Maker's Long Acres

"I got my hand in a pickle jar and I can't get one out!" that's what she said at one point as she worked to get the piglet out.  That piglet was stuck. The hips making its exit nearly impossible. And little Raye was just trying for all she was worth to free it. She had been at it close to thirty minutes at that point. And time was ticking.  The mama, Ginger, is a smaller knee-high pig and one of Raye's favorites. She's part of the gang led by Raye that scrambles over the farm, eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and looks for and finds adventure wherever they go. Ginger though was in some serious trouble and Raye having grown up in the barn knew the severity of the situation.  When it was clear our hands were too big and we turned to Raye we saw her coat was off and her sleeves already up. What we also saw was somewhere through these years our little peanut had grown up and the face we saw covered with resolve was no longer a chubby-cheeked cutie, but tha...

  Around here a pig gets what a pig wants. Our girl, Blossom, typically has her babies out under the pine. She scrapes out a little area, adds sticks and branches and things, and makes a hole her home.  So it was a bit unorthodox when she had gone through the lower fencing and was up at the yard fence asking to be let in. Her trilling squeal was hard for the ole Farmer to resist and he happily obliged.  She knew right where she wanted to be and headed for the overhang stall on the milking shed. Pa got her set up with deep, fluffy straw, troughs for both food and water and made sure she would be cozy. She wouldn't let him leave for a while though. She kept knocking herself into him. She's never been much of a "cuddler", usually only seemingly tolerating our fawning over her as if half annoyed. So again, unorthodox and also quite perplexing.  All the knocking and chirping however got her exactly what she wanted and much time was spent rubbing her belly, scratching that...

Well Fiddle sticks. Miss Fiddle Fern STILL has not had her babes! We were sure she was plumb ready to pop weeks ago and not sure how she could have gotten any bigger. But she has! One thing is for sure though, she couldn't get any sweeter! This precious girl heaves her big self up on the stall door the second she sees us in hopes of getting some loving. She doesn't squeal or scream like most pigs. She hums. Yes a hum. See she's a more rare, critically endangered Chinese Meishan breed. They are just different. They make a really cool series of hums, trills and barks to communicate their needs. Here she's just happily communicating her need for a little more loving to make it through this "home stretch" and getting those babes safely delivered! We just hug her and say "we know sweetie, we want them here too"! Anyone else ready for them already? Did you happen to see her at the fair, when it looked like she couldn't possibly go even another da...

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...

A bit dizzy still this morning from the whirlwind of yesterday! It seemed a blur and we had no sooner opened our eyes and the sun was setting. And somewhere between life unfolded beautifully around us.  The day started with the finding our favorite mama duck with fluffy yellow ducklings waddling along behind her. It was a joy filled moment because she was one we never dreamed would live let alone give us ducklings! And wonderfully enough it we a year and one day to the day that she was hatched.  Not long after we hear the "beep, beep, beep" and rumbling groans of heavy equipment and see the neighbors coming down the hill. They were here to fix a road that has been a bane and caused us much frustration and lost time as we almost always got stuck, hung up or any number of things as we tried to get in. It's the main access to where our feed is and the road to the barn. But work on the main road has changed the slope and all the water had eroded the entryway to ne...