Takin’ a Hit For a Friend… Gladly

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Lanny

 

Just when you thought a story was over….

If you haven’t read the post previous to this one you may not understand what you are about to read, so I suggest that you drop down to read it, if you need help getting there just click here. 

After we got back from the eye doctor on Friday I was just a bit grumpy on why I had to do all that rig-a-ma-role, I was slightly irritated for the lost time. 

I needed to have gotten a tarp for the pasture turkeys and there is a good book waiting for me at the library.  The appointment did go rather quickly, “no waiting on checkout 4 with eyeball collapse”,  but the drive into big town and back takes up a whoppin’ chunk of time. 

And of course, even though I know he was kidding because he also heard what Dr. Kim said about the whole thing and the possibility of retina detachment, in fact he was standing at the eye poster when she came back in the room and he said he couldn’t see the vitreous on the picture and how was it going to pull the retina and exactly where is the retina (he hadn’t liked my explanation after I read the paper to him out loud for entertainment purposes), so he got a full blown explanation and dramatization from Dr. Kim, and yet he still came home and told Bet that, “yep, we had another one of your mother’s hypochondriac trips into the doctor, I felt stupid for going in.  I of course got immediately defensive and Bet laughed and said that once again I bit, Dad was trying to get you all stirred up and sure enough he succeeded.  Mom, you gotta stay tough she says.  I thought I was being tough when I told him what for.  No, mom, stay tough and ignore him.  Bet, is that you or your grandfather ERB?

So I was a bit irritated about the seemingly wasted afternoon, a half-hour on the phone, a forty-five minute drive into town, a thirty minute appointment from the time of walking in to walking out (if only they could all go so fast) and forty-five minutes back home. Two hours and thirty minutes that I could have wasted watching a trashy movie, and still have time to spare!   And yet, I still have to pay attention to what I see, just in case, so I can go in and do it all again.  So then there is also that tension.  Arg why? Why the wasted time, why the tension?  I didn’t dwell on it, “whatever” my mind kept saying, I had to do what I had to do, onward life.

But once in a while we do get to know why.  And this time I take the why very humbly, very very humbly, because of my momentary whining in light of the post (I Would Rather) I made just the other day, about doing what needs to be done, what God calls you to do, no matter how silly it looks to others (hypochondriac trip to town) or yourself actually.

Just prior to making the first call to the eye doctor I had been over at my friend’s across the highway, she had mentioned a few days ago that she had my lidded 2quart measuring bowl.  So on my way into our little towns to stop at the post office, run by the library for a hold, and swing into the funky all-you’ll-ever-need-short-of-food store for a tarp for the pasture turkeys, I stopped at her house.  And of course, in spite of the fact that I was interrupting her lunch with her husband and children (he has Fridays off) we got to talking.  She loaned me a book, the book I started reading on the way to the doc, we talked about all the tractor work she can see me do out by the highway, and then we talked about eyeball weirdness.

I told her that I meant to call the doctor today but didn’t get to it, Dirt had encouraged me to call for appointments for stuff now before the new year.  And I probably should, blah blah blah.  Then she told me she was having similar issues, except that where I just went blurry a couple of times she actually lost sight for a few hours only to wake up normal.  My parting words to her as we left to go further down the road to town…”we should go to the doctor.”  We are both reluctant to go, me more so than her usually.

She has a very long driveway and along that long driveway I was getting firmly nudged.  Firmly.  Which is weird because even though I said that thing about going to the doc, all that the talking to her really cemented in my head was, yep, we’re getting’ old and body parts are fallin’ apart. I didn’t really want to go to the doctor any more than when I pulled into her driveway. 

But at the end of her driveway as I waited for traffic to clear, I told Bet I was going to swing back into our driveway and make some calls: I should really call the post office, it is out of our way actually and it had short hours I should make sure they’re open; I should call for those doctor appointments, I know that if you call on Friday you’re more likely to get in the following week than if you wait to call on Monday; I should grab my cell phone and there was something else….

The rightness of going backward to go forward was proved out on my first call to the post office.  Even though I saw on the website when I went to get the phone number that they were open for the afternoon, since I had the phone in my hand, I still called.  I was told that there was nothing the Postmaster could do about my undelivered Netflix.  Okay, we just saved over twenty minutes and the gas money to swing into Roy before swinging down to Yelm.

The next phone call I decided to make was to call the eye doctor instead of the GP for a physical, because while waiting for the PM to answer I saw the new website about the light flashing and that it called for an immediate call to your eye doctor.

You know what happened with my afternoon after that call Dear Reader, now let me tell you why I was strongly nudged to go back home in the first place.

When I was looking up more stuff about the eye symptoms on the web while waiting to be connected on my phone calls, I was seeing more and more that all the eyeball weirdness my friend and I were having was nothing to monkey around with.   So when the call to the doctor and their insistence on getting me in right away proved out what I was reading, I called my friend and told her to go to her eye doc, now!  No chit chat, just call!

Saturday, after the flurry and after I wrote my post, thinking that my rig-a-ma-role afternoon was so that if someone else who’s retina was actually going to detach needed to know what I previously didn’t, I should write and tell them all about my new found knowledge, my phone rang.

It was Terry, asking if I was blind yet.  Very funny, no, no big deal my friend, yet another false alarm.

Well hers wasn’t.  She did go into her eye doctor that very same day.  Her eye ball wasn’t collapsing it was about to explode!  She has glaucoma.

Wow.  She might not have ever gone in, her glaucoma was not causing discomfort and only occasional vision issues, not enough to bother her.  She could have really been done in and ended up with permanent vision loss if not for my insistence to go because of my eye stuff which ended up no big deal except for a lost afternoon. 

I’ll take that irritation gladly.  I’ll be less reluctant to listen to those nudges that seemingly are of no big deal, certainly not a God thing, right?

She is stable for the moment, well her eyes are stable for the moment, but while I am pretty much in the clear (unless I see more flashes as my eyeball finishes collapsing away from the retina or when the other one starts and have to go in again), she definitely has to go in for further testing.  And the testing will tell them what they have to do.  She has a condition that must be watched carefully from here on out and by the grace that is our God’s, she won’t have lost her sight.

Obviously I need to continually be reminded that God things are not always huge in the eyes of the world, they may only be important to one person.  One person and her family perhaps.  A God thing doesn’t necessarily mean it works out to a world changing event.  In spite of the seeming insignificance of the matter, like turning back home and making a few phone calls that appear to only delay my day, those God nudges are not to be ignored.  They are big deals.  They are God deals.  And to God there is nothing that is insignificant, He carries the sparrow and knows the count of our hairs, every last one of them.

God call us to particular moments and for a particular life He sets before an individual.  Both need to be listened to.  Both are paramount.  You ought to do the individual things God leads you to and you ought to live the life He places before you not your brother.

If I was swept up by the need to be significant, do a God thing big time, answer other peoples’ God calls to go far a field, Paulinian like, and not be home, tilling just a little bit of the earth and planting just a few vegetables for just a few people and living an ordinary mundane life, then I wonder where my friend’s sight would be today, tomorrow, next year?

I have to constantly remind myself that I have to answer God’s call.  I have to answer the call God gives to me.  I have to avoid the human desire to be significant to a great many people.  I have to be content in being significant to God alone and let him chose to whom else I am significant.

It is not up to me to decide who I impact, or how many thousands I bring to God or who’s minds I change.  It is my job to follow God’s lead.  To do the things he lays before me and to do them well and be delighted to do them, not wondering or wishing to do worldwide significant things.

Oh how I would love to do both, be vital to my immediate neighbor and also bring thousands and thousands to God and save millions of marriages and keep zillions of children pure and without needless baggage.  But perhaps I need to remember how many gums and walks God knows that I can do at the same time.

Categories: God the Father Son and Holy Spirit, Good friends, Health, Spiritual Disciplines | 9 Comments

Collapsed Eyeball

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Lanny

Freak me out!  Okay, so collapsed eyeball sounds sort of more extreme than it needs to, but not really.  It is exactly what is happening and it can be very serious and it can be no big deal.  Nothing in between. 

The biggest reason I’m blogging about this… Because no one told me that what was happening in my eye was a big deal until I looked it up a second time, called my eye doctor and they seemed to calmly panic and made me come in for an emergency appointment, right then, that’s when I finally figured it was a big deal, a week or more later from when it started.

What symptoms was I looking up?  Flashes of light, like lightning, in one eye.

I didn’t even consider the increased amount of floaters.  But I should have.

Why was I not all that concerned and let it go for a week?  Because I was told a while ago that floaters are natural and occur more in older people.  And that is what I am.  Older people.

No one said anything about lightening in one eye. 

I have migraines, have since childhood, they are preceded by visual disturbances, mostly in my right eye.  I was half thinking that these flashes were just a new version of the visual disturbances that I have before a headache. 

When the flashes went for a week or more and no headache came I knew that they weren’t that. But I still didn’t think that they were any big deal.  I thought maybe it was a sign I was strokin’ out but heck I was still up movin’, workin’ and nearly thinkin’ clearly, so I was good.

What did I find out when I finally looked it up on the right website (the wrong one at the beginning of the week told me what I knew already, floaters and old age go hand in hand,  they threw flashes of light into the same bag) ?

The new website said, that yes, floaters are natural and with age they tend to increase, age means some time after forty.  But that if they increase rapidly in one eye, or if you have flashes of light in one eye like lightening, or if you have a curtain of nothing in your field of vision, then you could be in danger of a retinal tear or detachment which can be fixed and if not fixed could cause blindness.

Uh yeah, blindness in one eye, not my eye-dea of something I could work around.  So I called the eye doctor.

The eye doctor phone receptionist calmly panicked after she found out why I called, which was after she updated my records, real quick, and found out that I’m just a plain ol’ white girl that only speaks English, hasn’t changed her phone number and hasn’t moved.

How can you tell a person is calmly panicking?  You know you’ve called on a Friday.  Any other time you call for any sort of doctors appointment that you don’t already think is an emergency and even the ones where you do call hoping to get seen that day, like when you’re asthmatic and are having a hard time breathing, you know you really aren’t going to get a same day appointment.  When you call on a Friday at three, you definitely know you’re not. But she took my information and then proceeded to say that I could get a same day in Federal Way. I had her repeat the phrase ‘same day’ because I was in disbelief.  The appointment was in forty-five minutes, uh Tacoma is forty-five minutes away, add twenty more for Federal Way.  She wouldn’t let it go and just give me an appointment for Monday in Tacoma. 

Tacoma was indeed full but what she was going to do was message them and let them figure out when to squeeze me in. And would I be at this number? 

All that and I knew it was serious.  I’ve been gasping for air and they haven’t worked that hard to get me seen.

The phone rang from Tacoma within five minutes.  We did some chit chat about the symptoms I was having.  The tech put me on hold, came back on, told me to be there in thirty. I told him I couldn’t do that. He told me to come any way and they would deal with me when I got there because Urgent care (farther downtown) wasn’t’ open yet.

At this point I am trying not to panic.  I don’t do well if I can’t convince myself it is no big deal and this time I’m having a hard time convincing myself that it is no big deal.   Death isn’t eminent, but clearly blindness could be.

I know there are a lot of blind people out there leading great lives and they’re blind in both eyes.  But of all the things just shy of death and actually neck and neck with death that I don’t think I could really work around, remain a nice person and deal with, is blindness.   I know a guy who was an electrician and then went blind, afterward he was still doing electrical work.  But his wife was his eyes for him while he worked. 

Not that I make a whoppin’ lot of money to support a family off of what I do, but Dirt has no idea what he is looking at when he is looking at ninety percent of the plants on the farm, and his skills of description… frightening.  I have daughters that confuse begonias with gladiolas with hydrangeas and it isn’t cuz they’re old or strokin’ out.  I really do not want to find out what my life would be like without sight.  Hearing would be a bugger to do without, but really a lot of silence could be nice.  My feet?  Wheel chairs with fat tires for mud.  Paralysis?  Read books 24/7  could be a dream come true.  Blind even in one eye. er. NO.

They can fix a retinal tear in the doctor’s office (they didn’t tell me that, that was on the web site) so I ask Dirt to drive me, I don’t even like driving home from a regular eye appointment, he was only going to help me do stuff any way.

Off we go.  Not panicking but moving quickly. Read about God on the way in, definitely helpful. Perspective and peace.

On the way my one big floater, the big fat spider with a bum leg, that has shown up in the last day or two, after the lightening, is now joined by a flock of flea beetles.  Interesting.

I get checked in, sit down, pull the book out of my purse, locate the page I left off at and my name is called.  Dirt asks to come too, he likes learning new stuff and this whole eye adventure is turning out to be interesting already.

The assistant has me do the highway sign and puff of air thing at the machine in the hallway.  Then we go into the typical eye appointment room and she does a lot of things, things I didn’t think they would be doing.  Eye chart stuff, luckily no “is one better or two?” type stuff, I hate that.  Reading letters I can’t see is bad enough, choosing which not-being-able-to-see is worse or better, unbelievably stupid and frustrating.

But then, after my eyes are sufficiently dilated, the real stuff with the doc begins.  Intense.  Oh just before my eyes are dilated enough she give me a sheet of information to read until she comes back.  It says pretty much everything I’ve already read, emphasis on the floater activity, they even mention the “flea beetle” ones.

Doctor Kim comes back in and the real stuff begins.  Intense looking up this direction and down, and this way and that way and then similar stuff while she is at a machine.  She mentions that she can see my spider.  Then she says yep, sure enough I have collapsing eye ball. 

Okay, she used technical terms and it isn’t the whole eye ball that is collapsing it is the gel inside, it is liquefying with old age and falling forward, collapsing.  That part is okay, it comes with age, it is why I can see my floaters better right now and why the flashes of light.  The tricky part and why they had me come in is that during that normal aging process if the sticky stuff should happen to pull on the retina and tear it, then I could have problems.  But so far my eye ball is collapsing just fine.

Categories: Health | 7 Comments

Sanguine

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Lanny

A word mostly used to describe a personality type these days, but its origin is “of blood”.   Which is what I most often identify the word with because of my earlier days as a nursing student and then a nurse, making chart notations about sanguineous fluids.  Blood.

It was my choice for the header challenge this week, I’ve tossed that word out for my fellow players to have a good time with. (Their links are to the far right, go see them this afternoon.)

I love the word myself, not so much as the description of a personality.  I love it more for the mental image it procures in my mind.

Blood red, the color of warmth, change, life, intensity…

What better object here at Victory Farm and Gardens to exemplify the emotions of blood red than our Market Shed, the backing of the Hippy Hot Hut. 

Its completion, or at least the near completion save for interior insulation and finish, signals one more step of a great change in our lives.

Not a complete one-eighty mind you but just more steps closer to a vision.  Slightly faded, tattered and torn, bearing only slight resemblance in some folks’ way of thinkin’ on the outside, but very closely related to visions given, dreams dreamed, whispers heard, for others closer in.

It signals that Vicktory Farm & Gardens will have her Grand Opening sometime this coming spring, God willing of course. 

By spring, hours of business will have been established, memberships filled, larger consistent harvests will be being made, chickens, ducks and turkeys will be filling egg cartons as well as incubators, the gardens for wandering and cutting flowers will be presentable for inspection and wonder, and the tea kettle will be on.  And cookies on a platter!

Make no mistake Dear Reader, the choice of red, blood red, for the color of our Market Shed and Farm signs is no accident.  The Farm’s sign for the highway will look very much like the fair display sign hanging here on the north side of the shed. 

Most of our outbuildings, pens and signs are blood red.  The paint can says “barn red.”  And one could say that it’s the paint available at our local hardware store, at hardware stores across the nation.  But it could easily have been green, or brown or “barn black”.  Dirt thinks everything should be black if it isn’t beige already.

And I do love green, even though it is being terribly perverted at the moment in our culture, becoming more of a verb than a colour.  Used as a marketing tool by everyone and their dog, even when it couldn’t be farther from the truth even in the sense that it is being used.  But I digress.  And certainly green would have been a decent color choice.  Black not so much, a bit limiting, kind of bleak and rather hot for about a month. 

It was no accident that we were led to use red as our canvas colour.  Blood red. 

This farm, our life on it, is the gift from blood, from the blood of Christ.  The blood that washes away sins, brings abundance and peace beyond understanding, that binds souls together like no other blood.

It was a gift that led us to come here to this farm twenty-six years ago, a gift that caused us to stay, to raise our daughters here, to befriend those who passed into our lives here, a gift that grew Dirt and I as one, the one that we were already but came to fully understand through the gift that is His blood, His sacrifice for us. 

Some people have fish to remind them of Who’s they are, I once wanted a tattoo of a crowing rooster to remind me, but now I have red, blood red, sanguine, to remind me, to make my heart leap with joy and to keep me following Him, directed towards His will, changing daily in His hand.

Categories: Farm Make Over, God the Father Son and Holy Spirit, Spiritual Disciplines, Vicktory Farm and Gardens | 10 Comments

I Would Rather

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Lanny

I’ve been thinking a thought lately and I wanted to get it to sound right before I wrote about it,  but I can’t seem to find a better way to word the thought so…

I would rather do the will of God and have it “appear” to be a bust, to have not been a good “choice”,  than to not do the will of God and have it appear to be all right. 

Do you get my meaning Dear Reader? 

Sometimes, because we look at something too fast, or frankly, because we do not have the vision of things that God does, doing His will often seems… well, rather foolish.  It would sometimes appear by circumstances that things didn’t go well enough to really be the will of God.

But then we might wanna look at a few of the folks in the history written by God’s hand through his people, if we wanna think that because “God is in it it will always turn out good”.  For one right off the top would be Jesus’ mother, Mary. 

Not but a few short months after saying yes to God’s will she is giving birth is less than meager circumstances even by the standards of the time.  And then shortly after that her husband is packing her and her small child up and running off to Egypt. 

How ‘bout the fella that God told to marry a whore.  Yikes.  Even when he did, it didn’t turn out all rosey for sure, just ‘cuz he did what God asked him to do didn’t cause her to become a perfect wife. 

 So I beg that I may put aside my ideas for the future and even for what has already gone, that I humbly do the will of God instead of what I or culture would think the wiser choice.

And for those times when I want to wail and cry and say I can’t figure out His will, may I be reminded of the latter part of Psalm 142

Lord, I flee to you for refuge.

Teach me to do your will,

  for you are my God.

Lord, I have confidence that You will teach a willing heart what Your good will is. 

And when I want to crumble and think that Your will is too hard may I continue to be encouraged by the rest that says:

Your good spirit will lead me to the land of justice;

  for your name’s sake, Lord, you will give me life.

In your righteousness you will lead my soul

  away from all tribulation.

Oh God. What may seem like tribulation and difficulties and a wrong path to the world, is not, You give me peace, a peace that surpasses all understanding, all understanding.  I need only rest in You and Your will.

 

Thank you for listening once again Dear Reader. Today, according to the branch of the church that I was raised in, today is All Saints Day and Psalm 142 was part of today’s Compline.  All the words I read for today reminded me of what I have been trying to work out lately and had given up on figuring out how to say at all.

I’m glad I came upon those words today, that God led me gently to them, so that I could hear again what was my heart.   That I would have encouragement to write it out, that I would find encouragement to meditate upon it.

  

Tomorrow we are to have freezing fog!  That should do in the brugs that I did not get moved inside.  This could be a good thing!  They are slow in the year to bloom and have awesome fragrance, at night when I’m asleep.  A lot of trouble and space for little return. 

If I get up and get out early enough, tomorrow should render some of my favorite type of pictures.  The ones you can only get in my absolute favorite time of the year!

Categories: Building A Future, Change, God the Father Son and Holy Spirit | 6 Comments

Irregular Vegetables

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Lanny

Ya gotta admit Dear Reader, sometimes vegetables provide more than just nutrition and a full belly. 

They provide humor.

Hope everyone had a delightful Halloween.  

Categories: Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Views of Fall

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Lanny

Talk about late to the party….

Whew doggy, the new header as we all know, Dear Reader, is supposed to be up on Wednesday and here it is Sunday!  I keep waiting for the not so busy season to arrive.  It hasn’t, and now I’m not so sure it will. 

Catching up on the blog day, just some fun family-ish stuff that has occurred since I last fell off the face of the earth, (personally I’m glad the earth is flat it is easier to find an edge to grab onto as I’m falling and chinny back up)

 

A week and a half ago my second oldest daughter and son added to why October is my favorite month, a baby grand girl was born on the nineteenth,

 two weeks early, and not a second behind gorgeous!

Her name?  Ruby.  Ruby Stone.  Her mamma hopes she doesn’t end up with red hair, I hope she does.  But it looks like mamma might get her way.  We’ll see, hair color changes a lot in our family.  Momma had very dark hair that stood straight up when she was born, we loved it but it did cause some embarrassing moments, then it finally laid down and went blonde.  So who knows with Ruby Elowyn Stone’s hair.

We, Dirt, Bet and I, haven’t spent a lot of time with her, only her first evening.  They live in town, New Dad had this last week and a half off to be with his girls full time, so… we’ll bug her starting… now, with a morning-ish visit tomorrow!

 

Dirt wanted to call Michelle (the new mom) up last Saturday and ask her where she was, we were missing her.  We were all at the annual October gaming day with the horses.  She needed to be there too, she is the one that started us on this unshakeable tradition, Dirt didn’t think that having a baby was really a good enough excuse!

We had lots of fun, the rain wasn’t as bad as predicted, but we were prepared for monsoons. 

Very prepared. 

Dirt has ramped up his camp set up.  Mind you, Dear Reader, we’re only there for a day, seven o’clock until six or six-thirty.  So far Dirt only makes lunch/dinner in his camp.  This year it was chili, burgers with grilled onions, all the fixin’s and chips. 

Next year we figure he’ll add breakfast and maybe fries to the lunch menu.

The Bowerman girls joined us as usual and Justin brought Anna down from up north.

And guess who rode along with the girls?! Me! I risked life, limb and hip!  Bet had me practicing and accumulating rear-side blisters the two weeks before the show, so I wasn’t in too much danger of physical calamity.  But I was riding Ivan.  That alone on any particular day can leave a person a fine line from a fracture.  Sorry, no pictures of me, I had the camera on my belt.

But lots of the girls, the arena is rather dark and my camera isn’t fancy so the pictures are blurry, but you’ll get the picture…

a fun day, all of us rode in three or four events,

and Bet rode both Holly and Ivan, training for all three of them. 

Bet offered to let me ride Holly in the last event, but I’m not that crazy, Holly likes to run in the game shows, Ivan prefers to barely lope.  Right now that is my speed, gone are the days that I would willy nilly throw myself on my horse, Easy, and see how fast we could go over land and logs. 

But I have been bit by the bug.  Next purchase will be a helmet.  I’ve experienced a mighty whap on my noggin’ back in o’ three on asphalt and I don’t care to experience that horrid feeling ever again.  I saw a gal with a helmet that I really liked, when I got home I looked up the brand, Tipperary, and they weren’t all that expensive so it’s on the Christmas list.

 

I won’t keep you too long today Dear Reader, I’m still experiencing the “busy season” with lots to do.  I do believe that I’ve reconciled myself to not ever seeing a not-busy season again, so I need to stop waiting for a good time to catch up with blogging.  The housework on the other hand, it can still wait.

Categories: Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Two Halves of A Whole

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Lanny

This is a special post for two reasons, it is a celebration of the Header Challenge’s second year and it is a post done jointly between Lanny and EBet.  Make sure you visit the other header challengers their links are on my side board.  Oh, and Bet, EBet’s, blog is Paddle in the Pond.

Opposites aren’t always so opposite, oft times they are compliments, vital compliments. 

Many of us are taught to see the world black and white, and judge between the two.  We see wild places and un-wild places. 

We learn that wild places are those areas that man does not touch except for an occasional visit. 

The un-wild areas those that man manipulates. Then, in this current social climate, without question, we deem the wild places “nature” and everything else is unnatural.

Which of course is certainly not what the word nature means.  The origin of the word would have it that it means essential qualities, the nature of something is its innate disposition, nature is the creative power in material world as it is derived from the the Latin for birth.

The cultivated portions of a farm are no less of nature than the wilds.  It is of Brussels sprouts’, broccoli and

 

beet’s innate disposition to grow in a well groomed bed within fingertip reach of its neighbors, it is of a farmer’s innate disposition to tend to the needs of the soil that feed the needs of the vegetables who’s harvest feeds the neighborhood.

Here at Vicktory Farm & Gardens it is our nature to have very cultivated areas,

the livestock pastures, the Market Garden and some of our ornamental gardens,

And have wild areas,

beyond the pasture fence surrounding the big pond and swamps.  Two sides to the same coin, the two places that make one. 

The non-cultivated areas are vital to the health and well being of the farm, and yes, when the coyotes, bear or cougar sneak in from the wild areas to take one of the lambs, or the raccoons or opossums steal a chicken, or the vegetarian vermin hollow out a prize winter squash, it is hard to be thrilled to have wild areas up close and personal to the cultivated.  

In spite of the trouble, the benefits abound.

Not the least of which is the soul enrichment for the farmer and the farmer’s visitors.  Places to wander, and to let your mind wander or get completely lost, to think about everything and to think about nothing.

Wild places serve as a classroom, they remind a farmer why he/she does the doin’:  the soil enriching, the mulching, the protection of tilth and critters.  And it gives how-to tips. Put additions on and subtract harvests a little at a time and the status quo never skips a beat.  Giant upheavals  dramatically change the landscape, the micro-ecosystem, yet they never completely ruin things, lots changes for sure but in it all something entirely new comes along.  Both, status quo and upheavals have their place in nature, wild nature and cultivated nature.

Wild places buffer cultivated places, lowering insect traffic, minimizing contaminants from roadway runoff, reducing wind and erosion.

It may sound like wild places need only exist for large tracts of cultivated areas.  Areas devoted to wilderness certainly take up a lot of room that could be used.  But the use of space for wild areas isn’t a waste, no matter the size of the farm. It is always tempting to use every inch, always tempting to make everything neat and trim and under control. 

But we control enough, sometimes what seems out of control is actually in control and allows the farmer to tend to the cultivated with vigor.

Categories: Farming Manners | 10 Comments

Memorable Moments

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Lanny

You’d think that with a header challege theme like Memorable Moments in Your Life, I would remember, however, I forgot all about it until last night just before going to bed, so I stayed up to figure out what to put up.  

I started in on a collage so that I could fit in the pluralness of the header challenge. 

Oh heavens, there was not enough space, so then I tried to go with just memorable moments for this fall,  Deary me, you’da had to get out a magnifying glass for that one Dear Reader. 

I gave up, I had to go to bed.

Morning found me with a whopping headache from mulling over what to use.  Oh I know what you’re thinkin’, by lookin’ at my header you think I caved and just threw somethin’ up.  And I admit it could look like that unless you look deeper into the eyes of those Sunshine Squash.  Here goes my thinkin’… 

Those squash represent a lot of memorable moments.  The picture brings flashes of memories working in the garden with my children, and Dirt, the gardens here and the gardens that lead up to here.

Memories of a garden over by the sound in University Place where two newlyweds learned to work on a project together. 

A garden in the back of a city house where I began to share the wonders of growing and planting and chickens with our first Vick Chick.

Coming out here, unlimited room for a garden, watching little girls harvest dry beans, rake leaves for mulch, run with baby goats, chase chickens, flop around in a fit when weeds needed to be pulled, wrapping twine on bean frames, picking flowers, hiking in the woods identifying trees and shrubs, horseback riding for a whole day, with Dirt, with the girls.  Those Sunshine Squash represent a lot of sunny memories. 

Not to mention the memories of last year when we first discovered this lovely little squash, man alive it is yummy.  But unfortunately last year the mice discovered them as well, and we didn’t end up with very many. 

Looking at these squash I’m reminded that I didn’t think I would have any this year, the weather was awful, the soil was still soggy and cold come planting time, heck a majority of the garden was still under water. 

I started the squash too early in the Hippy Hot Hut, they don’t really appreciate the whole transplanting process.  Then when I had to move the squash to bigger pots I had to supplement my potting soil mix with compost from off farm, it was questionable at best but is was all I had, so I used it.  And sure enough it croaked three-fourths of my starts, squash and others.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, the weather continued to be mostly wet and cold until mid-July.  I’m surprised I have any thing in my garden this year let alone a fairly good crop of winter squash. 

So the final memorable moments in my life that my header reminds me of … that I’m a fool that is constantly carried on the shoulders of Someone far stronger than anything.  Constantly blessed far beyond what I deserve or can comprehend. 

So I’m sorry I ‘m late with my post, nearly a whole day, but there ya have it.  Go see what the others have for Imac’s choice of “Memorable Moments in Your Life”.  Sideboard for the links.

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So Here’s a Little Controversy Talk

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Lanny

I’m not sure I wanna be a farmer.  Oh I love working in the soil, correcting imbalances, seeing things grow, planning, planting, weeding, nurturing.  And I love people, I want the best for folks, I wish all folks knew with confidence their future, their eternal future, short of that I want other folks to live well.  And for my part, I want them to eat well and find things that bring them beauty and refuge.

But I’m not sure I wanna be a farmer for others.  Just sayin’, not sure I wanna put myself out there. 

Not that I would be growing cantaloupes for people all across the country, but there is a very dedicated team of brothers farming in Colorado who love to grow cantaloupes, lots of them.  Some go to their close neighbors in Colorado and some travel across the country. These fellows, who love cantaloupes and the land and people and people who love cantaloupes, they put themselves out there, year after year and grow cantaloupes, until this year.  The Jensen brothers started off their twentieth year growing their popular cantaloupes and then they got the call, the call that tells them there is a problem with cantaloupes from their region. 

Now their cantaloupe crop is done, not because the frost of fall arrived, but well before the season was ended their cantaloupes were done, they shut off the irrigation, sent the harvesters away and watched this year’s crops die, prematurely, in the field.  And when the brothers go back to their  homes or office, they get to watch the news that blames them for death and sickness and they get to deal with the lawyer who is dealing with a lawsuit against them. 

Listeria.  Listeria is a soil borne bacteria that can be, but isn’t always, carried by animals, oh and by humans in their “you know” tract.  The little buggers can hang out in all sorts of places, like factories, for a really stinking long time, even in your fridge.  They can actually grow in your fridge when you have it set around 40 degrees.  Basically, I’m not sure why we haven’t all died from listeria poisoning, or any other sort of food poisoning or just from the stuff that floats in the air, just in case you breathairians were getting all uppity there for a minute.  When Dirt and I were gifted a book on sheep diseases we almost threw in the towel, after quickly perusing the book it looked as if sheep would just keel over at a moment’s notice because lots and lots of stuff croaks ‘em and the lots of stuff is everywhere. 

I remember as a student nurse thinking I was gonna die from a zillion different things, there is a lot of stuff out there that is gonna kill ya.  Lotsa stuff.   I get it.

I would just prefer not to have my stuff be the stuff that carries the stuff that knocks the stuffin’ outta somebody.

Hands down, the best way to make great soil for growing things, poop.  And the fresher the better.  I like to make great dirt.  I have animals on my farm.  So I would be crazy not to use their various poops.  But sometimes poops are the things that have the things that kill us or make some of us sick, especially when our immune systems are bogged down with life.  But even just dirt does that sometimes, like the cantaloupe farmer who doesn’t have animals. 

So I’d really like to not be a farmer. 

But I can’t help it.  I feel compelled to feed people.  I believe that hunger is a politically and culturally caused problem, not because God’s earth can’t feed all the people ten times over.  We can control and humiliate people through the release and use of food stuffs, so we do.  I can’t prove it and I can’t solve it, but food shouldn’t cost so much and it shouldn’t be scarce, any where.  But all I can do is to feed a few families as good a food as I can raise and for a decent, and when I mean decent I mean non-oppressive, price, in non-oppressive manners.

Ahh but culture and politics step in again.  The culture of fear.  Mine and yours.  Mine at being blamed for making someone sick and the fears of others that my farming practices will make them sick.  And the politicals stir the fear.  Mine.  And yours. 

Dirt, my husband not the soil, says, “Then just grow stuff folks have to cook”  But nothing guarantees that folks will cook it enough.  And how many vegetable do I grow that I don’t eat raw out in the field?  Winter squash is the only one I can think of.  So what would prevent folks who buy my “cook-only” vegetables from “raw snacking” on their way home.  Dead at the wheel by 176th and Waller, put down by a baby zucchini.  Details at eleven. 

Not funny when it is your zucchini, or green bean or snow pea. 

Yet I’ll do it because I can’t help it.  I have to.  Not because we’re not bright enough to make a living other ways.  More because in all my years of living I’ve spent far fewer of them not growing an abundance of things than growing things.  And I cannot see not growing food for others as an option any more.  This year.  This is it.  In spite of previous e-coli in spinach, salmonella in eggs, and now listeria inside cantaloupe, this year we go public.  No more just giving away our spare veggies to friends, no more just growing enough to feed ourselves and a bit extra, no more experimenting and figuring out how to make the switch over from garden to Market Garden. 

Just don’t laugh when the greens are triple washed with a warning label.  And I might make people fill out adoption forms if they want to take home a squash.

Categories: Uncategorized | 5 Comments

This Week’s Plans

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Lanny

Really I only have plans for today, but since I always think I can get more done in a day than I can and tomorrow Bet has a allergy appointment for her Eosinophilic esophagitis, well then, my saying “this week’s plans” for what I hope to get done today is probably far more accurate!

In the kitchen… Pickles, cucumber pickles, naturally fermented, one batch using grape leaves and one batch using horseradish leaves for insuring crispness.  Also pickled beets using a natural fermentation as well.

I need to process a short ton of zucchini.  Some will go for relish and some for winter zucchini cake and breads.

Apples are littering our driveway and Dirt love applesauce so, what the ducks haven’t chewed on or the neighbors pulling into the driveway haven’t run over will end up in the sauce pot. 

Bet is learning the ropes on a new concept in bread baking, no knead, slow rise coming from a cookbook who’s title was more than I could resist, “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes!”  We’ll see about that!

She must be feeling ready for hibernation because she also got out the cookie books as well.

On the Garden Front… Things have slowed in the Market Garden a bit but I do need to do some weeding in the roots and cole crop beds, mulch the onions as they are coming up, harvest potatoes for the week, and rearrange one pair of beds into a set of three beds and two two foot paths for the bramble berries.

The hedgerow low spot needs some more excavating before the fall rains keep me and my medium-orange tractor out. and I would like to make some planting holes for the hip roses and some other selections to move from the nursery beds out to the hedgerow.  I’m not going to plant them until later this month though, just want to have the holes ready.

I took pictures of my dahlias because they came in a assortment.  I like to have some things a little more tidy than a big fat jumble, okay for a wildflower bed but not dahlias. I’ve taken pictures to go along with the description on the markers.  But I really oughta match pictures to the markers before I forget entirely.

The Hot House needs a few improvements so that I can get the overwinter plants in before we have a freeze and then I can work at prepping them for overwintering.  I need more rods up top for the hangers, which is an easy do, the pipe is in the garage.  The bench redo however needs accurate plans and a visit to the lumber store. 

General Farm needs… a sign needs to be made for the highway mostly so the last two puppies can get new homes.  We had a temporary sign up but our windstorm took it down while we were at the fair.  Sorta a good thing, because a permanent one really needs to be made, Farm name and number on top with hangers on the bottom for available products, like the puppies, turkeys and eggs, just to name a few

And finally, but not last on the list, tidying up the house, doing some deep cleaning (like spring cleaning just not in the spring) painting and rehanging my porch door and then redecorating for autumn, I know, late, but….

Well gotta go Dear Reader, life moves pretty quick under my feet.  Updates at eleven… (not really, I’ll be in bed! But I will be back soon, still holden’ on to my new blogging grove.)

Categories: Homemaking, To Do List | 4 Comments