Wet Dogs

This spring, our prayer for you is that you are released from your shelter-in-place orders ASAP and that you are able to celebrate with as much joy and glee as Colt and Petunia after a dip in a pond. 

 

Just don't go too crazy. You're not used to this much excitement, you know.

winter weather

 When it's been warm but then it turns cold again,

it's usually best just to hunker down in a sunny spot,

cover up with your favorite warm, snuggly blanket (or fur coat as the case may be),

wriggle around until you find a comfy spot, and then fall fast, fast asleep.

And if your boo can keep an eye out for you, and maybe even share the couch, well, blessed are you.

Or Petunia.

Whichever.

the puppies are here! the puppies are here!

Some states call it Super Tuesday because of politics. Here on the farm, it was Super Tuesday too. But not because of Donald Trump's inability to articulate a thought or Hillary's angry rants. Our Tuesday was super because . . . Petunia had puppies!

Last year, Chris found me another Great Pyrenees. We took an afternoon road trip to pick Petunia up, and she curled up in a little ball on my lap and slept the whole way home. That sealed the deal. 

See how cute she was? So tiny. So happy. So little! 

Now she's the size of a small horse. 

See the two puppies in the back? The one on the right is Winchester, and he's half Great Pyrenees. He's now a proud papa. 

Colt, on the left, is Petunia's faithful sidekick Colt, half Shar Pei. But bless his heart, he'll never be a dad. Let the reader understand.

You can see more pictures of their adorable puppy cuteness here. 

So with Blackjack the lab and Winchester running around the farm, Petunia was basically destined to be a mom. And from the looks and sounds of things a couple of months ago, there was no way she couldn't be. 

Doesn't she look like pretty much any mom who has just given birth? Exhausted. Bleary eyed. Hungry. And yet still pretty magnificent!

Chris took a look at Petunia a few days ago and pronounced that it would happen any day. And he wasn't kidding. 

One moment she was shuffling along the deck, dropping treats out of her mouth and then slobbering on them, as is her custom. 

And the next minute, she was nosing at a pile of little puppies that were busy making itty bitty kitty sounds. 

For now, they are tucked up under the deck, sleeping, eating and snuggling. Mama Petunia growls at any dog who gets close and is grateful for any head scratches we have to offer. 

Donald Trump may be busy building walls and Hillary can pant suit with the best of them, but over here, with six puppies, three chickens, 650 cows, a pasture full of heifers and four dogs, pretty much every day is Super Tuesday. And, as with most of farm life, we vote yes.

My name is Adriane and I approve of this message. 

dads

I'm a firm believer that children need a mom and a dad. 

Certainly there are cases where the mom is left on her own, or where the dad shirks his duty and takes off, or where the dad has passed away. 

But I'm not talking the exceptions. 

I'm talking the rule. 

I know how much I need my dad . . . and I'm 31. 

And I know that Georgia already recognizes her dad and responds to him with smiles and toots and big eyes.

She knows her dad because he's here.  

Because he sings to her. 

He reads to her. 

He prays over and for her. 

He tickles her. 

He smooches her. 

He takes her to church. 

He keeps her safe. 

He comforts her. 

He snuggles her. 

He explains things to her. 

He tells her about her future. 

He describes the puppies and the cows and the chickens to her. 

He works long, hard hours so that her mom can stay home with her. 

He tells her about Jesus and politics and land prices and farm markets and how to build fence and dig tile and why Lent matters. 

And he always has a smile and a kiss for her when he comes in, even after working a 21-hour day. 

I can feed her and change her diaper. 

But she needs her dad. 

And I'm glad the Lord blessed her with this one. 


PHOTO COURTESY KATIE LOCKHART PHOTOGRAPHY 

coyotes, round 2

I think we all remember the great coyote attack of 2014. (You can read more about it here.) Ok, so it wasn't really so much an attack as it was a potential attack. But you can never be too sure out here. 

It's been all quiet on the Western front until the past couple of weeks when one coyote has started making the rounds again, trotting into the pasture every morning around 9:30 a.m. and trotting back out at about 9:40 a.m. when the heifers realized he was uncomfortably close and charged him. 

A couple of days ago, he upped his game and brought recruits (aka  his siblings) . . . who look strangely similar to the pups who ran up our road last summer. 

In other words . . . they're back! 

This year, however, Petunia and Colt are on it. Usually. 

Petunia spends most of the day sleeping, but Colt lets her know when the intruders arrive. It only takes her a few seconds to snap out of her sleepy haze before she's locked, loaded and on a mission to rid the world of injustice . . . and the pasture of coyotes. 

Can you spot the coyote in the upper right corner? 

Colt is kind of a chicken and won't run out to meet them (or maybe we'll give him the benefit of the doubt and just say that he's more interested in protecting the homestead), but he'll bark, which usually sets Petunia off even more. 

She sprints down the road as fast as she can, makes a hard right into the field entrance and tears across the field after those coyotes who usually make like bandits toward the tree line. 

So far, the coyotes have made it out alive. But I'm waiting for the day when the Colt-Petunia combo hem them in and don't let them off so easy. Or the heifers trample them. Or they just decide their mid-morning jaunt isn't so worth it anymore in this veritable farming minefield. 

Any of those will do. 

farm blog round-up: the best of the best!

It seems fitting to use the term "round-up" when it comes to farming blogs because old Western songs about round-ups and Roy Rogers' theme songs basically pop right into your head. 

Ok, or just mine. 

Winchester 

Also, you should be forewarned that this post has nothing to do with our farm dogs, although they do enjoy rounding things up.

Trash, for instance. Bottles. Corn stalks. Cardboard. A random glove. Pretty much anything they can find within a three-mile radius ends up in our yard. 

Now if I only could teach them to find discarded vintage Pyrex, we'd be set!

For those of you who may live in the city but are interested in farm life -- and I know you exist because you say so on Instagram -- get your mouse ready to do some clicking and bookmarking. Winter's coming, you know, and there's no better way to spend time waiting for the next blizzard to pass than pretending you're out on the prairie with Pa Ingalls trying to find your way from the house to the barn just by holding on to a rope strung between the two. 

Ok, maybe that isn't as fun as it sounds. 

Still. 

Colt 

Common Ground: The site and blog are written by farmers simply starting discussions about how they produce the food that ends up on your table. And they're super good at helping you break through all sorts of myths and misinformation. 

Country Linked: This is a sweet blog that's just right for all the people who grew up in the country and love hearing stories -- and seeing pictures -- of day-to-day life on the farm that brings all those memories right back. 

Cow Spots and Tales: Just go ahead and zip on over to Lisa's blog riiiiight now. She's a runner interested in nutrition, but she's also a dairy farmer, so all those stories you hear about whether or not it's good to eat meat and if there's antibiotics in your milk? She sets the record straight on pretty much all of them. 

Dairy Good Life: Sadie's blog's tagline says it all: "Cows. Kids. Chaos. It's all good." And it is! Plus, we once stayed at the same hotel in DC while attending two different conferences. We never got to meet, but our IG posts told us we were at least in the same vicinity and that counts for something! 

Petunia 

Dairy Carrie: You've probably seen or heard of Carrie on Twitter . .. or in Chipotle's nightmares . . . or on Facebook. She's a wife and a mom and a dairy farmer and a blogger all rolled into one -- with a sense of humor and a quest to make sure the truth is told to boot. 

Prairie Californian: Beautiful pictures, delicious meals, the truth about gluten and things you never even knew about raising sunflowers -- you'll get all that and more by following Jenny's blog! Just be prepared to leave hungry pretty much every time you visit. 

My Barnyard View: Janet's busy blogging about dairy . . . while learning how to drive a combine . . . all at the same time. I can hardly keep up! 

The Pinke Post: Katie is a wife, mom and agvocate who blogs from the prairie where she -- prepare yourself for this -- lives 97 miles from a Starbucks! That's worth reading about right there! 

You may not have grown up on a farm or ever lived on a farm or even been to visit a farm. But thanks to these ladies and social media, you can still meet the people who raise your food. You can learn how crops are grown. You can ask questions about what animal care looks like. You can hear their stories and tell them yours too. 

Like the time our dogs thought they wanted to take off after a coyote but then Petunia decided to just lay down and bark instead. 

Um, or maybe just go read a good blog about life in the country.

Yeah. 

Do that. 

And their tails all wagged happily every after. 

day 9 of farmacology: naming animals

  

One of the things you may not know about farm folks is that

sometimes we name our animals; sometimes we don't.

I was homeschooled for a couple of years before I headed off to school. Whenever any kid found out my dad was a hog farmer, he inevitably asked, "Do you name your pigs?" 

I always thought that was a weird question. It wasn't because giving names to animals was awkward. It was because, well, how did people expect me to tell the difference between all those identical-looking pink pigs?

A few did have names. One sick pig got the distinct pleasure of hearing 8- or 9-year-old me read Charlotte's Web outloud. I perched on a footstool next to her while she recovered, thinking I was a pretty good nurse, although perhaps my literary selection could have been slightly more helpful. Her name was Princess. 

We don't name all our cows today, but sometimes we do. There's Snout, Lucy, Snowflake, Snickers, Reba, Ruby, Queen Mother, Talulah, Clementine, Gandalf, the General, Dorothy Lynch . . . Some also have numbers, and my farmer can recall many of those digits just as quickly as he can a name. 

We have a whopping six chickens at our house right now. Our rooster's name is Horace, but the five hens have no names. We've had well-named cats too, like . . . Truck Kitty and . . . Little Kitty. (Ok, so we struggle in the cat moniker department.)

And that's not even mentioning the four canines who keep all coyotes, mailmen, falling leaves and raccoons at bay. 

Some farmers name all their animals. Some don't. Some, like us, go for the combo approach.

But if you come to the farm, and you spot a calf that you think is just downright adorable, tell us her number and give us her name. 

We'll remember both. We promise. 

Want to read more of my 31 day farmacology writing challenge? Click here. 

day 3 of farmacology: naps

One of the things you may not know about farm folks is that

we take naps, and we take them in really strange places. 

Farmers are notorious for working from sun up to sun down. But that doesn't mean they don't take a break here or there to recharge. 

My dad took a nap almost every day after lunch. Somehow, no matter how hard he was sleeping, he only napped for 15 minutes. Then he'd pop up, refill his coffee thermos and head out the door again.

Heck, I lay down for five minutes and I can be out for the rest of the afternoon. So that capacity clearly skipped a generation. 

But if you're chopping silage, you can take a 10-minute nap in the chopper while you wait for the next truck.  

If you're waiting for a cow to dilate so you can help pull her calf, you can lean your head back in the Gator and catch 40 winks. 

If you pull your truck up to your house after an 16-hour day and you're too tired to even walk inside, you can sleep in the pickup for an hour or two before getting up the energy to go in the house and shower . . . and then go to real bed. 

If you're planting or tilling, you can stop your tractor, turn off your phone and stay right there in the seat while you catch a nap. 

If you're milking cows in the parlor and you're waiting on the girls to finish, you can pull up a bucket, hold your head in your hands and get a good five minutes in before having to wake up. 

If you're stopping home for lunch, you can fall asleep on a . . . pile of dogs. 

The napping options are virtually limitless for farmers! You get up early, you go to bed late, you nap when you can. 

And where you can. 

If you can. 

Sometimes, even with the dogs.

** This post has been paid for my farmer . . . who has napped in all the places mentioned above. Except he didn't actually pay for this post. He just likes naps. **

Want to read more of my 31 day farmacology writing challenge? Click here. 

this week in iPhone photos {sept. 21, 2015 and maybe the last couple of weeks too}

This week, we wished it was nap time. Like, every day. Cooler fall weather, lots of sunshine, bellies full of apple fritters from a local apple festival thanks to kind folks . . . and we were ready to nap for DAYS.

But there's a baby on the way, so there's really no time for napping. I'd say there might be time for a snooze or two after baby arrives, but let's not kid ourselves here. 

So instead Chris chopped the second round of silage and I went for long walks in what had been--just days before--a field full of corn. The heifers in the nearby pasture kept their distance. Puppies and loud noises have that effect on these girls. 

We went in for an ultrasound at the crack of dawn and found out that we're having . . . a baby! So that's reassuring. 

I took a little work trip to Washington, D.C., where I sat a lot, let people cart my luggage around, got a nice case of swollen ankles and met the awesomeness that is Drs. Ryan Anderson and Sherif Girgis and caught up with--albeit quickly--Mollie Hemingway and Scott Murray. 

And it was good.  

Chris and the guys rounded out silage season--not without some hilarious exchanges over the radios--and drove the choppers and trucks off into the sunset. And we gave thanks that nobody tipped a truck over or backed into each other or drove over the chopper. It's the little things. 

The puppies learned how to bark and howl at nearby neighbor dogs, and yet they still choose to stick together like the Three Musketeers instead of meeting their brother, whose bark from the neighbor's house stopped them all in their tracks.

Literally.

To top it off, Winchester christened the new feed truck by sniffing it, surveying it and curling up next to it . . . for a nap. 

And now, since we've come full circle--all the way back to naps and just the way we like it--I think we're done here.  

a (p)update

Colt - half Shar Pei, half lab 

Just a few weeks ago we suddenly found ourselves in THAT category: the one that includes people who have too many dogs.