Squirrel!

I was going to post a night picture of our barn and tell you all about how Mike's here at the farm now during the week, we're up on weekends, and we're finally going to get started on our renovation of this place. Only, when I went to find the barn photo I just took, this picture caught my eye and I got to thinking about how much I love to roast green chiles, cook green chile, smell green chile.... And in less than three seconds my photo quest was derailed and I instead committed to the chile.

When given the choice, ALWAYS commit to the chile.

Anyway.

We're back at the farm. It's a brand new era for us. I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!

Much more to come....

(Not to spoil any surprises but part of the more to come may very well be involving some of these little fellers.)



Hmmmmmm, what's in the pot?

I'M. SO. EXCITED.

Love and sleepless with excitement from the farm,
Teri

Still a Farm

When we pulled into town Friday night and saw the lights of the Navajo County Fair, I was so excited, and I immediately was thinking of the photos I'd take so I could share all about how we'd come up to the farm for our county fair/ birthday week tradition, complete with kids getting ride wristbands from Grandma and Grandpa, the legendary Jose's Green Chile fries, Open Class Exhibits (more on that soon) and lots of run ins with friends and family.

Only, when I thought about saying we were up at the farm, all the excitement deflated in a whoosh when I had the stray, unwelcome thought, "Should I really call it a farm anymore when there is no life left there?"  No chickens. No ducks. No farm dogs or barn kittens. No turkeys. No pigs. No Gertie the Goat banging on the door or munching fall leaves.

The thought made me a little forlorn and brought a mix of emotions I decided not to try to sort through right then and there. I pushed this sad little question aside and determined to reclaim my joy for being at our other home, and quickly regained my excitement about the fair, where I knew in just minutes I'd see my sister and my Sweet Ell.

The fair delivered, as it always, always does, and after a late night of canasta with Mom, Dad and Mike (during which Mom and I WIPED THE FLOOR with Dad and Mike...), Mike and I came out to our place and stayed the night in his Mom's camper behind our house. (Have I told you we're pre-remodel in the house itself, so it's full of redwood planks, piles of stone tile, and new windows stacked everywhere? Not a bed in sight.)

Anyway.

I woke up early this morning and while Mike slumbered, Sadie and I went outside to start watering the trees and rose bushes that we're trying to keep growing by watering every couple weeks when we come to the property. (Low-tech auto watering systems are high on the project list, but not yet conquered.) Thank heavens it was a particularly rainy summer up here, which helped keep things alive when our absences stretched weeks apart.

As I looked at our weed covered property while I was moving the water, I thought again about that mood dampening thought I'd had about whether this is really a farm anymore. By my production farmer and rancher friends' measures, no way. Adam's dad, John, is now married to a wonderful girl who is the daughter of a true-blue Minnesota farmer with many, many acres of verdant farms. John enjoys my writing about our farm antics, but one day laughed as he told me, "What you call farming, we call gardening."  And he said that when we still lived here and we still had chickens! AND ducks!!

I laughed along, though, because I knew he was right. By many standards, this isn't a true blue farm. Still, this is our tiny farm, and I've been happy to call it that all these years. The thing is, though, if there aren't any critters or gardens growing here right now, what about it? Is it a farm or not?

As I continued to think about it, I moved the water from the globe willows to the apple tree, then Sadie and I strolled down the lane to the chicken coop so I could check whether we had plenty of straw and old poo to throw on the garden bed since it's preparing to slumber for the fall and winter.

And I looked down to watch my step and saw this.

Look closely.

Do you see them?  Those are somebody's prints in our lane.

A sure sign that something living has been wandering the place since the last rain.

Then I looked closer, and saw these. A smaller critter than the first -- a racoon? a porcupine?

Then there are these.

These tire tracks are from the farmers who drive back and forth on our lane to their well, which is right behind our property. They park behind our barn to tend the alfalfa fields off the back and side of our land, too. We bought this little 3-acre slice of their land, which they hay around us. (Around here, "hay" is a verb as well as a noun.)   Those farmers moving on and around are property -- they are life.

Next to the tire tracks are Sadie prints.

Hey there, Sadie.

A few seconds before she sat for me, I saw her over at the corner of the summer kitchen, alertly investigating the spot where once there was a monster bee hive, dripping with honey, and where occasionally, traveling bees pop in to hang out for awhile.

Bees qualify as life. Heck, bees ARE life, in so many ways -- their value to our living systems can't begin to be overstated.

I stopped in my tracks about this time; just pulled up still, held my breath, and listened.

I heard the grasshoppers rustling the grasses and chirping; the birds perched on the power lines and outbuildings singing my favorite morning songs; the lizard scampering across the tin panel by the shed, and the pigeons cooing atop the weathered grey barn.

I thought about the very act I was engaged in -- I was pulling water from our deep, cold well to water peach trees, almond trees, an apple tree, globe willows and mulberries. The towering poplars are drinking from the puddles surrounding the rose bushes.  And that well? When Mike went down the stairs into the well house, which doubles as a cool, damp cellar, he encountered a very startled tan and white rat. The fat fella had brought in fresh alfalfa from the field and made a nest on one of the shelves that used to be heavy with canned goods preserved, no doubt, by the woman whose husband farmed this land long before we bought this place.

I don't have to water the grapes winding along the fence line or the overgrown asparagus patch, because the water from the hay farmers keep these remnants from the previous owners growing wild. The lilac bush is nurtured on the fence line, too, and the runoff from summer rains have kept the honeysuckle bush under Adam's window green and strong.

I turn from the honeysuckle and see this. A "mano y metate" -- ancient grinding stones, used hundreds and thousands of years ago by Native Americans to grind corn and grain to sustain life. The side of the small stone you see is smooth and flat, from the years and years it was gripped by Native women making food for their families, firmly pressing hard kernels into the flecked, hard surface of the stone basin below. These prehistoric tools were here when we bought this place -- I don't know if the previous owners found them on this land or while out herding their cattle on the surrounding high desert prairie.

As I looked around me again, I came to a realization. This place may be temporarily missing goats and chickens, turkeys and ducks, pigs and barn kittens; and we may no longer live here full time. But we return often to nurture the life that is still here, with dreams of returning for good some day, when we'll delight in our grandchildren and great grandchildren who will tumble out of the just-opened doors of their parent's SUVs, racing to find their favorite kitty, or check the chickens' nests for eggs, or grab a handful of straw to offer to nervous goat kids. They'll toss a distracted, "Hi, Grandma!" over their shoulders as they disappear around the side of the house. We'll find them later, hidden under their grape arbor forts, munching an apple they stole from the tree as they ran past, and picking up where they left off with their interior design projects of the last trip.

Their last trip to Grandma and Grandpa Walker's farm.

Because this IS still a farm.

There is still life here.

I am still here.

And forever will be.

Overflowing with love from the farm,
Teri

Half Pint

“I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.”
-Laura Ingalls Wilder

When we moved from the Phoenix Metro area to northeastern Arizona seven years ago, I didn't realize I would transform from City Girl back to my country roots. In fact, I didn't even realize I had country roots. Frankly, I had never thought to try to characterize the life I lived with Grandma and Grandpa Potts, up in Pottsville, all those years ago.  I didn't think it was country life; I thought it was just life with some hard work mixed in.

I didn't even particularly like the hard work -- we did it because Mom told us to help Grandma. By and large, we were pretty obedient kids and we certainly did what Mom told us to. That's just how it worked. So, we gardened, and fed the cow, and strained the milk, and stirred the cottage cheese, and dumped eggshells in compost, and weeded, and put clothes through the wringer, and picked green beans, and canned, and washed dishes. And canned. And washed dishes. And canned. And canned.

I didn't know that one day, when I was fumbling through learning to can by myself --and feeding chickens, and scattering straw, and trying my hand at gardening -- that I would feel connected to my girlhood. That I would pause and stand as still as possible in my garden on summer mornings, because it was as if Grandma was right there with me, and I didn't want to even whisper and lose the feeling.

I had no idea I was so connected to that part of my past. I didn't know how I had loved those years with Grandma and Grandpa. I just happily experienced them at the time, as kids do, and grumbled with my sister Lynda and my cousins when I felt we had just too much to do.

As a grown up now, though, I know there is something about these "close to the earth" ways that make my spirit sing. When I started gardening and canning and keeping chickens and making homemade bread after grinding the wheat fresh, my Aunt Carol told me that my Uncle Rich said something about my practicing "the old ways." I was touched by that statement more than I can ever express. I felt something deep in me stir, and I felt...honored. Like somehow, I was part of some wonderful, respected old tradition of hard working people who knew and passed down "the old ways."  I think I responded that way because I felt that Uncle Rich had meant it as a deep compliment (I don't know that for sure, and I don't think I'll ask, just in case he didn't mean much by it, in which case I'd feel foolish for tearing up every time I think of it, which would just rob the whole sentiment entirely, for heaven's sake.)  The reason I suspect it was a compliment, though, is because it wasn't long after Aunt Carol told me that until Uncle Rich dropped by one day with a quart jar of multi-colored dry beans. My heart actually caught for a moment; I knew immediately what those beans were, and tears sprang to my eyes. These were heirloom beans ... beans Uncle Rich cared for and nurtured each year in his tiny garden, carefully collecting and storing them because they came from our family farm in Kentucky and had been passed down by generations of Fraleys. How many generations, we don't know. When I asked him how long they'd been passed down, he only shrugged and said, "I don't know. I know Daddy said they'd been gathered and saved for years and years, but I don't know how long."

It didn't matter.

What mattered was knowing Grandpa Fraley had collected, and stored, and reseeded the forebears of the beans in Kentucky for decades that were now right there in a quart jar in my front yard, decades later, in northern Arizona.

Uncle Rich and I sat right down on the ground in front of my house as he began sorting through the beans. He pushed them to and fro, nudging them into separate piles that made no sense to me, but I know made perfect sense to him. I kept mostly quiet, letting him decide which ones he'd pass on to me and which ones he'd keep. I knew this hadn't been an easy decision, to let any of these treasured living things go. I know because I'd asked about the beans a time or two over the past few years and he'd looked decidedly reluctant to share, so I didn't push. To have him there, then, willing to part with them...willing to entrust me with our family heirlooms...was a surprisingly sacred moment for me. I don't know if he has any idea how much that little bit of time we spent visiting and sorting beans that day meant to me.

But, what it affirmed to me, was that his assessment of my taking part in "the old ways" had merit in his eyes.

Uncle Rich called it "the old ways"; my sister took an entirely different tack. When I'd tell her of some new venture I was up to...making homemade laundry soap, sitting on a stump watching my chickens for hours, taking in a stubborn goat...she'd roll her eyes and say, "OK, Half Pint."  Yep, she and my Mom had no desire to take part in any of my endeavors, with our industrious -- often messy -- country life having no appeal to them. And that's been just fine...I laugh at their disdain, and they laugh at me for my farminess and we all find each other ridiculous in our positions, which works well for us. There's not a lick of mean spiritedness about any of it.

Plus, for me, Half Pint isn't such a bad thing to be called. After all, it's what Pa called Laura Ingalls in her books, and I LOVED her books. When I read them as a little girl, I remember my tummy getting so excited reading about the bins of flours and dried goods in their pantry; hearing Laura detail all of the preparations they made for the winter -- the foods they would bottle, the meat they would hang to cure, the wood they would stack, their trips for salt and sugar...all of it enthralled me. It should have come as no surprise to me then, as an adult, that my happiest moments would be watching our pantry shelves fill up with the beautiful jars of tomatoes and apples and peaches we'd canned ourselves. Or seeing the rows of cans filled with wheat and flour and sugar and beans that provide security in our shed next to the house. Or knowing our eggs come from happy hens who are allowed to peck around our few acres; and that last year we got to the grapes for the first time, before the birds did. My delight at finding a tiny patch of asparagus left over from the old couple that had lived here, that I continue to nurture every year, should be no surprise at all; or my concern for keeping alive the lilac tree and honeysuckle bush that I believe must have brought Buelah, the old lady who lived here for decades, such joy.

I love that something of my past -- both of childhood and deep ancestry -- is stirred every time I take part in one of "the old ways" or share young Laura Ingalls' excitement at a well- stocked pantry. I'm grateful to be connected to the old traditions and practices and to remember my Grandma Potts here in Arizona, and Grandpa Fraley in Kentucky when I choose to walk in the old ways.

These "sweet, simple things of life" really are the real ones, after all.

Well said, Half Pint.

Love from the farm,
Teri

A Balmy Winter Day

It feels like spring here in the Arizona high desert and it's lovely, but you can't enjoy these warm, sunny days without having that slightly anxious voice at the back of your mind saying, "Yes, this is nice, but it's not normal...and what we really need is deep, dark winter storms to quench the earth before the spring winds parch it even more."

I am nervous about the lack of moisture and am genuinely praying we'll see lots of snow and rain in February and March. Since there's absolutely nothing I can do about the precip situation, however, I decided to say, "Shhh!" to that anxious voice and spend some time outside on our little farm today.

After I'd taken a treat of fresh herbs and popcorn to the chickens and sleuthed around for their eggs, I was walking back to the house when I looked towards the alfalfa fields adjoining our property and saw this.

Oops.

This is a portion of our little asparagus patch. The same asparagus patch I had planned to cut back in the fall so it would come back fresh and abundant in the spring.

I forgot.

Being a balmy day, I decided to take the matter in hand. After locating some rusty pruning shears, I went to town on these dried and dormant stalks, and was left with this.

 

 

It may not look like much now, but trust me, this is now the spot I will be watching most anxiously come spring, because asparagus is among the first crops to arrive when the weather warms, and definitely among my Top 5 Favorites. And, this year, we get to harvest, so I'm extra excited. (Wondering why that even bears mentioning? Read here.)

 

Being outside and puttering around the place was so good for the soul, it almost made up for what happened when I clenched the pruning shears a bit too hard.



I say almost only because I JUST had my nail appointment yesterday and I won't be going back for another two weeks, and really, who wants to deal with a cracked nail snagging hair and fabric and everything else it comes in contact with for two weeks? (I may be losing farm girl cred for whining about this. That's OK; I prefer to think of myself as multi-dimensional -- farm girl is not my only identity; prissy and professional can also co-exist.)

Since the asparagus photos are as dry and dull as the surrounding landscape during winter, I'll leave you with this picture that shows proof of life on the farm. And I vow to quit taking photos during the noon hour, on my phone, so you aren't looking at these washed out images.

Vow may be a strong word, but, I'll try. Promise.

Here's one of our Henny Pennies, looking extra shiny because she and her friends have been free ranging the past several days, eating lots of protein-filled bugs.  She's even prettier when there isn't a high noon glare washing out the lustre of her feathers. Seriously, I'll try to time my photo captures better.

Before I go, I want to leave you with a little story and a lesson:

When I went outside to see the chickens, I didn't know I would be doing yard work so I didn't put on an apron and I didn't have anything on with pockets. Well, I needed to put the pruning shears somewhere while I carried the asparagus stalks to the garden to compost. Being a girl with a perfectly sturdy (sorry male readers) bra on, I figured what's good enough for an iPhone is good enough for pruning shears. 

Actually, not so much.

I didn't need a Band-Aid, but ow, nonetheless.

Lesson: There is absolutely no reason to ever, ever be without an apron whilst wandering one's property.

OK, go think moist thoughts for Arizona, please.

Love from the farm,
Teri