Aug. 14, 2005 ~ Soon
Soon we will get on a plane and travel to the land of children and grandchildren and the cutest grandbaby ever born. Though I am probably a little biased about that. It will be our first time to see her in person, and she is practically all grown up already. We are excited, so excited that we almost forgot we must make arrangements for the care of critters in our absence. But there is plenty of time for that still.
Has it really been two months since I last wrote? Why, yes it has. Have we been especially busy or was something interesting going on here? Not really. Just everyday life, going to work and coming home and cleaning and cooking and doing it all over again the next day. Pretty soon a lot of days passed by. So, what is new with you? Not much is happening here. We are in the middle of a hay crisis. A drought. Big one. At our particular farm we have been luckier than most, in that we've had actual rain from time to time. So our fields, for the moment, are green. We've only had to feed a little hay this summer. Others are selling their entire herds, not willing or not able to struggle and scramble and spend way too much to keep their animals going. I have been giving serious thought to a whole different way of doing things. Some people, probably the more intelligent people, buy cattle in the spring and sell them all in the fall. They have mowing machines, more or less. The cows keep the pastures grazed down and maybe calves are born and perhaps a little profit is made. Or not. But they don't have to worry about hay or buying feed or what to do in the winter time. These people do not name their cows. Their cows are the equivalent of bovine farm machinery. I am attached to some of our cows, and I think most of them are cute, and a couple I could do without completely. I adore our bull. He is precious and sweet, a gentle giant. But when my favorite animals go to cow heaven I think I could probably part with the rest of them. Husband, on the other hand, is attached to ALL of them. He does not want to sell a single one of the mama cows, ever, probably because he works more closely with them than I do.
I could even tolerate not buying ANY cows, and just letting our neighbors put some of their cows in our pastures each summer. But Husband "just likes fooling with 'em," as he says. He likes taking care of them, worrying about them, even, I suspect, feeding them in the rain or the freezing cold. Go figure. So here we are scrambling for hay, again. Our usual hay supplier let us down, and did not seem to notice or care. Memories are long, and we probably won't buy hay from him again, even when he has tons to sell and no buyers. It's a character defect, but that's how we are. If we can't count on him in the hard times, just never mind.
Exciting news on the home front -- okay, this is probably only exciting to me -- we got rid of our old washer and dryer. Big deal, right? They have been here, in our front yard, for over a year. Tacky, tacky, yes, I know. It was the first thing I noticed every time I say our house. Not, "Oh, what a wonderful home, how lucky we are to live in such beautiful surroundings." No. More like, "Maybe we could buy a few old cars and put them up on blocks in the front yard, too." My attitude was getting lousier and lousier. Now that they are gone and I've given up thoughts of planting begonias in old toilets, I'm focusing on other tacky things of ours. There's really no pleasing me.
But we do have a new cat. His name is Mango and he is orange and white and is an outside cat. He would dearly love to be an inside cat but no such luck. He begs daily, though, sure we will change our minds sometime.
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