Far Beyond Pearls

They have a category at the fair called Best Collective Hobby – Three Items. It can be any sort of thing you collect – rocks, stamps, squished pennies – whatever. I didn’t enter that category this year because I don’t really collect anything, but the week after the fair, I found a large, dead cicada hanging in the window of the chicken coop. I brought it in and declared to the children, “Here you go! This is the beginning of my collection for the fair next year.” Davey found me another cicada. Rosie found me a whole bucket of cicada shells. Delaney found two butterflies. And a friend brought me a large rhinoceros beetle she’d found at church. My desk is quite literally covered with bugs.

Yesterday, Davey might have gone a little over the top, though. I found him sitting at the kitchen table with an index card, a bottle of crazy glue, a can of spray shellac, and…

A BLACK WIDOW SPIDER!!!

She’s the largest black widow I’ve ever seen and was found living contentedly beside the school room door in an old tire. I’m not terribly pleased at having such a specimen in my collection, but it was sweet of him to think of me, wasn’t it?

It’s been probably two months since it rained here. The fields are dry and brown and the ponds have dried up – or will soon. Yesterday, we found out the neighbors have been feeding hay already. They have a lot more livestock than we do and their animals are starving on forage. I honestly haven’t paid much attention to the state of our fields, except to note that David bush-hogged the pasture the sheep are in when nothing is growing. The cows come into the barn with an algae line about halfway up their sides, so I know the pond is okay, and I just assumed they were still grazing. But last night, I checked.

I walked out into the pasture to evaluate the amount of grass left. Most of it is brown and dormant, but there were two green and growing spots down in the hollows. It’s mostly grass, with one area being weedier than the other, but it looks like we’ve got a couple more weeks of forage out there. We only have two cows out on (I’m guessing) five acres. Still, as I walked back up to the barn to finish up my milking chores, I prayed my daily prayer for rain. I closed the back gate to the barn to keep the cows out, gathered up my milk pails, and walked back to the house, praying some more under the clear, blue, sweltering sky.

Hours later, I was awakened by a kaboom! Thunderstorm! I jumped out of bed, pulled on some shorts, and dashed out the door to open the gate so the cows could get under cover. I have dashed out into many a storm for the benefit of my animals, but the lightening was coming too close and too fast and I did not feel comfortable covering the distance between house and barn and then laying hands on a metal gate. So I waited. In the brilliant flashes of light, I could see my cows waiting it out alongside the fence near the trees. It was forty five minutes before the lightening slowed enough that I felt it was reasonably safe to make the journey. I felt badly for making my poor girls stand out in that weather, but it was wonderful to finally have weather to stand out in.

When I finally climbed back into bed, I laughed, and I prayed again, “Thank you, Lord, for the rain, but I’m going to complain now. I always complain. We could have done with a little less lightening.”

We’ll take the lightening, though, if that’s what it takes to get the rain, so keep it coming. I’ll try to remember to leave the barn open at night from now on.

This morning, I was trying to get water for the cows. First, I had to get the hose, which was stretched out in a long line ending at the door to the chicken coop some distance away. So I started pulling. At the first movement of the hose, something else moved off to the side, right next to the garage. I pulled again and looked. It was a white rabbit! The thought process the ensued went something like this: “Oh! A white rabbit! A wild white rabbit! An unusually big wild rabbit. We don’t have white wild rabbits… Hey! I think our rabbits got out!” Honestly, it took me a whole minute – at least – to figure this out.

Three hours later we were driving out of town toward the bank. We passed the Knights of Columbus hall, the Knights of Columbus that David is a member of and of whose activities I am somewhat acquainted with. There is a sign out front. I read it. “Fish Fart )/20″ I looked at it thoughtfully as we drove past. What could they be trying to tell me? Is it the name of some other local group renting the hall? A band performing in an upcoming concert? Some slogan which would be uplifting if only I could figure out what it means? As we drove by, I looked back, perplexed, hoping to glean some bit of meaning. The other side read, “Fish Fry 8/20″. Of course it did. Because they’re having a fish fry next week. Not a fish fart.

Apparently, sleep deprivation results in a loss of reasoning skills.

Fortunately, Davey mentioned the Knights this afternoon before dinner, and because I can only remember things if somebody else brings them up first (not a terribly helpful trait) I was able to tell my fishy tale, and he was able to call the Grand Knight, who was able to call someone who is actually in the area, who will go fix the sign and spare the Knights any embarrassment when a large crowd of people arrive on )/20 expecting to hear that awesome band, Fish Fart.

And sometime around 7 o’clock this evening, we were finally able to catch the two white rabbits who, because they are not really wild, are actually looking almost good enough to eat.

And bedtime is just an hour away, and wake up is at six instead of four thirty.

So it’s all good.

We moved our little home-hatched chicks out to their parents’ coop this week. Oh, I was so worried for them. How would those poor little guys fair amidst all those big hens and aggressive roosters? David built them a little house with a solid roof and wide wire walls, a little place that they could get out of but that the older birds couldn’t get into. A safe haven. Still, I worried. It wasn’t built quite like I wanted – no floor, for one thing – and I was afraid that rodents might kill my little chicks in the night. But we did it anyway. Right around the time the big chickens were settling onto their roosts for the night, we put the little ones in. We just tucked them under their roof, said a prayer and closed the door. They were all still alive in the morning. The hens barely even spared them a glance. The day after that, they ventured outside. They haven’t been mauled by roosters or rats. They haven’t been crushed by lounging sheep. In fact, it’s gone so well, I’m ready to set a new clutch in the incubator.

Ellie-The-Cow, who used to be Dixie, has mastitis. We gave her antibiotics on Friday and I’m trying to give her an extra afternoon milking, but it’s not improving. It’s not getting any worse, I don’t think, but it’s not getting better. A friend told me that if mastitis doesn’t respond to antibiotics, it’s probably caused by a staph infection. She also said the antibiotics kill off all the bacteria, good and bad, and she’d do well to start taking probiotics. I’m also feeding her garlic, which is supposed to have antibiotic properties. (Do you know how challenging it is to convince a cow to eat garlic?!) I have a number for a fellow who treats his own cows as much as possible. Sounds like he’ll be a great resource for us. I’ll give him a call tomorrow and see what he says. I think I’ll place another call to the vet, too. Ellie has been nothing but worry for me, but she’s such a sweet cow, gentle and affectionate, I’m not liking the looks of my options for her.

Our other chickens, our Jersey Giants, are doing really well. This week, they were deemed Big Enough To Make The Cat Think Twice and set loose in their pasture with the baby cows. Mostly, they hop through the fence and eat the grass and bugs on our side, but they’ll get too big for that soon enough. In the meantime, they are funny, friendly birds and we don’t mind their wanderings.

Somebody around here is looking forward to winter, when the cows get milked after breakfast and before dinner and the chickens are in bed early. Somebody is tired of running, running, running from 6:30 in the morning to 8:30 at night. She even seriously considered ordering pizza delivery the other night, that’s how desperate she’s feeling. But we won’t name names. Suffice it to say that when the mercury drops into the single digits, she won’t be complaining. It’s a small price to pay for an hour or two of leisure.

Many, many years ago, during another rocky stretch of our married life, David and I picked up a little book at church called The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts. We went through it together, taking our quizzes and reading up on how best to love the other. I wasn’t surprised when David’s love language turned out to be acts of service: pouring his coffee in the morning, making his lunch, ironing his uniforms, cleaning up his messes. Just last night, I opened a gate unasked so he could drive his tractor through. “Aw, you still love me,” he hollered over the noise of the tractor.

Unfortunately for me, he shows love the same way he receives it. I’ve always just accepted that, understood that when he does chores or special projects around the house – and now the farm – that this is his way of expressing love. But to me, they’re just items on the to-do list and my “love tank” has gotten so empty, I can’t convert a chicken coop into affection anymore.

My love languages are time and touch – when he doesn’t act like they’re items on HIS to-do list. I need to feel his arms around me sometimes just because. And I liked when we milked the cow together because we got to spend that time talking without the distractions of children, time we don’t have any other way.

Have you ever read that book? What makes you feel loved? How does your spouse receive love? Are you good at meeting each others needs?

I’ve been lost, these past two years.

He came home from the war and he hated me and I didn’t know why, and there was no peace in my life, nowhere to go to get away from the anger and the pain that slept beside me every night.  He broke me down with his anger and his hate, tore me up and left me lying there in the dust, in a million little pieces that I didn’t know how to put back together.  He just left me there, broken.

I cried for such a long time.

Until the day I took off my wedding band.  I didn’t cry anymore after that.  I put on my own armor of anger and indifference to hide my brokenness from him.  But I’m still broken.  It’s hard to mend a heart, to heal a soul, all alone.  And I’m so very tired.

I’m choosing, right now, to live for love.

I love the sun on the fields in the morning.
I love to be out of doors when a storm is coming in. 
I love to work with him, side by side. 
I love to read bedtime stories to my children. 
I love to wrap slippery babies in freshly washed towels. 
I love to cook dinner. 
I love sit with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
I love to milk my cows. 
I love to know other people. 
I love to listen to my chickens. 
I love to hang laundry on the line.
I love a good book.
I love the work of the farm and the work of the home. 
I love the life of the family and the life of the community.

And I’m trying, in my brokenness, to love him again, too.  To really love him, faults and all.  It’s so very hard to open myself up to that, to risk the shattering of this fragile life I’ve built. 

But it’s just a shadow life, this living with and without him, hardly worth saving anyway.

So I’ve put back on my wedding band.

He never even noticed it was gone.

Miss me?  I miss you, too.  It’s a bit of a rainy day, and there are something close to a thousand other things I could be doing (like killing that fly that’s dive-bombing my head) but I’d rather say hello to you.

We got our second flock of chickens in the mail this week.  Our first birds are New Hampshire Reds, and they’re wonderful birds – curious, friendly, and pretty good at laying eggs most of the time – but when there are too many roosters and they must be killed and cleaned and plucked and tucked into the freezer, well, it’s not so wonderful to go through all that work and trauma and come out with a two pound bird, bones included.  These new birds are called Black Jersey Giants and fully grown, they’ll weigh between 11 and 13 pounds, which should net us a pretty sizable roaster.  These new chicks here are actually not for eating, though.  They are the parent flock, who will grow up to lay eggs that will hatch into chicks that will grow up themselves and most likely be killed and cleaned and plucked and put into the freezer.  This growing food business is always a long term project.

I’ve ordered an incubator, too.  We don’t see any indication that any of our hens intends to set upon and hatch a clutch of replacement chicks for us, so we must take matters into our own hands.  I also have it in mind to sell hens that are close to or at laying age, thereby relieving the purchaser of the burdens and vagaries of raising them up from chicks.  I’ve thought up a design for a small backyard hen house to go with them, too.  Somebody told me recently that you can’t make a living on a farm unless you inherit one; starting from scratch is just too expensive and you can never make it pay.  I fully intend to prove that person wrong. Because I’m ornery like that.

The other day, I went over to the feed store for some grain for the cows.  He’d just made a pick up and his truck and large trailer, still loaded, were blocking half the drive, and a customer’s vehicle was blocking the other half, making the circular driveway not-so-circular.  Well, I had the trailer with me, and I don’t know how to back up the trailer, so I went inside and asked the other fellow if he wouldn’t mind moving for me.  Which earned me some good-natured ribbing from all the men present.  Well, don’t you know, I took that trailer home and practiced and backed it up…twice.  And I only took out one tail light. I told you I was ornery like that.

And, just so you know, in case you go around randomly building structures in your yard, too:  It is less expensive and less time consuming to have the cement truck deliver even very small loads of concrete than it is to mix it up and lay it yourself.  Even with the substantial “small load fee”.  Davey got the main supports for our new chicken house up last week, and the floor was just poured today.  A few walls and windows, a door and a roof, and our little guys should be able to move out there just as they start hopping all over our living room.  Perfect timing.

And that’s all the generic-type sharing I’ve got today.  All the personal stuff?  Well, that would just make somebody else mad.  We have enough angst around here with adding fuel to the fire.

The first day we milked Miss Dixie, after her milk had chilled and the cream had risen, I made a point to sample her milk and see how it measured up.  The kids said it was great, better than Maybelle’s, more like store bought.  (?!?!?!)  I said it tasted a little salty.  They all looked at me like I was crazy, but my instinct was to keep it out of circulation until we knew what was what.

Each day, morning and night, when I’m all done milking the cows, I bring it back inside and pour it through a filter and into the jars.  I filter milk for two reasons.  Hand milking, I’d often have bits of hay, a hair or two, and, occasionally, a fly, but with the machine, it comes through clean 95% of the time.  I still filter it, though, for the odd 5%.  I also filter it in order to check the milk for early signs of mastitis.  Dixie’s milk has had small clumps in it and it’s been getting worse.  And this morning, her front right quarter still had hard spots in it when we were done.

Our veterinarian was coming over this afternoon anyway, so I asked him to have a look at her.  “I’m going to tell you an old redneck trick,” he said, squatting down beside the cow.  He took a little squirt of milk in his hand from each teat and took a little taste.  “You just stick the tip of your tongue in,” he said, “just enough to get a taste of salty or sweet.  The quarter with the mastitis will taste salty.  You try,” he said, stepping aside.  “I know which one it is.  See if you can tell.”

So I did.  I bent down and took a little squirt from each teat and I tasted each one.  Sweet, sweet, sweet…salty!  And it wasn’t the front right quarter at all, but the rear left!  It’s subclinical, meaning she has no other symptoms besides the clumps and flavor, so we decided not to give her antibiotics and just milk her out frequently, discarding the milk from that one quarter, until she’s better.  Fortunately, I’d been milking her last and keeping her milk entirely separate from Maybelle’s.  I didn’t want to contaminate Maybelle, who we know to be healthy, with any infections that Dixie may have carried with her to our farm.

Now, I’m feeling quite empowered.  And vindicated.  That milk WAS salty.

Texas revised its social studies curriculum. I especially like this part:

“Parents should be very wary of politicians designing curriculum,” Duncan said in a statement.

But Republican board member David Bradley said the curriculum revision process has always been political but the ruling faction had changed since the last time social studies standards were adopted.

“We took our licks, we got outvoted,” he said referring to the debate 10 years earlier. “Now it’s 10-5 in the other direction … we’re an elected body, this is a political process. Outside that, go find yourself a benevolent dictator.”

I am thankful for my friend Marie who I can see is going to be a wonderful older-woman mentor for me.  She is full of grace and love and understanding, and she passes that on with such kindness and gentleness.  She also brought us a whole bunch of fish she and her husband caught, already cleaned and filleted.

I am thankful for my husband who makes it a point to just be here.  Sometimes, that’s frustrating, but most of the time, I like having him around.

I am thankful for my children who make me laugh and make me cry and make sure I take time to just be and breathe and live in the right-here-and-now, with no expectations , no plans, no fears.  Otherwise, I’d just keep rushing headlong through everything.  No, wait.  If I didn’t have these children, I wouldn’t have nearly so much to do….  I’m thankful for them, anyway.

I am thankful for my friend Pat who, I told my mother recently, is like a mother, sister and best friend all rolled into one.  I don’t know how I went so long without her.

And I’m thankful for my mother, who raised us all, my sisters and me, working her way through the endless round of meals and laundry and last minute school projects.  This is no easy job, this motherhood, but she gave us her best, and where would any of us be without her?

Thank you, Mommy; thank you, children; thank you, Davey; thank you, Pat; and thank you, Marie.  I love you all.