It Has Landed

Barnheart By Jenna Woginrich

      As I brought the littles back from the bus stop this afternoon I noticed a bulky white air mailed envie taunting me from the mailbox.  I knew exactly what it was.  It had landed.  Barnheart was here.  I had originally intended for Mr. Pretties to have it mailed to the farm so that I would have something there when we moved in in the next 2-4 weeks, but he was afraid something might happen to it with the mail not being checked regularly and so many different people doing the checking right now, but I knew if it had gone there it I would have a better chance of indulging in it later, because I have no self restraint what so ever, and think I'll probably have to drive it to the farm tomorrow and ask the contractors to please lock it in the house for me.  That's how sad and pathetic my self restraint is.  I also know that I have a few Christmas gifts left to finish for the girls (Waldorf Dolls anyone? Why do I commit myself to things that revolve a fair amount of sewing when I know my sewing skills are sub par and my patience for sewing is even worse?) after they're in bed and I'm now going to have an internal debate about how I need to finish these gifts, my children's joy and innocence depends on it, and my desperate want to fill the tub up with 3' (yes, feet) of bubbles, a good cuppa and Barnheart.  There's something to be said for those with no self restraint and a complete lack of ablility to reason with ones self, and it's not good.

   The main reason I want to hold onto this book until after the move is that it has a purpose.  I have big plans for this books life.  It's going to be the first book I read on the farm.  I have waited to move to a farm and start our new adventure for several years, and read Jenna's blog Cold Antler for two and a half of them, her blog kept the internal fire burning when it otherwise might have smothered out due to overwhelming complications, the apparent impossibility of finding a farm to rent, various personal trials and I want to feel like I've made it.  I'm going to be reading Barnheart in my downfilled chair, with a cozy blanket and a cup of tea infront of a roaring woodstove while the snow swirls heavily outside.  I have waited for that moment for so long, and it's going to happen.  When it does I'll know we're at the beginning of the road we were meant to travel. 

  For years I've felt like we were simply treading water, just keeping the pace in a destination we hadn't signed up for while we should running marathons somewhere else.  It's almost suffocating, to feel that while we should be happy with what we have, you feel like you're wasting precious time in your life doing what you were never intended to do.  Like something is hovering anxiously over your head with a 'wrong direction - turn back' sign while you keep on heading down the wrong road. Winters would pass by filled with seed catalogs and copies of Small Farms on the table, spring would show up with nothing to sow in the earth, summer would pass by with drives out to rural areas where we could catch a peak of the life we're supposed to be living, even just for an hour, and fall would blow passed with nothing to harvest. It was a constant feeling of being missing a season, being behind.  I've never experienced anything else like it, but it's like a winter without a garden to plan, chicks to order and a beehive to build is just another long, bleak drift of cold brown snow on the side of the road.

   Now that we're traveling at the right pace in the right direction I feel like there are so many more things I'm capable of accomplishing.  I've always wanted to write children's books, but 'couldn't' in the place we were in, but I feel like that is a complete possibility with our new lot in life.  It sounds silly but I feel like this situation is going to be the balm our emotional scars are in need of, and once theyre healed our possibilities will be endless.  We're looking into joining the local Farmer's Market for the 2013 market year, hoping that we'll have a handle on our gardens by then and having a good idea of  what products we'll be able to offer people.  We don't have a huge amount of land (no I will not disclose how much, I can't take the hysterical laughter), but I'm hoping we'll be able to do a lot with it and touch a few other families along the way.  Being that we will now have extra 'work' space, I will now be able to pick back up with our antiques as well which I've always thought mixed fairly well with farming. 

   So while the idea of a book in the mail may seem simple, a sweet little package made to delight, it is so much more symbolic than that.  And for that reason I want to savour it on our farm.  Too bad I'm now having an internal debate about whether it would be so wrong to enjoy it for the second time on the farm.  It doesn't have to be the first, does it?  I'd give it to Mr. Pretties to hang on to for the next couple weeks, but he loses stuff (seriously, everything, all. the. time.) and I would never, ever see it again, and while I would like to put off reading it, I don't so much want to put it off indefinitely.  So instead,  I'll just ignore it.  Maybe I'll put it in my purse, which I never seem to take out with me anywhere, but will take special care to bring during the move, and this might ensure that I'll both forget about it temporarily but be able to find it sooner rather than later... 

   Does anyone else have this complete lack of will power? Help!

Finding Your Tribe

... or when you realize you're weird.

  Six years and ten months ago we had one child.  And our family was complete.  We shopped for housewares at Ikea, bought groceries at Sobey's or wherever the almighty flyers told us to, and used Pampers and formula faithfully (not that there is anything wrong with that, obviously).  Our daughter was born in a hospital, delivered by an obstetrician, and the only farm association we had was that we enjoyed a nice drive 'out in the country' on the weekends where we would throw out half hearted desires to one day live there.

  Yesterday I went to my midwife appointment, where we discussed my desire to birth our fifth child at the house (I mean, the farm! Sorry, couldn't resist). We discussed our chickens, and she was so excited to hear about them (I've become accustomed to the glazed over look people tend to get when we mention that we may or may not have poultry in our backyard) and was eager to share her contact info for her 'milk and goat man', something I'd been looking for for the last year or so.  We discussed the local homeschooling groups, her other patients with larger than average families, my cloth diaper order that was coming in, and how long I planned to nurse.  While I was sitting in that cozy room with the late morning sun filtering in through the large front windows I was almost knocked over by the realization that I am absolutely not who I used to be. Or who I thought I was.

  I know we'd made family changes in recent years, we usually buy our furnishings and what nots by thrifting them from stores or auctions, we buy 90% of our family groceries at the local farmer's market, or directly from local farms where we know what went into our food, how it lived, and how it arrived on our plate, we're making the move to a farm where we plan to grow our own food, and were now entertaining plans of a homebirth.  But I hadn't really realized how far outside of mysef I had stepped.  I've always been the 'weird one' in the group, and usually have very little in common interest and moral wise with the people I encounter on a daily basis.  Usually people just find that I'm 'different' and are okay with that, but it always kind of troubled me that I didn't seem to fit in anywhere.  But sitting there and discussing homebirth and raw milk in the same paragraph with someone who would come to my house to deliver my child made me realize, these people are my tribe.  There are families out there who practice all the same parenting and lifestyle techniques we do, I just hadn't realized we were one of them! How do you not realize who you are?

  It's such a breath of fresh air to realize that you aren't alone after all,and you might be different, but you're not different from everyone, because after all,  you've just been looking in the wrong places. 

 

And Then There Was Nothing.

Photo courtesy of Ezinemark.com

   It's funny how something like that can sound so dismal and depressing, but something so important and positive.  Why does there always need to be something?  Sometimes it's perfectly adequate, if not more desirable, to be nothing.  Or to simply just be.

   We needed to vacate the house for a few hours this afternoon so the owners could find suitable tenants to take over our lease so that we could move on to greener pastures (literally, eek!).  So we did what any sensible folks with four young children would do.  We drove an hour, in the -5 degree weather, to go pay our future homestead a visit.  Nope, we don't have any keys to the house, nor can we do much aside from sit in the car, or better yet, freeze our keisters off sitting outside the car, and dreaming the sweet,  sugar glistening dreams of those who are finally on track to start living their lives (which mostly means those that are celebrating the fact that they will no longer have to scrape chicken crap off their garage floor as part of guest preparation). The house has been under going some surprise renovations this month, so we can peek in the windows and see what progress has been made.  We were actually in it last weekend and did a walk through to see what had been done, what still needed to be done, and how completely fabulous it was to realize that even when this house looked a little, well, 'loved' when we first trotted our farm sick selves through, we truly loved it and saw it for what it could and would be (and not the fact that some how it had ivy growing from the outside of the house into the livingroom...), and now that all of the things we thought we were going to have to bandage up and kiss better for it are being done for us, we love it even more.

   How can one love a house, let alone one they don't even know?  I think because houses neither physically speak, nor are able to obviously hint at their feelings, that they've been granted the power of exuding feeling. With all their histories, the years they've stood watch over their growing and changing families, and the feelings that have been expressed inside their walls, they are able to process all of these energies, times, emotions and release them in their own unique way. This unique perfume of feeling is then either appealing to others, or it isn't.  Maybe some time of house pheromones, if you will.  This house definitely appeals to us, on a very primal level at that, and I can only hope that we appeal to it in kind.  We hope to have a happy relationship with this home for many, many years.  It has truly made all the waiting, all the farm disappointment, and all the Barnheart worth while.

   While we were up there we enjoyed the few inches of crisp white snow that had already fallen into a tidy blanket of winter on the ground ( as we have no snow in town an hour away) and the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard (or not heard).  Nothing.  Sweet, wonderful, clear, nothing.  No local traffic, no train, no partying neighbours nextdoor.  Nothing.  It was as pure and crisp as the winter snow, and as cozy and heart warming as the blanket it immitated..  It might sound silly, or even frivolous to some, but even though we have lots (and lots, and LOTS!!!) of plans for that acre, and no doubt will be making a fair bit of noise (sorry new neighbours, I really am!), I am really looking forward to nothing.  To taking some well deserved time to just be. 

  Maybe this is how people go about finding themselves?  If you 'be' long enough, you just might come knocking?  If so, I can only hope the person I think I am, and the person I strive to be, are the people on the other side of that proverbial door.

Good-Bye City Life!

I just spoke to the conservation authority and... the farm is ours!!!  He sent me the nicest email about it, and I don't know whether it was my overwhelming pregnancy hormones, the fact that we've been looking for a farm for over two years, or all of the above, but I cried.  It's such a surreal feeling.  So many of the things I've read about, researched, priced, and dreamed about can stop being a 'someday' and start being 'soon'.  Amazing.   And to top it off  I can now use 'The Farm' in a conversation at will.  We've talked to the kids about the impending move and they're all okay with it.  They were always ready and willing participants in anything to do with visiting a farm, keeping chickens, or the like, and were thrilled at the prospect of moving to our own farm, don't get me wrong.  But BLP was absolutely terrified the last few times we drove out to 'the farm' (see? Isn't it awesome!) because there is a lot of wooded area around us that looks rather gloomy, being the time of year that it is, and is extremely concerned about getting eaten by coyotes. So much so that she has refused to leave the refuge of the car everytime we've been there.  (you know, 'at the farm', hehehe) I thought it might be difficult for her knowing that we would be living there, but she was totally fine with it.  We looked coyotes and wolves up on YouTube and watched them, listened to what noises we might hear at night, read about what things they eat in the wild, so armed with that I think she feels a lot better.  Otherwise we're going to be sporting a spare room in the house (the FARMhouse) while she resides in the car. 

I feel like I have so many exciting things to do now!! I want to get a cord of wood sent up each pay from now until then so that we have something when we get there (I do, however, feel like we're starting a few steps behind, being that we didn't prepare for winter over the summer...), phone the oil company to discuss filling the tanks ($1800 - ouch!), getting some straw and hay sent up for the chickens/rabbit and whatever else we end up with.  Good stuff! The highlight of my weekend was when we drove up to the farm to get some measurements and another resident was out walking their dog on the back road and gave us the two finger wave.  Yes sir, we were two finger waved.  Mr. Pretties two fingered back with a head nod, and I was incredulous, I was all 'Did you SEE that?! Did you see what he DID?! We got the two finger wave!!!'  I was seriously stoked.  Is that wrong? Or weird? Or both? Probably, but it so made my day.  And to that I say:

Good-bye City Life! Green Acres We Are There!!!  

The Agony...

... Of this wait is KILLING me!!  We've now clearanced the library debatacle and are awaiting on reference checks.  Normally this would be a non-issue as we have some fairly fabulous references (which, by the way, happy to be real), however when your previous-previous landlords change their number and even their son doesn't have the new one, your previous landlords changed their number (seriously, our landlords don't run off to the witness protection program after we leave, I promise) and sent it to you via email, which you then deleted and are having a hard time getting ahold of them via email only, and you don't want your current landlords knowing you're planning to vacate right away.  Something that should have taken a mere 48hours is now going in to day 8. EIGHT.  The BIG eight.  Not two, eight.  *Sigh* I find myself being unable to make any kind of decision due to this 'hold' we're now in.  Mr. Pretties is all 'Do you think we should get LP ____ for Christmas?' and I'm all 'well how can I possibly know what Santa should bring if  I don't know where I'll be living in February?!'  Add to this my nasty pregnancy hormones and you've got a recipe for I don't know what, but whatever it is, it isn't good.  I'm all 'Pfft... I so hope we don't get that crappy old farmhouse, man that place sucked' on the outside, and on the inside I'm all 'pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease...  I'll never swear again, I'll start being more frugal,  I'll never buy another Bath and Body Works 3 wick candle...' on the inside.  What can I say, it's a constant battle.  In my head.  Which leads me to be very thankful that my email is no longer linked to my blog where the rental company could read what a mental case I am ;)  It's all about the small things! 

In other news, egg 1 of 12 I believe has quit, but 2 of 12 is filling up his egg completely and getting ready to bust out on Monday or Tuesday (SQUEAL!!!  Hatch day is coming friends!!!) and out of our second clutch that I am hoping beyond hope Browna continues to sit on after Brownie's egg hatches this week as this clutch is 10 days behind this baby.  Out of seven eggs six of them are developing beautifully, they look like little swimming fish with black eyes, you can actually see them swimming around in their eggs, I seriously doubt there is much cooler than that!  So we've got some fun stuff to look forward inside the next two weeks.  The only down side to this farm is there's a house between our farm and the next that is quite close, I'm concerned this will cause reason to be sans rooster, which means sans chicks, which means I will cry.  We'll see, but I have this feeling...

I'll keep you posted on that crappy farmhouse I totally don't want anything to do with, as well as hopeful hatchling!

Still Waiting...

... This just in, there has been a flag on our credit report.  A nasty, heinous, repulsive flag.  Apparently, there is a $27.31 overdue balance at the local library from 2001.  This is the first I am hearing of this, but no doubt it's true.  I'll march myself right down there and pay them this afternoon.  In the meantime, this 'flag' may have cost us the farm...  evidently inorder to obtain a farm such as this you must prove that you are a low risk tenant, and when you're running around doing scandulous things like running up library fines, well you simply aren't low risk anymore.  Yikes!  Luckily we've got a second farm on the back burner, our 'just in case' scenario.  Hopefully my library fine will be resolved by then :) What a week.  It would have been so much more normal to have been born sans 'Barnheart - Jenna Woginrich' and could be perfectly content in a condo somewhere with a container of tulips on the balcony.  Life is tough ;)

A Modern Miracle?

   After over two years (Really?! Two YEARS?!) of looking at farms, and "farms", and 'you call THIS a farm?!'s, I *think*, with extreme caution, and zero breath holding on my end what-so-ever, that we've found a farm.  I'll let that information digest, I know I'm still digesting this on my end and this has been a possibility since Friday.  That's like four days, I've actually kept my mouth shut about it for FOUR days.  Anyways...

   So I think we found a farm.  A 'real' farm.  A farm that isn't absolutely adorable but with uber scary owners, a farm that isn't super duper scary itself with super nice owners, a farm that doesn't have a barn full of rotting garbage/an entire episode of Hoarders/human remains, a farm that isn't already up for sale, a farm that the owners plan to retire in - next year, or a farm that is on the side of a main highway in the city.  It is so none of those things, and we have seen so many of those farms we were developing an extreme phobia of farmhouse viewings. At this point in my life I cannot give thanks enough to Google Maps.  I have taken many virtual 'drives' around potential rural neighbourhoods only to realize some of the above, as well as that the farm is situated beside a very busy cistern cleaning company, that it backed into a major highway, that the roof was falling in, that the barn had no roof, or that the farmhouse itself had no roof.  Since we hadn't limited ourselves to something necessarily local, this saved us a ton of time, gas and 'they call that a farm' melt downs in the car from my end, that we normally would have wasted driving out to look in person.  So round of applause for Google Maps. 

  This farm is awesome in so many ways, it's owned by a local conservation authority who was gifted the property many years ago.  It doesn't sound like much, but this implies several important things to us, 1) it is never going up for sale, we will never have to move for this reason 2) it does not have 'owners' per se, so we will never have to move because someone wants their house back (this has happened.  It sucks)  3) due to it's ownerage (is that a word? probably not) it will likely be maintained quiet while, as it hardly shows any abuse, above any beyond typical wear and tear for 150 years, from being rented out for the last 25 years.  Infact, they're currently having the ceilings taken down and replastered, as well as the walls, stripping and repainting all the woodwork (which is all original - hooray!) as well as having the house reinsulated.  That is some exciting stuff!  We have a whole acre for our use (stop laughing, I know you're sniggering over there, but I'm hoping I can do a fair bit with one acre.  I could be wrong, and might be joining you for a snigger fest in about six months time) as well as the barn that as long as they don't want (which they haven't in the last 25 years) we're open to use.  If everything sails smoothly (please oh please oh please let this all sail smoothly, no choppy waters, no choppy waters!!) we'll be moving in in February.  Our neighbour is a real farmer, one who's won farm awards and is on the Federal Association of Agriculture.  I feel like I'm moving in next to a movie star or something.  He'll probably hate us with our silly city folk ways of 'farming' but we'll see.  Maybe he'd like some farm fresh eggs (he farms pigs, no chickens).  So, if everything is yay, this will be allllllll ours:

   In other news, our silkies have gone broody already.  Browna is sitting on 2 eggs (we had 12, 10 were either clear or ended up quitters, we now have 2 happy eggs waiting to hatch on the 28th.  Except that I accidentally dropped one.  I fixed it will nail polish and it's still swimming around in there, but we'll see.  I feel insanely, insanely bad about dropping that egg, just so we can all be aware of that.  Brownie (The Pretties named the chickens, clearly) is sitting on 8 that according to my earlier candling session this morning are all veining and developing wonderfully.  Luckily Browna is more than happy to sit on a few of Brownie's eggs during this egg insanity, so it all works out.

   We should know what's what by next week, but in the meantime I'm all about using the garden planner on Mother Earth News, scouring Kijiji for antique farm sinks, clawfoot tubs, cupboards, dexter cows, and vintage tractors.  You know, because we would totally need a tractor on our whole huge acre.  We might, however, need a tractor with a wagon to get the Pretties to the bus stop which is 'just down the lane' which translates into a 10,000 mile walk along a gravel road in 5' of snow with five kids.  We might need to investigate homeschooling a little closer...  

  Hopefully this time next we'll be making arrangements to fill our oil tank and have several cords of wood dropped of for stacking 'on the farm'.  I've never had a lease that including vegetable gardens, poultry (and other fowl), and small cattle.  Even if we don't get it, I think I'll frame the draft lease as further motivation to make it happen.  It's easy to get plowed under with what can feel like the impossible, but you need something to pull yourself off and keep on it, especially when your destined path is farming, anything less and you'll never be satisfied.

Hope everyone's ready for the winter, it's starting to get chilly out there!! Time to pull up the woodstove with a warm blanket, a good book, and a cup of tea.  Maybe some knitting, except for the part where I can't cast on and my Grammie isn't around to do it for me anymore, and for some reason my brain can't comprehend what it is I'm seeing when I watch 'how to' YouTube videos.  I think it's pregnancy brain, it also can't comprehend why I'm in Wal Mart, how I got there, what I'm supposed to be buying, and how to find the car in the parking lot again.  I imagine the little chick embryo in the eggs outside have more brain cells than I do at this point and it makes me afraid...