The Long Journey Home

Disappearing chicken mystery... solved!

2011-01-20T15:42:00.000-06:00

Our chicken population has been mysteriously and steadily shrinking over the past month. This has happened to us before, but not since we gave up our free-range dreams and put the chickens behind portable electric poultry netting.

The plus side of being a free range chicken - volunteering for the road trip

In the past we have had chickens carried off by coyotes and local dogs. Something, probably a raccoon, once ate toes off some of the young chickens while they were sleeping in the brooder porch (I know, awful, isn't it?).

But these are full grown chickens, living behind electric fencing. And we were still finding piles of feathers on the ground.

Farmer Boy came bursting into the house the other day and shouted "I figured it out! I saw it in action! It's a hawk!!" I could not believe it... a hawk, taking full-grown chickens. Sure sign of a drought.

We found this little guy in the woods a few years ago, struggling to fly. How could something that starts out this cute become a killing machine?

Now this is not an easily solved problem. We had not been planning to fence the top of the chicken area... it is really big, and how would we make that portable, or even get under there to manage the birds, and... ugh.

We have not yet decided on the solution, but I think we are down to two. One is to move them into the planned covered-garden-perimeter-poultry run. The other is to get a livestock guardian dog dedicated to them.

Puppy, or massive farm project... hmmmm....

Somebody had a third idea. Ahem.

How Patti is Like a Magpie, OR The Great Escape

2011-01-08T11:33:00.000-06:00

A few things you need to know about me....

~ I like to encourage my children to help with farm chores young
~ I'm sometimes impulsive
~ I am as easily distracted by pretty things as a magpie

Okay, you already figured the second one out from the guinea story. Add in the other two and we've set the scene for the exciting sequel (um, conclusion?) to that very story.

The guineas were 3 or 4 weeks old, and had been quite manageable. So I hadn't screened the top of the brooder. Because really, the tyranny of the urgent seems to drive me when it comes to the farm. And things hadn't felt urgent. For you literary types, this writing technique is called foreshadowing.

It was a gorgeous fall day, the children and I were outside, and I was feeding and watering the guineas. The brooder lid was propped open, but I was right there. I walked away from the brooder for a minute to bring the waterer to the hose. No problem. All was peaceful as the guineas hungrily huddled around their newly freshened feeder.

Little Warrior came running over to me as I rinsed out the waterer, and asked if he could fill it. Well, of course he could... sure it meant he would end up soaked, but he's four and I'm trying to give him as many big-boy jobs as I can. You know, hard work builds character and all that.

While he held the hose, I walked back over to check on the guineas, who were starting to look pretty with their brand new grown-up feathers. They calmly munched their grain as we waited for hose-aiming-challenged Little Warrior to finish filling up the waterer.

Pretty birds.

A squawk from the direction of the chicken yard turned my head. More pretty birds. I grabbed my camera off the brooder porch roof and meandered toward the chickens. The light was so pretty. The chickens were so pretty. The roosters were especially pretty.

I started taking pictures.

I knelt down and took more pictures.

Lots of pictures.

Preeeeeetty birrrrrrds.....

SQUAWK!!

I turned around to see a guinea fly up. Suddenly, like popcorn in a pan, guineas were popping up and out of the brooder every which way. The first guinea or two had hit the brooder lamp which fell off its hook and onto the brooder floor, terrifying all the rest. And if you're a guinea, terrified = fly.

The closer I got, the more guineas flew out of that brooder. I froze and did the only sensible thing a calm mother such as myself would do - shouted "HELP! I don't know what to do!" to my teenager.

By the time we made it to the brooder and got the lid closed, there was one guinea left in it. The fields and trees looked like ice cream with guinea sprinkles shaken on it. They were everywhere.

We tried to herd them like ducks. Um, no.

We tried to lure them with food like chickens. NOT!

We tried to catch them. As if.

Three of them flew in with the chickens. That was nice. Farmer Boy finally managed to catch one that was on the ground, and put it in with the other three.

I heard squawking, and followed the sounds to the big pond. Peeked through the trees hopefully, but found these guys...

Pretty, aren't they? They were swimming, a happy wild duck family, just peacefully swimming...

Preeeeeeetty birrrrrrrrrds...

DOH! Guineas, guineas, focus on the guineas!

But I couldn't find any more. {sigh}

So here are a few of the things I have learned about guinea raising:

~ guineas really CAN fly very young

~ guineas can fly very high on their first flight (20 feet up into a tree)

~ an open brooder should be treated like a hot stove... never left unattended

~ if guineas escape their brooder young they have no memory of your property and do not yet consider it home

~ young guineas make good breakfast for coyotes

~ I am too distractable to brood guineas the same way we brood chickens

We had four guineas in with the chickens the first night after the Great Escape. Within a week we had no guineas.

And would you believe that despite all that mad distractability my husband gave me an even nicer camera for Christmas? If you hear me talking guineas again before I get that roofed pen built, talk me down, would you? And keep my camera hostage. There's no telling what pretty birds might lure me in to a photo shoot.

Joy in the Waves ~ A Cropped Photo

2010-12-05T23:13:00.000-06:00

We just returned from an incredible family vacation, our first with our extended family. My amazing and generous father took both my brother and me, along with our families (and our mom!), on a trip to Hawaii. There were nine of us all together.

I have oodles of gorgeous photos... Hawaii is such a beautiful place even an amateur like me can take decent pictures! For fun, I decided to try out a challenge that Jenny at Home Is Where You Start From runs weekly.

This week she challenges her readers to post a cropped picture. I am working with a very basic camera so I have built in limitations. But this was a great opportunity for me to look with a slightly different eye at some of my shots.

In the cropped version the story is my sister-in-law's joy. She is living in the moment fully, and that energy shows. I love the movement in the waves. The strips of color in the water have a stronger impact.

The full shot tells a different story... I feel her emotion, but I also have a sense of perspective, how small she is. The story feels more about the water:

The L.E.N.S. Challenge is new every week; click on Jen's link to join up!

Is it a chicken? Is it a turkey? No, it's a Turken!

2010-11-12T18:07:00.000-06:00

Years ago, before we moved to our farm, Farmer Boy and I spent a few weeks studying up on chickens. I read books, he made a chart, and together we curled up on the couch, slowly leafing through the pages of a chicken hatchery catalog.

There were big chickens and little chickens, meat chickens and egg chickens, white egg layers and brown egg layers.

And there were Turkens.

Turkens are, well, ugly. They are true chickens, but have a naked neck and look turkey-like, hence the name. We could not figure out why anyone would want to raise Turkens, when there are scores of beautiful, highly productive chicken breeds.

Fast forward five years. Extreme drought. Chickens picked off left and right by coyotes. Our free-range chicken population was slowly and tragically whittled down to zero.

A friend decided to downsize her chicken operation and offered to sell us some full grown layers for a good price. We ordered some portable electric poultry netting to create a movable fence, and bought a dozen chickens from her. They were random breeds; whatever she happened to catch while we were standing there. And we ended up with one Turken.

Honestly, it was kind of a pity buy. She asked us if we wanted her, and I felt sorry for her. So I said yes. I couldn't imagine someone else actually wanting her.

We were in for a surprise. Our Turken was gentle and sweet. She was also smart and brave (for a chicken). And she ate fire ant eggs.

After a little while she no longer seemed ugly to us. We loved her, and that made her beautiful. {cue violin strings}

Last spring, when it was time to bring a new family of chicks to the farm, we included five Turkens in our order. They are all grown up now, strong and healthy, and laying eggs happily. We love the new Turkens too.

There may be a special advantage for Turken hens here in Texas. I expect they are considerably more comfortable than the rest of the girls on a hot August day!

photos © Patti Brown 2010

Guineas

2010-11-09T13:55:00.001-06:00

I have contemplated adding guineas to the farm for six years. Rumored to be ravenous insect consumers, guineas supposedly even eat fire ants!

But they are loud. Really loud. Really really really loud. At least the guineas on my friend's farm were. And I could never figure out a way to buy fewer than of 25 of them at a time, which seemed like insect hunter overkill.

No guineas.

And then...

A few weeks ago I had a wild hair to check the farm and garden section of craigslist. This is not something I do often, mostly because it’s like going to the store without a list. I put myself in danger of buying something I did not plan to get, and don’t especially need, but suddenly can’t live without.

Sure enough, I found an ad for 14 baby guineas for only $2 each. This is about as cheap as I can get them from a hatchery, and far fewer than the mandatory 25 minimum. Suddenly I couldn’t live without guineas.

A quick email query to the Head Farmer, then an email to the seller, and I was committed. In the good way, as in "I made a commitment." Not committed to a mental hospital. Although perhaps...

But I digress.

That afternoon I picked up some unmedicated game bird feed and a cute little special waterer, and drove to pick up the guineas. Fourteen hopping, trilling, terrified, one week old guineas, in two cardboard boxes.

Guinea chick at one week

Now this is Texas. Hot. Dry. But because I am special, on the night I bought baby birds who need the temperature to be 90 degrees round the clock, the forecast called for lows in the low forties. And I had loaned our new brooder lamp to a friend.

Nooooo problem, thinks I. They will sleep in the tub tonight.

Just in case you should find yourself in this predicament, I have, out of the kindness of my heart, prepared detailed instructions. Be sure to follow them exaaaaaactly. And take pictures. Please. Because I forgot.

First Night :

Clean out tub
Hunt down old brooder lamp
Note spider web inside lamp
Clean lamp
Unscrew bulb to remove all web (fire hazard!)
Jump when large black spider emerges from behind bulb
Stare at broken bulb in tub
Thank God that bulb didn’t break on your feet
Clean tub again
Hope for extra bulb in storage
Find extra bulb
Rest metal crutch across top of tub to support brooder lamp
Place cardboard boxes with guineas in tub under light
Remember that you only bought one little waterer
Fill small metal lids from recycling bin with water and feed
Repeat an hour later
Repeat
Repeat
Repeat
Tell the guineas to go to sleep already!

First Morning:

Wake up to find two soaking wet cardboard boxes, an empty waterer and empty lids. Those birds can drink! And spill.
Refill everything
Repeat
Get caught up in homeschooling.

First Afternoon:

Feed and water guineas again
Weed whack around brooder
Clean out brooder
Lay down pine shavings
Search for chick feeder
Search some more for chick feeder
Find countless lost items in fields, shed, barn, shop, laundry room
Find no chick feeders
Try to retrofit full sized feeder with chicken wire to make it suitable for babies
Repeatedly poke self with wire and pinch self with wire clippers
Struggle to not say bad words
As sun is setting, shout to 13 year old to get smallest chicken waterer from chicken pen.
In the dusky glow, learn from 13 year old that waterer has a leak, rendering it useless without welding.

Second Night:

Give up and go to store and buy new waterer and feeder. Get extra bulb for heat lamp because bulb breakage seems likely
Finally get guineas settled around 10:00pm

Now, really, you can see that things couldn’t have gone better. Except, well, maybe if I had to change just one teeny tiny thing? I would have started working on the brooder project in the morning.

Live and learn.

Or not.

By the way, these guinea chicks have a lovely cheeping trill for a song. Not overly loud, and surprisingly like a song bird.

Guinea chicks at two and a half weeks

Coming out of hibernation

2010-11-07T16:46:00.000-06:00

Hi!

{wave}

Miss me?

Let’s see (counting counting)... it has been about a year and a half since I have posted on this blog. It wasn’t just neglect. I made the decision to stop for a while.

But I love to write, and I find myself writing about our farm in my head as I go about my day, so the lure of the written word brings me back to this space. I read back about the years gone by and marvel at where we have come from. And I wonder where we are going. The fact that madcap adventures and farm hilarity seem to dog everything we undertake helps me in my quest for topics, to be sure.

A few months ago I started writing again on a new blog called I’m Becoming Joyful. Over there I’m writing about the profound changes in my life since embracing the truth about who I am in Christ. And I’m writing about how God magnifies joy in my life when I serve others.

And here? Back to writing about the madness!

Thoughts on a Spring Night

2009-04-16T22:31:00.000-06:00

Thoughts on a Spring Night (a poem by Mary Duce - my mom!)

It's 9 PM in Texas.
The June bugs have arrived.
They're crashing on our windows
And some of them survived.

They're beating out a rhythm
Of triumph over glass
They simply cannot fathom
They're better off in grass.

Their bodies litter sidewalks
They interrupt my peace
I wish there were a posse
Of June-bug death-police.

Oh why do June bugs come here
In April and in May???
If only they would disappear
Forever go away.

My night-time peace is bothered
By smashing sounds on glass
Don't let these ugly insects
Take kamikazi class.

Now that's a lotta cats!

2009-03-06T11:58:00.000-06:00

One day recently, while our little girl and boy cats, er, I mean two boy cats, were at the mobile clinic having their manhood removed, I had the Princess take a slight detour from her normal math curriculum, after she asked why we were having them "fixed".

I set her up with this problem: If a cat gave birth to 5 cats each year, and each of those cats gave birth to five cats each year (and so on), how many cats would there be in 10 years?

Remember, each of the cats has 5 babies each year, so in year 1 there is 1 parent, in year 2 there are 6 parents, in year 3 there are 36, etc. This of course assumes that they are not mating with each other.

And the answer...

110,854,656 cats

110 million cats is a lot of cats. Princess still wishes we could have kittens, but now she understands.

Drought solutions!

2009-02-14T15:31:00.003-06:00

Stephen and I are very pleased with ourselves.

This week we have come up with three, yes THREE, ways to cause the skies to rain, even in the most severe drought conditions. If you are not local to us, you may not know that we are in one of the worst droughts in 50 years in our area. Our drought level is rated at "exceptional", the highest (or worst) level.

But, folks, we can help! Each of the following techniques has been independently tested. Yes, that means that we, the Brown family, have caused it to rain THREE times this week!

And here are our scientifically proven methods:

1) Wash the mud room floor. Merely sweeping will not do. It must be washed and gleaming.

2) Transfer the chickens from their cozy, heavy wooden brooder to the lightweight portable hoop house so that they can graze. This one will bring heavy winds as well.

3) Organize an outdoor music event utilizing most of your expensive electrical music equipment. Best to transport the equipment in the open bed of your pickup truck.

I am looking out the window at rain as I write. Thanks, of course, to Stephen's brilliant implementation of #3. Well done, my dear!

Do you think we could get a grant to study this? We could use a few bucks, and with all the economic stimulation going on, well...

Things I have learned this week

2009-01-29T10:11:00.003-06:00

1) My husband really likes "bringing home the bacon" the old-fashioned way - starting with a live pig.

2) Homemade sausage is way tastier than store-bought

3) Electric meat grinders are much easier to use than manual. And appallingly more expensive

4) A sharpened Henckels knife from 1993 works better, and is easier to clean, than a meat slicer from 1968.

5) In the time it takes me to google "green slime electric plug" Stephen can rewire the plug on an old meat slicer

6) I like facebook

7) Our cats are both male

8) It is cheaper to neuter male cats than spay female cats

9) It is a nice surprise to save $10 when you go to pay for your cats' surgery

10) I feel like planting when the weather is balmy

11) Six hours later when the temperature has dropped 40 degrees, all I want to do is sit in front of the fireplace.

12) A 2 year old does not intuitively grasp that he should not stick his butter knife in his sock at dinner

13) Coyotes eat their breakfast when we are finishing up ours, at 7:30am. Right outside our window. They prefer chicken for breakfast. Maybe they eat eggs for dinner.

14) A coyote with a chicken in its mouth runs faster than Stephen can walk from his seat to the gun safe

15) Our cats can take down a rabbit that is almost their size.

16) Our cats are very proud of this.

17) Out of respect, our cats may leave us an offering of a rabbit head on the front door mat. If we do not eat it, they will take it away to a suitable location for "burial"

18) Living here can be gross. Oh, I learned that years ago.

Thank goodness for ag science

2009-01-29T02:13:00.004-06:00

Happy cows produce more milk.

Imagine. {rolling eyes}

Do you think happy mothers make better cookies? I wonder how much grant money I could get to study that. It would, of course, require cookie testing. Any volunteers?

It Couldn’t Be Done

2009-01-16T21:46:00.001-06:00

by Edgar Albert Guest

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it!

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it;”
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.

Out of the mouths of babes

2009-01-11T23:33:00.004-06:00

We have a new batch of baby chicks. On the day they arrived I took Little Guy out to see them, after he woke up from his nap. He seemed to have mixed feelings... they were "so cute!" but he wasn't too interested in holding them. Not that I'm complaining; he killed one last time (seriously).

Later that night as I was telling him "The Story of Little Guy's Day", which is part of his bedtime routine, I got to the part about going out to see the chicks.

"So Mama picked up a chick and gave it to Little Guy, who had to be very careful. It was soft and, well, what DID it feel like?"

He looked at me solemnly with those big 2 year old eyes and said "Chicken nuggets."

Kitties

2009-01-03T20:45:00.002-06:00

In late October we added two new residents.

The children named them Genesis and Exodus.

This past Sunday, for a Christmas gift, I surprised The Princess with tickets to the musical Cats. We had another happy girls-only outing, this time all the way to San Antonio.

Imagine our surprise when we discovered that the leader of the Jellicle Cats is named Old Deuteronomy! Thus we learned that The Princess (for it was her idea) is a natural at dignified cat naming!

Another new year

2009-01-01T14:18:00.004-06:00

The years are flying by faster and faster. How can 2008 be gone already?

Last night, in a happy change of tradition, both Stephen and I were awake past 10:00 on New Year's Eve. We stayed up and watched the ball drop an hour late (the networks delayed the broadcast by an hour for the deprived Central Time Zone folk). We talked about how when we were kids, 2009 seemed like a year that was only possible in the movies. We agreed that the concept of 2000 was so unsettling that we had never really thought past it.

And now here we are nine years past it! On reflection we also agreed that we could never have predicted that our lives would be the way they are, or that we would be the people that we are, when we were teenagers in the 80's.

It was also a moment to reminisce 19 years back, to our first this-is-not-an-actual-date-we-are-just-friends outing to a New Year's Eve party in Newport, RI. I had a terrible crush on Stephen then, but could not tell how he felt about me. I was so nervous I was ready 30 minutes before he came to pick me up! Anyone who knows me knows that this is, well, practically defying the laws of physics.

Alas, another year and a half would pass before we declared our feelings for one another. But you know the story ends happily, and here we are in Texas (surprise #1), married for 15 1/2 years (surprise #2), on our farm (surprise #3), with our 3 beautiful children (surprise #4), whom we homeschool (surprise #5), I am an omnivore (surprise #6), we own guns (surprise #7), and are conservative evangelical Christians (surprise #8). There are more, but I think that's a good start.

Yes, it is a long journey home, but it is never boring, especially with Stephen Brown holding my hand. I do love that man, and pray we will be journeying together for many years to come.

A little color

2008-12-31T22:41:00.003-06:00

Here's a burst of sunshine and color from this summer. These are two kinds of watermelon we grew, Yellow Doll and New Orchid:

White food

2008-12-31T11:10:00.005-06:00

Recently we were given some store-bought eggs. Yesterday I was baking cookies and pulled the carton of eggs out of the fridge. As I opened it I heard a gasp, and turned to see The Princess with wide eyes, up on tiptoe, saying, "They're SO white! They're completely white!"

It had not occurred to me that she might not have seen white eggs. I suppose the last time we didn't have our own laying hens was almost four years ago, when she was just 3, and even then I usually bought brown eggs.

This reminded me of this past summer, when we had used up all our chickens in the freezer, and I bought some breast meat at the grocery store. Farmer Boy came into the kitchen, looked at it, raw, on a tray waiting to go into the oven, and said "What is THAT?!" He actually did not recognize it as chicken meat. When I told him it was chicken he said, "It's so... white!" Later, when asked for his thoughts, pronounced it, "Gross." He said the texture was what really bothered him. "Sort of slimes down your throat... blech" was the best he could describe the texture. This is the boy whose eyes light up when he hears the word "tongue". Not a picky eater.

Now let me clarify that he ate it (that comment notwithstanding, he is a polite boy), and was not criticizing the cooking. But he could distinguish the vast difference between home-grown chicken and factory-farmed chicken. And he was not impressed.

For Stephen and me, coming from a non-farming background, we have had a similar reaction, but different in its emphasis. Our kids have been surprised by how bland factory food is. We have been amazed by how delicious fresh food is. Animals grown in healthy environments produce tastier eggs and meat. It is that simple.

Veggies just picked from the garden glow with color and flavor. Bread made with freshly ground wheat is tender and moist. Last summer Stephen was the caretaker of a goat dairy farm for a few weeks. He is not normally a milk drinker, but he guzzled that fresh milk!

Because I cook mostly from scratch, I find my taste is now more sensitive to artificial ingredients. It is surprising how few ingredients are needed in a recipe when each ingredient is bursting with flavor because it is fresh.

Obviously this can be expanded almost indefinitely. In the final analysis, the way God made it is the way it is best enjoyed, and best for you.

Fewer and fresher ingredients in our food, our homes, our relationships...

Some older posts to follow

2008-12-31T09:29:00.002-06:00

I have not blogged for many months (three I think), but I did occasionally sit down and write a few entries without posting them. Following this you will find a few of those posts with their original dates.

Going to the Opera!

2008-11-07T00:46:00.003-06:00

The Princess and I took advantage of a remarkable opportunity yesterday. Austin Lyric Opera opened it's final full dress rehearsal of La Cenerentola (Rossini's Cinderella) to students and teachers, including homeschoolers.

We went out to a lovely dinner at The East Side Cafe (my favorite Austin restaurant, to which I have not been for 3 years). Our dinners even came with flowers on them! Fitting, given the fancy hairdo The Princess made for herself.

Then, with an hour to spare, we went to the Long Center for the Performing Arts. Our extra time allowed us to go the top of the parking garage and enjoy the night skyline. It also permitted us to get amazing seats, since seating was General Admission and we were there when the doors opened. We paid a total of $17 for our tickets. The seats we chose were in the "orchestra prime" area. If we were to go this Saturday, EACH TICKET would cost $126!! $17 vs. $252.

Because it was a dress rehearsal we were told beforehand that there might be stops in the action, and the performers might not always "sing out" (preserving their voice strength for opening night). There were only one or two occasions when the singing was soft, and no interruptions. The singing was amazing, the orchestra stirring, the costumes over-the-top. I was completely overwhelmed.

It was long, and late, so when intermission came and it was close to 9:00 already, I suggested to The Princess that we just head home then. She wanted to stay, and so we did. The 2nd act was even better and we were both so glad we stayed. It was a wonderful evening for two very happy girls!

Freezing milk

2008-09-29T23:21:00.006-06:00

Here's why it is a bad idea to freeze milk in a glass jar with rounded shoulders...

Dear doggies

2008-09-29T22:31:00.006-06:00

We have lived on our farm for four years now. In that time nine dogs have lived here. They've come to us from people who can't keep their dog any more, strays that have shown up, and some just born here.

Farm life is a happy life for a dog, I think, but it's not a soft life. Our dogs don't sleep on our beds; they're not even allowed in the house, unless there's a terrible storm.

They're expected to work... protecting the animals and farm. Most of them really like to do this. Some have thought the chickens might be quite delicious, but we've managed to limit this somehow.

They run endlessly, play in ponds, get dirty and don't get in trouble, and pretty much live a doggie dream life.

Of course we've had dogs get stepped on by cows and kicked by horses, but the really dangerous thing for dogs here turns out to be cars.

Our house is close to the road, and for reasons I still can not understand, cars are very threatening to the canine mind. Trucks hauling trailers are the ultimate enemy.

We have had three dogs get hit by cars. Two have died. We've also lost dogs in mysterious ways... they've just disappeared. And we've given dogs away.

Molly, Fleck, Fred, Zeke, Belle, Sheila, Pepper, a stray we never named, and Luke. Nine dogs, and we're down to one.

Luke is our only dog now. Dear limping, sad Luke. He really is a good dog, but he's never gotten over being separated from his brother and best friend when he was a year old and brought to live with us. Luke was hit by a car this summer. He has recovered but will always limp.

Recently Luke seems to be cheering up. His solo status actually appears to be a positive for him... he gets all the human attention and doesn't have to argue with anyone over status (although he'd been top dog since right after he arrived).

He's not doing his job very well. We're down to six chickens (from 40 in the summer). Rather a calamitous loss. I believe the coyotes refer to our house as "The Breakfast Club".

Wild Turkeys

2008-09-29T21:59:00.003-06:00

Stephen discovered a large flock of wild turkeys (technically called a rafter of turkeys) on our property recently. I was excited because we do not raise turkeys yet, so we still have to buy Thanksgiving and Christmas birds. Wild turkey for Thanksgiving dinner - how fitting!

Unfortunately (for me, not for the turkeys), turkey hunting season is in the spring. Good thing the folks in Plymouth lived before government regulations on hunting. Not that they were unfamiliar with the problems of a heavy-handed government...

Anyway, here are the birds. Ugly but in a really cool kind of way.

Garden

2008-09-29T20:52:00.007-06:00

Oh my, three months since the last post. Yes, it has been a full and happy summer.

While Stephen has had many new projects on the farm these past few months, my main farm project has been planting a much bigger garden. As I've written, Stephen enclosed a little more than 1/4 acre for us last spring. We got some planted, but it was previously pasture, so there was a lot of work to do to break the ground.

In August, Stephen took over the ground breaking part (phew!) and now we are moving along quickly. At this point we have about 1500 square feet planted, and are probably 1/4 of the way done. Of course we want to feed ourselves, but we are also planning to sell vegetables at the Bastrop Producer's Market.

The kids and I plant mostly in the morning after breakfast and before school. After dinner I like to go out and sit in a chair in the garden and just look.

I still squeal like a 5 year old to see things like this (our first sugar snap pea):

We have marauders in the garden periodically. A rabbit systematically helped itself to our bean babies. This picture is taken half way up a 40 foot row, the rest of the row behind me was wiped out too.

Here's what fills the row where there you see no green above:

Thankfully I read that tabasco sauce mixed with water and sprayed on the leaves deters rabbits. It works! That's why we still have some left.

They pilfered a cabbage plant too. Here's a happy cabbage:

And a missing neighbor!

Yesterday I was marveling at how green everything in the garden is. We are in a serious drought and most of the farm is dry and yellow, but our wonderful soaker lines keep the veggies green.

We do have bursts of color here and there...

My son is crazy

2008-07-09T07:19:00.003-06:00

I've mentioned the rat snakes in the hen house before. More than once. Big stinkers. Hungry. Farmer Boy chased one or two out last month, but one time decided the fastest way to deal with it was catch it! He knocked on the back door and here is what I saw! Don't worry, they are not venomous. Is he brave or what?

Beef tongue

2008-06-06T10:51:00.008-06:00

WARNING TO VEGETARIANS: This post deals almost exclusively with meat.

WARNING TO OMNIVORES: This post deals almost exclusively with weird meat!

Okay, so I have put it off for a long time. Yes, years. I have had a growing collection of (deep breath) beef tongue in my freezer. Each steer we slaughter comes with a tongue. And various other things like a heart, two kidneys, a liver. We have these things all tidily packaged in white paper in our freezer.

A few months ago I made kidney stew. The Princess and I were reading Mirette on the High Wire as part of our Five in a Row curriculum (which I mostly just use to guide our circle time theme). "Delicious" kidney stew is mentioned, so in keeping with the theme, I found a genuine french kidney stew recipe, and we had kidney stew with crusty french bread for dinner. It was terrible. Ugh.

We have used up our regular frozen beef. We have eaten our last frozen chicken. We are down to the end, and I really don't want to buy factory farm meat at the grocery store.

So I cooked beef tongue today.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to learn how to cook beef tongue these days? Only one of my cookbooks has a recipe (The Joy of Cooking from 1964... and I'll bet the new edition doesn't have it). Online the recipes are few and far between. Seems beef tongue is especially enjoyed in Mexico and the Philippines. But not so much in the US.

I decided to take the Mexican angle today. So I made beef tacos. Note the word tongue is not mentioned... we had BEEF TACOS. Some of us have these bizarre psychological hangups. I'm not naming names.

So, on to the method. I kind of pieced this whole thing together from various sources and made the sauce out of what I had available.

First I (with great trepidation) unwrapped the packages. The tongues looked like tongues. Really big tongues. I decided to spare you pictures, but if you are really curious, look here. I scrubbed them and put them in a big pot, then covered them with water.

I put the pot on the stove, added a few bay leaves, a lot of garlic, about a teaspoon of salt and some coriander seeds. Brought it to boil and let it cook for 3 hours.

When it was done, I took it out and easily removed the skin, then cut up the meat. I sauteed (for 1 min):

2 T vegetable oil
2 T flour
2 T chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin

Then I added:

the sliced tongue
14 oz can stewed tomatoes (with liquid)
1 cup water left from boiling tongue
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder

I mixed the whole thing and let it simmer until dinner time, about 45 minutes.

Here it is, on a home made whole wheat tortilla, with onions, cheese and lettuce, ready to be rolled up:

The meal met with approval, but I still hadn't told the kids what kind of beef we were eating. After Farmer Boy had seconds, I told them they had eaten tongue, and they laughed! I really have the best kids in the universe.

As for me, I would not be sad if I never ate tongue again. I'll confess. I'm the one with hangups.

Recent harvests from our garden

2008-06-05T22:31:00.006-06:00

Last week was our first green bean harvest (actually they were purple... Royal Burgundy Bush Beans from Seeds of Change... but they changed to green when cooked!)

We enjoyed wild dewberries in late April and early May, and the early blackberry bush in our garden area put on some huge juicy berries for us all through May:

Last night we ate our first corn:

And tonight found our first yellow tomatoes (we've had a few red ones already):

Soon to come... zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, peppers, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, and lots and lots of blackberries in a patch down the hill. And of course lots more beans, corn and tomatoes. Yum!!

Yet more baby birds

2008-06-05T21:53:00.005-06:00

As you know, we live on a farm. We have domesticated animals. We have lots of wildlife. You'd think with all these acres, we would have some "humans only" space, even just right outside the house. Say, on the front porch, for example.

Well...

First there are the dogs. The cool concrete is very soothing in a hot Texas summer. Especially when you've just taken a nice dip in the pond then rolled in the dust.

Then the chickens. Doorsteps are great places to roost on. Rocking chair arms give a fine vantage point for surveying the lay of the land (aka the front yard).

And of course, there's the wildlife. We do have trees, quite a lot for Texas. But as I've written, we have already had a nestful of babes born in a hanging flower basket over the front porch this spring.

Around the time they were born, we noticed some swallows rebuilding a nest that had been inadvertently knocked off the house around Christmastime, probably due to Christmas lights. This nest had had two sets of babies born in it each summer we'd been here, so we were sad. We needn't have worried.

After the first fledglings from the flower basket headed off for adulthood, these scrawny cuties started peeping from the rebuilt swallow nest whenever they heard the squeak of the front door:

That picture was taken on May 21st, from our open front door.

Here they are on June 3:

You can imagine what the porch underneath the nest (yes, almost directly in front of our door) looks like.

Today I went out and they were gone. All "growed up" in a whopping 2 weeks. But never fear! We are not baby bird-less yet! For we have another hanging flower basket. Yes, now it too has a nest therein.

I sneaked a peak, and look who's ready to get a-growin...

So if you come to our house and wonder why we have two completely dead flower baskets hanging over our porch, now you'll know it's because they are actually bird nurseries, and bird mamas don't take kindly to having their babies' rooms flooded.

Planting flowers

2008-06-02T21:39:00.003-06:00

The big kids and I took advantage of Little Guy's nap one Saturday and planted more seeds in the cut flower beds.

I think we are weeding in this picture. This day we put in zinnias; right behind me are two rows of cosmos that were a few weeks old. And obviously we are surrounded by unbroken ground (loads of grass and weeds). Think of the possibilities!

Irrigation

2008-06-02T21:29:00.002-06:00

Stephen has been working hard to get water into the garden for me. He dug a 3 foot deep trench in the back yard and ran piping out to the garden fence. Then he installed a faucet inside the garden.

At the moment we have a series of regular hoses and drip hoses hooked up to the faucet, but we need more already. The flower beds still have to be hand watered, and I am starting a new area for a second corn patch.

If you give a 6 year old a camera...

2008-06-02T21:04:00.003-06:00

... your iphoto library will look like this...

My personal favorite came with this gleeful explanation, "My bedroom floor was actually clean so I took a picture of it!!"

A portrait of the artist as a young woman:

May wildflowers

2008-06-02T20:53:00.003-06:00

In May I made up this bouquet of wildflowers I found in our yard and garden. The picture doesn't really capture the amazing variety of color.

The trouble with allowing forklifts at the table...

2008-06-02T20:47:00.003-06:00

... is that they are bound to lift your lunch...

Catching up

2008-06-02T15:15:00.002-06:00

Been away from the blog for quite a while, so I will be posting lots of small entries to update things. Thanks for understanding the whimsical nature of being a mama, homesteader, and well, me. ;-) I suppose I shall have to someday post my musings on the problems of being rebellious about schedules.

Wildlife

2008-05-05T01:02:00.008-06:00

Lots of recent sightings of interesting wildlife lately.

Stephen found this gray tree frog on a gate by a downed tree that he thinks had been the frogs home:

He also found two rat snakes in the hen house (here's one):

To give you a perspective on its size, here it is next to an adult's hockey stick:

We'll add the snakes to our reasons for declining egg production lately. The extreme free-rangedness of the chickens is yet another. Here's a nest of about 10 eggs that Stephen discovered by the road! We eat all the eggs from newly discovered spots ourselves and only sell eggs that we gather fresh from known laying spots.

I also found a snake in the dog house. When Stephen went to move it, it slithered away. In his search for it, he uncovered these gulf coast toads who had been hanging out under a piece of plywood:

Last night I went to water some hanging plants and to my great surprise, a baby bird flew out of the plant. I had seen some activity in this plant some weeks ago, but had not seen any birds around it for quite a while (not even when watering). I counted 4 Carolina Wren babies in all. They are all fledglings who kept fluttering around on the front porch and wall nervously while their mama watched vigilantly.

Here's one on the front window screen (you can see the plant in the upper left corner):

This one is SO cute! I just love the "eyebrows". It was on the step of the front door:

Farm update

2008-05-01T16:45:00.000-06:00

Well it has been a while since I have written about the farm, and lots has been going on.

Stephen finished fencing in the back yard and the 1/4 acre garden. All the posts came from trees he cut down, stripped, hauled and sized himself. This is the garden:

I have been working sporadically (thanks to the usual demands of homeschooling, home making, and TODDLERS) on putting in and caring for the garden. We have veggies in for ourselves and I started putting in a cut flower area in the hopes we can make it to some farmer's markets this summer. I am just going to keep planting until I run out of space, again, with the hopes of trying out selling veggie surplus at farmers' markets. I hope I actually get to the point that I run out of space, but my pace of planting is painfully slow.

Here are some sprouts from a few weeks ago... first one of beans, then a baby tomato:

Our chicken situation, as always, is in flux. We have had a bit of chicken loss lately, mostly due to coyotes, but in one very sad case, due to a chicken getting into the car when the door was open and not being noticed. I found her a few hours later when I went to get something out; it had gotten too hot for her, and she did not survive. This was especially sad as she was one our favorites, and had a name (you may remember that we rarely name animals because we know how easy it is for them to leave us).

The free range chickens are all laying hens, except for our dear rooster Louie, who has been with us since 6 weeks after we moved here. Our dogs haven't even lived here that long! Here is proud, beautiful Louie:

A number of hens tried to hatch out clutches this spring. One successfully hatched two out of the 10 or so she sat on, but we have not seen the chicks since they were 2 or 3 days old. We suspect coyotes again. We let this girl sit for more than three weeks and not one of them hatched. When Stephen finally kicked her out of the box he disposed of some very rotten (chick-less) eggs.

We have had a few successful hatch outs here in past years. This girl's birth Mama was a Black Australorp, and her Papa is Louie. If I remember correctly, her adoptive Mama was a Buff Orpington (maybe even the one above; this breed tends to be broody in spring). I think the mix turned out really cool in her feathering:

We got another round of meat chicks 4 weeks ago. Here they are on day 1, oh so cute:

And here they are a few days ago, almost 4 weeks old and getting pretty ugly as their feathers finish coming in:

You are seeing them in the porch of their brooder house. They will soon move to pasture in a portable hoop house, allowing them fresh air and fresh forage daily, while still protecting them from predators.

A few weeks ago the cows alerted us to a coyote sitting on the edge of some trees watching the chickens longingly. This was around 9:00am... pretty late in the day for a coyote.

The picture is a little odd, I know... the coyote can be seen in the upper left corner, and you can just make out a line of cows facing him (the playscape is what is in the way... it was impossible to get a clearer shot). Stephen estimates the coyote was about 150 yards away from the house.

We have had two more calves born in the past month. That brings the total for 2008 up to three. The most recent:

Our horse Joe discovered that Stephen had changed to chicken feed storage location. He broke the door in, helped himself to the feed, broke the feeders, and ate most of a bale of hay that was in the chicken house. Here's the door-less chicken house:

And, being spring in Texas, we've been enjoying the wildflowers. This year the field between our house and barn is filled with evening primroses:

Here is a close up of one my favorites, the wine cup:

With all this going on, you can see why I haven't done much posting lately!

Ouch!

2008-04-16T23:56:00.003-06:00

Stephen "added a notch in my Texas belt" today when he got stung by a scorpion on the finger. Yes, been here for 13 years and it was his first scorpion ambush. He was helping Farmer Boy start a fire to cook some fish that FB had just caught when he got zapped in the hand.

His main concern? "I don't think I'm going to be able to play the piano tonight." But of course he did, because there isn't much that will keep him from the piano.

My dad is 73 today!

2008-04-09T21:52:00.004-06:00

Three years ago I posted about my dad celebrating his 70th birthday on the road in the Outback of Australia.

Well, they're at it again, so happy 73rd birthday Dad!

Here are some adventures from a recent email. Keep in mind that he is celebrating his SEVENTY THIRD birthday...

"We have finally emerged from the remote outback, and this is the first chance we have had to get on the internet in about 10 days. We had a marvelous trip across the never-never.

The weather stayed quite good for us, although it had rained a few days before we went through, and we had to cross a few wet and watery places. We had seen some water mirages of the type we always see when it is hot on the roads in Texas, and as we were barreling along I said to Mom, 'There is another mirage,' and as we got closer it still looked like a mirage until SPLASH! - it wasn't a mirage! Fortunately I had suspected it might not be just before we got there so had slowed down enough that there was no problem.

The real outback part went from Warburton to the Carnegie Homestead, if you have your maps. The part up to the Heather Highway was very good, and the first half of the Heather was good too. Then when we made the turn onto the last half of the Heather things began to deteriorate quite fast. The corrugation was terrible. The track split in places in up to 4 different tracks trying to get less corrugation, and we'd try different ones, never sure we were on the best one. We hit a number of washouts where we would simply have to stop and get out and try to figure out what was the best way to get across them without tipping the campervan over - the angle we were in at times was quite scary. Usually Mom would get out and survey the place, break off branches if necessary, knock down parts of the bank so we wouldn't get hung up and then watch to see if I toppled the van over as I drove across. It was very exciting a number of times.

In places the spinifex grass was up to 4 feet high, both on the sides of the road and in the center of it, so you could hardly see the road at all - it was just 2 small tracks across the spinifex. In that area we averaged about 10-12 mph, and when we would get up to 18mph (30kph) we would be ecstatic.

In a distance of about 900 Km we passed only one vehicle. We know there was also one vehicle going the same way we were, but a day ahead of us. We never came across their bodies, so we assume they made it too. We stayed overnight at Everard Junction on that really bad stretch (it is circled on the map). It was amazingly lonely out there - no station or any organized life for at least 150 miles in any direction. That was the junction of the Gary Highway and the Gunbarrel Highway, but it was certainly unlike any highway junction you have ever seen - just grass and 2 small tracks as far as one could see. There were lots of holes in the ground, which were clearly homes for unknown creatures, and once it was dark we definitely did not venture out of the camper until it got light the next day.

The first few hours the next day were like the end of the previous day - very slow. Then about 100 Km before Carnegie Homestead the road got much better (the road we had been on up to then was "built" in the 1950s and had had absolutely no maintenance on it since then). At Carnegie Station we were able to get fuel (it costs about $8/gallon out there!), could take a shower, etc.

The next day we drove into Wiluna, the first town in almost 3 days - we were going to stay there, but it was not at all a friendly looking place so we drove another 180Km on unpaved, but good, road to Meekathara, which was a marvelous town of 2000. About 50Km out of Maakathara we came across a car stopped with 3 aborigine women and 2 men there. They asked us to stop, which we did. They had run out of fuel. They needed gasoline and we had diesel, so we could not help them. They had no food, so we gave them a half loaf of bread, a jar of peanut better and a large can of beans, which they really seemed to appreciate. They had plenty of water. We told them we would tell people in Meekathara about them, and as soon as we got into town we found the police and told them. What they did about it, I don't know, but the police thanked us for being so concerned and kind, and that made us feel a bit better.

We were then on pretty much paved road for the next almost 1000Km, except for a stretch of about 150 Km. Kalgoorlie is a big (30,000) town with all the comforts of home. We are going to celebrate our birthdays with a dinner in the best restaurant in town later today, and also we got an ensuite site at the campground (it has its own bathroom right outside the camper door). So we are now living it up! Kalgoorlie is a gold mining town, and we just visited the most huge mining pit I've ever seen. We've got pictures, etc. So that's about it for us. We've had great adventures and hope for a few more to go, but the worst (or best) is likely over."

Do I have the coolest parents or what?

Hymnal Project

2008-04-08T21:57:00.003-06:00

Stephen has started a new project this week, recording hymns from the Episcopal hymn book. You can read about it and hear our first attempt at his new blog!

I will not doubt

2008-04-07T08:48:00.003-06:00

This past year has been a year of much loss for our little family. We lost our income in July. We lost our beloved church home in August. We lost a precious little baby in September. We lost a restaurant opportunity that we had been working on for months, this February.

None of these things is yet resolved.

I was recently talking with some friends and one of them said to me, "Patti, you work harder than anyone I know. Yet your goals all seem so far away." She said it with the utmost love and compassion. It was true, and yet immediately I knew there was something not quite true about it.

And it hit me, so I said, "As hard as all this has been, my REAL goal is to end up in the arms of Jesus forever, and He is ever with me. No matter what has happened, or will happen, no matter how I feel, God is God is God is God, and He is constantly with me."

That is what I meant when I chose the title of this blog. My long journey is home into His arms. The adventures along the way are the stuff of my life.

I read this poem today and wanted to share it with you. It speaks so much to my heart and my circumstances, that I kept saying "Yes! Yes!" out loud as I read it:

I will not doubt, though all my ships at sea
Come drifting home with broken masts and sails;
I will believe the Hand that never fails,
From seeming evil works to good for me.
And though I weep because those sails are tattered,
Still will I cry, while my best hopes lie shattered:
"I trust in Thee."

I will not doubt, though all my prayers return
Unanswered from the still, white realm above;
I will believe it is an all-wise love
That has refused these things for which I yearn;
And though at times I cannot keep from grieving,
Yet the pure passion of my fixed believing
Undimmed will burn.

I will not doubt, though sorrows fall like rain,
And troubles swarm like bees about a hive.
I will believe the heights for which I strive
Are only reached by anguish and by pain;
And though I groan and writhe beneath my crosses,
Yet I will see through my severest losses
The greater gain

I will not doubt. Well anchored is this faith,
Like some staunch ship, my soul braves every gale;
So strong its courage that it will not fail
To face the mighty unknown sea of death.
Oh, may I cry, though body leaves the spirit,
"I do not doubt," so listening worlds may hear it,
With my last breath.

L.B.Cowman

Biscuit Brothers

2008-04-05T18:05:00.005-06:00

On Wednesday evening we drove into Austin to the Biscuit Brothers' CD release party at Central Market.

The Princess, normally outgoing, was quite shy when she met "Buford", "Dusty" and "Buttermilk". I asked her about it later and she said, "Well, I was shy at first, but as soon as I said something I felt fine." Which was true. She got a signed cd, ate dinner and jammed out to the live music. A fine time was had by all.

Butterfly Boy

2008-04-03T21:53:00.003-06:00

This past weekend, our friends invited us to join them at the annual Zilker Garden Festival in the Austin Botanical Gardens.

We had a great time, bought a bunch of plants, and snapped a colorful picture or two...

My love/hate relationship with chickens

2008-04-03T01:35:00.000-06:00

Why I like having chickens:

"Did someone say 'Roadtrip'?!"

But sometimes, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

Our front "flower" bed (that mulch used to be on the bed, and there isn't a single one of the dozen plus flowers the Princess planted left):

The front walk (note the POOP, and the ants... chickens don't eat ants, wah!):

Obviously (do a little math on the number of pictures I posted) I like chickens. But man are they frustrating sometimes.

If I could just get these animals to read the rule books!

Sleepy sleepy

2008-04-01T23:02:00.002-06:00

So, you wonder, why are the Browns falling asleep so early?

Two words: HARD WORK

We have really been feeling what it might be like if we did this homesteading thing full time. In the past month Stephen has put more than 50 posts in the ground for fences... posts from trees that he cut on our property, trimmed, hauled, cut to size, hand-dug the holes for, then dropped in. And then he's actually attached the fencing.

He is gaining greatly in strength, and is officially a redneck! The other day he took his shirt off for a while outside while he worked because it was so hot, and I was blinded! We had a good laugh. :-)

I have been breaking as much new ground as I can before he gets the new garden totally fenced in. I daren't plant a thing yet because of the chickens. When our technical difficulties are overcome, one of the pictures I will post is of their dastardly work on the front flower bed. They are wonderful helpers for breaking new ground (they ate up some little wriggly bad bugs like candy yesterday), but they sound the death knell for living plants.

Today I didn't get much time in the garden because it was a very child-intensive day. I'm sure you homeschooling moms know what I mean. But we got through it, and the children eventually got all their work done. That kind of day causes a different kind of tired. Not the go-take-a-little-rest-at-7:30-and-then-I'll-do-the-dishes tired that my hard-working husband succumbed to tonight (it's midnight now and I haven't seen him since, poor dear!)

It doesn't help that Stephen and The Princess seem to be highly sensitive to oak pollen (which is high now). They both just get wiped out by it.

Well, I suppose I should stop talking about sleep and actually start sleeping!

Technical difficulties

2008-04-01T22:54:00.003-06:00

Deary me. I have oodles of photos to post. But we seem to be under a black cloud of technical problems. First the camera went missing before I uploaded the photos to the computer. Then I found it and the battery was dead. Oops, no, not dead, the camera couldn't read that it was full and shut down immediately on starting. Super-hero-Midas-touch husband saved the day.

Me: "What did you do?"
Him: "Manhandled it."
Me: "No, really, tell me so I can do it the next time it happens."
Him: "I honestly don't know. It was whatever the last thing I did was."
Me (thinking) "Wow. That's incomprehensible to me on so many levels. And I am SO thankful for this man!"

So, hooray, we have pictures, we take more, I am all set to post, oops, Dreamweaver (through which I have always uploaded my photos) is set up differently than it used to be. So again I ask my hero, "If you have a chance, would you see why Dreamweaver isn't working the same way?"

So he fixes it. But I fall asleep. And now here it is tonight and HE has fallen asleep, and everything is broken again.

Honestly, I don't know how people without computer genius husbands manage. These machines are SO pesky!

The Princess' Easter art

2008-03-31T05:01:00.003-06:00

Our girl is such the little artist, and loves being in the kitchen. So she combined the two at Easter...

Little guy holds a tie-dyed egg made by his sister:

And she made sugar cookies. I actually did much of the decorating after she was in bed, but she made all the artistic decisions; I just followed her guidelines. Oh except for the fact that I was supposed to make the bunnies' ears pink. They would have looked much better that way.

Spring has sprung!

2008-03-29T22:53:00.002-06:00

Wow, oh wow, is it beautiful here right now. March is my favorite month in Texas. The roadsides are covered with bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes. The weather is pleasantly warm and nights are still a tiny bit chilly (just right for sleeping with the windows open).

On the farm, we have irises blooming and hens brooding chicks. Stephen has been putting in a ton of fences. He closed in the back yard before Easter. He is almost done fencing in the garden.

The children and I have been out digging in the soil so that we can get some veggies in as soon as Stephen gets the garden fence done. The chickens have been keeping close tabs on the progress; I usually have one within arm's reach as I turn up the soil. They eat all the bad guys (except fire ants) but unfortunately also eat some of the good guys (like earthworms).

The Princess and I did some much needed work on the front flower bed today; pruning back salvia from last year that were leggy, fixing part of the brick border that the dogs had dug out, putting in some deep purple petunias, and mulching.

The chickens were ever present, and in this case posed a problem. The Princess planted all the petunias, using a ruler to determine spacing. At one point I looked up and thought that she had miscalculated and missed a spot. Then I saw a petunia on the other side of the bed! A chicken had dug it out in the process of scratching for bugs and had kicked the whole plant across the bed. Chickens are one of the reasons we are fencing the garden!

I sprinkled cayenne all over the flower bed, hoping it would deter the chickens. It worked for the dogs, and made me sneeze like crazy, but there were still chickens coming into the bed. Any ideas for how to keep free range chickens away from something?

The Hope of Easter

2008-03-21T22:26:00.002-06:00

I wrote this essay five years ago. We were just about to sell our house and begin the long process of moving to our land. It all still rings true to me now, and is especially powerful as I am a little way down the road from those questions about our life that you'll read near the end. Now I know some of the answers, but not all, never all.

Truthfully, I could never have imagined what God had in store for us; the great joy, and much loss. In the struggle to live this life our family has been given, God continues to press us through the pain and break our chains so that we are free to truly love and serve Him.

Our life on our farm is in so many ways an expression of the hope we have in Jesus.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Hope of Easter
by Patti Brown
April 2003

Good Friday is a day I dread. It is much easier to think about Jesus’ birth, and his resurrection, than His death. I’d much rather pretend that part didn’t happen. I don’t do well with cruelty and torture.

Now that I am a mother, the horror of it seems magnified. I can’t begin to imagine. I avoid even thinking of what it must have been like for Mary. Her son’s horrific death came before His resurrection... could she have possibly known what was to come in the next few days? The bible doesn’t seem to give any indication she had foreknowledge of this, so for her, it was the death of her son, and that alone, that she was witnessing. How did she feel? Certainly, certainly anguished, desperate maybe. Where was her faith, did she cry out to God, did she lose hope? Or did she trust?

We don’t know, but we do know that what we now call Easter came three days later, and our Lord was resurrected, victor over death forever. Alleluia!

Do you ever feel hopeless? I know I do. There are times when I look at my life, and I feel overwhelmed, and see my sins glaring back at me, and can’t even begin to imagine how to dig my way out of the hole I have dug for myself.

Sometimes it’s trivial... the house is a mess, I can’t find one room in which there is a clean floor, I am over committed and I have two crying children in my lap. Other times it’s a deeper sense of hopelessness... I will NEVER learn how to be on time; I am a disappointment to my family because I am not more disciplined; and most painfully, I am a disappointment to God because of my distractibility, my selfishness, my disobedience.

How much I focus on myself in my hopelessness! Just look... in writing about it, I’ve used “I” or “my” twelve times!

What if I changed my focus? What if my eyes were on God instead of on myself?

Hope. There really is hope. Hope for me, hope for you, hope for these children who must live with my brokenness, hope for the wonderful man who blesses me by calling me his wife.

And that is what Easter is all about. Unlike those who loved Jesus during his lifetime, we pass the days from Good Friday to Easter knowing what has happened. Yes, we think, Jesus’ death is horrible, but wait... just a few days and it is Easter! Time to rejoice! To sing all the alleluias we can, to celebrate new life with those we love. To remember that we can pin all our hopes on the God who truly saves, who brings the ultimate light from absolute darkness.

And then we promptly forget. It’s as if we become Jesus’ friends and family on Saturday, as if we live out most of our days in that in-between time after His death, and before His resurrection. We can’t see the future, so we worry, we mourn, we lose hope. We focus on our grief and our suffering.

It is in these moments, that we must stand firm. We must “put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devils’ schemes... so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” (Ephesians 6:11,13 niv) We fix our feet to the Rock!

We must “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross...” (Hebrews 12:2 niv)

And we must turn our hearts toward Easter, remembering how it all “turned out” (although Jesus’ resurrection was only the beginning!). If God can bring hope into THAT hopelessness, what can He not do?

The bible tells us:
“Hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (Romans 5:5 niv)

Our hope is in Jesus... hope not only for eternal life, but hope for transformation NOW by the power of the Holy Spirit.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2)

When we give ourselves over completely to God He changes us. He really does take us and make us into a new creation.

My house is teeming with new life right now. Our son is hatching shrimp in a tank in his bedroom, while painted lady caterpillars spin their cocoons in a cage nearby. Over our front door, a mama and papa swallow have rebuilt last year’s nest in preparation for their babies soon to come. Our flowers are blooming, trees are bringing forth fresh leaves, and tiny green tomatoes are appearing on our tomato plants.

And our family prepares to embark on a new adventure of homesteading, leaving this little home that has blessed us so, and going off into the wide world. We do not know what will come of all this, as God continues to mold and shape, indeed to create our family. So many questions... will we be able to raise animals successfully? Will I be disciplined enough to be responsible for a much larger garden as well as livestock, while schooling and training our children? Will my husband be able to be as much a part of this as he wants to be?

And Lord... will the caterpillars really become butterflies?

I hope so. Oh, how very much I hope.

Steady your feet. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Turn your hearts toward hope... for remember, hope does not disappoint.

May you live each day as if it were Easter...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

March 2008:

And friends, they did, the caterpillars did become butterflies, as I recall, each and every one, which was unusual. Take heart, take heart.

"In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

What happened??

2008-03-12T11:15:00.002-06:00

Did you think we had driven off a cliff?

From an internet perspective we kind of did. It proved to be very difficult to find access to the internet on our journey, and on the rare occasions that we did, I never had enough time to upload text and pictures and get all the links working.

When we got home, we didn't have internet access at the house any more, and in the interests of saving money, didn't get it again until recently.

That's why we disappeared.

The trip was wonderful. A happy, happy time of being a family without any outside responsibilities.

We discovered we really enjoy tent camping, and we fell in love with eastern Tennessee. We read loads of interesting things about the states we drove through. We visited historic site after historic site, drive through 19 states, and saw 50 relatives! We learned so much about our country.

But mostly we enjoyed each other. We drove over 6000 miles on this trip. I had brought several books of fiction to read just for fun. I did not read one of them because I was enjoying talking with my sweet husband too much. 6000 miles, and I didn't feel the need to "escape". Verdict: he's the one for me! :-) It's nice to feel that way after 14 years of marriage and 3 kids.

I did read about half of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography aloud to him though. What a man. Wow.

I doubt I'll manage to get the whole trip story up here, but I would like to get back to blogging about our funny life on the farm. We do laugh a lot (admittedly, sometimes it takes a few days before we're ready).

Day 8 - Ambridge, PA to Hanover, PA

2007-09-10T00:59:00.000-06:00

Saturday August 25, 2007
total miles
total travel time
states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Pennsylvania

This morning we rolled down the road at 9:00am, heading south for the National Road and Ft. Necessity. The National Road was really neat. We read about its history, and watched for the mile markers. It was a beautiful drive.

We reached Ft. Necessity around noon and went immediately to hear a talk on artillery in the French and Indian war. Ft Necessity really is a fascinating site, and the French and Indian War far more pivotal than we often realize from our elementary school history. 22 year old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington led the men at Ft. Necessity. Stephen was especially taken with how the lecture ended:

(roughly paraphrased by Stephen) “You may think of this as just some unimportant park commemorating some unimportant event, but this event sparked the French and Indian War, a world war in which the French were ultimately defeated. Why do you suppose the French came to help the colonists with the revolution? Because of their great love for the colonists? No, because of their great hatred for the English, due in part to their defeat in the French and Indian War. Without the help of the French, the colonists would never have won the revolution, and you wouldn’t be here today.”

The children played in a model Conestoga Wagon and we spent some time in the museum (nice and cool!), then loaded into the van for sandwiches on the road.

Oddly enough, the fastest way to Gettysburg, due east, was to take the interstate in northern Maryland. We were only 10 miles north of the state line at Ft. Necessity. So we spent much of the afternoon driving in Maryland. We finally made it to Gettysburg at 5:00pm, just as the visitors’ center closed. But we managed to hook into a tour of the cemetery that was just starting, and learned a lot of very interesting things.

I found it fascinating that Lincoln was invited, by the Governors (states' rights were still considered so important!), to give just a few remarks, FOLLOWING the main speaker, on the occasion of the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. His famous Gettysburg address was a mere 268 words long and followed on the heels of a 2 hour address by the featured speaker.

As were finishing up the tour it started to thunder, and shortly after we got in the van the skies opened. We were in a bit of a quandry as the storm was heading east, and so were we... east to a campground!

We made our way slowly toward the campground, hoping the storm would pass over before we arrived to set up. We decided to kill extra time by eating out, and had our first real pizza in a looooong time:

When we finally got to the campground, which was quite hard to find, it was dark. Poor Stephen had to set up the tent by headlight while I corralled the baby and got things ready for bed. It was another hot night in the tent, but we managed.

Day 7 - Ambridge, PA

2007-09-10T00:57:00.000-06:00

Friday August 24, 2007
total miles
total travel time
states: Pennsylvania

Today was another happy day of hanging out with our friends. It is very nice to stay in the same place for several days. I did a ton of laundry so that we’ll embark with freshly filled backpacks. I even managed to get out to the local Aldi, which carries my favorite jelly (can’t get it in TX). While there I also picked up lunch and breakfast food for the next day, then hit a gas station and filled the tank and vacuumed the van. We are ready to go again!

Day 6 - Ambridge, PA

2007-09-10T00:50:00.000-06:00

Thursday August 23, 2007
total miles
total travel time
states: Pennsylvania

Today was a lovely day spent with friends. We mostly just hung around the house, the children playing and the adults chatting. I did have the opportunity to walk down to the local farmer’s market, always a favorite activity for me. I was surprised by how big and how busy the market was.

The highlight of the day was definitely attending “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” in which our friend Kate played Titania. The show was very impressive, put on by a cast of children who appeared to range in age from 8-16. They had only been practicing for 2 weeks, but they had a professional looking set, costumes, and performed the play in the original language.

Our children really enjoyed the show and said they understood it. I had read the story to Farmer Boy a few years ago, but the Princess didn’t remember it. They had a little primer before the show, which helped. Parts of it were quite funny indeed, and I was blown away by Kate’s beauty and ethereal poise as Queen of the Fairies.

Day 5 - Indiana to Ambridge, PA

2007-09-10T00:28:00.000-06:00

Wednesday August 22, 2007
total miles
total travel time
states: Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania

It took FOREVER to break camp this morning. Things will go faster as we all get used to the new tent and each person has his/her jobs smoothed out. The biggest challenge is Little Guy, who either wants to "help", wants to fall off a cliff, or wants to play in poison ivy. Needing to have a person dedicated to keeping him alive definitely slows us down.

We learned something funny today. One of the things we have noticed is the omnipresence of Starbucks. Stephen’s penchant for strong coffee (he orders his coffee black with two shots of espresso) has led us to several Starbucks so far. Indiana is the first state we've been in that we have not seen a Starbucks.

Today was dedicated mostly to driving, though we did stop a few times in Ohio for bathroom breaks and to let the kids play. Little Guy did have a few hard moments; at one point Stephen handed him a cassette tape to play with. This was the inevitable result (yes, we were parked when this picture was taken):

When we crossed the Ohio River into West Virginia we were struck by the dramatic change in landscape. Where it had been fairly flat in Ohio, we were now in a very hilly area. We stopped in WV so the kids could get out for a little stretch. I saw a really cool looking bridge that appeared to have one design on the WV side and one design on the OH side. Turned out it was two bridges, but doesn’t this look neat at first glance?

Being of Irish descent, I was drawn to this cross by the river which reads "Dedicated to the Irish of the Ohio Valley."

The children wanted to buy gifts for their friends so we stopped in a little craft place, then loaded back up for the final leg into PA.

We arrived at our friends’ house at 5:30pm and soon sat down to a delicious home cooked dinner. We were fairly tired and fell asleep easily!

Day 4 - St. Louis to Indiana

2007-09-10T00:07:00.001-06:00

Tuesday August 21, 2007
total miles 313
total travel time 9 hours (including visit to the Arch)
states: Illinois, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana

We hit the road at 8:30am and headed back west to St. Louis to visit the Gateway Arch. The princess was worried about the speed of the ascent to the top, probably due to her recent visit to Six Flags, so we asked at the ticket counter, and learned that the trams go 4 miles an hour. The Princess was reassured by this information so we bought the tickets.

Our tram was about to leave so we went straight to it. It turned out it was less of a tram and more of a pod.

The Princess’ anxiety about the ride had not disappeared after all, and when we sat down she buried her head in Stephen’s chest and refused to look. Turns out she thought we were simply taking a ride up, over the top, and back down, and she was afraid of how it would feel as we crested the “hill”. She was much delighted when we arrived and got out. We all experienced that weird feeling in your tummy when you look down form a height, particularly underscored in this case by the fact that the design of the windows is such that you can look not only down, but down and back, as the windows angle out.

Here's what we saw from one side:

We took a “pod” back down and as soon as we got out The Princess begged to go back up. Farmer Boy enjoyed the whole thing with his usual quiet smiling enthusiasm; Little Guy’s favorite part seemed to be nursing in the pod in both directions.

Next we spent some time in the Museum of Western Expansion, which is under the Arch. I had high hopes that this would be Farmer Boy’s primary Lewis and Clark educational stop on the trip, but it was not especially engaging, and frankly, poorly laid out even for adults. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to go to a museum in St. Charles that had been recommended to us as having a great child-friendly Lewis and Clark exhibit.

By 11:45 we were loaded back into the car and heading east on I70 again. We had decided to drive as far as possible, as our next major stop was in western Pennsylvania, a distance of more than 600 miles.

As we crossed from Illinois into Indiana we also changed time zones. At around 6:30 pm we rolled into our campground. This was our first night to camp, so we had a learning curve. Everyone pitched in to help:

We barely got the tent up and dinner in our tummies before it was dark. The kids decided we would rotate telling stories to each other before we fell asleep; tonight was Farmer Boy’s turn.

Day 3 - Kansas City to St. Louis

2007-08-21T02:49:00.000-06:00

Monday August 20, 2007
total miles 303
total travel time 7 hours
states: Kansas, Missouri, Illinois

We took it easy this morning since we stayed up late last night. The kids, of course, were up long before the grownups wanted to be, so I very thoughtfully (do you sense the foreshadowing?) decided to take them all out for a walk so that the other three adults could sleep. Being a police officer, John is very security minded. Quietly I opened the door, and “Screech screech screech!” I set off the alarm. Oy! I am so thankful I have such a loving and forgiving family.

John whipped up some biscuits and gravy for breakfast, which the kids had never eaten, and which they really enjoyed. We left at 11:00, bound for St. Louis. Thanks John and Mel... now it’s your turn to enjoy some Texas hospitality. Come on down!

After getting lost in Kansas City and buying a MOST delicious cup of chai, we found our road and headed east. On the road, we learned about Missouri history, including the Pony Express. We started memorizing state capitals, and launched the license plate game. I started reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin aloud. We stopped in Columbia, MO to give the children a chance to play. Little Guy (with much help from his big brother) had his first big playscape experience:

We drove into St. Louis around 5:15 but it was 6:00 before we reached Stephen’s brother Chris in the suburb of O’Fallon, IL.

We ordered pizza and all fell into bed pretty early.

Day 2 -Oklahoma City to Kansas City

2007-08-21T02:15:00.000-06:00

Sunday, August 19, 2007
total miles 387
total travel time 7 hours 45 minutes
states: Oklahoma, Kansas

This morning Jen fried up some more lumpia for us to take on the trip... oh YUM!!! It was SO wonderful to have time to spend with Jenny and her boys; it had been more than 10 years since I had seen her and my kids had never met her! Thanks for your hospitality Jen.. you and the boys are always welcome in Texas!

We left Jenny and the boys at 9:30, later than planned, as we waited for a storm to pass (thank you Tropical Storm Erin).

We have a theme song for the trip, which Stephen played for us this morning as we drove. I love singing with Willie:

On the road again
Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is makin' music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again
On the road again
Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again,
And I can't wait to get on the road again.

On the road again
Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
We're the best of friends
Insisting that the world be turnin' our way
And our way
Is on the road again
Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is makin' music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again

North out of Oklahoma City we headed, and on into state #3, Kansas. Here’s what Kansas looks like from the Interstate:

We stopped in Wichita for gas and a lunch break. We got gas at this place; the name cracked me up:

In Wichita we also made a Starbucks stop, went to a grocery store for lunch supplies/ice, and then to a park so the kids could get the wiggles out.

We pulled into John and Mel’s driveway in Kansas City at 5:15pm. John gave us a tour of their lovely home... they have put so much into this house; it’s great! Then we went to Arthur Bryant’s, the famous Kansas City barbecue place. Yum! Here’s Little Guy chowing down on a rib:

On the way there, Stephen saw a brew pub called Granite City, so since he is interested in such places (and collects pint glasses from brewhouses) we stopped. Everyone else went in while I stayed in the car with the baby. After a bit I followed them in. When we came back out to go home we discovered that I had locked the keys in the car, thinking Stephen had taken them with him (he had thoughtfully left them for me in case I needed to open the windows). Thank goodness for AAA!

Here’s my cousin waiting with us to get into the van (and ready to tackle any "bad guys" who might come our way... convenient getting locked out with a corrections officer!):

We really had a great time visiting our cousins. We all stayed up late (John and Stephen until 4:30am) just enjoying each other!

Day 1 - Austin to Oklahoma City

2007-08-21T01:27:00.000-06:00

Saturday August 18, 2007
Total miles 427
Total travel time 8 hours
States: Texas, Oklahoma

We finally hit the road, a mere two hours behind schedule (gulp). Between extremely restrained packing and Stephen’s amazing abilities at loading vehicles, we got everything in we wanted to bring, with one exception: Stephen ended up bringing his mandolin except his guitar. He didn’t take the seat out, and we didn’t have to put anything on the roof. It is a bit cramped, but not really that bad. I’ve definitely traveled tighter... I am reminded of a trip in New Zealand on which I had to sit on pillows and couldn’t move my legs... remember that Mom, Dad and Dave?

All loaded up and ready to go:

We started by going the back way to the highway so Stephen could show me all the new natural gas pumping rigs that have popped up in our vicinity. This is, as you can imagine, something of a disappointment to us. At this point there aren’t any particularly close to us, but Stephen is worried about the potential for bad smells on the wind.

Little Guy had trouble the last hour or so before we left, and once we started driving fell right asleep. We were only about 45 minutes down the road when The Princess said “Are we almost there?” Stephen and I just looked at each other and laughed. We spent about an hour playing 20 questions. At one point I was thinking “giraffe” and Stephen and The Princess were guessing. They took surprisingly long, but they determined it was an herbivorous animal with horns from Africa that could be seen at a zoo, and at last the questions, “Does it have a long neck?” and “Does it have spots?” were asked. “Finally!”, I thought. Logically the Princess guessed “Is it a reindeer?” More laughter.

We got several hours of road behind us and stopped in West, TX at the famous Little Czech Bakery. I love trying unusual foods, especially when I am traveling, so I had a sausage and sauerkraut kolache, a poppy seed kolache and a cottage cheese kolache. I didn’t manage to eat them all in one sitting, but it was an interesting taste sensation. The rest of the family stuck to the more traditional flavors.

We drove on, with a few more stops for coffee, bathroom and nursing breaks. Little Guy did not sleep in the afternoon, which was a surprise since he seemed really tired. We did have one unpleasant stretch of crying, but he settled after nursing.

At long last we rolled into Oklahoma City, and pulled up to Jenny’s house at 6:00pm. Jenny is my foster sister from the Philippines... this is SUCH a cool story. My mom and dad sponsored her through Pearl Buck when I was a kid, and we wrote periodically. She ended up marrying an American and moving to the states, and became an even bigger part of our family. My mother considers her a daughter, so that makes her my sister!

Now she has two children, ages 16 and 9. It just happened that the 16 year old’s birthday is 8/19, so she cooked a big meal to celebrate. I told her it was like a delicious sampling of all the places she has lived! She made ribs and beef strips and chicken, she made yakisoba (she lived in Japan for 4 years when her husband was stationed there), and she made lumpia, these amazing egg roll-like treats from the Philippines. I ate until I could hold no more!

Road Trip!

2007-08-21T01:23:00.000-06:00

Pre-Trip

It’s 12:38am on Saturday August 18, 2007, and I am sitting at my laptop (I still can’t believe I have a laptop... my birthday present from Stephen) finishing off a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream. I am only doing my duty, you know, as mom and wife. In 7 hours and 20 minutes we are leaving on our 4 week American History Adventure Tour, and I’m just trying to make sure I’m leaving things nice and tidy here at home. :-)

We crazy five are heading off into the uncharted wilderness, uh I mean the interstate system, and driving until the children beg for mercy. Well, only a few of the days will be non-stop driving. We are taking a 30 day excursion, schooling on the road and learning about our lovely country. Farmer Boy is studying U.S. History this coming year in our homeschool, so it seemed the perfect time to hit the roads. We’re hitting the books too, of course, since I am the one in charge of planning school and I have a little, um, problem when it comes to books. Let’s just say I heard Stephen talking with someone about bookcases recently and he said “Shhh, don’t let Patti hear you, she’ll just be wanting another one!”

Speaking of books (drool, drool), my neighbor showed up this afternoon with the ENTIRE Cornerstones of Freedom history set to GIVE us! I know you homeschooling moms are jealous now... don’t worry, we have a very liberal lending policy at the Brown Family School Library. Suzanne’s kids have outgrown it and she thought we could put it to use. Oh yes, indeedy! I squealed with glee, let me tell you!

It remains to be seen whether or not we can fit everything into the van. Stephen suggested we take one of the seats out and I think it’s a great idea. We have to fit all the camping gear (tent, stove, dishes, 4 sleeping bags), all the school stuff, clothes for 5 people, guitar, a cooler, and of course, 5 humans! All this in a fairly small mini van with 211,000 miles on it. I told you it was going to be an adventure!!

I know this has mostly been a farm blog. But it is about our adventures (see blog subtitle), and I think this qualifies. It just happens that our adventure for the last three years has mostly consisted of making fools of ourselves in rural Texas. I don’t really know how often I will be able to post the blogs, but I intend to write them every day and post bunches of them when I have access to the internet. Our home access has turned off so I won’t be able to post this until we are on the road.

Criminal activity

2007-07-07T23:47:00.000-06:00

On the front page of our county paper today was an article about recent criminal activity in one of our towns. While there were some burglaries listed, the more engaging reports were as follows:

A lady in an apartment complex spotted two bobcats. Traps were set but they were not caught.

Police charged a woman with assault after she started a fight with another woman IN THE POLICE DEPARTMENT.

A woman called the police to report that her neighbor was cutting his grass and it was "disturbing her."

A new clerk in a local store accidentally pushed the hold-up alarm.

On July 4th a woman reported that her neighbor's son was throwing firecrackers over her fence and "making the dogs rowdy."

CSI is not likely to do any on-location shoots out this way.

Rite of Passage

2007-06-29T01:50:00.000-06:00

All young men must mow the lawn for the first time, and Farmer Boy's mom was on a snake-free-zone mission today. After I mowed a large portion of the yard, I picked a flat rectangular area for FB to try:

I made him go slowly, and thanks to the rain the grass was really tall, so I don't think he had much fun. But he obviously had it way better than most kids do. I didn't even see a riding lawn mower until I was an adult.

The continuing saga

2007-06-29T01:30:00.001-06:00

So this morning Farmer Boy comes to me and says, "I think the snake is back in the brooder because the chicks are making strange noises." No surprise; I put on my boots and head out.

After checking to make sure there was not a snake right where I was going to lift the lid, I opened the top, and sure enough, there was a snake in the house. But it wasn't the same snake! It was considerably smaller, 3 feet I'd guess. And it had a suspicious lump in its middle.

I lifted it out of the brooder with the shovel, thinking I'd just take it to the barn and put it inside to have its fill of rats. But it slid off the shovel part way there, into some very tall grass. I had called the dogs, and Molly (about whom I had spoken so disdainfully yesterday) was on high alert and barking and snapping at the snake. I encouraged her with all my heart, but it became clear she was not going to succeed.

Farmer Boy offered to try using a rock again as he had seen his dad do this. I took him up on it. The grass was too long for there to be any decent impact. In the end, I got it back on the shovel, moved it to a patch of dirt and between a brick I threw, a rock Farmer Boy threw and Molly, we killed it. Molly has redeemed herself.

If you are interested in grossness and gory detail, view the photos below. If not, please abstain.

The dogs got the snake open at the bulge... definitely a chick:

Here is Zeke, pulling out a tasty treat (ick ick ick again!). For those who can't figure out what they are seeing (ahem, Stephen) this is a dog pulling a dead chick (head in his mouth) out of the middle of a snake:

Final note; I'd read that rat snakes stink. Instead our dogs stink. Their breath smells DISGUSTING. I mean even more than usual. Ick.

Snake

2007-06-29T01:26:00.000-06:00

We have new baby chicks that are about 3 weeks old. Last night as part of my animal rounds I opened up the brooder to check on them, and this is what I saw:

Notice something amiss? Here's a closeup of that thing in the back:

It's a Texas rat snake, and I'd say it was about 5 feet long. Funny thing was I had been in the barn just before that and had been thinking about snakes. I am reading My Antonia by Willa Cather, and had just read the part where 10 year old Jim kills a rattler with a shovel. So when I saw the snake I didn't freak out, I just thought, "Ugh, I have to kill a snake."

I had seen this snake before (at least I think it was this snake). One night when the babies were just a few days old I realized we'd forgotten to turn on the brooder lamp, so I went outside with a flashlight. Oddly enough I had snakes on my mind then too (do you think God is with me out here or what?). I reached the brooder, saw a huge snake coiled under it, and turned right around to fetch my big brave husband. He relocated the snake down by the workshop in the hopes it would eat rats (of which we unfortunately have plenty).

My big brave husband wasn't home this time, so big brave me went to find a shovel (a la Jim in My Antonia). I grabbed the camera too. When I got back the snake was still there, and I counted chicks. We were definitely missing chicks, so I knew I had to kill it.

In a brilliant flash (do not even THINK the word cowardly) I called the five dogs over (yes, five... that's another blog post begging to be written). I tried to coax the snake down and out the back. It stuck its head out, saw the dogs, and went right back in. The dogs completely missed it. They are not the brightest bulbs sometimes.

I went back to the front and saw it taking a different approach:

It headed onto the roof of the brooder porch. I finally got the dogs to notice it. Molly barked and was clearly nervous. I should have realized that this was not an indication of a fierce snake hunter. Alas, I knocked the snake down right in front of her, hoping she'd finish it off, and she jumped back and quivered (while barking) as it slithered off to hide under the brooder again.

Now, let me be honest with you. I had been brave and matter of fact at the beginning. I'm not, generally speaking, afraid of snakes. But when I had to start touching the thing with the shovel as I tried to get it to go where I wanted, I started to lose my nerve. I wasn't 100% sure it was a rat snake (which are non-venomous). I knew it wasn't a rattler, but wasn't positive about what it WAS. And, well, it was a BIG snake! I got all shaky and weird feeling; I must have had a major adrenalin rush or something, but it wasn't like the rush I feel when I have to deal with, say, a goat emergency. It was a spooked out kind of feeling. I totally get why Satan was a serpent in the Garden of Eden. Ugh.

So there I am, looking at the ground under the brooder for the snake, holding a shovel, and wondering what I am going to do next, when I see a head. But not under the brooder...

That's the telephone pole behind the brooder. I can assure you that at this point the spooky factor was at its height. I could barely catch my breath. And that was the end of my snake hunting, although Farmer Boy tried to throw rocks at it unsuccessfully.

Ick ick ick!!!!

Summer!

2007-06-06T14:08:00.000-06:00

Well, not yet summer date-wise, but wow, it sure feels like summer to us. We are getting temperatures in the 90's during the day, the kids are out of school (which for homeschoolers means no official schoolwork; of course LEARNING is impossible to quell), and blackberries are ripening. I am SO happy!

I love seasons. The thing I missed most about New England when we moved here (not counting family and friends of course) was the seasons. I've posted about this before. Here in Texas we have basically two seasons, hot and not-so-hot. We can garden year round.

We've even tried schooling year round. Some homeschooling families like this approach... it allows them to keep the same schedule throughout the year and they usually do things like take all Fridays off or take a week off every two months. For me, I need the long break. I look forward to the change, and then in August I am revved up and enthusiastic about a new school year. In an informal poll of our school's students (all 2 of them), a hearty "No way!" was the recent response to the idea of schooling year round. So it works for all of us.

Little Guy is almost one and is enjoying the first summer that he can actually appreciate (last summer the main thing he enjoyed outside was lying in the sling watching the leaves blow). I took the kids to a water playground in Austin on Saturday and I think Little Guy had the most fun of all. He crawled through the sprinklers fearlessly, and only complained when he inadvertently stopped right next to one that was off, which shortly came on and hit him right in the face. He still isn't walking because crawling is faster, but he is into everything. In the course of writing this blog entry, I have had to remove a silver tray with a tea set and a plant from the room in which we are working. I baby proof rooms and he quickly shows me what I have missed.

The blackberries are ripening slowly but surely. I ate five or six last night; we'll have lots starting to turn black in the next few weeks. Our neighbors up the road have a blueberry farm and are opening this weekend for picking. The tomatoes are green and the peppers are green so not too long until we have a small garden harvest (we have a tiny garden this season). I am getting close to a quart of milk each day from our goat, which is just right for our family. There is more demand for our eggs than we can supply, so we have 50 more chicks arriving this Friday. And we are about to take some bull calves in for slaughter. The farm is keeping us busy!

The joy of giving

2007-05-09T23:24:00.000-06:00

One of the things that I find shocking about contemporary Amercian mothering is the complete unwillingness to accept that love means sacrifice.

As a young girl, I was taught that I could accomplish ANYTHING I set my mind to. This was the message empowering young women of the 70's and 80's (the decades in which I grew up... and it is still taught). When I was 14, I distinctly remember, as I contemplated my career aspirations at the time, feeling alarmed by the apparent incongruity of the college --> med school --> intern --> resident --> physician path, with the deep desire I had to be a mother. How could these two lives - being a doctor, and being a mother - coexist?

The fact is, they couldn't. Not as I envisioned them. I couldn't be a full-time mother and a full-time physician. It is simply impossible. We delude ourselves and our daughters by implying (or even outright telling them) that this is possible. We must choose... we choose to give up the career and be a full time mom, we choose to give up being a full time mom and have the career. Of course we CAN have both... but only part of both, and this is what we're not told. You CAN be a career woman who is also a mother, but you are going to give something up to do this. You are going to give up getting as far ahead in your career, you are going to give up seeing your baby's first step, you are choosing something and by so doing are choosing to give up something else.

I realize that you, dear readers, are probably going to be a tough audience for what I have to sell here tonight, because you, like me, live a cushy life. You measure need in a way inconceivable to much of the world. You need a new car because yours gets bad gas mileage. You need new towels because yours have holes. Let's be honest: this is not need. You don't need a car. You don't even need towels. You need air, shelter, water, food, warmth, love. There is very little in the material world that you truly need.

And in this amazing world in which you and I live, in a country where I can be sentenced to a year in jail for killing a toad on the endangered species list, but can kill my unborn child and no one will blink an eye, in this sad sad place, the thing most lacking in homes is not soft towels, but love, one of the few true needs we have.

There is a new movement afoot for stay-at-home mothers. Today's mom needs to take care of herself. It's hard being a mom, you know. The relentless demands, the mess, the crying, the chauffering, the laundry, the three meals a day, every day. So moms really need to be better about taking care of themselves, not being martyrs. After all, "If Mama ain't happy aint nobody happy." Put on your own oxygen mask on before assisting your child.

There is something in this to which a part of me says, "Yes!", yet a deeper part of me finds it worrisome. On the one hand, it is absolutely reasonable to feed ourselves, bathe, etc. We need to be able to function. But this idea of what we need has expanded, just as it has in material areas of our lives. We need time to ourselves. We need a break.

I have struggled with this for years. I have felt in my heart that the way to true happiness is to give yourself up to love, in service to others. Yet I could not escape the persistent cry from mothers, "What about my needs?" I could not escape my own plaintive cry.... "What about me?" How could I integrate service and sacrifice with self-preservation, with survival?

And now, in this season of extreme demands, this season of a sleepless nursing baby, children who need to be educated at home, a husband who needs tender attention, a goat to milk, wheat to grind, eggs to wash, friends to listen to and pray for, and of course the endless river of laundry and meals; in this time in which I do not have enough hours to give of myself as much as wants to be taken, I have had an epiphany.

What we have wrong is not that we have needs that must be met. What we have wrong is how to meet them.

If we are true followers of Jesus, we will lay down our lives for love. We will give ourselves over completely in service to God by serving our "neighbors"... the very people with whom we spend each day. Our children. Our husbands. Our friends. Our parents. We will find our true selves in this giving. And we will find that what we really need is air, shelter, water, food, warmth, love.

And we will find that the source of all these things is God.

The great sustenance of my life, the air I breathe that gives me light and hope, the source that meets my every need, is God. If I consider survival or self-preservation as my greatest goal (and realistically, isn't that ultimately what most of us are trying to do?), I can not love fully, because I am always trying to keep myself safe, if even a little bit. Yet when I give fully of myself, as a gift not only to the beloved, but profoundly as a gift to God, I am preserved.

I am preserved because God meets me in my sacrifice. Jesus did not call himself the bread of life and living water for nothing. God becomes my air, my shelter, my water, my food, my warmth, my love. These things that I need, he knows. God is the oxygen mask I must put on first.

Yes, perhaps, a break is just what is needed at times. But the break does not require money; does not even necessarily require being away from the children. The break needs to be from the material world, for a visit to the spiritual. And that visit can occur in your living room or as you push the stroller down the street. A praise song on the stereo, danced to with precious children, a song sung at the top of your lungs. A shawl pulled over your head for a makeshift chapel, just you and God hiding under that cloth for a tete a tete in the midst of chaos. Stepping outside for a deep breath of fresh air, a look at the vastness of the sky and movement of the clouds, a close examination of a perfectly formed "weed" (so many of our weeds are really lovely tiny flowers).

Give, give, give. Give all the love you have, the world longs for it. Pour it out into your children so that they know what it means to be loved, so that they have the capacity to be magnanimous lovers and bless others. Saturate your husband with love, choose to put his needs before your own. How much easier it is to love those who love us first. Demanding love never gets us far, but those who give great love, receive great love. If you want a husband who adores you, try this: love him sacrificially.

Yes, you will suffer. What kind of an offering would it be if it cost nothing? But the suffering is only the pain of that which is unneeded burning away. Give, love, offer the sacrifice to God, be made pure.

In this you will know the greatest joy possible.

Two Questions

2007-04-27T00:15:00.000-06:00

So, say your husband is on a business trip to Alaska.

And you stay up until 2:00am cleaning and writing and making the parts for stuffed shells and doing laundry and showering and gathering stuff by the front door. And at 6:00am your alarm goes off, and you want to sleep but know that today is not the day, so you get up and make yourself some coffee and try to listen to your audio bible and put on a farm dress. You make breakfast and wake children and scurry around putting more stuff by the door. You put the baby in his chair and give the 10 year old some Organic Toasted O's to feed the baby while the 10 and 5 year old eat breakfast. You race around outside doing chores and looking really stupid because you are limping from the jammed toe you self-inflicted five days before. The dog steps on your toe. You run back in the house and wash up and put on your going-out clothes.

You get the kids and backpacks full of schoolwork and diaper bag and purse and cooler full of stuffed shell ingredients and a bag of empty pans and an exersaucer that you are returning to your friend and your cell phone and your bible and bible study book and notes for a meeting and cup of coffee and, oh yeah, the keys, all loaded into the van. And off you race to the big city for an 8:30 am meeting with your priest.

Get to church, settle big kids with schoolwork, have meeting while trying to keep baby from killing self with mirror on wall, electrical cords, rocks on floor. You're glad the priest has a flock of young children because you have to nurse the baby several times during the meeting just so you can hear yourself think.

Meeting ends, you load everyone in van again after bathroom visits, and head back out of the city, in the opposite direction from home. During the 45 minute drive to your friends' house (who once lived within biking distance but now are an hour and a half away) you stop at a feed store to see if they have any bales of alfalfa hay. They do, so you buy one since everyone in your area is out of them and you are trying to get your dairy goat to give you more than three sips of milk a day. You and the kids and all the aforementioned stuff are in the minivan, so you tie the bale on the roof.

You drive to your friends' house and are so happy to see them again... a playmate for everyone, even the baby and Mama. Everyone pairs off and rejoices in reconnecting. Lunch comes and your friends graciously feed you. Time for the baby to nap, and you're really happy since you think today would be a great day to take a nap with him (what with the four hours of sleep the night before). But the baby thinks today would be a great day not to nap. So you give up.

You get the five year old girls to wash their hands and have a special treat... helping you assemble stuffed shells! You are pleased with yourself that this arrangement works for everyone! ;-) As you finish up the project you realize that the clock you have been watching is actually slow, so you shift into overdrive and load everyone and all the stuff (minus the exersaucer) back into the van. The van looks like it has been ransacked. You drive off, heading back to the city to go to your bible study, where you are the provider of dinner tonight. The baby falls asleep instantly. You spend your last $2 on a Pepsi at a Taco Bell drive through.

Despite a later-than-anticipated start and rush hour, you arrive at your destination 25 minutes early. Not wanting to impose on the family who is hosting (since you are there 25 minutes before the 45 minutes early you were already planning to arrive so you could cook dinner) and since the baby and the 5 year old are asleep, you park on the street and try to nap a tiny bit. You don't succeed. Eventually the baby wakes up, screams, you nurse him.

At the appointed time you go into the house and start baking the stuffed shells. You have a very pleasant evening with friends, sharing dinner and having a nice discussion about the passage for the evening, with the special gift of having a good 20 minutes to talk without chasing the baby, who is getting better at being with the caregiver.

At the end, you try to quickly load everyone up to go home, but the 5 year old disappears into the bathroom, causing a long line at the door, and when is finally pried out, is shoeless and does not know where her shoes are. You try not to be exasperated because one of the verses that night was "Do not exasperate your children" and you figure you should model that. You decide she really won't need that pair of shoes this week, but your hostess finds them and you leave. The baby screams a lot.

It is now 9:00pm. You have been gone from home for 13+ hours. You have had a full day. You had 4 hours of sleep the night before. You have an hour drive through the dark Texas countryside. You have no money. But you have a gift card.

So, question #1:

Where do you think you are at 9:07pm?

Good answer! That's right! You are at Starbucks. In the interest of not driving into a wall, you use your gift card to purchase some caffeine.

It's in a nice part of town. The neighborhood where your friends who host the bible study live does not have yards manicured by chickens and dogs and gophers, like you do. The people who live there put their money into fresh paint and nice bushes, not fencing and feed. You are far from home.

As you load your crying baby back into the van for the fifth time that long day, you see four or five beautiful, nicely dressed young women come out of Starbucks. They look toward you and start to laugh.

Which brings us to question #2:

Why are these girls laughing at you?

Yes, that's right, very good. This IS why they are laughing at you:

And you laugh too, because it IS funny... the whole thing... hay on the van, crazy kids, all of it. It's funny, and fun, and just a bit exhausting.

Epilogue:
The caffeine works. When you get home you are so wide awake from it you blog into the wee hours of the morning. :-)

First glass!

2007-04-25T14:26:00.000-06:00

Well, I've milked Domino every day for a week now, except Sunday. Every day, for one reason or another, I've had to dump the milk. Today I was DETERMINED that no matter how much we got we were going to try this milk!

Here are the results of about an hour of work (with some of today's freshly washed eggs):

And here are the Princess and Farmer Boy trying it out (we had to split the above amount three ways... a swallow each). Note the suspicious looks on their faces. :-)

The Princess' comments: "It was good. Well kind of strange. It will probably be better when it is cold, like after it is in the refrigerator."

Farmer Boy observed: "It was fine. It just tastes goaty."

I did it all by the book... washed and sterilized the supplies, hobbled the goat while on the stanchion, washed and dried her udder, milked and milked and milked, carefully covered the bowl to keep stuff out of it, put the bowl in ice water and stirred to cool it rapidly, put it through the special milk strainer. Took a lot of picturees of a pitiful glass. And after 30 years of waiting drank a mouthful of milk. :-)

I am not giving up! I am still getting the rhythm of milking properly, especially since she has small teats. I realized I may not be feeding her enough to produce for us and the two babies who are still on her. I can also separate her from the babies during the night and she'll give a lot more in the morning. And of course once the babies leave we'll get all the milk. Right now they are actually helping her teats to become more user friendly. ;-)

We're well on the road to really having our own milk! Yippee!

Milking stanchion

2007-04-23T21:10:00.000-06:00

Stephen spent Saturday building our new milking stanchion. Here is Domino trying it out for the first time:

First milk

2007-04-21T21:21:00.000-06:00

On Wednesday I milked Domino for the first time. Here are the results:

I know, not much, but it's something! After about an hour of preparation (figuring out how to mix up the udder wash and the dairy soap and the sanitizing spray and how to get all the supplies to the barn without them becoming contaminated, etc, etc), I loaded the baby into the stroller along with lots of supplies and headed down. We didn't have the milking stanchion built yet so I attached Domino to a fence with a 2 foot dog leash (she has a collar), hobbled her back legs just in case, gave her some food and tried to milk. I managed to do it, with lots of interference from the kids (the four legged ones) and the puppies. It was VERY frustrating.

The next day, more frustration, but good news, which is that it seems Domino has a good milking personality (goat-ality?). I didn't hobble her and she didn't mind me milking her.

I've tried to milk each day, just so we can both get practice, but haven't been able to save any of it yet because of constant interference (and therefore contamination) from curious puppes and goat babies. One of the challenges is that Domino has fairly small teats so it feels awkward to milk her. Even when I use only three fingers with the thumb, I sometimes end up with milk dribbling down my hand. We'll figure it out.

Today Stephen built the milking stanchion (pictures to come) so tomorrow I will be able to milk her in the barn and CLOSE THE DOOR! Thank goodness.

They're here!

2007-04-02T23:46:00.000-06:00

Well, golly gee whiz, I was right! Yippee! Domino is the proud mama of twins!

I kept checking on her today, and all of a sudden there were babies! :-) She birthed unassisted and did just fine without us.

Here is baby #1:

And baby #2:

Domino was not very interested in them at first. I found them still wet and shivering, so I raced back to the house to get towels, and iodine for their navels. Of course the human kids couldn't be left out of the fun! Farmer Boy took this picture of a very happy Mama, toweling off baby #1:

Baby #1 wanted to nurse and kept following The Princess around and trying to nurse from her pink dress and pink boots. He had the color right at least, but the species (and a whole lot else) wrong!

We ended up having to help the babies nurse. Stephen held Domino while I got the kids to latch on. It was not as easy as it sounds like it should be. But eventually everyone figured it out, and after the kids had a good drink, and we saw that Mom had licked each of them, we left them in peace for a while:

Names to come!

Well... maybe tomorrow...

2007-04-01T17:29:00.000-06:00

Domino seems ready to pop! I have a gut feeling that the babies will be born tomorrow. I may well be wrong (I don't have any experience to go by here) but it'll be fun to see if I have any natural instincts about goats.

When oh when oh when?!

2007-04-01T07:02:00.000-06:00

You know the saying "A watched pot never boils"?

Well, Patti Brown's farm corollary is "A watched goat never gives birth."

We have had many babies born on this farm since we moved here, but I have never felt like this before. For one thing, we've had goats for two years now and this is our first successful pregnancy. Snowy, our old doe, has had a series of questionable bucks in her life (first one left a lot of does he bred with open that year, second one was ancient, this year we're still unsure because Esau was so little when he tried).

When Domino and Elf came to us, I wrote down that Domino was due 3/15 and Elf 4/1. When Domino was overdue I wrote to her original owner and found out I had the dates backwards. Domino was actually due 3/30. Elf, our dear departed doe, had been the one who had bred first. So I've been thinking "Any day now!" for about three weeks.

Poor little Domino... I've spent a lot of time looking at her rear end for signs of imminent birth (don't worry, not touching, just looking!). I know those babies will come out eventually. But when?! I'd so love to be here for it. But it wouldn't surprise me in the least to go out one day and see them already born and frolicking around.

On top of all this, I have wanted goats for milk since I was seven. That's thirty years of waiting. I suppose I have earned the right to be a wee bit impatient.

Time's a flyin'

2007-03-30T23:09:00.000-06:00

Farmer Boy was shocked today to realize that it was Friday. Again. It seems it has not only been for me that time has been passing at break-neck speed.

March is always a busy month on the farm. We've usually had lots of babies... chicks, ducklings, calves. This year we have the puppies, and are expecting goat kids any day. The weather becomes lovely and incredibly enticing, making it hard to stay indoors to do the housework. This leads to later nights trying to get the inside work done, or more time outside in denial, trying to ignore the appalling state of the house.

We've been eating lunch and dinner outside sometimes, and using the grill more. Wildflowers are exploding all over the fields and we're crunching around the house on a thin layer of dust because of the open windows.

I love Texas in March!

We finally broke ground on our garden, after two and a half years here! I am SO excited! I think with the fencing we will be able to keep most of the critters at bay, although the gophers are going to keep our mental muscles flexing, and I don't even know what to anticipate bird-wise. We'd have to build Fort Knox (including below ground and overhead) to keep all the interested parties out. For the moment I am going to blissfully pretend that we won't even have to think about insect visitors. Oy.

But busy-on-the-farm seems to equal not-writing-on-the-blog-as-often! Kind of funny, since the blog is about the farm. But now you know what I've been doing. Along with the usual kid-raising, homeschooling, carting everyone to ballet, piano, park day, library, grocery store, bible study and church stuff.

Outlaws and inlaws

2007-03-30T23:06:00.000-06:00

Observed by the Princess (age 5), while driving in the car:

"Hmm, I get it! Outlaws... outside of the law! So... in-laws are inside of the law! They follow the law!"

Mama, mumbled under her breath, "Well, most of the time!"

Blue eyed Belle

2007-03-21T07:02:00.000-06:00

Belle has one bright blue eye:

Little Guy thinks the puppies are hysterical. Zeke thinks Little Guy is delicious:

Demolition

2007-03-19T12:11:00.000-06:00

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Stephen and some young friends did some demolition work while the kids and I were away in PA. Here is some of what they did...

This is the barn, when we first bought it:

And here it is minus the rotting "roof" over the loafing area:

We also have a structure that we call "the falling down barn." That is what we have always called it because it has been falling down since we bought the place. We blocked off the entrance and it has just been sitting there being dangerous. We fully expected it to have blown over by now, but it took a few pushes from the tractor in the end.

Here it is from the front when we first bought it:

And from the back:

Here it is today:

This weekend the rest of it comes down.

When you have a 5 year old daughter...

2007-03-19T12:09:00.000-06:00

...you may spend the day wearing a necklace. Even if you are a big tough guy digging holes on a farm. If necessary, scowl ferociously to offset the softening effects of the jewelry:

Domino

2007-03-15T22:53:00.000-06:00

A few months ago we bought two new goats, and I am finally getting around to blogging about them.

As you know, we had three goats, Snowy, Sylvester and Esau. Snowy and Sylvester are La Manchas (the "earless" breed), and moved in with us 2 years ago. They grew up together. They have different moms but probably the same dad. Esau joined us from a different farm in December of 2006. He is a Nubian.

Domino and Elf, our new goats, shared a dad, but had different mothers... the mothers of Snowy and Sylvester. So the four LaManchas were all half siblings in some way.

Sadly, a few weeks ago, Elf died due to pregnancy ketosis, a metabolic disorder that can affect goats during pregnancy. We did not realize what was going on until she was too far gone. It is actually easily treatable if you recognize the symptoms early enough, but poor Elf was stuck with us, the people who don't have a clue. It made us very sad. But we have learned, and I don't think it will happen again.

Thankfully Domino had lived with the other goats for long enough that she felt she was at home and did not seem to be affected by Elf's death.

Domino is a very sweet little goat. She is pregnant, and due any day now. We are SO excited to be having kids, and soon thereafter, milk!

You can see how she got her name:

The baby loves the goats, who are patient with him:

I think she looks like she is smiling in this one:

Breaking the cuteness meter

2007-03-15T21:55:00.000-06:00

They're like a cutesie poster from the seventies...

Zeke (on the left) and Belle (on the right) are three weeks and two days old. Mama Molly is having no trouble with her postpartum weight loss program while nursing her mammoth babies.

Horse Lesson 47

2007-03-14T22:57:00.000-06:00

Today's guest blogger is my beloved husband, Stephen...

(This lesson builds upon horse lesson 12 - corelary to Murphy's Law)

A horse can spin in a circle much more quickly than you think it can. Why is this important? Because it means that a horse can kick you in the head, even if you think you are safe. So let's give a practical example of how these two lessons come together.

The horses were separated from the cattle by a fence, and had been for some time. I could feed the cattle grain without worrying about the horses. Because of short supplies of grass lately, the other day I opened the gate to let the horses and cattle share the same fields.

I knew full well that it would take quite some time before the horses discovered the open gate, so I decided to feed the cattle. Let's look back at lesson 12: "The horses may not come when called, but they will come if you don't want them to, so use proper caution." Now you can see that I've failed to heed lesson 12. So what happens next? The horses immediately chase the cattle away from their feed and start eating it.

Problem is, the cattle feed makes horses sick. So in this real life example, I had to try to get the hungry 700 lb horses away from the feed and into stalls. And this is where we learn the lesson of how quickly a horse can spin around and point its backside at you, already locked and loaded. Chasing a horse away from feed makes him mad! I figured as long as I kept in front of him, he couldn't kick me. But much to my surprise, a horse can turn around and point his back legs at you faster then you can scream "I'm going to die now!" The Good Lord clearly has more work for me to do down here, and I avoided being hit by the horse.

I got a scoop of horse feed, and tried to lead the horses away. No dice. I chased the horses hoping they would head far away. No dice - they just ran in circles around the feed. After a while, the sly animals would stop about 50 feet from the food and nonchalantly eat some grass. Then, as I walked toward them (and away from the feed), they would suddenly bolt past me back to the feed.

After a 15 minute wrestling match, requiring physical stamina and a whit sharper than that of any horse, I finally managed to corral the horses, and so completed horse lesson 47.

Patti's note: Not knowing the whole story, I watched this transpire through the kitchen window. I thought Stephen had decided to break the horse (who can not currently be ridden) in the middle of an open field. I thought he had gone mad. I saw Joe try to kill him. I prayed and prayed. Later when he came in I said, "I was praying for you," and he said "That explains why I'm not dead."

Storms

2007-03-12T22:23:00.000-06:00

We've been having some pretty strong storms coming through in the past 24 hours. As I type this I hear thunder in the distance. I'll be shutting down the computer right after I post tonight.

Last night, as the computer was shutting down, the power went off. Poor computer. It was pretty mad this morning. Took the Midas touch of Stephen the computer genius to get it to even turn on.

I didn't get a whole lot of sleep. There was the sudden rain, and windows to close. Then the baby with a cold who wanted to nurse. The dogs wanted to come in and sleep in the laundry room. Molly was going to leave her babies behind but Stephen wouldn't let her. They were way under the back steps out of his reach so he made her stay with them.

We got settled in bed again then heard a crazy racket which turned out to be huge hail stones attacking our roof. After they stopped, MY cold kept me up coughing and looking through my books for herbal remedies that are safe to use while nursing.

I got to sleep only to be awakened by more heavy rain and piteous whining from the puppies. Molly was trying to move them in the downpour. So Stephen brought them in and Molly and I dried them off (I used towels and she used her tongue. Ick).

Eventually I did manage to get several fitful hours of sleep. Sounds like we may be in for another night of adventure tonight!

Here is one of the hail stones that came down last night:

We seem to have a trend here. Everything is Texas-sized... first puppies, then hail... what next?!

Belle and Zeke

2007-03-11T23:50:00.000-06:00

The puppies will be three weeks old now in a few days and they are shockingly large. No wonder Molly could only fit two in there! She moved them into a larger doghouse, and a few days ago had to move them under the back steps. They are going to be some big dogs!

We've named the boy Zeke (on the right) and the girl Belle (on the left). Zeke had just been getting a bath from Mom. Belle needs one... happens frequently when your floor is dirt.

I included the picture of Molly nursing Belle to give some perspective on her size. Her eyes have been open for less than a week!

Snow for the Texans

2007-03-11T23:32:00.000-06:00

Little Guy had a rare chance to bundle up when we were in PA on vacation.

He lay on the floor waving arms and legs, unable to even roll over. He reminded me of the little boy in A Christmas Story who can't put his arms down when his mom dresses him up in his snowsuit.

The big kids had fun. They played in snow, shoveled and swept snow, and caught snowflakes on their tongues. They sampled maple syrup drizzled on snow (yum!) a treat enjoyed in childhood not only by their heroine Laura Ingalls Wilder, but also by their very own Yankee mom! Farmer Boy even got to go sledding and sprain his wrist. He had a blast earning his ace bandage. A time-honored tradition!

Hard work on the farm

2007-03-09T21:12:00.000-06:00

(Our guest blogger today is Little Guy)

You know, this farm thing, it isn't easy.

I'm out there in the afternoon, and I'm watching Mama feed the goats. Then she's watering fruit trees. Then feeding cows. Then carrying gallon waterers to the chickens.

She's wearing me out!

Picking up toys from the yard. Sweeping the front porch. I finally just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer when she started shoveling chicken manure to move to the garden.

I'll tell you, the woman doesn't know when it's time for a nap!

All the rage among the laying set

2007-03-09T21:11:00.000-06:00

Apparently the flowerpot idea has caught on...

Lunar Eclipse Tonight!

2007-03-03T09:35:00.000-06:00

There will be a full lunar eclipse tonight. It will be visible at moonrise in the U.S. Here's more info from NASA:

"In the USA, the eclipse will already be underway when the moon rises on Saturday evening. Observing tip: Find a place with a clear view of the eastern horizon and station yourself there at sunset. As the sun goes down behind you, a red moon will rise before your eyes. Rising moons are often reddened by clouds or pollution, but this moon will be the deep, extraordinary red only seen during a lunar eclipse."

You can also check out this NASA site for more information.

For the Austin area moonrise is at 6:27pm. For other areas, you can find it by plugging your zip into Weather Underground then scrolling down to the astronomy section.

Creative hens

2007-02-27T14:24:00.000-06:00

Our free range chickens missed the orientation in which we gave tours of the nest boxes in the chicken house. They prefer more interesting locations to lay their eggs:

Farm Dog vs. Lap Dog

2007-02-23T08:02:00.000-06:00

When I was a kid, our beagle had puppies. This was a highly monitored event. My mom got a big box and lined it with clean blankets and put it in the kitchen. When the dog started giving birth late in the night, we got up to watch, and got up several times throughout the night. We made sure they were free of their sacks, and that their mom licked them and that they nursed. Those puppies were adored! When they got older, my mom put an old playpen in the living room and we put them in there to romp. We loved taking them outside and rolling around with them.

Fast forward to today. Molly and Luke do not come in the house, unless it is really cold or stormy, and then only in the laundry room. They swim in the pond and roll in the dirt (and in Molly's case other more fragrant brown patches). We have not had Molly fixed because we thought someday we might breed her. She is a full-blood Australian Shepherd, which are extremely smart animals, and very helpful as farm dogs.

I am an advocate of spaying and neutering in general. When we first got a cat on the farm, Farmer Boy and I did a little math project in which we determined how many cats would born from our female over 10 years if she had five kittens a year, and each of them had five each year. It was astounding (if I remember correctly it was over a million). We spayed the cat, and Luke came to us neutered. It is much easier to control a female farm dog's reproductive life than a male's.

Nevertheless, this time we had a surprise, albeit a welcome one. We had been discussing getting a livestock guardian dog for the goats, and now Molly has seen fit to birth two! We will have to see if they end up with stronger herding or guarding instincts. I am hoping for the latter as I'd like to put one with the dairy goats (we have five now, and babies due in the next month), and have one to put with the meat goats we will be getting in the near future.

Thinking back to those days of squeaky clean beagle puppies, I have to laugh. It took a great deal of convincing to get Molly to come out of the dog house so I could put a clean blanket in there AFTER she gave birth (you would not believe the condition of the one she actually birthed on). Later I went out and she had moved it aside so the babies were on the bare dirty floor. Even with more clean blankets she is tracking loads of dirt in every time she goes out and returns. We did not see either baby born, nor did we ensure she licked them or nursed them or any other good veterinary suggestion. She just did it.

It's not that we don't love our animals, we just have a very different relationship. In some ways it may be healthier for all of us.

Surprise!

2007-02-22T10:20:00.000-06:00

I did not expect to be blogging about this so soon.

Introducing Molly's new babies...

Back in December, Molly was clearly in heat. Luke is fixed, so can't become a daddy. But this cycle, for the first time, a Great Pyrenees from up the road showed up. Molly and Luke kept chasing him off, but he managed to get Molly to let him mate... both Farmer Boy and I saw it. I watched her and she didn't seem like she was pregnant, until Monday, my first chance to really love on her since we got back from our trip. I noiced that her nipples were quite engorged and deduced she'd be having babies soon. I didn't realize HOW soon!

Tuesday, when Farmer Boy came in from his chores, I asked him if he'd noticed how swollen her "breasts" were. He said, "I didn't see her." That struck me as odd, until {oh!} "Put your boots back on and find her... check the dog houses; she may be having puppies already!"

Shortly thereafter, the children's squeals of delight from the front told me that she had indeed been busy! :-) Molly had one BIG baby girl (you can tell her daddy is a big boy) by 9:45 Tuesday morning. I could tell she had more coming throughout the day, but she never seemed really agitated. By nightfall she still had only one. I was a little bit worried until I googled it and learned that dogs can go up to 24 hours between birthing puppies. Sure enough, Wednesday morning we had another puppy, a little boy this time. This morning, Thursday, we're still at 2, so I think she's done. They are quite big for a dog her size, so I suspect she only was able to carry two of them.

We are greatly enjoying having new babies around again!

Morning view

2007-02-21T07:19:00.000-06:00

This is what I saw as I stood at my kitchen sink this morning to begin breakfast preparations...

The fog hovering in the valley, the calf nursing, the knowledge that I am looking at our own trees on the horizon, the rainbow painted in bold horizontal swaths... I am so undeserving of this view, and the intricate and precious blessings that surround me at every moment.

One of the many gifts of this farm is how present we are to the miracle of life. There is less to distract us, and the boldness and beauty of God's creation is more in our face every moment. We are also aware of the constancy of change. That view is gone now, but in that fleeting moment of its gift, I was called to stop and be fully present to the moment.

Stop today. Breathe in the fullness of the life that you have been given. Open your eyes to see the beauty right in front of you. Engage fully with someone you love. Today is all we have. Worship the Lord with your full presence in His world.

Blogging break

2007-02-20T07:33:00.000-06:00

You may have noticed that I have not been keeping up with my 10 minutes a day of writing. That's because the kids and I went away for a vacation to balmy Pennsylvania (where 37 was the highest temperature during our visit). I took a break from everything, even e-mail, and it was HEAVENLY!

We visited dear friends for the week... it was so refreshing, both physically and spiritually. I have some great pictures of the baby in a snowsuit. SO cute! I'll post them when I get the camera dock hooked back up to the computer.

While we were gone Stephen was a busy boy, not only working his full-time off-farm job, but making some major progress on some of our big projects. I'll have pictures of those too.

Room with a view

2007-02-07T10:29:00.000-06:00

This morning I was standing in the kitchen drinking my tea, looking out the window at this happy domestic scene:

On the right you can see cattle circled around some food. There are chickens smattered across the center. On the far left are Joe the horse, Ruth the mule and Dominic the donkey. Stephen is standing holding the baby, with The Princess right next to him. The dogs are to the right of Stephen.

I realize at this small scale things are hard to see, but I think you can get a sense of how peaceful and happy this view was for me.

Sick horse

2007-02-06T22:48:00.000-06:00

Poor Joe got colic today. Stephen found him lying on the ground partially entangled in some fencing.

Sad, sick Joe then had to be walked for hours until he felt himself again. Seems his tummy just couldn't handle the fresh rye grass growing in the pasture he was moved to last night.

But now, according to Stephen, "He's fine. Walking around. So you can say that your superhero husband saved a horse's life."

The man thrives on emergency.

Non sequitur

2007-02-05T21:39:00.000-06:00

Driving from ballet to gymnastics today, the van was quiet when this conversation sprung up...

Princess: "I always try to be nice to Farmer Boy. Non sequitur."
Mama: "What?!"
Princess: "I always try to be nice to Farmer Boy. Non sequitur."
Mama: "Non sequitur?"
Princess: "Yes."
Mama: "Where did you learn non sequitur?"
Princess: "From you."
Mama: "What does it mean?"
Princess: (thinks for a moment) "Well, you know, if we were driving along and talking about ballet and I suddenly said 'I like going to bible study on Thursdays', well, that would be a non sequitur."
Mama: "Yes, it would. Yes, it would."

She's five. Look out world!

Inspiring Quote

2007-02-05T09:47:00.000-06:00

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." (Scott Adams)

The Princess (age 5) on Organized Sports

2007-02-05T09:43:00.000-06:00

"I really like being a goalie for baseball."

Farmer Boy is 10

2007-02-04T23:55:00.000-06:00

My baby has hit the double digits!

Farmer Boy turned 10 today. His party theme was "Whacky Games". The kids played Crazy Auto Race, Coconut Bowling (coconut for a ball and milk jugs for pins), 3-legged Race, Noodle Baseball (pool noodle for a bat and beach ball), Balloon Soccer, and Stuff the Shirt (in one minute stuff as many balloons as possible up a big shirt you are wearing).

3-Legged race:

Noodle Baseball:

Stuff the Shirt:

The cake was a joint Mama/Farmer Boy creation:

He conceived the castle and implemented it himself (those are candy legos). All I did was bake the cakes and make the grass, moat, bridge and road. He also laid out the figures, put "crocodiles" in the moat, and created the jousting ring and dragon jail.

Stephen observed that it was the first interactive cake he had experienced. With each slice of cake, new drama unfolded on the scene. Falling walls received the most enthusiastic "audience" response. Observe how the dragon has broken free from its jail cell and wrought havok...

Happy birthday, sweet son. We are so proud of you, in so many ways!

Egg Faceoff

2007-02-01T09:35:00.000-06:00

Today I made fried eggs for everyone for breakfast. I had only one farm egg for Stephen so I also used one store bought egg I had. What a difference just to look at! Our egg was so pretty; the store-bought egg was pale and icky looking. I noticed that even the white was tinted yellow, which indicates that what little color WAS in the yolk was helped artificially. It is a sadly common practice to add colorants to a factory farm hen's diet.

Here was Stephen's culinary assessment:

"The yolks have a distinctive difference... there's a taste I've never noticed before, and it's in the store bought egg, and it's not a good taste. The whites have the same taste - nothing - but the consistency of ours is much better. The store bought one is kinda more synthetic rubbery. Perhaps comparable to bubble wrap."

I didn't know he'd eaten bubble wrap before.

Trials

2007-01-31T22:40:00.000-06:00

I have one of those scripture-a-day calendars on my kitchen windowsill. My mom gave me one two years ago for Christmas, and I liked it so much I have made a point of buying one myself to be sure I have it for each new year. This is my third such calendar. I love to have the inspiration and source of meditation in front of me when I work at the kitchen sink.

Today's scripture was from 2 Corinthians 1:3-4...

"What a wonderful God we have - He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the source of every mercy, and the one who so wonderfully comforts us and strengthens us in our hardships and trials." (from The Living Bible translation)

I am in a busy season of my life. Our eldest is in fourth grade, and we homeschool him, so five days a week that is my main focus. Our middle daughter is very academically inclined, so even though she would still be in preschool if she went to "away" school, she is doing seat work for older children. She is also a pretty emotionally demanding child. And of course Little Guy has HIS seat work... learning to get out of his seat and crawl! This new found desire for mobility means I am usually either holding him or spotting him when he is awake. There are many things I can only do when he naps. But there are more things to do during those fleeting naps than are minutes in which to do them.

I am finding myself falling farther and farther behind with the normal things, like dishes and laundry. I am finding myself with less patience, finding myself falling asleep with the baby and having trouble getting up in the morning. I am finding it hard to carve out my 10 minutes to write.

I am just plain tired, really, no matter how much sleep I get.

Today's verse really made me think. I would not say I am in a period of hardship, but I do need strengthening. My eye fell on the word "trial".

Who is trying me, and for what am I being tried?

I believe I know the answer to that question. When everyone is pleasant and the sun is shining, it is easy to be a patient mother. But what do I teach our children if I am grouchy and frustrated when things aren't so easy?

Now before I say this, let me be clear that I do not believe I can earn my way into God's love. But it is kind of helpful to think of these trials, as "try-outs", like auditions for a play. The play is my life, and I am playing to an audience of One.

Wouldn't it make sense for me to go to The Director at the end of the day and say, "How did that one go, what do you think? Was I little too dramatic in that bit about the broken glass? Maybe I need to work on a gentler tone in the scenes with unfinished chores. Oh, you liked the part when I gave out hugs and kisses?"

When all is said and done, the course of my whole life WILL have been played to an audience of One. I want to make Him proud. But each part of my life has extra audience members. In this act, I have a husband and three beautiful children, as well as many beloved friends and extended family members. I would very much like to make them proud as well.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." (Hebrews 12:1-4 NIV)

Joe

2007-01-27T20:53:00.000-06:00

Haven't written about Joe in a while. You may remember that we bought Joe in the summer of 2005 for our niece to train. Joe is still with us, and still green. We are probably going to sell him, as we don't know how to train him, and even if we paid to have him trained, we are all absolute beginners with horses, so really need an animal that is old and steady, not a spirited four year old.

He sure is pretty though, and we enjoy seeing him out in the fields with Dominic the donkey and Ruth the mule. I love this picture, taken by our young friend Denise...

Esau

2007-01-26T22:00:00.000-06:00

We have a new little buck here these days. We got him back in November or so. He is a Nubian. His grandfather belongs to our friend. Ancient Abraham came and had a vacation with us last year, in the hopes of getting Snowy pregnant. Didn't work (we knew that was a possibility given his age).

So this year on a whim we bought his grandson, who Stephen named Esau. You know... Abraham... Isaac... Esau. :-)

After we bought him I realized that while he has the ability to become a daddy, he might not be big enough to reach! Not to mention the fact that Snowy and Sylvester have been pretty tough on him. I honestly don't know if he's bred Snowy. Time will tell.

He is cute though, and after our years with earless goats, he's making up by having ears in spades!

Austin's ice mania makes it on Ellen

2007-01-24T01:15:00.000-06:00

This is hysterical. Turn your volume on to hear this:

Ellen show cancelled in Austin because of ice