Maker's Long Acres

This little girl, FarmHer Raye, is nothing if not determined. And she was determined to get herself some chicks. She had saved up her money for months and combined it with a gift card she'd gotten for Christmas and had waited (not) patiently for spring to arrive. She was relentless in asking if it was time enough to bring home chicks.  It was a Sunday. The day our family usually heads to town to do some dinking around with no real agenda on tap. But that day? Oh we had an agenda! We all knew it was the day she would finally be able to stop asking if we could get the chicks.  There was much fan fair and much ado in the picking them out. Fluffy yellow fuzzy nuggets huddling under a warm red lamp, completely unaware of the world around them. A few darting out of the reaches of the warm, red heat lamp and pecking about under the scrutiny of the pint-size FarmHer. "This one" she would say with a nod, "Not that one! The other yellow one" exclaimed with an ...

We had started feeling burned out. It was every waking moment consumed by farm-life.  We woke up talking about it, spent the day doing it, and went to bed pressured. The to-do list continually growing, continually looming, never enough hours, no time for anything at all. Tension and stress were high. Always. Nerves and patience thin, too thin. We had begun to wear resentment like tight fitting boots- rubbing raw.  A rushed trip to get grain from the brewery changed our minds. "Have time for a beer?"  It was laughable. We never have time for anything.  But we were waiting in town for a part to come in, so, we sat. We just sat across from each other, staring at one another's other's ugly mugs not even sure what couples are supposed to talk about when they do stuff like that.  When we made it home though, we felt refreshed, and not from the malty hops. A soul refreshing, a hydration of "self". We jumped right back at the work. The same ole chores we...

Last week a broken phone. This week, downloading photos from the cloud. A bit of a nuisance, however seeing a few of the photos again has been a  delight.  Like this one of the little FarmHer when she really was little. We like to tease that she's our "feral barn child". Like the cats we have down there, she is full to overflowing with independence and she has doubled down on grit.  Days like today when other kiddos would be pushed indoors by the rain she goes marching out. You can see by the photo she wears mud like other girls wore princess dresses.  She will be bent though that the rain will keep folks from visiting the farm stand. We get it, who wants to head out when the sky is opening up. But for her it's just another day. For the brave souls that do venture out, she'll be there! She loves to talk about where we picked the berries for our jam, she will regale you with stories of the chickens who peck her grubby fingers when she collects their egg...