Do Better.
Posted on | November 8, 2016 | 2 Comments
So this is what happens when you sell your dairy goats. When you cut that powerful tether to the farm and cast off into the wide weird world where no one milks twice or day. Or hurries home from the store in case a doe is kidding. Or rushes off for dewormer after checking eyes and lips with the FAMACHA charts. Or doesn’t bother to leave the farm at all because one reeks of buck odor by 6am.
Without a dairy operation to check in on every minute of every day, I didn’t bother with hatching eggs and just let the grown hens wander around under the care of livestock guardian dogs. If they managed to hide eggs and hatch chicks then they were also responsible for raising them. I sure as heck wasn’t going to bring in a ram for the ewes when I had already shipped out all my own bucks to other farms for breeding purposes. My last remaining Muscovy duck, at 10 years old, was way too old for fertile eggs so she and her male runner duck companion simply wandered around calmly between the pond and the barn. If they showed up in the front yard while I happened to be outside I tossed them some dog food out of the container on the deck. The freezer was way too full of pork to bother raising pigs. That’s all folks.
Once the dairy goats were gone, I only needed to stroll into the barn once a day. Just once a day—-morning or afternoon or night or whenever. Check the waterers, feed the livestock guardian dogs, drop off the chickens’ scraps and pick up their eggs, pull down fresh hay for the sheep. 15 minutes max. Usually less than 10. Such a short period of time that it wasn’t enough to hold me to the farm all day. And I had plenty of time to explore that strange and all-consuming world out there. You know, the one everyone else is living in.
And…really, people,….what the hell?
I threw a back-to-school party in August and instead of going with just the usual, I tried branching out. Because I had the time and the energy to do something more, something different. I actually stood in line at Lowe’s with a bunch of 2X4s and waited patiently for them to make a hundred million cuts in those 2X4s so I could have giant Jenga! game on the deck. Which I will never use again and that sits there looking at me and that I have to straighten up every time I walk by because, you know, I have time for worrying if the Jenga! pieces are crooked.
August.
Posted on | August 24, 2016 | 2 Comments
Are you kidding me? It’s August? End of August?
I had some suspicion that summer was full on when I went from gleefully eating a tomato sandwich 3 times a day to averting my eyes from the rows of tomatoes slowly starting to rot on the counter. I should have realized summer was at its peak when every meal involved some combination of bread and veggies from the garden—tomato pie, pesto pizza with roasted peppers, brushetta, eggplant panini. The Other Half started cooking himself a pound of venison sausage every weekend and nibbling on it throughout the week for a protein fix. And everyone ranted and raved ecstatically when I made meatball subs one night in an effort to finish off the crockpot full of homemade tomato sauce.
Although in their defense it may not have been the sudden appearance of meat that they appreciated as much as the fact that I made dinner itself. ‘Cause the night before I just sat on the couch with crackers, cream cheese, and a jar of freshly made hot pepper jelly. As everyone wandered in looking for dinner, I looked at them blankly and continued to shovel in creamy, sweet, spicy goodness without comment. And the night before that they came in to find me eating a homemade chocolate cake smeared with coconut pecan frosting (don’t get excited—it was box cake mix and a tub of store frosting). Which, at least, counts as cooking. Read more
Happy Birthday, America. The Home Stretch.
Posted on | July 24, 2016 | 1 Comment
We had only 4 days left and, for the first time, the kids started asking when we were getting home. Oh, it wasn’t all love and endearments until that time. Some of them desperately needed some alone time. And took drastic measures to get it.
Happy Birthday, America. The Wild West
Posted on | July 21, 2016 | 1 Comment
We drove through Grand Teton National Park as we headed through Wyoming. We didn’t stop as I figured I couldn’t summon any more enthusiasm from the kids for hikes and waterfalls and mountains for a few more days. It was odd how quickly we developed nature fatigue—-one week we were ooohing and ahhhing over the buffalo and the next week they were just getting in the way; one day we wanted to get as close to the falls as possible to feel the spray and climb on the rocks and the next day were were happy to just pull in at an overlook. Breaking up the trip with cities was definitely a smart part of my plan and this time we were on our way to Jackson. But driving through the Tetons and the Jackson Hole valley along the Snake River still provided a whole lot of scenic appeal.
Happy Birthday, America. Bear Territory.
Posted on | July 18, 2016 | No Comments
We stopped at Mount St Helens visitor center on Spirit Lake Highway on our way out of Washington state.
The video and the interactive displays had lots of information on the eruption. The pictures of the volcano before and after its eruption in 1980 were startling but the damage was easy enough to see with the naked eye. Just outside the center was a view of the volcano with its top almost completely blown away.
Happy Birthday, America. The Other Side.
Posted on | July 17, 2016 | 3 Comments
We spent the night in Cut Bank, Montana, in the Glacier Gateway Inn and we felt the chill of changing elevation. Oh, sure, we shivered a bit in the Windy City—the sidewalks of Michigan Ave can be heavily shaded by the towering buildings and serve as a perfect wind tunnel for lake breezes. But this was the crisp cold and cutting wind that dropped temperatures in the 40’s at night. In mid-June. Brrrr.
Happy Birthday, America. Following the Buffalo.
Posted on | July 14, 2016 | No Comments
The next morning I left my family sleeping and ate breakfast at the State Game Lodge, where President Calvin Coolidge and his family spent their summer in 1927.
Happy Birthday, America. This Is What We Came For.
Posted on | July 13, 2016 | 1 Comment
If there’s one piece of advice that I can give you about visiting the National Parks, it is this:
Do NOT start with the Badlands.
Happy Birthday, America. In The Middle.
Posted on | July 11, 2016 | 2 Comments
We woke up in Dubuque, Iowa and hit the Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium for the day.
Happy Birthday, America. Going Back.
Posted on | July 10, 2016 | No Comments
I went to college in northern Indiana and Chicago, Illinois so I knew when the land started getting flat that we were getting close.
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