Farm Tours Restart

Welcome back for more tour of Vicktory Farm & Gardens! Didn't mean to let nearly a year go by. Today we will be strolling in the Barn Garden and talking water and weather, hope you wore your boots. Anna could run to the kitchen and get some bread sacks to go over your shoes but those stilettos your friend there has on definitely won't do.

In the scheme of things this garden sits west of the house, I can see parts of it from my new big bedroom window (the lilac hedge blocks a full view). In past posts you have seen the South Pastures that sit just west of the Barn Garden and share a pond, and in Hang Out Spots tour you saw the yard that is just the other side of the east boundary fence for this garden.

Let's get started, come off of the driveway here and come through the gate in Dirt's special fence.

You'll see a lot of plastic 5 gallon buckets around the Farm, they come in super handy. I use them to pick up my weed piles so I can throw the weeds to the chickens, easier than a wheelbarrow I gotta get up more often than a wheelbarrow load or I won't be able to unkink my legs.

There is a little strip of garden that separates the driveway from the main Barn Garden. We'll come back to that at the end.

For now we are going to go on through this second gate, gate way actually, because the gate is old and needs fixing. This walk way is rather muddy because the rain off of the big barn roof comes through here and out into Barn Pond. This issue is in the process of being solved, unfortunately it isn't at the top of the list.

I do a lot of ditching around here, no the "d" is correct, I dig a lot of water ways. I'm a hydrologist. The biggest issue about keeping someone out of the garden early in the year in the PNW (Pacific North West) is water and soggy soils.

This is what the soil looks like this time of the year when it gets walked on. Not a good look for garden soil.

That is the reason nearly every gardening area here at VF&Gs is a raised bed that has hidden electrodes around it so that you get blown to the next county if you step on the bed. Well, not really but a girl can fantasize about things, can't she?

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A raised bed is one of the basic season extenders here at VF&G, one I wouldn't do without. We make them simple. No treated boards, no plastic "lumber", no concrete blocks (the poison they all leach has a way of undoing that home grown goodness plus they harbor slugs, bugs and fungus) just a three to four foot wide bed not much longer than twenty feet (otherwise you find yourself cheating and jumping the bed to get to the other side). They are sometimes straight and other times they go with the contour of the landscape. We employ them not only in the "vegetable" gardens but also in the ornamental gardens as well.

The soil in these beds is nice and fluffy and can actually pass the soil lump test just fine right now, if you took a similar sample of some other areas like the lawn or the market garden strip in the pasture rotation, it would not pass the test for a couple of months. It is also warmer than soil that is all soggy and wet because it can't drain.

Being able to get into the garden at this time of the year is a real bonus, and in spite of my being slightly jealous of those areas that get real snow and ice for winter, it is why I love living here in the PNW. With a few season extenders PNW gardeners can produce food for most of the year. So yes, our tomatoes are a challenge and fresh corn is barely a month long treat but if well attended to, a PNW garden can provide very well.

It also allows for gardeners to stay ahead of weeds. I suppose that ice and snow has a damper on weed growth but being able to weed during the slower growth months of winter really helps this procrastinator stay ahead, okay, a few steps behind the weeds.

Winter weeding is an art all to itself. I should tell you all about it soon. I hope you noticed a specific pattern to the little garlic plants coming up, it is called equidistance planting.

But for now lets look at another season extender, my cold frame. It sits just to the left and forward as we came through the last gate (the gate way). The area around it is trying to find itself, the beds just in front of the glazing side is becoming Bet's herb garden area but this funny spot back here is having some serious identity issues.

Here is the front glazing side of the cold frame, it is oriented exactly to the south. Not necessarily always the best choice, sometimes it is better to catch the sun a little earlier and orient it slightly to the east, but when you only have one and you can't make decisions well, you go with normal and average sometimes just to get the job done.

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There are some things inside, lets lift the lid and see.

A few flats of last year's left over onion seed, onion seed like just a couple other vegetable seeds is only really viable for a year, but I hate throwing things out so I went ahead and dumped the packets into flats just to see what I could come up with. And I think the showing was worth my trouble. This week I will be seeding flats with this year's main crop of onions and in a couple more days these guys in here will be ready to come out and head to a garden bed. Most likely in the North Garden.

So this is the view looking west from the cold frame area. We rather went crazy with the garlic this year. It will be interesting to see just how much we really need to be planting. Even though Dirt eats lots of garlic, with the varieties we end up growing he doesn't eat as much of it as when we get it from the market. So it will be interesting to see how sales of garlic go this year and how much we really need to plant. Yippee I am so excited about our new adventure. But we'll talk more about that later.

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For now let's go over and look at Bet's two new peach trees.

The names escape me at the moment, I'll get back to you on that in the morning here, They are semi dwarf and won't get much over fifteen feet or so. Bet says she is looking forward to coming out here with a good book and a saddle pad and taking her breaks from work under her peach tree, she has a few years yet before that vision actually fleshes out but I love her patience and I admire her faith. I now understand what it means to have the gift of faith, Bet has it. In spades. About absolutely everything.

Here is the other peach tree, the two trees line up with a spot she has picked out for some other trees. They are semi dwarf and of course deciduous, so the fact that they sit in the center of the garden isn't a real problem. The sun will climb up in the sky before they have their leaves and there will only be a lovely dappled shade underneath them, just perfect for somethings that can't take the heat of our dogs days of summer, five days in August.

This is our hoop house made from livestock panels. It has been a lot of things, a gourd arbor mostly, a cold greenhouse in the late winter/early spring and a great spot for the mums to get their early boost if it is a super cold winter.

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Most recently it served as a chicken coop so that Bet could separate out some of her breeds. It may be that again soon. There is supposed to be a chicken coop built along the west wall of the barn, it will serve to keep the water from the base of the logs of the barn and house Bet's breeding stock but the Hot House/Market Shed complex comes first and then we might collapse for a month before we tackle this project.

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If stock panels weren't so stinkin' expensive at the moment I'd have more of these, I'd anchor them a little differently, but this one was hard to do because there is a concrete slab we were spanning with the hoop.

Standing up here at the hoop house and peach trees looking south we can see Bet's duck house. It finally got its front doors on and so the ducks got kicked out of the big barn and now Bet comes out and locks them up out there at night and lets them out in the morning.

They were being pretty good at staying on their side of the fence until the last couple of days. Something will need to be done to keep them from coming in here and pulling up the garlic and onions. They seem to be attracted to the green, go to pull it out, taste it as they are pulling it out of the ground and decide they don't like it. Unfortunately Bet hasn't successfully trained them to replant it!

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They really like their pond and they can wander all over on the other shore and up around the turkey pens but they seem to like to dabble in my garden this time of the year. I think its the green shoots of the garlic, I haven't seen much signs of slugs and other treats, besides if they are in here the slug and bugs are also out there.

Bet and I have been doing a bit of research about dealing with grey water, specifically the water from processing poultry, for when we apply for our license to process. We have come across some interesting info about cleaning water by running it through bogs planted with cat tails and some other specific water plants.

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The heavy stalks in the water in the center left of the above picture is a little colony of cattails. I am really drawn to cattails and would love an excuse to have a larger planting of them up around the Barn Garden.

The boggish place just to the right of this fence line has been filtering and dealing with the grey water from the farm house every since there was inside plumbing here. It is a great system and rarely puts off an odor, some compost piles smell more than our little un-designed bog.

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The pond just beyond the bog supports bull frogs, cat fish, occasional escapee trout, and the ducks of course appear to thrive here. Not to mention the resident river otters and beaver clan along with clearly healthy pond side flora.

Here's a view from the far southwest corner of the Barn Garden. The fact that the majority of our grey water has its own system and doesn't go through the septic makes our septic all that much more healthy. Besides in a septic system the grey water would pretty much end up doing what it is doing right now. Go through a soil/plant root filter before eventually ending up in the pond.

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It is all so freakishly green I can hardly speak of it. Funny, things on farms were green long before now and old farmers knew how to protect the water and soil supply. They didn't really need the Birkenstock, or black nail polish crowds to tell them how to take care of the earth that they depended on.

Here is a big view of the south west side of the barn and the hoop house. In the foreground is one of the gazillion weed piles. Lots of my weed piles, stuff the chickens would rather not eat or just the stuff that is more than they can handle, are cold compost piles.

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They eventually rot down and no, the weed seeds aren't burned up, but man that takes a heck of a hot pile and I'm just not that into doing that at the moment. The hot compost will come when we have to start dealing with poultry offal from the processing. But as for the weeds, I'm beginning to think they aren't so stinking bad, I really feel strongly, come 'round July or August especially, that we actually ought not to weed any more. But that's a discussion for another day. Right now I love weeding.

And I love tossing the weeds to the chickens so that Bet doesn't have to put alfalfa in the hay rack that you see the hens sticking their little head in (the bluish green square on the right half of the coop. This is the winter housing and where the breeding stock hang out. In the summer the eggers and the meat birds head out to the pasture and will become an integral part of the pasture rotation that we will be incorporating this year. MiG. Managed intensive grazing. Making the most of less land. And something Dirt and I are very excited about. But... you guessed it, we'll talk about that another day.

If we turn around and look east we come across my aronia berry bush. I have some more up at the nursery beds that will be coming down here this month during transplanting days.

I have no idea yet if this moon signs planting business is really effecting the plants and bugs and weeds (there are days for dealing with everything!) But it sure is doing a good thing for making me get stuff done and not get sidetracked with a bazillion jobs all at once. I need a way to keep me focused or I end up not getting anything finished because I am doing too many things.

A better view of Bet's herb beds in front of the cold frame, the bright green little tufts off to the left of the picture are her chives, a lavender and a sage is just beyond that.

The bed between that one and the cold frame is filled with lavender starts from a plant that I rooted in place by heaping soil up around it and in the middle of it. Each branch then became a rooted plant. It is a great way to multiply several different types of shrubs and herbs especially when they have been neglected of seasonal pruning and get all out of shape. A "do over" of sorts.

These are a examples of raised beds that are not straight. I would like to do more large gardens with not-straight beds but that will come later in my life I think. Right now I just like to get it done and get them planted. Soon I will have more time to shape and have fun with different geometrics in the garden.

These big lumps here on the far left are not more weed piles, they are my enormous comfrey plants that if I have time will be busted up this year and dispersed through out more areas of the farm. Comfrey is an amazing plant in the apothecary and out in the garden. Its huge leaves are great in the compost and add some really good extra nutrition, because of deep roots it can pull up lots of minerals from the sub soils.

I can't think of a plant that doesn't like to be near comfrey or have its big leaves as a mulch during those five hot days in August. It is another great bog and pond edge plant and has tremendous water filtering abilities. It is just simply a must have plant.


This for me is a dreamy view. I like to look far across the pond to the other bank and the white barked aspen. To me they are like the paper birch in the painting by Carl Larsson of his family picnicking or the one where they are fishing. Sometimes I like to think I live in Carl's world.

This is the little gate way and walk that Bet takes to let her ducks out. This spot is also in need of an identity and restructuring, something I hope Bet and I can get to and get into process later this spring or at least by early summer.

We turn around and head back for the gate by the barn. Our raspberries here on the right on the fence line await their annual trimming and tying up session, hopefully this year I will get to it before the leaves are out, that makes a tough job tougher. I'm utilizing a bit more of my wonderful black weed mat, Water goes down through but weeds are really discouraged from growing and it is even impervious to armor piercing quack grass.

On the right side of the weed mat walk way you can see a couple of step in black plastic posts. Those mark where I think I want some climbing roses to go up over some hoops toward the raspberries, forming a arbor-ed walkway here. I like secret little walk ways and such so we'll see. The fence post in the fence line are old creosote and I keep the raspberries back from them for the most part but I would like to move the raspberry operation some place slightly less toxic entirely.

As we head back out the gate you can see the walkway, between the barn wall and the chickens, becomes a holding place for my mums in pots and the fruit trees awaiting their new home spots.

Sometimes I get a little crazy with the old and makeshift things we've got going on here but then most of the time I just embrace the character of it all. And then, I am thankful that God has placed me here and not in a modern home on an uninteresting, history-less plot of land.

Like the stories this little garden by the driveway holds for us.

Some where in that center bed lies the first casualty here on VF&Gs. A murdered sheep was buried by yours truly about our second or third year here. Back in '88. Dale's flock of sheep had come out here to live but not before the pet lamb of the wife of one of his worker fellas had been mistaken for a locker lamb. So after the flock had been here a while Dale dropped off a sweet little Cheviot to hang with the group, replacing the mistaken identity lamb.

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Well, sheep are flockish, and they did not accept her, She spent most of her time many yards from the flock, she ate separately from them or after they were done and had moved on she would come and clean up the leftover. She was excluded from coming in the barn to get out of the rain or the heat.

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Then one day it was particularly rainy I was glad to see that she had obviously gotten to go in out of the rain because she wasn't in the barnyard. But when I looked over the door I didn't see her. Well this is turning into a long story and has nothing really to do with gardening so I finish it up later.

Along with buried sheep and my second oldest's pet goose being buried in here, down by the lilacs there, was where the out house stood for the former resident and now neighbor and old work buddy of Dirt's. All another long story about just how small the world is and confirmation on God wanting us here.

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But as for the outhouse part, Dave says that when he left home for the Korean war the out house stood right about where the lilacs are or maybe a little over to the right where the path goes out onto the lawn. But when he came back there was a new addition on the house and indoor plumbing.

Well that's the end of the tour, long one for such a small space, you can come in and take advantage of the indoor plumin' if ya need to and you can stay for a cup a tea ifn' you'd like. I gotta get on with the hallway project but you can pull up a chair and keep me company while I paint.

My Daughters Crack Me Up

The other day our youngest Vick Chick, Anna Banana, Peanut Butter, maker of phenomenal pies, bread, dinners and more, all from scratch, was going to make the dinner of her daddy's fond desire, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. She does the best grilled cheese of anyone I know, it is an art form. That night the sandwiches were wonderful as usual, the tater tots baked to perfection. But the soup? It was a bit strong tasting.


"Anna," I say to her, "What did you do to the soup?"


"I don't know! It's awful isn't it? I even added a little cream to it, and it is still awful."


"What kind of soup did your daddy bring home?" I inquire, knowing that she has on occasion used the store bought tomato soup out of those cool hermetically sealed boxes, but the can she was unfamiliar with.


"It was that nasty canned stuff. I had to use three cans" She says.


"Did you add a whole can of milk for every can of soup?"


"No." She replied indignantly, "It didn't say to."


Knowing that this is also my incredibly impatient child, at times over the top impatient, I asked to see said can because in her favor it may not have been the can I thought it was.


It was.


Give the girl a sack of flour and a couple of apples and she turns out a beautiful pie or with a little yeast a nice crusty loaf of bread, give her a bag of peas and some quick instructions while you work in the garden and she has a lovely hearty soup waiting for when you're done, but she has no time for a stupid can of tomato soup.



Then there is Bettispaghettie, Betti-kins


Betti-kins aka Elisabeth (not pronounced like Elizabeth) is my oldest at home girl.


Sometimes her humor surprises the heck outta me because she is so dog gone quiet most of the time. But her father is rubbing off on her more and more and she is beginning to make up songs about whatever she sees or is doing at the moment.


The other day while she was suggesting to her little (nearly taller than her) sister that the dogs needed tending she came up with this song and it soon became the anthem for the weekend. It is sung with a little western twisted tune (where'd she come up being such a western music person I'm not totally sure but in my need to place blame I might look in a hedgerow somewhere).


Give the dogs food and water,

It will change your life.

Never let your mother or your daughter,

hate your wife.


Now I don't care who you are, but that is downright funny to hear being sung by a gaggle of girls in the back seat of a big fat Ford 350 diesel dually going to the feed store to buy some hay and chicks.


But then if you think about it no truer words were sung. It isn't good for a man to allow his mom or his daughter to have ill feelings towards the woman he is married to.


I think we forget what that word married means. In cooking you can put a stew together hastily and bring it up to a hot and steamy temperature with some quick heat but you will be able to taste the full flavor of the individual ingredients if eaten separately. However, if you take the time to marry the flavors then you could never again completely separate out the different components as if they were separate foods on a plate. They are married, now one, inseparable. The meat essence has oozed from the bits and melded into the softened carrot chunks and the carrot fragrance has infected the potato, nothing can be separated from the other, not completely.


With stew it takes time, but through the miracle that God has created in human marriage it only takes a moment, a moment of a vow, an acknowledgement and the two are one, never again completely separable.


It doesn't take years of dating, a lengthy engagement or a big wedding, it only takes what the community accepts as an understanding of marriage and it is done, forever. One shot. You are married for the length of your life. You cannot get the other out of your skin, children or no children. They, the children, are not how you become one. God proclaims the married as one, not two living together until the children come; they are in fact one, one right now and one forever.


If the mother hates her child's spouse, she hates her very own child, for now the two, her child and another, are one flesh and always will be. The idea of a mother hating her child isn't healthy; for a mother to hate her child's spouse is to hate her child and that is crippling to a mother.


So the husband in Bet's song can't allow that to happen not just because he loves his wife but because he loves his mother and if his mother hates his wife, she hates him and if she hates him she does damage to that thing inside her that is a mother. She would be denying what she was created for, motherness.


When Jesus takes the thou shalt not murder thing to a whole other level with His Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5) he showed how our ill thoughts and words towards another is right in there with murder. Solomon, the wisest man, knew that a mother could never murder her own child without causing herself chaos and degradation. Connect the two.


Somewhat similarly, a daughter cannot be allowed to hate her mother for it will do her damage and her father cannot let that happen for it is the father's job to keep his daughter from harming herself. To hate her mother would do just that, harm the daughter. She came from this woman, she cannot stand in the kitchen with her hands on her hips, level her face to her mother's and scream her hatred for her without causing untold damage to herself. She hates her mother? She may as well hate herself. And as we know from Jesus' lesson to hate is to murder. Self-hatred is suicide. Self-hatred by the way is not the same as self-denial or self-control or selflessness, not in the least.


Need some more dots to connect? Commandment five says, honor your father and mother. In Ephesians it is pointed out as the first commandment with a promise. The promise is for a good and long life; “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”


The promise is not just a cookie that God gives for being good but a natural consequence in God's magnificent creation. And we know that a certain amount of time isn't really that same amount of time in God's perspective. Even in our own minds time can change; a good time, a happy and joy filled time is as productive, worthwhile and seemingly long even if it is shorter in actuality than a miserable retched time where regrets and disappointments live at the end.

If you hate yourself by hating whom you came from, who's DNA you have making your hair curly or your eyes green, then you are not going to live a good long life; it will be short and miserable even if you live to ninety-six.


So it may very well have been a silly spur of the moment Bettikins song but it is very, very true.

Inspired to Share a Memory

So Saturday, I spoke of how Mildred inspires me, she does so with nearly every post, I try desperately not to be inspired by her lovey tea, coffee, chocolate and lemonade sets, lest Dear Dirt, just a poor school teacher and sheep shearer, be driven further into poverty by his wayward wife and her tucked away plastic.


So because of Mildred, and Empress Bee, who is always gallivanting off to sea, wearing a tiara, to eat cake, luscious delightful cakes and when she is on land is always speaking of making these clearly southern creations of hers, and because I live with Cake Girl, I was inspired to build a cake Friday. If you're hungry and you missed it, scroll on down and have a slice, there is a little left I am sure.



Another inspiring person I read is LindaSue, (you are all inspiring really, otherwise I would not be reading, and I hope to get to you all). She is in the middle of kidding season, not to be confused with comedy month. A while back she told of going to rescue a neighbor's_goat that got it's head stuck and the rest of the herd was bashing the poor thing.

Then in another post about kidding she and Kathy were discussing how goats and sheep have little sub-herds within the larger herd and so now she has inspired me to tell you a story of when Dirt and I were starting out in the sheep life. Pull up a cushy chair 'cause this is another of Lanny's Longies.


As most of you know, Dirt and I rent our farm from the late Dr. Dale Tibbits DVM and his lovely widow Norine. Twenty-two years ago, after we had been here a year Dale brought his sheep from another farm out to this farm to eat for the summer. The flock stayed into late fall, mid-December, and one actually lambed here, a very early, but not unheard of, start to lambing.



Dirt found the momma and lamb off by themselves, we scooped them up and brought them into the barn until Dale and his farm manager could come and pick up the rest of the herd before they lambed under the inexperienced eye of his crazy renters (us). How inexperienced were we?

Even though I had been raised by a farmer boy and a farmer girl, the farmer boy went on to be a suburban businessman because farmer girl never wanted to be on a piece of land that even remotely looked like a farm ever again. So my farming knowledge came from having been farmed out to cousins in the summer and listening to hours and hours and hours of farming stories, lore and advice all my growing up years from my father. And the gazillion books I read. That was all the experience I had, but it was enough to know that Dirt had next to zero.

I had already introduced him to gardening and learn that he knew that plants went into the ground and that was pretty much the extent of his garden knowledge. But he was especially deficient in the lamb department, because when he saw the lamb he freaked out because it had a tail! I stood in disbelief because even though I had never been around my cousin's sheep farm during lambing season I knew they had tails that needed to be taken off. Besides, had he never recited Little Bo Peep?

The flock, ewes and the ram, came back early the next summer so that the lambs could stay at the other farm and be weaned. While the flock was here, Dale asked if we wanted to see them through the next lambing season and he would split the lamb crop with us. "Cool" was our less than mature answer, we thought Dale made that offer because he saw what great farmers we were.


Lambing season went really well (the last year that happened) and late winter passed onto early spring in a "happy go lucky, laid back, life on the farm", John Denverish sorta way. Everything about "farming" went well for Dirt and I that year. My garden had been huge and profitable, nearly every meal clear into early spring came from the garden, the root cellar and the cow that we had butchered. And now with lambing season having gone so well, we looked forward to the lamb that would be on the table next winter.

One day Dale's farm manager shows up on his way back from the auction, and in the trailer he has a young sheep, a Cheviot type. He explained to me and attentive little Stephanie, that the previous fall the lambs that had been kept over at the other farm for weaning were then ready to be slaughtered but mixed in with the lambs for slaughter was the farm renter's pet lamb. On slaughter day the slaughter guys arrived before he or Dale could get there and of course the first lamb to be dispatched was the friendly little guy who immediately came up to the fence when people showed up.

The renter's wife was very sad, and a little mad, so Dale and his farm manager, Bruce, promised to replace it. So here they were with the replacement. Which I found rather humorous because it was clearly no one's pet and wanted nothing to do with people and it was here at this farm instead of the other farm where the renter who lost the "pet" lived. But that was how things were done in my life from then on out.

I was happy to have her, she was very pretty and very different from the rest of the flock, however the flock did not agree with me. Yes, they could tell she was different but they were not happy to have her. She was all white, clean white face with stick up ears, they, being all Suffolk, were white fleeced with wool-less back faces and legs, and their enormous black ears droop slightly to the sides of their heads, very different sheep indeed. You might say like day and night. And they knew it!

For weeks she was not allowed in the barn by the other sheep. When they were all outside she was many yards from any of them at anytime. I felt very bad for her and gave her extra treats, but as she was not very trusting of humans sometimes she didn't always get her treat, because our big moosey tame Suffolk were always there to get it before she did.


One morning we were having some nasty spring weather, I sloshed out to the barn to do chores and I was glad to see that she got up the gumption to go inside the barn with the other sheep. Poor thing was against the wall on one side of the barn while all the other girls were lined up at the wall feeder on the other side. I felt bad for her but at least she was in out of the weather.


After lunch I went out to check on everyone and see what was going on. I didn't see my new little friend anywhere in the barn. She must have gotten tired of being a wall flower and went outside, the weather had cleared so she would be okay. I went to lean over the half door to grab the water bucket and it wasn't there. What the heck had those silly sheep done with the bucket? They were all staring at me in a rather sheepish manner.


"Girls, where is your bucket?" I said as I hopped over the door. Once I was in the barn I could see that the bucket was under the feeder. "For crying out loud, I was coming out to give you more water, there was no reason to throw a fit," I exclaimed to them as I tried to tug the bucket out from under the feeder.

I had to get down on my knees and reef on the bucket to get it out, "What the heck?" I griped while tugging and tugging.

Once I got the bucket out I could see there was something else behind the bucket way under the floor of the feeder. I reached and grabbed onto it and pulled out my sweet little friend.


They had bashed her to death, and then stuffed her under the feeder hiding the evidence with the water bucket. The evidence was clear, the bucket was still retaining it's new oval shape. Unbelievable, murderous sheep. Just because she was different. Not of their herd.

I was sobbing by the time I got her out from under the feeder and shaking by the time I got her out of the barn. I had yelled and screamed hateful things at my other dear sheep, now that I knew what they were capable of, shewing them out of the barn and locking the out into the pasture.


I was racked with sobs as I headed to the house to call my husband. His friend and colleague, Jim, answered the school phone.


"Jim, is Phil there?"


"Yes, but what is wrong?" Clearly Jim could hear the distress in my voice.


"Oh, it is horrible, one of our sheep is dead, the other sheep killed her."


"That's too bad, but are you sure she is dead?"


"Yes, I am sure."


"Did you try Sheep P R?" he says completely even toned.


On any other day, if it was someone else, that quick witted Jim was pulling this on, I would think it to be rather funny, but not today and not to me.

"Uh, Jim, could you just get Phil please?" I say in a sad voice, not a hint of laughter.


"Sure."


Phil got on the phone to hear the bad news and he said to just put her in the wheelbarrow and that he would take care of her when he got home.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.


"I'll just take it out onto Weyerhauser land and set a trap for the coyotes."


"You can't do that. You can't let her be torn to bits by those coyotes."

Long pause on the other end by the sensible husband talking to the irrational, momentarily overly sensitive wife.


"I'll just bury her" I say. I thanked him for talking to me and being willing to help but that I would just take care of it.


So back outside I went. I hoicked the body into the wheelbarrow and took a break while I surveyed the areas where I could bury her.


All around the house and in most of the pasture the soil is nearly rock-less, so that wasn't really a factor in my decision but I didn't really want to go too far as the baby and little Steph were in taking naps. I thought of how the Indians planted fish under the corn for a better crop so I figure I would put her in my garden where I was going to plant tomatoes.


I got the shovel and began to dig. I took a break to go get my inhaler and continued. I had a beautiful grave dug for her. Sides were straight up and down it was nearly chest deep, okay it wasn't six feet down but this wasn't a county grave site and she wasn't a human. So I hopped out and took another puff on my inhaler as I went to get the wheelbarrow, aka hearse, with the poor deceased sheep in it.


I wheeled her right up to the edge and though it didn't seem very dignified I figured my best bet for getting her into the hole was to just up end the wheelbarrow and let her slide on in. Besides it was better than what Dirt was going to do to her.


So I grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow and up they went, but contrary to expectations she did not slide right in. I did not account for rigor mortis having set in and her molding to the wheelbarrow. I tried to shake her out but all that happened was that I lost hold of the wheel barrow and the whole works went into my beautiful grave.


Oh this was not good. All that was sticking up were the handles of the wheelbarrow. Straight up. I stood and stared at it for quite a while. Then I resolutely turned toward the house.


I walked back to the house, grabbed the phone, dialed the number for Dirt. Again Jim answered, but I spoke so firmly and my voice was strong enough that Jim just answered with, "I'll get him, hang on."


When Dirt came on the phone I explained that I had dug a beautiful grave in my tomato garden. He agreed that it was as good a place as any and it might do the plants some good.


I explained to him what had happened when I attempted to dump her body in. He inquired as to what I wanted him to do about it.


"I wanted to know if we could use the handles of the wheelbarrow for tomato stakes?"


To which he busted out laughing and told me no, that he had just bought that wheelbarrow and no, tomato stakes should not cost fifty bucks. I told him I thought he was being very narrow minded and unfair. He told me to get the wheelbarrow out of the hole.


So I did. But first I took another puff off of my inhaler.


That garden saw many grave stones in the next year. Then we had to branch out. There have been a lot of deaths here at the farm, there have been many sorrows, tears, anger and a little callousness has set in also, reality eventually dawns on even the idealistic. Many deaths have come after hours of work, like floating cold lambs in the bathtub till your arms feel like they are going to fall off, only to have them never make it.

One time my husband and some of his work friends and their wives rented my sister's house on Cannon Beach, at the last minute I didn't join them and my girls because my favorite Nubian goat was so pregnant with triplets that her back legs went out and she couldn't move. Even though I was fairly pregnant myself I would hold up her back legs and take her for "walks." That however, was one of the successes of our idealistic crazy work. She lived for many more years and her triplets all survived too.

As another blogger Cliff, a real farmer says, This Farming Game Is Not For Sissys. And there have been plenty of times that I have come to the clear conclusion that I am the chief of sissys. But then there are times when I am Eldon Barker's daughter and I buck up and put my shoulder to the grindstone. Once in a while I even come out with a funny story. Thanks Linda for inspiring me to share this one rather humorous story.

Capping Off A Week Of Visits

A week of having visitors each day was capped off by having good friends down from up north for the weekend. (See Stephaine and the Boys, A Fun Day At The Farm And Another Daughter Comes To Visit, More Farm Visitors if you need to catch up)

Saturday we went for a walk out in the back forty with the Coulters; Mark, Becky, Justin and Trevor. Dirt wasn't really worried about rain, (note the rain gear) he was doing chores just prior to coming out back.

We did run into a few rain drops during the day but for our walk the sky was beautiful. We enjoyed it and so did all of the dogs. Dale was out in the back mowing some fence lines for Dirt, so his dogs were hanging out with us too. Dog confusion.

The three little girls are always investigating something, their little noses work over time.
Martin's nose was working overtime too. This was perhaps the third and by no means the last time Bet had to go get him away from Dale's dogs, I'm sure Dale wouldn't appreciate having a litter of Lab-Rats.

Enough for our walk, we're heading back to the farm house to see if we can decide what to do. Bye Dale, bye Labradors.
So we went with Anna's pick, and and found ourselves at the Pierce County Fair. Too bad, no Morton Logger's Jubilee, no chain saw exhaust, too late of a start, oh darn.

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The fair was fun and the girls got to see some old friends in the swine, sheep and poultry barns. Dirt and I did a lot of strolling down memory lane including finding this up in the poultry barn.If you enlarge this picture and look just to the left of center, you will see our oldest daughter when she was fifteen. She is holding a purple grand champion ribbon, way to go little Stephie! Directly over to the right edge of the poster is a picture of our second oldest, Michelle, age eleven, being grilled by the fit and show judge. The picture just above that is a close up of her during fit and show with her little chicken.

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This terrific poster was hanging in the barn because KathyB. was a great superintendent and always did up a poster of each year. It is nice to see that the tradition is being continued.

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All in all it was a great day for us, hanging out with new friends and checking up on old friends.

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All the Bowermans came out for dinner on Saturday night, Mike and Anne had stayed home for Friday gathering. We were glad to see Anne feeling better. We had a good time catching up with Mike and all his stories.

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In the middle of the evening Bet came in with news that some chicken and turkey killers were up in the cherry tree. Martin, her Rat Terrier, had treed them while he was out with Bet putting her poultry away. So all the guys and Bet and Anna went out and "took care" of the problem, while Martin had to come back inside for his safety. He was beside himself.

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The girls will probably do some more skinning this week. In respect for some of my sensitive readers, I'll spare you the gory pictures but if you want to see them you can come out to the farm for slide show nights!

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We, the Coulters and the Vicks, stayed up late watching one of the best movies of recent, Open Range. More shooting! And the best line, "how's this going to work Sue, if you don't do as I say." Amen!

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The late night made for a late morning, but it was all good, no one really had anything pressing this morning.

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But sadly we finally had to let our friends go home.

Maybe I Should Have Just Watched The Show

Sorry dear reader if I subjected you to the result of my trying to multi task. I was probably too tired to even mono task. But I have cleaned up my terrible writing (worse than usual) and set the post Electric Day right.

Today's goal is to focus on what I am doing and get it done.

No more murders last night, but the night before we lost a Polish chick. And I'm telling you, the thing out there is very strange indeed. Phil did get up at two in the morning because he heard a ruckus. When he got out to the barn the ducks were all stirred up but this morning everyone is accounted for.

Bet and I have to go up to Eatonville later today to pick up a full grown Bourbon Red turkey so that we have something for the display at the fair. This murderer or muderers must be stopped!

Who's Poop Is This?

I have a scat identification book, I just haven't gone up to find it.

This belongs to the animal that absconded with our beloved (and not) little blue bantam rooster. Last year an animal came to our farm that we had never heard before. It has a creepy screamy rattly yowl (sounds like a piece of sheet metal being rattled) in the middle of the night or shortly after dusk right down by the cherry tree and the barn pond. And now I wonder if it is all the same animal that has done the evil (or blessed) deed at the chicken coop that sits just above the barn pond.

We'll miss the little blue bantam. Unfortunately we didn't know that we needed to have a picture of him, and besides a picture could never tell you how much a person could love the little bugger and kick him across the coop all at the same time. He was vicious, clearly suffering from short man's syndrome, the only reason he could stay and not be done in was that he was barely a pound and could only hit as high as your boot, hardly a threat really unless you're silly and go out into the coop with shorts, but definitely annoying when you're bending down cleaning feeders, collecting eggs, closing up the waterer and the like. But now he is gone and no one could even find a feather of his for a memorial to our little buddy (irritant).

I think it is funny that Anna and I are reading Hank the Cow Dog, by John R. Erickson, and Hank is solving a chicken murder case. I think I am riding the rails between two parallel universes.