Living at the Farm

At the beginning of November, we got the chance to play at being "Farmers" when we babysat my sister's farm. We moved there for the whole week, and enjoying being in the country. For me it was a vacation from my house. Without all my normal projects beckoning to me, I found lots of extra time to read, play with my kids, and do lots more homeschoooling with them.

We all loved the country life. Besides the beautiful scenery & the peace and quiet (except for farm noises) we adored being in Mary's cute spacious country-style house. My kids especially enjoyed the downstairs playroom (we don't have one) The children loved running around outside. If you asked them what they liked best about the week, they would probably say that it was Sunshine, Mary's sweet Pomeranian dog.

We were happy to get a chance to preview the life that Scott has always dreamed about. He's hoping to get a Farm between now and his 40th birthday, and I thought to myself...."I need to see if I can handle farm chores!" So Scott and I learned how to feed and take care of a whole menagerie of farm animals.

I got to feed goats, turkeys, chickens, geese, ducks, peacocks, guinea pigs, and guinea fowl. And dogs and cats, of course. You know, I never realized just how FREAKY a cats eyes look in the dark. Whenever I would go out at nighttime to do the chores, I wore a little flashlight on my head. It would illuminate all of the animals eyes. Sometimes I felt like I was living in a horror film, or running around in an Animal Planet documentary, or existing in Stephenie Meyer's world in the book THE HOST. (The only way you can identify the alien entities who live in host human bodies is by shining a light into their eyes and seeing a reflecting glow, like an animal's). I never quite got used to walking around in the dark, surrounding by green glowing eyes. It was unsettling. The cats eyes were the worst, however, because they were always popping up out of nowhere. A couple of times, I "lost it" and came close to hysteria when a cat would drop on top of me out of nowhere. It was like the pooh bear movie where Pooh bear whispers menacingly to Piglet, "It's a JAGULAR....When you look up....they drop on you!" There was one cat, a black one called Spook, who kept on trying to climb up my body with his claws. I think he became overly amorous after I fed him some goat milk strippings.

The scariest glowing eyes incident of all was with their enormous guard dog, Daisy. Daisy had taken to jumping the fences to chase cars, and so they tied a VERY heavy log to her to prevent her from getting hit by a car, or from bothering the neighbors. This caused her to move very sl0wly and awkwardly. Well, one night when I went into the pens to feed the dog, I saw/sensed this ENORMOUS animal RUSHING toward me very fast with huge glowing green eyes. I knew it wasn't a cat, it was too big for a coyote...could it be a wolf...a mountain lion? Just when I was trying to decide whether to scream, run, or fight, the animal got close enough and I discovered to my chagrin it was just Daisy herself. She had somehow freed herself from the cumbersome log and chain, and she was gleeful, bouncy and playful with her happiness at being free. Well, I felt pretty silly at my alarm, and very relieved that it was just the dog. I'm sure if I were outside doing farm chores everyday in the dark, glowing eyes wouldn't freak me out so much.

It wasn't as difficult as I'd feared. But it was time consuming. Mary's an expert by now, and each time she does the chores she says it only takes her 1 hour. Well, it would take Scott and I 2 hours, and sometimes much longer to do the same work. We slowly got a little faster as the week wore on. The longest time was taken up by milking 4 goats. At first, my hands were so weak that by the 3rd or 4th goat, my hands were trembling, and I just couldn't command them to work anymore. My back and neck were KILLING me! The pain and discomfort didn't begin to go away for several days. My hands were finally strong enough to finish the milking without difficulty by the time my sister returned home. But my fingers were sore for days and I had a hard time playing the piano on Sunday. The tendons just felt all jiggly.

I have SO MUCH respect for my sister and the continual hard labor she puts into caring for a farm that produces wonderful, healthy, life-giving products! Great raw milk, omega 3 free-range chicken eggs, and of course grass fed meats of all kinds. She does a great job, and we've all been blessed by the fruit of her labors!

While we lived at "River Ridge Farm" we had a couple of engaging experiences. The most memorable is when we kept on trying to chase and capture Mary's peahen which escaped the week before when she was transferring the peacocks to a new cage. Despite baiting the area with bread crumbs, using all the kids to corner it, and being as sneaky and fast as possible, we never did catch the bird. She kept on flying right out our grasp. She was too clever for us!

Life is never boring on a farm, there is always something to see and to do! The environment is SO good for kids.

I think whenever we get our own acreage, that the agricultural life will suit us very well.

The experience overall was a very good one, and I look forward to having fun babysitting the farm sometime again in the future. Maybe it will be in the summer when it's light till 10 o'clock outside, and I won't have to look at glowing green eyes in the dark!