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<\/a><\/p>\nJulia developed a massive blocked salivary gland.\u00a0 Which scared the crap out of me, thinking it was CL (even though she had always tested negative) , until the vet assured me otherwise.\u00a0 Salivary glands.\u00a0 Who knew?<\/p>\n
The pigs had been assigned to till the section of the garden that had the last of the spinach.\u00a0 So no more fresh spinach for us until the freshly seeded spinach is ready for harvest.<\/p>\n It’ll be a while.<\/p>\n Due to a chilly and cloudy spring, there will be no transplants coming out of the greenhouse to go into the garden next week. The majority of the seeds we planted last month in the greenhouse still have not sprouted.\u00a0 The ones that have, are so scrawny that there is no way they are going into the garden yet.<\/p>\n Most the of Silkie chicks that we hatched have died (weak??\u00a0 trampled by the bigger chicks??\u00a0 too much food competition??) even though the Welsummers and Cornish Cross are flourishing.\u00a0 And the 6 Silkie chicks from December have developed into 3 hens and 3 handsome and unnecessary roosters.<\/p>\n Brianna suddenly rejected one of her kids, kicking and butting him whenever he tried to get to the teat.\u00a0 So poor Tucker needs to be bottle fed.\u00a0 Which means poor me once spring break is over and Pretty goes back to school.\u00a0 Really, how dare Billy be in line for the bottle when his mother is saving all her precious milk for him.\u00a0 The nerve of some kids!<\/p>\n It was all a bit overwhelming.\u00a0 And I was standing in the yard, picking the first tick of the season off my arm (not too cold for ticks apparently!), wearing my woe-is-me face, when I had a funny thought.\u00a0 Whenever the troubles of the farm become daunting I remember a funny story that a good friend told me.<\/p>\n She had a small flock of ducks living on her pond when one of them became injured.\u00a0 So she made the little duck a home in the barn.\u00a0 She gave it expensive medicine and special food.\u00a0 She gave it a large washtub pond with a ramp to swim in.\u00a0 And she emptied that large washtub of yucky, slimy duck water every couple days so it could have a fresh pond to swim in (If you don’t have ducks, you can’t possibly understand how yucky and slimy those buggers can make their water.).\u00a0 She cleaned that duck’s personal pond and hauled water and gave medicine for 6 weeks.\u00a0 On top of all her regular barn chores and her full time job.\u00a0 Until the duck was all better.\u00a0 Then, in triumph, she released the healed duck and watched it paddle out on the pond to the rest of the flock.\u00a0 The flock immediately turned and began pecking the duck.\u00a0 They pecked it and attacked it until it eventually went under the water and never came back up.\u00a0 Never.\u00a0 All the while she was standing on the pond bank, screaming and yelling and throwing rocks at the flock to no avail.<\/p>\n When she told me that story we laughed and laughed and laughed until we cried and worried that we might pee our pants.\u00a0 Which is probably not what you did when you read that story.<\/p>\n Unless you are a farmer.\u00a0 Because once you are a farmer you will be shocked at how often your best efforts have horrifying results.\u00a0 I mean, shocking, unpredictable, appalling results.\u00a0 And you will be forced to watch weeks and weeks, hours and hours, of time and effort (and, of course, money) get its head shoved under the water until it never comes back up.\u00a0 And you will realize that all you can do is call a friend and say,\u00a0 “Can you freaking believe that??????!!!!!\u00a0 What kind of a moron hauls a washtub full of water to an injured duck for weeks and expects that to end well???\u00a0 I should have known better!!!”<\/p>\n And every time she told me that story I laughed again.\u00a0 Because it never got old.\u00a0 And every time I felt like I was wading through the thickest of troubles on my farm, I remembered that story and laughed.\u00a0 Because at least I didn’t spend weeks sloshing yucky, slimy duck water all over my shoes and forcing pills down a duck’s throat just to watch that duck get murdered as soon as it recovered.\u00a0 At least I didn’t do that.\u00a0 And because I have a slight ability to learn from other people’s mistakes (although it does compete with my innate and inexplicable sense that surely that won’t happen to me), I never will.<\/p>\n You’re on your own, ducks.\u00a0 There will be no personal ponds around here.<\/p>\n So as I headed in to get my drill to fix the gate and as I dug around in the mud room for the extra pack of nipples for bottle feeding, I had a smile on my face.\u00a0 That’s what friends are for.\u00a0 To make you laugh until you think you are going to pee your pants.\u00a0 To make your troubles look small.\u00a0 To remind you that you are not alone in your expensive, time-consuming, and disastrous exploits.<\/p>\n I decided I would write a blog post about that duck story.\u00a0 Really, it was just too good not to share.\u00a0 Now, you might not believe this (based on the grammar mistakes and the typos), but sometimes it takes a while for me to create my posts.\u00a0 Once I have an idea for a post, I need to get some pictures to prove to you that this stuff is really going on.\u00a0 Or you would probably think that I make it up.<\/p>\n Then I need to find a time when I can sit down at the computer and type out my thoughts.\u00a0 I have to pry the kids off the laptop and then listen to them ask, “Are you done yet?\u00a0 Are you done now?\u00a0 When will you be done?\u00a0 Can I do something real quick?\u00a0 Will you be done in an hour?”\u00a0 until I scream at them that I will never be done and it’s my lap top anyway and everyone will NOW GO OUTSIDE TO PLAY and I put them and their dogs outside and lock the doors.\u00a0 So there.<\/p>\n Then I have to heavily edit my idea.\u00a0 Because I can’t share everything.\u00a0 Some of it is just too real.\u00a0 Too politically incorrect.\u00a0 Too much cursing.\u00a0 Too much blaming other people.\u00a0 Other people that read the blog.\u00a0 Then I have to limit the sarcasm.\u00a0 I know it doesn’t look like any of the sarcasm is cut out.\u00a0 But it is.\u00a0 Oh believe me, it is.\u00a0 I need to unplug and replug in the router several times to get an internet connection.\u00a0 And then finally, finally, after several days of effort interspersed with milking and making dinner, going to work and picking up kids from sports practice, then I can publish the post.<\/p>\n And I was in the midst of that effort when I got the news.\u00a0 My friend had passed away suddenly of a massive heart attack.\u00a0 She called a friend to take her to the hospital when she began having pain and that friend immediately told her to hang up and call the ambulance.\u00a0 Which she did.\u00a0 But when the ambulance arrived she was already gone.\u00a0 They were never able to revive her.<\/p>\n Like all her friends and family, I was stunned.\u00a0 Shocked.\u00a0 It just didn’t seem possible.\u00a0 My friend was in her 60’s and had her share of health problems.\u00a0 But the kids and I had been out to her farm less than 2 weeks before she died.\u00a0 We trimmed goat hooves and gave vaccinations.\u00a0 Then we sat on her front porch admiring her new rose bushes and the beds she had prepared for blackberry plants.\u00a0 It was beautiful spring day. We both had shorts on and the sun felt so good on our pale, sun-starved legs.\u00a0 There was a light breeze that kept us cool during our barn chores and was invigorating as we laughed and chatted on the porch.\u00a0 The kids ran around in the grass, playing with the dogs, and throwing the frisbee back and forth.\u00a0 The guineas squawked in the driveway, the roosters crowed in the pasture, the pigs snorted happily in the hay rolls.\u00a0 The goats eyes us warily, hoping for some more treats but without hoof trimming attached to it.<\/p>\n It was a perfect day.\u00a0 Perfect.\u00a0 The kind of day you would choose to have if you knew it would be the last day you would spend with a good friend.\u00a0 If you got to choose such things.\u00a0 Which you don’t.\u00a0 So I will be eternally grateful for getting that day.\u00a0 That day was a gift from God, that I opened without even realizing what an incredible gift it was.<\/p>\n And all the while that I was bemoaning the state of affairs at my farm, and laughing over her duck story, and planning my post, my friend was already gone.\u00a0 I just didn’t know it yet.<\/p>\n It’s just like her to tickle my memories as she exited this world.\u00a0 To leave me chuckling as I circumvented the mud pit by the leaking hose.\u00a0 Grinning over the pathetic plants in the greenhouse.\u00a0 You might not believe that, but I do.\u00a0 Oh, I do.\u00a0 That’s what friends are for.<\/p>\n And if that duck story wasn’t amusing (or horrifying) enough to live on indefinitely, my friend left lots of other reminders of her time on this earth.\u00a0 She gave me my very first dairy goats and taught me and Pretty everything we know about basic goat care.\u00a0 She handed us hoof trimmers and loaded syringes and just let us have at it, with her confidence alone driving us on.\u00a0 We watched kidding for the first time at her farm, in 20 degree weather, standing in the barn with numb fingers and frozen toes, and wanting to fight the does for space under the heat lamps.\u00a0 Over the years, we traded goats and chickens and guineas and veggies and eggs and animal care and feeding and husbandry tips.<\/p>\n And, of course, we swapped stories about the most ridiculous and outrageous things we had done on our farms that had unforeseen and grisly endings.\u00a0 Chicks that were saved from a murdering mother hen, just to be gobbled up by a black snake in their new “safe” pen.\u00a0 Dogs that died on the 85 mile per hour dash to the emergency vet just to be charged the $75 exam fee for walking in the door with weeping children and the dead dog in your arms.\u00a0 Roosters that were rescued from the butchering block just to be snatched up by coyotes in their new home or suffocated in transport containers on their way.\u00a0 Ducks that became entangled and hung in the flagging tape strung between the trees to protect them and their ducklings from hawk attacks.\u00a0 Dead baby goats, foaming at the mouth, discovered by visiting 5 year olds.\u00a0 Managing to flush a hen’s impacted crop yet kill her by getting fluid in her lungs.<\/p>\n Hysterical, I know.<\/p>\n I realize some of you are crossing me off the list for your funeral service right now.\u00a0 Deciding you do not want me standing up to speak or writing your eulogy.\u00a0 Lest I start giggling about dead kittens.\u00a0 Guinea pigs with foul-smelling cysts.\u00a0 A goat kid trotting around happily, oozing CSF, after disbudding.\u00a0 I could go on.\u00a0 And on.\u00a0 And on.\u00a0 My friend and I could have sent you from the room, screaming.\u00a0 All the while we laughed and cried and clinked our glasses, complimenting each other on our hardiness.<\/p>\n I know you’re thinking that this memorial is too blunt.\u00a0 Too blithe.\u00a0 Too blasphemous.\u00a0 But I know my friend gets it.\u00a0 I just know that she is chortling to herself, that she and B’Uddernut are looking down at all they have established and are well pleased.\u00a0 That Ben and Jerry came running to greet her and that they will all spend eternity avidly watching over the rest of our adventures.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n