The Glamour of Farming

This growing your own food business is a lot a fun.

Most of the time.

Then comes the day when you realize the milk goat has a terrible, messy belly-ache because you, the clever farmer, fed her way too many orange peels. Or, at least, you hope that is what is causing her upset. Not being a vet, you haul out the biggest book on the animal care bookshelf, the Merck's Veterinary Manual. (Thank you Brendan and Kirsten) It confirms you suspicions. You decide that the goat will live, but that the family won't be drinking the milk for a few days, just in case. You send Mr. Farmer to the store to buy organic milk. While he is off in town you discover that even in her distress, sicko goat felt well enough to knock down and mutilate the wire cage protecting a wild honeysuckle vine in the goat pen. Your parents, generous enough to let you stick your dang vine-ravaging goats on their property, would like to this this specimen preserved, hence the cage. You straighten the cage, tromp through the incredible boot-sucking mud and return with a five-pound bag of cayenne pepper. Why do you possess five pounds of cayenne pepper? It was going to be an attempt at organic pest control. The sicko goat is certainly making a pest of herself. You cover the ground around the cage with the spicy stuff and sneeze a couple of times. Okay, time to milk. On your clock, anyway. Goat girl thinks it's time to play tag. You're it. A bucket of grain and some stolen mouthfuls of alfalfa later, you nab her. Then she runs with amazing strength, dragging you to the gate, eager to leap up on the milking stand. Okay, chores done, wipe that sweat off your brow.

Oops. Remember that cayenne? It's in your eye now.

You think this farming thing might not be worth your trouble after all? Mr. Farmer returns with a gallon of organic milk from the blasted grocery store. $8!!!

Okay, okay, I'll go do my chores, just let me get this pepper out of my eye first.

The Dull Days of Winter

I hope and pray and finagle for rain, then it all seems to come at once. The trees and wildflowers and I really do appreciate it, but must it all blow in in February? Our already minuscule house is shrinking from all the rain. All the toys have been played with and discarded in boredom. Aliana and I have read aloud until hoarse. We have baked and consumed more brownies and muffins that I care to admit. I have spent way too much time reading about other people lives on blogs. And the mud! Bleh. But I really do thank the heavens for the rain. I really do.

The Chicken or the Egg?

I have written before about how amazing and practical Aliana is. Check the archives for March 2008. I have further proof to offer today. She has solved the ancient question: which came first, the chicken or the egg?

She tells me that there was first a chicken, then an egg. She has a logical argument to back it up. I love classical homeschooling.

Her reasoning is based evolutionary theory. She imagines that there were birds pecking around in the jungles of Asia that were very chicken-like, the ancestors of today's domestic poultry. One day one of these extremely chickenish jungle hens mated with an all white-meat rooster. An egg was laid. It hatched. Out came chicken numero uno. This chick had enough of the features of what we call chickens to be so called. Since then we have had chickens. Yum.

Blue Rubber Bands

You know, the really thin ones that hold bunches of green onions together. And then there are the wide purple ones that arrive around bunches of broccoli.

Today, contemplating a handful of rubber bands, it occurred to me how much I value those little blue guys. I use them for all sorts of things. I am also fond of the plastic bags that hold potatoes. I use these instead of buying trash bags. I figure they're going to be thrown away anyway, I may as well use them one more time before they go. The incredibly long strings that come off new bags of animal feed get tucked away in a kitchen drawer for all kinds of wonderful projects. I buy my flour in cloth sacks and make the sacks into hankies. I can only find one brand of jam that doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup, and it happens to come in beautiful jars. We fill those with homemade feta to give away.

Looking at the rubber bands this morning, a funny thought popped into my head. I wonder if I will miss the little useful bits when green onions, broccoli, and such things don't come into the kitchen packaged, but are instead gathered from the garden. If the pounds and pounds of potatoes I plant this spring grow well, I will have to find a different solution for my trash bags. We recently bought a grain mill, so as soon as we run out of store-bought flour I will start grinding my own. I imagine we have plenty of hankies for now, though. This summer I look forward to putting up enough jam to last us all year, so I'll have to buy some jars for the cheese gifts.

I don't think I'll mind. It's just funny how the mind works sometimes.

I don't do Sudodku...

but golly do I play games.









Back when I was a working girl I took over a department in my company that was staffed by three people. After helping to move the facility to a newer and much more efficient space I staffed it by myself for quite awhile. Around this time the president of the company brought in an efficiency expert. Yeah, really. He was a little bossy leprechaun of a man. He made his way to my desk one day and interrupted my work flow by asking me, "What did you do to bring down the payroll numbers in your department so drastically?" I attempted to hide my irritation at the interruption and find words that wouldn't sound too condescending. "I figured out how to do things as efficiently as possible, I made them buy me a telephone headset and I come in really early before everybody else gets here and wants to make small talk." He clearly wanted more from me, but I really didn't know what else to say. I worked as fast as possible for eight hours or so every day. I was well rewarded for my work. Asking for a raise after proving able to work as well as three people was easy.





But really, that was not my motivation. In this life it is necessary to do certain things. Different things for different people, and even different things at different times. These tasks can be performed in a perfunctory manner or with pleasure, even, dare I say, relish. At that time in my life I needed to go off to work every day for dollars. So, I found a way to make it downright fun. It was a terrific game to figure out ways to shave a few minutes off my tasks. When I had a boss it was satisfying to say, "Okay, finished that, can I go home early now?" When I was the boss it was great to have enough time to work on tasks beyond the normal scope of the job. It made my time at work far more interesting to vary my involvement in the company that way. But, really just the game of it was loads of fun. By the end I was probably shaving seconds off my time, but it was still enjoyable. It kept my mind awake.





These days my work keeps me home. I rear children and animals, tend gardens and rising bread. I continue to adore my efficiency game. Just as I was able to cut payroll costs for my company all those years ago, I can now take my pleasure in trimming dollars, and sometimes even cents, off our utility and grocery bills. Years ago I had to go to work. These days I truly must find ways to save money. Life for our family has changed in many ways over the course of the last year, and I am far from my single working girl days, but I am still enjoying my favorite game.

Ego?

I like writing, it makes me think. Taking pictures helps me really look at things. But golly, do ya'll care? Is blogging really just a way to get people to pay attention to me?

Hmmm