Life on the Farm

[Halethala]

((Huge hugs to Dream for the idea! Since anything goes, here goes nothing! *laughs* I'm sure it'll bore some to tears, but it IS an odd lifestyle to many I meet online))

I crested the small hill a half mile to the north of us on my way to work a few weeks ago, surprised to see about a half dozen men, pickups, a few tractors and some odd equipment I didn't immediately recognize. "That's a little odd, it's not the right time of year for a Field Day, is it?" I thought to myself. (A Field Day in my part of the world is where seed companies hold special events in the test plots they've contracted with local farmers, where they've grown an assortment of varieties side by side for comparison, and then invite the neighbors to showcase their products and help them decide which they should plant next year. There's usually hot dogs, sodas, logo-imprinted give-aways and other propaganda involved.)

As I got closer, I could see there was mud all over the intersection, and I knew enough not to step on the brakes and lose control in the slippery, viscous stuff. But once I got into it, I knew immediately that it wasn't mud! All I could think of was "oh GREAT . . now I'm either going to have to wash my car, or park on the edge of town and walk in to work!" *laughs*

Later that evening, my husband began telling me his ordeal with the mess. He gets up at 4:00 am to go into work, and was met at the corner by a guy with a powerful flashlight, warning him to perhaps turn around and find another way into town. He assured him that he'd make it through ok with his 4-wheel drive, but was stunned to find the sludge was almost up to his bumper!! While I had made it through with minimal splash, he definitely had to park way beyond everyone, and scrub his shiny red pickup at the carwash on his noon hour!

You see, less than 2 miles to the west of us is a huge dairy operation, close to 9000 head of Holstein cows in confinement sprawling over hundreds of acres, producing nearly 10 million cubic feet of slurry . . which is liquified manure! They've developed an ingenuous way of knifing it into the surrounding fields (as rich fertilizer) with a "digger" . . by threading out miles of sturdy flexible hoses that are then pulled behind the tractor with a powerful pump pushing the stuff through and into the ground. If it's done correctly, there honestly isn't very much smell involved. However, the best laid plans often go awry!

Apparently one of the seams in the pipelines had split, somehow, spilling thousands of gallons into the county ditches! So much so, that it flooded over our road and rolled on eastwards for a long ways before they noticed it (in the middle of the night! A dairy never shuts down, they milk the cows nonstop, 24 hours a day) They brought "honey wagons" and sucked it all up again, spreading straw over some of the ground to help the grass re-grow. We both wondered if it would kill all the grass in the ditches, but amazingly enough, you can hardly tell it even happened now, only a few weeks later.

Truthfully? I was very nervous about them building so close to us, and worried about the odor . . and am quite certain there will be larger disasters down the road. But for now, other than the spill, and the increased truck traffic hauling silage to their 35 foot high silage piles, and the influx of Hispanic workers that they've brought in to provide cheap labor, and the constant drone of machinery in the distance on quiet nights . . we hardly know they're there!

[Halethala]

'Possums and Parking Lots . .

My mother used to tell us about all the little animals and birds she saw, living as she did on a backwash of the river that ran through her city. She was already beginning to lose parts of her vocabulary, and describing things was becoming a challenge for her. Small evidences led me to wonder if she hadn't had some small strokes, since even her handwriting had changed. I was never quite sure she was really seeing what she was telling us about as some of the things were quite apparently hallucinations. Yet one of the things she described that got her more excited than most . . unlikely as it sounded, the way she told it, it just had to be an opossum.

Then, years later, we began to see them here, furtive little ghosts shambling back into the shadows of the ditch . . and skulking about the barn, their narrow, rat-like faces and shiny black eyes so terribly foreign to us! Even then, we didn't suspect that they were the culprits in the rapid depletion of the catfood we leave out for all the feral cats. Not until a quick bit of research, and information to arm ourselves against eradicating her. (I say her, since her girth seems to suggest an impending blossoming of the population!) What was once held with awe and wonder we now want to send on it's merry way for someone else to deal with! And feed.

It's winter now, officially. For us, at least. It's to warm up again later this week, but we've had a white mantle for 6 days already. As much as you brace yourself for it, it's still hard to accept once it fully settles on you. Snow. Cold. Wind. More darkness than light now. Today is a holiday, one I actually took the day off work to enjoy selfishly! I have 3 weeks of vacation time I'm supposed to use up by the end of the year . . not going to happen . . and still I wander into work even on most holidays to help out with things that still need doing. Today I was hoping to go shopping an hour from me. But it's snowing, and schools in that direction are closing and the weather site warns of slippery roads. So I will stay put.

There is no end of alternative ways to spend the day! There are projects I've delayed until "I have the time" . . there is writing to do, calls to make, that quilt I've been wanting to start planning out . . and best of all, winter is here! While most of the world sees a change in the landscape as fall dissolves the summer green, here the entire surrounding lands become one big parking lot. The fields that once varied in height and density and color and fruit are now all plowed and flat and leveled beneath the coating of snow. For miles and miles, as far as my limited strength can carry me, my snowshoes can take me on a thousand directions, not just the roadways and coyote trails and deer paths. There are the rune-shaped prints of birds and bunnies and perhaps even skunks and badgers to be found, and the sparkling, soft bunches of fresh flakes as they teeter atop my leather mittens to be examined and admired and loved . .

All of it to be loved.

[Lady Edfeil]

I can't believe it's winter already in Minessota. I mean, I know it is... but if you just put our descriptions next to eachother, it's strange to think we are talking about the same season. Yesterday I was sitting in the garden, without a coat, in just a thin pullover over a T shirt, watching Joseph run around chasing leaves and picking up acorns. All the while snow has carpeted your part of the world already...

[Halethala]

*smiles* I think that's why the poem by W. H. Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts" has always held a special place in my heart . . the irony of life humming along merrily for one soul, while there are others facing such completely opposite circumstances, good or horrible . . (although snow isn't quite exactly comparable to crucifixion! . . although some might argue that . . )

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

[Halethala]

There is just something so . . professional . . about wearing heels to work, right? The resounding and brisk "Clop, clop, clop" as you stride across tiled flooring, and even thin carpeting, for that matter, just seem to make you want to stand up straighter and bark orders! *grins* Well, not quite . . it's probably the irritability from the silly things pinching my poor feet. Two days in a row now, that should do me for a while . .

The snow has vanished again, even though there were moments of fluffy flurries yesterday, and it feels so awfully cold in the monotonous winds. It's such a wonderful place, this new adventure of not allowing myself one instance of self pity, no matter what. I woke this morning on the glum side, but it really takes so little to make me smile again.

There were two excellent opportunities yesterday to give in to worry again . . one reason eventually dispelled by suppertime, the other simply something that one can do little about, really. It seems out neighbor directly across the road from us had their empty house broken into in early November. It's been on the market for over a year now, listed in the local real estate agent's websites but only 3 viewings in all that time. They've locked it up tightly, and whoever broke in tried several different places before getting through an upstairs window. Nothing was really stolen, and things (there is very little there, just things for staging and cleaning the house) were mussed around, but no serious vandalism. She said law enforcement was suspecting "Urban Explorers" . . a new trend in youth adventuring.

The thing that's creepy about it is that we never lock our house, and yet nothing was bothered here, less than 100 yards away. It was such an odd thing to move up here and find that no one much did, not in the country, at least! Even vehicles were not only left unlocked, but the keys were expected to be left in them! You never knew when someone might quickly need to take it to run someplace, like fetching a digger from the north quarter. I hate to think of having that beautiful, albeit antique, trust shattered so . .

[Halethala]

Plank Guys . .

It's gotten cold enough to finally begin freezing the edges of the lakes and rivers, varying from paper-thin isinglass to only slightly thicker yet at this point. But my husband commented that the "Plank Guys" would soon be out. I'd never heard the term, but apparently ice fishing fever is so deeply ingrained in the blood of some anxious men (I think in this case it's safe to gender-alize this tendency!) that they will scoot a large plank of plywood out onto insanely thin ice and teeter on it just to be the first ones to plunk a line into the chilly waters! And yes, several have already fallen through. We get them all winter long. Men . . dogs . . cell phones . . snowmobiles . . four-wheelers . . vehicles of all sizes and weights, all the way up to brand new Super Duty Club Cab Pickups . . Ice fishing is not for the faint of heart. (Nor for the intelligent, I'm tempted to add . . but that's not quite fair or accurate. It really IS an exciting venture, once the ice gets about 2 feet thick . . yet even then the creaking and occasional booming cracking sounds - that sound like thunder rolling away from you - caused by the shifting air pockets beneath the ice while you're 75 feet from solid land do tend to make the heart pump faster. OK, MY heart at least!)

Have I mentioned the 'Possum score yet? Man - 3, 'Possum - 1. Hopefully the last one got smart and wandered someplace safer.

It was supposed to be warm enough today to melt the fragments of snow that still dot the landscape, but it didn't quite get there. The windchimes have been working overtime for days now, and I never tire of hearing them even though the propelling force makes the cold seem like an assault. There are actually folks here who wear those fur lined earlapper hats, like in "Grumpy Old Men" although most of us tough it out until it gets seriously sub-zero.

Our holiday plans keep changing. My incredible and wonderful mother-in-law passed away last spring, and so far her husband is managing somewhat poorly on his own, yet determined to remain on his own, so we've decided to bring Thanksgiving to him that day, rather an impromptu gathering, and not all the family.

And then there is shopping on Black Friday . . a female version of Ice Fishing, I suppose.

[Halethala]

So it is official. They are definitely going to de-construct the nice tar road in front of our place. Right in front of our place. Gads, I've already lost two nights of sleep worrying how we will get back and forth through the seas of dirt next summer, before reminding myself it IS a few months away yet. Heh . . . but it will be a mess, even they admit that. They also assure us they have to get us in and out of our homes every day, even when they are in front of our place. Which will probably be a "week" . . now I know that in man-talk that is at least in multiples of two. Two weeks, at least. Probably more. I shall plan on making arrangements to live with someone in town for the duration . . somehow. Maybe. We'll see.

I still can't believe I fought to have our 18 year old lilac hedge torn down and removed, but even I, as allergic to math as I am, can figure out that if you expand the road out by 2 feet and the ditch by 6 feet, that we are going to lose capacity in the ditch to hold floodwaters. We've been flooded twice in the time we've lived here, neither very major floods either. At least 1200 acres of farmland drains right into our ditch as we're in a rather low spot, and the most rainfall we've ever gotten in one storm has only been about 3 inches. We have watched others get up to 7 inches! If we got that, our entire porperty would be under water, not just the ditch and front lawn. One can plan as best as possible, but there are always exceptions. Still, why tempt fate anymore than we need to? If it is a contest between my hedge of my house, the house wins. So they hedge goes.

Besides, as much as I love the 300 feet of lilacs, it isn't quite what we'd wanted when we planted them. A little too much privacy! You can't see anything in the summer through the dense screen of greenery. I'm actually slightly happy to think of maybe planting a better option.

Plus they are also tearing down the massive maple that has been slowly dying from the top. Planting trees is hard enough, but removing them once they die is a horrendous task. Even so, I hate to lose trees. They are such wonderful things, and the kids and grandkids loved climbing in the lower branches . . and this summer we actually hung a swing up under it. The beautiful oak we planted close by a few years ago is still decades from providing equal amounts of shade.

Oh well . . no choice, really. Unless the government runs out of funding to go ahead with the road work. Which really IS a possibility.

[Halethala]

So the economic squeeze reaches deeper for us all . . reaching even to us personally. My husband came last night with a letter from his company, one of the largest employers in our small city. With regrets, and I know this to be sincere, since many employed with them are their own family, and they have been stalwart in all their dealings for nearly a century . . but a forced "vacation" is soon to come, two weeks, it said. You can apply for unemployment, but will not see the money until after you return to work . . perhaps late in the month. Yes, they are planning to return to full production . . but . .

My hours were cut as well, nothing major . . but it all adds up. We have no children dependent on us now directly, so that will help some. Tightening our belts will not hurt too badly.

Winter continues . . deep sub-zero temps still hung on into this week, and the snowbanks are as high as ever. Thaws come and go . . spring will come . . things will get better. Eventually.

We find things to laugh about. Look forward to seeing our grandson for his one-night-a-week visit, the anger over his own father so completely absent from his little life has subsided into the background. There are blessings hidden in all things . . like Easter Eggs that you finally discover in the middle of the summer heat.

There are two brand new baby calves in the barn now, one choose to adventure across and over the high drifts to see what he could see . . my husband had quite a time capturing him again, bruising his wrist as he slipped and crashed atop a wooden fence on the return route. We used to name them all, though it wasn't much fun being constrained by his insistence of incorporationg the names of both sire and dam, or at least the sire . . I always thought my suggestions were delightfuly creative. He rarely agreed.

"Power Play", "Mr. Clean", "Icehouse", "Who Made Who" . . see what I have to work with? Not that the smallest things can't inspire you. I feel my muse thawing a little, humming gently once more. Promising . .

[Dream Loxley]

Stay strong and focus on the good things in life my friend. Keep that muse thawing too! xxxx

[Halethala]

They moved all the old folks out of the Fago nursing homes a few days ago. This is not my flood, not this time around . . not that the last one was either. But it was my mother's and thus, vicariously, became mine too. So many memories triggered by watching this play out less than 2 hours from me. A flood of memories.

I drove home that day through water streaming across the road in two places . . the first didn't surprise me, the second place really did . . but the third place you couldn't have gotten me to believe if I hadn't seen it myself! Right in front of our house. It didn't make any sense until you looked more carefully. It really had no place else to go. Ironically, it was April Fool's day.

I called her then, a chill shiver coursing through me as I told her to be ready . . they were in for a great deal of water, everything here drained past them. Way more than this winter. The conditions were just all wrong. Too much snow, too rapidly melting. My brother the Math Teacher took time off to go help, long before the little backwash of the Minnesota River even thawed around the edges. In 5 days it went from a nearly invisible gurgling past the trees in her back yard to a roaring torrent capable of wedging massive bridge timbers into treetops . . the contaminated, icy waters eventually filling right up to the ceiling of her walk-out basement.

I think it has been, in the background of many of the newscasts, the drone of the muttering gas engines use to fuel the pumps that siphon the seepage back over the sandbag dikes that provoked the most poignant memories. Constant and annoying . . and ultimately useless, in the case of the '97 floods, but we didn't realize that when hope still held. For days, people we didn't know showed up to lend a hand with the increasingly heavy bags of sand. Dry sand is manageable in fairly good quantity. In fact, we growled a bit at the ones we thought were not filled enough, considering them a waste of bags. But wet sand is murder. You simply had to step back and rest a little when they kept slipping through your aching hands. There were fewer women there on the lines in the steady drizzle . . until nearly every road out of town closed, only the main highway to the east left unsubmerged . . and the lines were abandoned.

I took some pictures, the day before we all had to leave. Not enough. Some images my lens didn't capture, but they will remain with me until memory fails me as well. It didn't seem right to sit down when you were tired, not when others were still working so hard. My brother actually damaged his wrists permanently, and I know he didn't sleep for more than 2 hours stretches for a full week, he kept vigil on the pumps. So I'd walk around town when I needed to rest my arms. Downtown, every business that faced the river had been flooded before, but it was still stunning to see. The falls, once dozens of yards deep, barely showed above the rising crest, and the upper cables of the walking bridge had become matted with debris.

But it was the exhausted river rat, huddled in a doorway, drenched, shivering and ignored, that captured my attention. I didn't have the heart to chase him off, and wasn't brave enough to try and help him. It was the water filling streets blocks away from the river, creeping up through the overwhelmed sewers. It was the deep deep ruts in the lawn that her husband got angry over . . even though it was the only way to get the sandbags to where they needed to be. It was the yellow rain hat my eldest wore, that made everyone laugh, and that I knew he'd never wear again. It was getting bumped off the dike and tumbling into the frigid waters (on the inside of the levee, thankfully, and not into the river itself!) my breath instantly sucked out of me by the shock of the cold. It was the stench of kerosene that caused nearly as much damage inside her house than the flooding actually did. The electricity failed, it was an attempt to keep the pipes from bursting as a blizzard bore down on us, adding insult to injury.

It was driving back home as night fell across the moonless, watery landscape, and hearing the radio announcer halfways home that "absolutely no travel was advised for the entire area", which explained why I didn't meet anymore vehicles after the first 10 minutes! It was a lonely, frightening, dangerous drive, and I could not stop crying once I was safely back home. I can't remember ever being so sore and exhausted as I was the next morning.

It was the National Guard soldiers guarding the city in the weeks afterwards, to keep all but the homeowners out. We needed passes to get in to retrieve things from her house. It was the news reporters that interviewed her, seeing her on TV later. Some not getting the details right.

It turned out that the blizzard was the best thing that could happen. It froze everything up again, dragging the flooding out longer, but preventing the river from rising any further. They called it a 150 year flood . . but 3 years later we were back sandbagging again. That time, with experience and organization . . and success.

They've bought out all the homeowners on her street and the other one that flooded so badly that year, some of those homes nearly a century old, and moved the houses elsewhere. Built up an earthen dike that will protect the city much better. She was never the same after that. I heard that when a Grand Forks nursing home moved their residents out that same year to other placements, not a single person survived the year after it. The stress is incredible, the clean up taking absolutely months and months. Of course, everyone handles things differently.

I think, though, that there is this shaking that happens at times like these. Almost like a trust has been broken. Things we depend on are no longer as dependable. We all know that disasters don't always happen someplace else. Sometimes they happen to us . . . or at least too close for comfort.

[Repsol]

Letha I am in awe of you guys over there, so much happening, of course we see it on the news and in the newspapers but until you read it like this it seems so distant, we don't get to hear about the hardship of those it affects and can only wonder, I am sending me most special and to ALL your guys there and just know you are never far from me thoughts and always in me prayers.

Oh and you flatterer I don't do lawns or that mowing thingy one of me minions does.....LOL

Hugs ya tight Rep and Him. xx

[Dream Loxley]

I think you both could write about anything and capture me! Reps is so right Letha.......unless we use the internet to find pictures and more detailed news items I dont believe we really get to find out just how good or bad a situation is anywhere. I for one do enjoy the research and have got to know a fair bit about many places around our incredible planet. I do sincerely hope the flooding subsides and the weather improves so you can all enjoy the new season with hope for the future. xxx

[Halethala]

The spring has been blissfully benign here, very little rain, and no horribly cold days, and more important . . no killing frosts . . yet. We're still not "safe" from them, but you just have to plant in hope, or it's midsummer and everything's still itty bitty.

My son the Farmer has everything planted, except the Turtle Beans, whatever the heck they are. His girls were with me when we passed a massive John Deere mega-tractor, and I asked them if they had one like that. Nope. But then we dodged around a yellow one with tracks like a military tank, and they bounced and exclaimed that they DID have one like that. Blessed blizzard, things have changed since I was a kid *grins* I remember driving a little orange Allis Chalmers with a 2-row cultivator. It would take a month to do just a few fields, running morning till dark. Now my brother-in-law has equipment that does 24 rows at a TIME.

They put me on a field digger once, made me feel invincible! The thing was like a swath of destruction, that, if one is not extremely careful, you can rip out a century old fenceline in a heartbeat. Only practice, and a lot of it, could hone an ability to make impossibly wide turns without either gaps or overlaps . . neither acceptable.

I love my other brother-in-law the Storyteller, once you get a few beers in him. (Too many and he evolves into Hilariously Obnoxious) He was telling us about a precocious neighbor boy we all knew, how he wasn't doing very well in school, but boy oh boy he wasn't a dummy! At only 8 years old, he could tell you anything you wanted to know about anything mechanical on their farm . . how many bushels each grain bin held, when it was built, who built it, how many horsepower each tractor had, how wide each implement, how long it would take, on average, to knock down a section of land with it, etc etc . . He went on to explain about this young fellow driving their skidloader from one farm to the other, and I gave them a horrified look.

"Is he even big enough to reach the pedals?!" (thinking of other tales I'd heard of farmers putting their young sons to work on a tractor by tying wooden blocks onto their feet so they COULD reach the pedals)

Everyone turned to look at me to see if I was joking, and realizing that I wasn't, their faces grew amused. "It's a SKID loader, Barb . . they don't HAVE pedals!"

Then the teasing began . . addressing my husband "You really need to let her push snow around next winter" *Chortle, hoot, gales of laughter*

What kind of farm wife doesn't know how a skid loader works!

[Dream Loxley]

;D Has no idea what any of these vehicles are........thought a tractor was a tractor *chuckles* and getting stuck behind one in the UK with our little roads....well.......great fun indeed!

Lovely insight to your life as always xxx

[Thanatos Gray]

*ka-clunk...and is in awe of your stuff here Halethala* *WG*

Thanatos