Memorial Day

As you all celebrate this Memorial Day weekend watching parades go by, or having a family cookout and toasting marshmallows, please remember all those that have died for our country.  We can never thank you enough for your ultimate sacrifice.  A sincere thanks to you and all your families.

Memorial Day 2011

Have a safe & happy  holiday everyone!

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Farmers market finds

Today was market day for me.. a rather typical Saturday.  After I finished setting up my booth, I set out to do my shopping–jams, jellies, some pickles, arugula and then there were more pepper plants to pick up.  I found a sweet hanging cherry tomato plant covered in flowers and already had five tomatoes on it 😉 Yumma!

Then I spotted Stephanie–one of the vendor’s daughters with Lilian. They’re also regulars at market. Lilian’s kind of our market mascot and meets & greets most visitors who happen by.

Steph & Lilian

I had a few more minutes before market opened to the public so I went around to meet our newer vendors this season.  But then I spotted it…  a perdy large sign that read “adopt me”.  Hmm.. far be it for me to pass up a little looksy.  **Sigh.. three of the sweetest little ones you’d ever want to meet.  Well one of these little adoptees, ( the runt actually) just warmed my heart so much, that I wrapped him up in an old sweatshirt and he spent the day with me at market til we closed and naturally he ended up coming home with me too!  Meet little Piccolo, the newest member of our family. He’s taken to the house like he was born here, and already taken over one of poor ole Spencies fave toys!  He hasn’t mastered it yet, but able to give it a few good swats around.

Piccolo's first day home

 

 

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More peeps for Lonnie

Bluebird house

Feeding time

Peep peep

It’s pretty tough to not drop your trowel, grab your camera  and take in the wonders of Mother Nature.  Our bluebirds have begun to hatch out!  Two of the four nesting boxes have come to life so far.  This box has four peepers in it, but I only managed to capture this one poking his little face out to see where Dad has flown off to.  They’ll be leaving us in another two weeks 😦 but it’s sure been great having them again this year.

Happy Memorial Day!

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Beware of attack gardener

” Man– despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments– owes his existence to a six inch  layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. ”

author unknown

Whoever penned this statement was most certainly a gardener or a farmer, for those that live closest to the earth are not only the most tolerant of nature’s ways, but the most forgiving–even when droplets fall at the most inconvenient of times.  Into each Spring, some rain must fall.

Okay seriously now, do y’all know what the sun is?  It’s a big yellow round thing in the sky that gives off HEAT!  It’s gettting so bad I’m beginning to voluntarily do chores around the house.. arghhhh!!  Can you tell I’ve had just about enough of this rain?  LOL Ayuppers–bring on the sunshine will ya?!

Bring on the sunshine

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Murph, the Brat and a surprise

Murphy & Bailey the brat

Last week on about the only sunnyish day I’ve seen in ten, I took the little guys for a walk down to the beach and then over to the marshes.  The little one, Bailey just has too much energy that needs to be used up or there will be the dickens to pay when he becomes bored 😉  Murphy, who once was the little devil has finally graduated.. and a super good boy nowadays.  But I bring him along to keep Bailey happy and hopefully out of trouble.  They both scooted in and out of the bay chasing rocks or sticks I’d toss out for them, but then it was time to dry off so we took the longer loop path home crossing the marsh.  This is such a lovely area for me to walk, as I’m always on the lookout for any new birds I haven’t seen already, and seldom am I disappointed along this path.  Along we trotted, with Bailey poking his nose in every hole or reeds  he could get in to checking things out.  But then all of a sudden both Bailey and Murph stopped dead in their tracks! Not more than five feet in front of us was this big guy.

Elegant, in a word is how I would have to use to describe him, and though we have many egrets and herons in our neck of the woods–I’d seldom come so close to a Great Heron.  I quickly took only a few shots before Mrs Heron came out of the reeds…  apparently she’s chosen her spot along  our footpath to set up housekeeping and begin the nesting process. NOW I can’t wait to see these babies hatch out! Once the boys regained their composure, Bailey took off like a shot..  as did Mr  & Mrs Heron, even when he towered over the both of them..  I think he was as startled as we were. I was bummed not to have captured their departure.. and  remarkable wing span, but what an awesome walk we had that day!

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Joy in small things

Sammy's beefling

There are things you learn on a farm.  For one, you learn to love as hard as you can–as much as you can each creature under your care.  Because death is so intricately woven into the movement of farming you learn the need to go on in the face of death.  My best friend phoned last night to let us know she lost her best Jersey cow giving birth 😦  My heart went out to her.  It was her first loss on their farm, and as hard and difficult as this can be, the work of the farm must go on.

Animals still need to be fed.  Barns need to be cleaned.  The goats still need to be milked, even when that fresh memory is getting you down.  The very act of keeping the living alive disallows loss from stopping the work of loving those that remain to be cared for.

Living on a farm teaches that lesson–grief is for night time before sleep, which comes easily to most body-worn farmers.  Sadness may slip in between sleep and awakening, but only for a moment before the farmer must get up to go tend the fields and animals again.

Cheesecake & Cinnamon

The rain does not come because the farmer grieves, nor the sun because he celebrates.  He learns to accommodate more than plowing or mowing hay to nature.  Morning gladness is as much contingent on sunrise as on a newly born lamb, and joy surprises a heavy mood with as little as a chickadee who, fascinated with some winter berry, doesn’t mind the farmer near or the cow’s warm rough tongue against his shoulder as he leans to milk her swollen udders.

Francesca's eyes

Sickness is treated sometimes gently, sometimes with force that came from who knows where?  What needs to be done is done.

The farmer, oftentimes alone, learns to improvise– to take a rusty nail from where it’s half out of a wall, to mend the stall board the sheep run through–to used Coke bottles, duct tape and hay string as surgical tools — drenching throats, wrapping hooves and binding wounds that inevitably occur on any given day on a farm.  The farmer uses his  medicines for critters and bag balm and rubbing liniment for his own sore dry and aching bones.

Little things

As hard as it can be, the rewards of farming are tenfold in my mind.  I wish everyone could learn life lessons on a farm; to love hard– to make do — to see joy in small things, and to let it go and to go on.  It’s all those small things that will warm your hearts.

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First Bouquet

First bouquet

Happy Mother’s Day!

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