in and a neighbor drives by, and then backs up to yell that we have a calf up the road. Yup. She hid her baby next to the blacktop about a quarter mile away. Did she give birth on it? Who knows. So we load the calf up in the good ole’ farm Fusion and get it reunited with mom, only to be incredibly relived and discover that our two babies from the night before have also made it back to their people.

Whew.

About that time another neighbor drives by and makes a comment about us getting our cow in. WTF dude, you saw we had a cow out and didn’t call? Thanks, bro.

Perfect fodder for my next bout of anxiety.

Your cows are out.

No they aren’t. The neighbor would call.

But would they though???

… Honey, grab the flashlight!!!

Ah, farm life!

Not pictured is Eric's face as he was tersely telling me to stop taking pictures and drive...

Hug a cow in 2015!

Happy New Year!

Sorry for the delay in posting. Things get kinda crazy around here during the holidays.

My friend Rachel said it perfectly when she described getting ready for them thusly: "Two weeks of constant cleaning and arranging so you look like you just rented the house for the day, and that no one actually lives there. Then when everyone is sitting down to dinner you realize that you have no clue where you hid the pepper shaker. That's Christmas." That pretty much sums up the holidays round here. With mom hosting holidays and having a sanctuary for unadoptable Chihuahuas, well, it can take a lot of last minute touch ups. Let's just say there are some memories from my younger days that I get to relive - Cinderelly, Cinderelly / Night and day it's Cinderelly / Make the fire, fix the breakfast / Wash the dishes, do the mopping.

Just kidding, I actually enjoy being able to help mom out. It reminds me of when I still lived there and we would spend every Saturday cleaning. Maybe I'm scarred or something, but vacuuming that house makes me nostalgic!

Last year CA and I spent Christmas Eve with his family and Christmas with mine. We continued that schedule this year, and it seems to work fairly well. I'm really looking forward to having the house I bought finished though. I can't wait to start hosting holidays!

Speaking of the house, I'm not sure I have mentioned it before. I purchased my neighbor's house last March: a 1948 three bedroom and one bath. I had thought it would be great to remodel the bath and add a half bath upstairs. Things were going swimmingly - when I pulled up the carpets the house's original floors looked great. Until we had to cut a bunch of holes in them because the house had the original wiring and it had arced. And smoked. And I was ready to burn it down, but fortunately CA and my dad stepped up. I am happy to say that as of yesterday we are one weekend away from having all the wiring finished! Hallelujah!  At this rate I might move in before the one year mark! And that would be great because then I can sell my nicely remodeled trailer and dad can build a fantastic shed in its current location. Then he can move his things out of my grandpa's barn and we can start repairing buildings there in earnest. Then, after CA has his home remodel done, we build all of our fences on the hill (grandpa's farm), and we have the buildings finished we can turn our sights on remodeling grandpa's house. Whew. I tell you, I don't know what I am going to do with all my free time ten years from now...

But I can tell you how to install outlets and one-way switches, how to fix walls, and I can lay some pretty sweet quarter round. So, it hasn't been for nothing, right?

Last year around this time I decided not to make a resolution, but to give myself a yearlong to-do list:

-Self Love February -basically spend time doing the things I enjoy like sketching, reading, cooking that I fail to do so often.

-Paint vanity in bathroom

-Fill wood holes in quarter round on trailer

-Fix and electrify Pearl's pen

-Feed sacks clean out all the old feed sacks from both barns

-Clean Old Barn

-Rosetta Stone

-Finish edits on my book

-Exercise more

*Finish Old Barn pen

*Fix corner post

*Trim fence

*Replace/fix white boards

*Can enough tomatoes & potatoes that I don't have to buy any

*Basement #1, mom's

*Basement #2, CA's

*CA's house remodel

Yeah. Clearly that didn't happen. I didn't do so well with "Self Love February" since my grandpa died and I spent most of it wallowing in various stages of grief. I didn't fix Pearl's pen because another mare went blind in the pen next door and decided to play ping pong with the vinyl boards every time the wind blew hard. So, until the blind ones either pass on or get moved it is fairly pointless. I almost cleaned out all the feed sacks and the old barn, but then I got distracted by the fact that the barn was falling down and never finished. I never used my canner this year, but I froze the tomatoes and potatoes; that sorta counts, right? I didn't work much on mom's or CA's basement, and I took down some wallpaper as my contribution to CA's house remodel. I did however buy him a spare set of high thread count sheets so I did improve his quality of life somewhat.

Don't get me wrong, I accomplished a ton last year. I am almost into Evelyn's house. We have cleaned some of grandpa's sheds. I grew SO MUCH squash. I got a milk cow, courtesy of CA (:)). I didn't finish editing my book, but I started writing another. I took time to get pedicures, like three or four times.  I kept hay in front of the cows. I learned how to jack up a falling down barn. I learned how to run a mile. I bought my own trimmer and kind of kept my yard trimmed in addition to the fences. I took three amazing trips. I made memories with my loved ones, and so much more.

So this year I am going to change it up a little bit. For one thing I am going to actually share my to-do list with CA and my parents and see what they think and feel about things.

2015 To-Do List:

-Look better going into 28 years and 730 days old than I did at 20. That's right. Size ten jeans and a trip to the salon here I come.

                -Keep exercising more

                -Keep working on cutting out processed foods, GMOs, dairy, sugar, and gluten

                -Shank CA when he brings me ice cream, do not eat ice cream for supper dammit. Okay, maybe just once or twice...

-Move into Evelyn's house, and try to sell the trailer.

-Help CA remodel his house in whatever way I can.

-Plant flowers and vegetables. I may cease weeding by July, but by God it makes me happy. Heck, try to make more time for the Zen of Weeding.

-Stop. Breathe. Enjoy Life. Slow down and weed, pet the milk cow, pick cherries, watch a sunset, or paint. Learn from 2014. All those chores will still be there later, or even next year. Clean the barn on a gorgeous day when it makes my heart sing to be outside, but not because I have to.

-Help people more. Whether that is mom and dad cleaning the basement, or volunteering somewhere.

-Spend more quality time with friends, family, and critters.

-Take time to be creative: edit the book, work on the new book, learn Italian, daydream, meditate, learn to make cheese, bake more breads, learn to distill essential oil, ANYTHING.

-Try to not get overwhelmed as often by everything that I feel like I have to do.

That last one is the big one. It is so easy to get caught up in the rush of day to day living. I spend so much time rushing from one job to the next, and spending the time in between jobs strategizing how to do them more efficiently. It is going to take some conscious effort, but I am really going to try to slow down.

How about you? Want to keep me accountable in 2015? Want to share your goals? 

Want to hug a cow?
Of course you do. Hug a cow in '15!

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.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

It was ridiculously fitting that I blogged about being a muddy superhero on Wednesday. You remember that one? All about how farm life gets you out of your comfort zone, and stretches you as a person?

Yeah. I need to shut up about that because I must have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead of being nose deep in margarita night with the girls, I had to disassemble the rear end of a lawn mower. Joy.  I was supposed to get to be all girly and pretty and wear something NOT a t-shirt for an evening, but no.

My gal pal C is helping me out by mowing on my grandfather’s place since I am being pulled in so many other directions. She called while I was pouring out the last bucket of feed with a conundrum. The Grasshopper was stuck. She had a four wheel drive that could pull it out, but no chain. Could I stop by with a chain on my way to margarita night?

Well, of course. That’s a no brainer. These things happen. Logging chains also tend to twist when pulled and the danged thing wedged around the back wheel bar.

So, C and I banged on it ineffectually for a while with a hammer and then diligently started to scavenge wrenches until we found ones the right size and proceeded to take bolts and covers off until we could beat the chain with a hammer more effectively.

Also, Grandpa, I know that you’re in Heaven and they probably don’t have a hardware store there; but could you PLEASE send me a 9/16 ratchet next time? PLEASE!? In related news, the case for this Earthly experience being “hell on Earth” is actually strengthened by the fact that no matter what I am fixing I never have the right tool for the job. Eternal punishment I tell ya!

But we did it. We overcame. And I am 90% sure we got the mower put back together correctly. If it doesn’t run I think I may pretend that we did not take it apart and have the good Captain or my dad take a look. Hey, I didn’t say that farm induced problem solving made me a good mechanic, just that it made me a mechanic.

Mechanical stuff still is not my strong suit, but celebrating a night out with the girls after? Yeah. Playing to my wheel house baby! Who rocks at drinking margaritas in a dirty t-shirt? This girl!

Happy Friday all!

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.

What makes a farmer?

I was talking with one of my friends about a fantasy land where we would run away with our boyfriends and live in a cottage somewhere. In the course of the conversation she started talking about farming and how she wouldn't know what to do with herself, so Captain America and I would have to be in charge of it. I tried to tell her that it was easy, but something must have gotten lost in the translation.

How do you sum up the love, the angst, the freedom, and the responsibility in a few sentences? How do you explain the pure exultant joy that you can feel from successfully doing something that felt insurmountable: mowing and baling a field of hay on your own, helping birth a calf, falling in instant love with a baby chick, making food from dirt? Or the heart wrenching despair and loss that you feel when Murphey's law hits and everything that can possibly go wrong does: all the equipment breaks - repeatedly, it rains on your hay, animals die, gardens wither? 

Surely this is what she must feel like when she tells me about music, or other friends try to explain what moves them. It is so frustrating to have something that you love so much, and be unable to verbalize that love to share it with your loved ones. To explain how easy and wonderful your passion is to someone who doesn't share it is exceedingly difficult.

Being a farmer isn't about mechanical skill, ability to build fence, knowledge of livestock medicine, or any of the hundred other chores that pop in my head - though those things do help. But being a farmer is so much less, and so much more than that. It is heart. It is love. It is fortitude.

Being a farmer is cow paths that wind through the woods as a child's Yellow Brick Road. It is climbing atop a pile of round bales and serenading a herd of cows like you're a pop star. It is watching a thousand loved ones slowly age and die, or be swiftly executed in their prime. It is holding newborn kittens and helping bird's to their nests. It is standing in a hayfield during a surprise thunderstorm surrounded by 200 freshly made square bales that are going to have to be shaken out and dried again so they can be rebaled without molding, and finding the ability to cry, curse and laugh your way through it again and again. It is being aware and entangled with both the highs and the lows of life; and having so much love for that life, plant or animal, that you get up and keep going even when it feels pointless, overwhelming, and you question your sanity.

I don't know. Maybe it is genetic. Somewhere in our DNA is code for red or green tractors next to the one that determines our eye color. Maybe it is environmental. How could I ever leave my adoring herd of fans? After all they are the only ones who like my singing, and most of my songs were about them and the horses anyway. 

Maybe it is a combination of both that gives anyone the determination to pursue their passion. Heart and fortitude, baby. That's what makes me a farmer.

It's a redneck weddin'!

I’m pretty sure that I’m redneck married right now. If the gun left at my house was a betrothal of some sort we are definitely there.

Captain America and I bought a tractor together. It is a brand spanking new New Holland T105 with a passenger seat! He wanted it so he could pull a disc mower and a big baler for his custom haying operation. I wanted it because, well, it has a passenger seat! And air conditioning! And a sun roof! They called it a “high visibility panel,” but it has a sun roof! Long story short, it is a tractor with a cab where I won’t have to plaster myself pathetically to the outside of the door like a squashed bug. Which pretty much sucks except in the spring. I mean why wouldn’t I love clinging to the door with my fingertips as I watch my dad inside the heated, air conditioned, and dry cab. With this beast I can  actually sit in the cab and not get jabbed in the butt by the PTO button or a lever that I have to contort myself around so that my beloved can actually turn on the equipment. Not gonna lie, it’s pretty sweet.

Captain was pretty nervous about it. It is a lot of money up front, but it should be the tractor that we can use for the rest of our lives. Tractors don’t depreciate the way that cars do. Even though it made sense to spend the money now rather than later he was nervous about it. That is until he used the disc mower. I’m pretty sure I have never seen him so happy in all the months we have been together. We messed around mowing his pasture in the five minutes of daylight that we had left when we got back to his place. In those five-ten minutes we mowed almost a quarter of the pasture, which had previously taken him maybe half an hour or forty minutes to mow with his other mower. I hopped out to open the gate and when I turned around he had his arms full of freshly mown clover and weeds and I guess it could have been a trick of the fading light, but I think there were tears of joy in his eyes. He was probably saying something about “Look how great it mows!” but in my head he was spinning and dancing through the meadow with this big armful of clover singing in joy. The clouds parted. He ran towards the tractor, there was a dramatic moment where the refrain of “Loving you is easy because you’re beautiful” was playing. There may have been skipping, but I’m not sure because I was being shown clover at that point and my head and heart were bubbly seeing him so happy.

By the way, my head routinely makes real life into some sort of Disney cartoon. I sincerely doubt that it is a diagnosable condition, but I blame Beauty and The Beast.

So yeah, I’m redneck married. You can send all wedding gifts as checks made out directly to Davis Farm Supply. ;)

I guess all that is left to do is figure out which anniversary is the farm equipment anniversary. Captain America says year one, but I don’t believe him. I feel like he may just be angling for a new baler...

Take me for a ride in your big blue tractor.
We can go slow, or go a little faster.

Life is too short

I stumbled across this on the Facebook page of The Prairie Homestead, and it rang particularly true this morning. I was thinking something pretty similar as I struggled to run fifteen feet farther than yesterday.


How many times do we sit back and lament, waiting for a change; but unwilling to take the necessary steps to make it happen? I know I do it, and I'm sure you do too. I think everyone does in some aspect of their life, whether it is personal or professional: wanting a different kind of love, a different kind of life, or even in my particular early morning experience a different kind of body.


Yeah, how sad is it that for me, it was easier to overhaul my personal relationships and my career than it is to convince myself that I CAN run.


I have never been athletic. I have never thought that I could be athletic. In my brain I have always perceived the girls that ran (or exercised for that matter) for fun as "insane," "crazy," and maybe even "narcissistic." Never have I identified with them. I made up words and descriptions to make it less appealing, to make me feel superior, to validate my never running a consecutive mile in my whole life. To make excuses for not even trying.


I saw images of runners, with their long lean frames and stared at my frumpy self in the mirror chanting: "That can never be me. I don't look like that. Look at my belly, butt, and thighs. The damned things practically bounce off when I jog ten feet. I could never run. I can't do that."


And I never even tried...


Until a month ago.


You may recall a few weeks ago I referenced a conversation that drunk me had with Captain America where I told him my *actual* weight loss goals, and I ended the post with something about lacing up running shoes. Yes. Running shoes. It was a big step. It meant changing everything that I had ingrained in my own head about who I was. Sad as I am to admit it, not running DEFINED me and I didn't even know it until I made a haphazard blog post.


I started running that next morning. I drug myself up an extra hour early and headed out the door. I made it about forty feet before I was heaving and my sight was blurry. I walked the rest of the mile. The next day I made it fifty before I started walking. Susan, my dog with a horrible deviated septum, kept me company. Somehow running next to her as she wheezed like a creeper peeping into a woman's window helped. If she could do it, I could; I can.


The same things kept playing over in my head, day after day. This wasn't me! I didn't run! What was I doing? Who was I kidding? I couldn't do this. I should just go back to bed.


At the end of week two, and a quarter mile of consecutive run time, I actually stopped being wrapped up in my thoughts long enough to realize what my ego was saying to me. I started to argue back. Why couldn't it be me? Why couldn't I be a runner, or fit, or pretty? Why did I have to stay in the comfortable little scholar bowl mold that I had made myself in high school? That wasn't me. I wasn't that limited. I am not that limited. I can be anything. Hell, I already am more than that. Why not add runner to the damned list? Why not?!


Yes. I got pissed off at my own ego tamping me down. And you know what? It felt good.


We all have something that holds us back. Maybe yours isn't changing a deeply held belief about yourself, maybe it is wanting a new type of love, a satisfying career, a new lifestyle, or anything else under the sun; but don't give up on yourself. Don't let that damned voice in your head win. Get pissed. Trust me, you owe it to yourself.


Go out there and get that something you've never had. It feels good to change it up. 


Just not always at six-thirty in the morning after running 3/4 of a mile. That still sucks sometimes. But at seven? Man, it feels great. ;)

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 USDA wants to buy...submachine guns?!?!?

From the WTF files...it came to my attention today that the USDA (department of Agriculture) has put out a request for quote on...firearms?!?! What in the heck? Why does the USDA need submachine guns?

I mean, yes, rootworm is bad this year, but submachine guns? Seriously?

Death to crop pests!

Who wants to guess that these are NOT for a war on GMOs?

Have you ever been eye stalked by a cow?

 

You know those people at the gym that stare at you while you exercise? That make you feel judged, and badly about yourself? The ones that make that internal voice go, “Oh crap. I’m not working hard enough. Fast enough. I must look horrible in this spandex shirt!” Yep.

Meet the mother of those people. A cow.

You're not even able to work fast enough to keep me fed. Amateur.

Let me set the stage for you. A few weeks back I posted about my abusive relationship with the cows and I mentioned that I had spent several hours cleaning the barn. This is a set of before and after photos of the lovely project.

Something doesn't look quite right.
And no, it isn't the fact that the stalls are full of 30 years worth of junk!

Step one complete! Note the height change!
Also note that this is about when I realized that my radio was on AM.
And that was why I couldn't listen to anything other than radio Disney...
I was dedicated dammit. I also know the words to "Let it go."

Let it go, let it go. I'm not cleaning this anymore!
Let it go, let it goooo! Almost ready to close up the doors.
I don't care. What the cows say.
Let them moo onnnn!...The hay never bothered me anyway!

You see that wonderfully compressed timber? And the one with the hole in it? Yeah. That was what prompted my cow-stalking gym time. The dang barn was falling down. It is always something! 

And yes, I have an entire barnyard version of the song. Go ahead. Judge all ya'll want. When Disney comes knocking on my door you'll see! ;)

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!

 

Bad, bad, Biscuit.

I have a wonderful homemade biscuit recipe that I adapted from Suzanne McMinn over at Chickens in the Road (The lady is my heroine, seriously, check her out). I make these biscuits for Captain America fairly frequently. He can't get enough of them. They're damn good biscuits.

So, I made them for him Sunday morning before we headed downstairs to work on his basement remodel project. About an hour later there was a very loud THUNK! We looked at each other and nodded briefly. It was like in the movies. That one glance and slight chin tilt held more meaning
than an hour of conversation. I dropped the broom I was holding and made a mad dash for the stairs. I leapt up them two at a time and almost spun out on the laminate floor as I slid towards the kitchen.

There he was, CA's massive black and tan coon hound, Sampson; standing amidst a pile of still warm golden biscuit goodness.

I did what any sane person would do. I ran at him, screaming for him to back away from the biscuits. Believe it or not, he didn't listen and continued to nose around trying to remove the rest of towel that I had covered them with. I made it to him and started trying to drag him away from the pan before all of the biscuits were ruined by his doggie drool to no avail. He wasn't even sorry, or scared, or really wanting to move at all.


I picked up a biscuit that had rolled across the kitchen and threw it at him. It exploded in a golden shower of crumbs that spread all over the floor. The bits of yellow and white made a fine
counterpoint to the golden oak finish. I picked up another handful of bread heaven and started shoving it in his face. In my head it was like rubbing a puppy's nose in the mess he made.


Unfortunately, rubbing biscuit crumbs all over his face did not seem to punish him much. He
still was not apologetic or ready to flee the crazy biscuit flinging lady. So I reached around him, resorting to dragging him away from the pan manually. He is not a little dog, and while he was being removed from his prize he growled and snapped at me.

Growing up in a dog sanctuary, and watching a lot of The Dog Whisperer has taught me that there is one thing to do when a dog begins to be aggressive towards you. Roll them on their back and show them who is the alpha of the pack. I am always reminded of Cartman from Southpark, you WILL respect my authority!

Anyway, so CA comes upstairs to find a biscuit pan on the floor, the kitchen COVERED in crumbs (imagine a biscuit bomb going off mid air. . . it was even in the shelving), and me sprawled out on top of the dog holding him on his back with one arm and rubbing his stomach with the other; muttering something about him being a "bad, bad Biscuit" all the while. Sampson was staring at me like I had lost my mind. He looked up at CA and whined something that I have to interpret as: "Save me daddy! I was just eating some good food I found, when this crazy lady came up and attacked me! I didn't do anything wrong. She came out of nowhere!"

What did CA do? He laughed his butt off. That's what. Great co-parent he is going to be!

Now every time that dog is bad we call him Biscuit. I'm not sure he was smart enough to know what his name was in the first place. That poor thing is going to have a complex.

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.

My sick addiction.

I’m pretty sure that livestock is a drug.

 

Seriously, it has to be an undiagnosed opiate of some sort. There is no other explanation for why it was -35 freaking degrees and I was wandering around outside with three pairs of pants, two jackets, and a pair of coveralls on; feeding with a smile under my balaclava (ultra cool ninja mask). I was kind of horrified when I realized that I couldn’t wait to go check the cows. I’m sick, sick, sick I tell ya.

 

Or maybe I just wanted to practice my ninja skillz. WHA-CHA! The deluxe winter Lauren action figure comes with hay throwing motion and ice chopping axe! KII-AII!

 

Or perhaps  it was because I would throw the good alfalfa hay down to the cows from the barn loft and I was distracted by the cold thinking: “I wonder if this is the bovine version of manna from heaven?”

 

It really goes to show that it takes all kinds. I am pretty sure that someone out there would think feeding a bunch of dirty old cows in the freezing cold with snow up to their knees is hell, while I kinda think feeding a herd of black beauties in the muffled quiet that only comes during the pristine white world of winter is heaven on Earth.

 PS: I am really hoping God get’s it, or I will have to get really used to that cold layer of hell…