What I Like About You!!!

It is one of those things that bring a farmer great joy, to be able to show you what he has accomplished.

Our family identifies itself as "Faithful Stewards". So as the Pied Piper is learning to fill the water buckets without complaining, he is listening to the Wife explain how this job is so important as a faithful steward of the animals, but also this family. Yesterday he did the job entirely without complaining! Recognition was given in front of everyone at the dinner table. He had accomplished something he will be expected to do every day forever...hopefully there will be recognition thirty years from now. 

Dear Farmer does the dull work every day. Make soy meal...move fence...weed wack. And here we tell you about it. And (joy!) you read it!!!

Its one thing we like about you...

Heat, Humidity, and the Search for Water

One thing that you will never hear the Wife complain about is heat or humidity.  Yea, she's one of THOSE people. The rest of the family, however, has no qualms about letting you know exactly HOW hot they are, HOW liquid they feel, or HOW miserable they anticipate the next hours to be.
So, when the weather turned to full blast summer with a hundred and fifty percent humidity, and the family began melting they made their feelings known.  The Wife learned several facts that had apparently escaped previously...like: we do not own a pool and the cattle tank we have is not big enough for more than one big teen-age body, or two small children.  We do not have air conditioning...anywhere. We do not have a trampoline. And dinner is always HOT! { O the horrors of life, the Wife had no idea.}
The Wife made one of those verbal suggestions that she made regret later in life...she said, "Stop complaining and figure out how to survive."  Which the children did a few days later, while cousins were in town...
They went on a walk...to the canal...and jumped in.
(Can you do that?) 
The reviewers were raving, "This is great!"  "Water!"  "We won't die!"
The Wife had forgotten, she is a water-girl, the children were all raised at the beach. So, now, in the middle of a corn field, it should not have surprised her that all her children were in need of a good dunking.  They were parched.
The canal isn't what the Wife would have chosen to jump into.  The Wife prefers clear water...she's a lake snob. But the children don't care. 
Dear Farmer and Honorable Son No.2 were impressed with the ingenuity of the children.  They think it's a great idea!  So much so, that when they come home from the feed mill, coated in soy-meal, they grab their towels and a bar of soap and down to the canal they go! 
The Wife...she's not jumping in.  She did, however, pack up all the children and drive three hours to the lake.  She sat on the beach with her toes wiggling in the water(she could see her toes in the water!) and enjoyed the beauty of the water.  The cooling and beautiful water...while the children all jumped in and splashed!

How would you like to live a hundred years ago?

Been missing us?  We've been missing you.
So, we found this amazing farmhouse! We moved in from the sock and the shoe, into this amazing farmhouse...and stepped back in time!  Was it a time-warp?
Nope.  It's called "Amish Country" by the locals.  Apparently, that's because we are surrounded by a Mennonite Community.

So, step back in time, it's a very interesting ride:
1.indoor plumbing(limited)
2.electricity(gee, no one knew the power had gone off in the storm...because everyone uses limited electricity!)
3.country hospitality--people around here are teaching us about this!
4.internet...nope.
5.neighbors...300+ acres away

When I talk to the Amazing Farm Wife(Grandma) she says that there are people that didn't like the look of the electric lines in the (nineteen) forties.  They thought that it destroyed the view of the countryside. Now there's wind-turbines that dot the countryside.
Here in "Amish Country" the locals take the changes of the modern-day in stride.  The farmers aren't using horses to plow, and the acreage well exceeds the hundred year old standard(one man to every one hundred acres).  But the life is hundred year old simple. 

For the past month we've eliminated the modern day from our thinking.  Outhouses, cooking over an open flame, and sleeping in the sweltering heat and storms.  It was good!  Going back to the simple reminds us how far we've come...and how much we've lost.

So here's how we're making this work now.  This farmhouse, this awesome hundred year old farmhouse, it's going to glow with the life we're giving it.  When it saw us coming, it might have cringed, but we're breathing the life back in it's old bones. 
Dear Farmer is jacking and bracing the old foundation.  Reinforcing and skim-coating.
Replacing the old roof shingles with metal roofing.
Connecting the limited electricity so we can plug in fans on sweltering nights, and use lights on gloomy days.
And Dear Farmer has the opportunity to learn about "French Drains"...which is so exciting to the Wife because she speaks French, though Dear Farmer doesn't believe that one has anything to do with the other...

Those modern-maids that the Wife loved so dearly...Mme.Dishwasher, Mr.World Wide Web, and that glorious babysitter "Netflix".  Those we've said good-bye to.  It's sad to see them go...but we'll survive without.
So, your blog posts will be less frequent, but the stories more full.
And Dear Farmer and family will still do what we do...
we hope you laugh and we hope that you sigh, when you think of those days far gone by.
How would you survive sleeping on bedrolls and walking creaky stairs?
How would you survive living a hundred years ago?

Things...they are a changin'....

Change is a tough thing.

The world changes seasons, we grow up, grow older, grow wiser, dye our hair, go gray...
In our world right now, we are changing locations.

We have lived in the North for our entire marriage.  We are now moving South.  It's not in the deep south.  It's the northern part of a central state that is south of where we currently are.
The move, in this case, gives us time.
Time...something we never have enough of...
The move gives us four extra weeks of growing season a year.  Deep dark and rich soil.
More time to grow in the garden...more time to grow hay...more time to enjoy life.
The vision is the same.
The people will be the same.
The location will be different.

Change.  Sometimes people run from it.
We are embracing it!

Family Series(Part 3): Dear Farmer's Mother...the Dynamo!

The easiest way to explain why Dear Farmer is the amazing man he is, is to introduce to you his mother, the Dynamo!
From poorest of poor origins, growing up in the Gary Area of Indiana, she was the toughest little Puerto Rican you'd encounter.  She endured trials and heartaches, but never was a victim of any circumstance.  She rose above and prevailed.
So when she adopted a blonde haired, blue eyed, little boy who seemed to be the energy level of the Tazmanian Devil...instead of veiwing him as the "spawn of Satan", she saw him as a "Beloved Gift from God".  When everything seemed like the world was set against them, she took everything head on and plowed through.
So Dear Farmer, being brought up by the Dynamo!, does things much the same way.  He takes the world head-on, looks at the facts and deals with the necessities. Had he not been taught to be an over-comer rather than a victim, he wouldn't be the Dear Farmer that he is today.
Thank you, Dynamo!  You have awfully big shoes for us to fill, for having such tiny feet.
Happy Mother's Day!

Doorknobs and Broomsticks

Currently we own five brooms and three dustpans, inside the house.  Then there's the two outdoor brooms. No outdoor dustpans.  Of our five brooms one broomstick is broken at the perfect height for a three-foot tall person to sweep with (which we have one of) and another broomstick is broken at a perfect height for a four-foot tall person to sweep with (which we have one of, also).
Broomsticks and doorknobs are two things which our family uses everyday.  A lot.  Practically every time we turn around.  That is why when we purchase broomsticks and doorknobs we are very particular about quality and replacement costs.
Our front door has a doorknob on it that the previous owners did not care about either quality or replacement costs.  The door gets opened and closed at least four times every ten minutes.  The doorknob is now revolting against either use.  Sometimes it simply locks itself, as if to say to us "you crazy people! In OR out, it's not that difficult! That's it!  I'm done!"
I currently have all five brooms in use by someone somewhere on the premise. And the door is opening and sometimes shutting, but never latching.
This means one thing to me...they are all healthy!  Sick people can't run in and out every waking moment.  Sick people don't destroy doorknobs.  Sick people aren't sweeping inside and outside, and sometimes for fun.  Sick people do not use a broom so much that it bends and breaks.
What could be an annoyance, is...in my case...peace of mind.
Thank you, God, for a healthy and energetic family!
Thank you, God, for doorknobs and broomsticks!

Multi-tasking...

There are a lot of things Dear Farmer can do.
Multi-tasking, however, should not be one of them.
Dear Farmer has a habit of working in his head on a project, "listening" to the Wife talk, all while actually working on another project.
Surely I exaggerate, you say? No.  I am totally serious.
The fact that he does this, and does it on a very (all too) frequent basis, can fool most people into thinking that he can do it well.
The Wife concedes...usually he does do it well.
EXCEPT!  Except if it is late at night.  Late at night and driving.  Not a good combination.

Example: Dear Farmer and the Wife were out on a date.  Another "hot date" to the local farm-implement store and lumber yard.  While in these locations the Wife had opportunity to think on the present "tiny house" project we have going.  Think and think...and then release on Dear Farmer.  The conversation on the ride home was lively and funny and insightful.  And un-knowingly to the Wife...Dear Farmer was building the ideas into the plans of the "tiny house" in his head.  He was measuring lengths and angles while the Wife continued on the conversation about wash-tubs and clothes lines...
Then it happened.
As we were driving down the highway, approaching our turn-off to home...Dear Farmer didn't slow.  At all.
Not even a little. And the turn was coming up really fast!
The Wife did a little yelp ("turn.").  He didn't respond.
The Wife did a little more forceful yelp ("Turn!").  He blinked and looked around bewildered.
The Wife got all out bossy ("TURN, NOW!").
 Dear Farmer finally responded, "WHY? WHERE ARE WE?!"
"At the ROAD we LIVE DOWN!", the Wife elaborated in a rather forceful voice.
Dear Farmer yanked the steering wheel, stomped on the brake and turned (not a delicate movement by any means).
"What were you DOING?!", the Wife laid into Dear Farmer.
Sheepishly, Dear Farmer responded..."I was working on the tiny house, and driving home from Illinois on a Sunday night."
So we could either say that Dear Farmer was multi-tasking...or displaying signs of early-onslaught dimensia.  We'll go with the multi-tasking.
Dear Farmer, being his wonderful multi-tasking self, was figuring out the gutter system for the tiny houses, thinking about his upcoming commute to see us at the family garden on the Illinois farm and then returning to the Northern Farm on a Sunday evening, all while talking with the Wife on our drive home from our "hot date".
But late night, the worlds in his head, and in reality clashed...and he almost missed the turn to home.

Lots of laughter, lots of elbowing, and some good chuckles from the Farmer's Daughters, the Nordic Ninja, and the Wife.
We love our Dear Farmer...even while he's multi-tasking.

Hey! They clean up pretty well!

Permit me a proud moment of bragging...because I have good cause, not bad character...

This past weekend the Wife had the pleasure of working at the Farmer's Daughters' Prom.  The Wife had the joy of shopping for dresses with the Farmer's Daughter and the Haus Frau Farmer's Daughter.  We looked at hairstyles, accessories, shoes...lots and lots of shoes...we talked logistics of time-frames and conversations with people-we-really-like versus other-people.  It was a pleasure to spend a month of planning and seeing the results of age, maturity, and life-experience.  We had a great time.  Then came the moment of truth...the Wife left the Farmer's Daughters with the beautician and went to the Prom location for set up and preparation.  Having already been briefed by the Haus Frau Farmer's Daughter on good photography-know-how(the Wife was the photographer #2 for the event)...the Wife was off and running!
It was between the pictures of the appetizer table and drink fountain table that the Wife was able to see the most beautiful girls in the event walk through the door.  The Farmer's Daughters, with their BFFs(who are also farm-girls) walked in like Greek Goddesses(a look I think they were pleased to have attained).  They floated on clouds, laughed liked music, and conversed with ease...making all in their presence feel like royalty. And all the Wife could think was, "They clean up pretty well!"
See, covered in the muck and damp from the rain.  In the middle of feeding a bottle to a calf, or hay to a horse, a farm-girl is pretty impressive.  It wasn't a charade for an evening.  They weren't playing a part.  They really are these beautiful Goddess looking ladies on a day-to-day basis, just cleaned up for the "Ball". They are beautiful on the inside as they muck stalls, wipe off grime and bend down to clean gooky-noses all out of love. Daily they are disheveled and dirty with no make up on...But when that farm-girl can get cleaned up and walk with the best-of-them(in high stiletto heels) in a situation so opposite from her day-to-day...THAT'S pretty impressive.

Do What You're Supposed to Do...you won't have time for the "don't"s

Here's a thought...if you do all of what you are supposed to DO, then you won't have time to DO any of the "DON'T"s.

In the farmlife it looks like this:
DO your chores
DO your responsibilities
DO love eachother
DO take care of the animals
DO take care of the land
DO be respectful of others(even city-people who don't know what a farm is)

there's no down-time from doing the "DO"s.

This is simple.
So why do we all make this so hard?

Dear Farmer Places an Order Online

Dear Farmer is of the opinion that phones are for calling and talking to people...not texting, snap-chatting, insta-gram-ing, taking pictures, or reading on.
Dear Farmer likes to do business with a handshake...not bids, quotes or contracts.
Dear Farmer likes to buy things from a person...not the self-checkout, vending machine, or online.

These days aren't like the days when Dear Farmer was a boy.  Bread costs more than a nickle a loaf, gas costs more than ten cents a gallon, and there are some things you just order online.
"Back in my day..." Dear Farmer will begin a story, and the children groan.
"Pop! Get in the twenty-first century!", they say.  But that's not when Dear Farmer was born.
So, ordering online is a big "to-do" when Dear Farmer has to do it.  He only orders from companies that he's dealt with in the past...ones that have people on the other end.  Then spends hours "one-touch" typing in the desired items. It's so painful, none of us can watch him anymore.  He has to do it himself!
Then, after hours and hours of filling a cart....he calls in the Wife to checkout....
He has learned that the quick typing and quick clicking is un-nerving...so he usually tries to leave the room when it comes to checking out.  There are some times he has to be present for the orders because they need special instructions...he's usually found rubbing his head for the headache that comes on afterward.

No, these aren't the days that Dear Farmer grew up in.
It only takes two days to get something from an online order, he doesn't pay extra, and we don't have to wait at the mailbox for the delivery.
Pictures of animals are sent instantly from farmer to farmer with questions, concerns, or for sale.
Decisions take seconds, not weeks.
Modern machinery can do the work of three-hundred horses.
His tractor can do 45 mph on the road!

"Those Good Old Days", we remind Dear Farmer, "you still get to live.  You walk among your herd, hear the softness of the hay being munched during feeding, touch the tops of the grass as it begins to seed-head. You work in the beauty of creation every day! One afternoon ordering an automatic chicken door that's timed to close at night and open at the break of day(so that none of us have to do it)...that's really not that bad!"

The Family Question of the Night...the Wednesday Night Special

Dear Farmer was asked a question tonight at dinner..."Who has been the biggest influence in your life?"

He looked around the table.  The whole family was there.  Something that doesn't happen often enough anymore...
There was a time when it was just Dear Farmer and the Wife.  They dreamed about winning the lottery. Two people with a million dollars, they had it spent!  Alas, they never had a ticket, it was all just a dream.

Scrimping and saving.
Giving and living without.
Rejection of "wants and desires", but the joys of each need being filled.

Somehow, year by year, the most important thing became Family.  

Each set of eyes staring back at him were a monument to a time when he learned,
  a time when he sacrificed,
           a time when he overcame!

He was blessed by each one of those children countless times.
         More than they will ever know.
                  Not until they are parents, will they understand....it was worth it all!

He'd do it all again...the scrimping and saving,
                                                    the giving,
                                               the living without,
                     the never-having-it-all, but the just-having-enough...
                                                                                        he'd do it all again in a heartbeat!

Dear Farmer's answer was perfect..."Your Mother.  Without her, none of you would be here."


I Love this Farmer!!!

Buying Fencing...or...The Reason Dear Farmer Takes His Wife Shopping

So off to the local farm supply store Dear Farmer and the Wife go!  It's date-night!

On the list: goat oats, new collar for polar bear(she's chewed off the other), and...fencing.

About three seconds outside the store the Wife realizes...she forgot her phone at home.

"Ugh!", says Dear Farmer, "Why do you even HAVE a phone?!"(This is a mute argument, everyone knows Wives have phones so they can leave them where they are not.)

The Wife says to Dear Farmer, "Don't worry.  I'm a big girl! I can handle the farm supply store.  I'll get what I need for the goats and the polar bear and I'll meet you in the fencing supply."

And so off they separate.

Dear Farmer goes off to the fencing supply.

The Wife detours to the kitchen gadgets, then rounds the corner to the canning supplies, over to the shoes...boots...children's boots...looks for all the sizes for the children who are needing shoes, realizes the boots cost more than she is willing to spend...over to the clearance racks for clothing..., down past the baby clothes(that are so darn cute!  do we know anyone that is having a baby???), through all the garden supplies, checking out the seeds, meanders through the paint department(to grab some colors that she'll never get to paint, but wouldn't it be nice to dream), through the hunting section, over to the bikes, and the books, and the dog toys....picks up the collar for the polar bear, picks up the goats oats, and turns to the fencing...
where she finds Dear Farmer.

It's been an hour.

 Dear Farmer is staring at a computer screen.
This is where he's to order the fence.
There's no one around to help him work the computer.
 He looks at the Wife and growls, "I hate technology!  I've been messing with this screen and I can't get it to the stuff I want!"

The Wife has two choices: Do it herself or find an associate.
She opts for the associate.
Over one aisle she finds an associate and explains a farmer needs his help.
 He doesn't look surprised.

Dear Farmer tells the associate what he needs.  The associate finds it, makes the screen work just fine, asks Dear Farmer if there is anything else he can help him with, and prints out the needed papers for the check out.  Dear Farmer laughs with the associate about the "good ol' days" when a person spoke to another person and they handed them what they needed.  The associate smiles and nods, then walks away...Dear Farmer figures the associate must be about twelve, "Had no idea what I was talking about.", he says.

Dear Farmer and the Wife go to the check out.

The cashier checks them out, she's about twelve as well.
They hand the cashier cash.
She looks at Dear Farmer almost sympathetically as she asks if he would like to open a credit card with the store.
Dear Farmer replies a solid, "No."
The cashier has to inspect the bills, draw on them with a marker, and then the computer tells her exactly what change to hand back.
She didn't have to do any math.

Dear Farmer and the Wife drive away with everything on the list.  Most importantly the fencing...

On the way home the conversation is about how young everyone in looks these days, and how young the police officers are(do their mothers know they carry guns?!).  They laugh about the not having to do math, and the credit card offers.  They giggle about the computers that aren't Dear Farmer's friends.

It's the fun of the evening...it's the lighter side of a boring activity...it's life...Dear Farmer's life.

Waiting for the Rain

Every day, without fail, Dear Farmer is checking the weather. Using his instinct as a farmer, his skills as an untrained meteorological professional, and the ache in his sinus cavity: he interprets the various websites that predict weather, reads the forecast in the farmer's almanac, and watches the animals.

The old-saying is true...cows will lay down when it's going to rain.
The cows feel the change in the pressure system, and when it gets too heavy, they lay down(probably because of the throbbing headache...have you seen the size of a cows sinus cavity?).  So usually we see the cows lay down, and then they get up-move to high ground, and the rain starts.

The goats will smell the rain coming and run inside the barn.  Goats hate to get wet.

Our farm dogs will beg to come inside.  They are wimps when it comes to rain.  One of our dogs will hide in the hallway...the sound of the rain on the metal roof scares her.

Dear Farmer hasn't started to ache in a joint or "feel it in his bones"...but he does get it right more often than the weatherman.

So you want to be a farmer? The Reality of Being Organic and Sustainable

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work."
-Thomas Edison

If you thought that recycling made you sustainable and organic meant that you didn't use deodorant, then we're a shocker for you.  We take that to a whole new level!!!(Yes, we do use odor protection.)
Sustainable means we put up enough hay in the summer to feed the herd in the winter, and we're planning on growing the grass again next year. So we mow it when it goes to seed-head.  It's not a nice lawn look all year.  Sometimes during the summer it may look quite shaggy-depending on rainfall.
It means when there's an apple tree in the field, we pick it and sauce it so we have food in the winter. We don't complain the apples are the size of your thumb. Sometimes sustainability can take on the same look as common-sense...a chicken gets used four different ways. First as a vet for the cows as it cleans the pasture, next as an egg layer, third as a stew bird for dinner, and lastly as chicken broth preserved for later. We use the sun and air we breathe to dry our clothes, for light during the day and that "fresh air" smell on our sheets.
Everything that's sustainable is hard work, there's no skating by.  Burning wood for heat means cutting the wood, splitting the wood, and stacking the wood-sometimes in the coldest day of the winter.
But it's so worth it!
Organic means we don't use anything God didn't create for fertilizer, animals, and food.  We use our own animals to fertilize the pastures, then give them a dose of watered down compost for good measure.  We don't breed animals to have the biggest body-parts for show or production, we take them as God made them and use them right. That's why our goats have horns, cats have claws, and chickens have bone and skin!  We let the animals eat the grass, the apples, the leaves, the herbs-and we don't peel back an ear of corn for them.  This is the way God meant it to be.
Before you think this is all daisies and roses, can I be quite frank?  Because of this life we live...there are things you may want to consider...wear mud boots(real ones, not fashionable ones) to get to the door. There's chicken poop everywhere.  Why? They have wings, they fly any where they want to.  That means to the house, not just in the barnyard.
There's a goat who will greet you at the car door, and will gladly display for you how she can urinate on your foot and poop all the way to the front door of the house.
The cats like to leave "gifts" everywhere.  Dead mice, voles, ground squirrels, chipmunks...
Be prepared for dirt.  The windows are open in the house and it coats the furniture...really, I dusted it off six times today from the dark wood piano!  The dirt covers feet, shoes, clothes, and gets under nails.  It sticks to the cobwebs created overnight, and onto the faucets where children were washing it off.  It doesn't matter how we attempt to get rid of it, it comes back. A magazine cover will never show the reality of farm life dirt.
The mess. There's a plethora of misc. tools, equipment, toys, and vehicles that don't run. The reality is, we're busy staying alive, there'll be a time to make it all clean(when the dumpster is here), but right now isn't that time.  So, if you're OCD(which I find I am) take a deep breathe and close your eyes as you walk past it. The mess won't change the taste of dinner, and it also won't make the photo shoot for the magazine cover(thankfully).  So just move on. Lastly, prepare yourself for a new brand of sweat.  I promise, we do use odor protection, but it doesn't help the amount of sweat we produce.  It doesn't matter what time of year it is, there's hard physical work we're doing.  Whether it's under the hot sun or bundled in the dead of winter-people around here are sweating!  No need for aerobics class, we pitchfork hay around for hours. Snow-shoeing and cross country skiing are means for checking the fence lines.  Walking miles is a form of transportation, not relaxation. And when you see people standing around this kitchen with dripping hair or frozen hair and wet shirts and socks, covered head to toe in dirt and poop-laughing about the day they just had...know that they've accomplished the "Organic" label that went on that product in the store. AND LIFE IS GOOD!

To Be Industrious

Farming and the character trait of Industriousness go hand in hand.  Did you know that?
The Wife had first discovered this during childhood while talking with her Grandma the Amazing Farm Wife. When Grandma, while hanging laundry on the line, said,"A gardener doesn't go hungry.  It's hard work, but it feeds the family when others might go without." She had said this to The Wife when she lived in town.  Her garden consumed the entire side of the corner lot the house sat on, and it also shared the space with the walkway from the ally and the clothesline.  Looking back, it was a Norman Rockwell moment, but at the time, it was just barely appreciated.  One simple sentence and it planted the seed of Industriousness in The Wife for the rest of her life.

Living on the farm now we have no choice but to be industrious at times...the cows got out and there was no gate to block the road, we had to figure out how to make three people seem like a very large deterrence at the road side...things like this happen often enough to make you prepared at a moment's notice.
Then there's times that we choose to be industrious...to heat with wood, to milk a goat, to make soap, or to boil down bones for broth.
We see our children taking industriousness to the next level...knitting hats, gloves, dishcloths, crocheting blankets, stuffed animals, and slippers, making gifts with wood and nails, and training goats to pack-goat so they don't have to carry the heavy loads.

Recently we spent time with our Uncle Intelligentsia and his wife, Aunt Intelligentsia.  It was fantastic to hear Aunt Intelligentsia tell us of her process to insure the city where they live in be educated and funded for the community garden project.  She has had to be Industrious to see healthy lives restored even in the city.

Dear Farmer looks at Industriousness as a part of sustainable agriculture.  If there is no character of Industriousness in a farmer, there won't be a sustainable farm.  The two go hand in hand.
It's not easy, not always fun, sometimes barely appreciated...but it will change lives for generations.

The Farmer's Daughters' Bedroom.

It's a never ending cycle, and worse in the wintertime than the summertime.  House cleaning.  More specifically...bedroom cleaning.
Some days the bedrooms look like the destruction of the third World War, some days it's just more of a laundry explosion.  It all depends on how cold it is outside.
If it's VERY cold outside, it's the latter rather than the former.
We are constantly cleaning bedrooms.
Organizational tools are for bedrooms that only have one or two children in them.  The Farmer's Daughters are in a large room together.  That's six daughters in one bedroom the size of the living room.  First of all, that's a lot of girls/hormones in one room.  Second, that's a lot of stuff in a room.  Thirdly, that's a lot of laundry in a room.
The Farmer's Daughters do a great job of organizing...but the Smallest Farmer's Daughter Trio, they don't read.  Labels are stickers waiting to be peeled off. Bins look pretty-especially when emptied all over the floor and used to place blankets in lovingly for doll beds.  Folded laundry is for wimps that don't have a little sister to hide more important things from.
So organizing has flown out the window for the Smallest Farmer's Daughter Trio.  Instead we have streamlined their laundry and belongings in the bedroom.  Sounds nice, but now we have the issue of the Smallest Farmer's Daughter Trio getting into the belongings of the Bigger Farmer's Daughter Trio.
The Eldest Farmer's Daughter solved her problems by taking over the walk-in closet...she's made it her bedroom, it has a door with a lock on it.  All her stuff, her bed, her dresser and herself fit very neatly into the closet.  And when she comes out of the closet every day-she doesn't care that she's brunt of her brothers' joke because she and her stuff are all safe from little hands.
The Haus Frau and WhizBang! Farmer's Daughters have the brunt of the little sisters now.  They have devised a method to keep the little sisters on their toes and out of their stuff.  Ever played "Hide and Go Seek"?
Their organization is very similar to finding the needle in the haystack.  Laundry is shoved in drawers and under beds, hanging from baskets and in hooks.  Prize possessions are given homes each week.  Keeping them on the move keeps the little sisters from finding and raiding them-candy, Ipods, lotion, and chapstick-these are a few of our favorite things.
Heaven help us if someone can't remember where the electronic device was moved to this week.  The hormonal meltdown is equal to a nuclear reactor detonating.
Going off The Wife's Mother's rule when she was a child ("I need a path from the door to your bed.") is the beginning of cleaning the room.  If The Wife says this to the Farmer's Daughters they know that the next day will be cleaning the Smallest Farmer's Daughter Trio Quadrant, followed by the next day of the Farmer's Daughter cleaning out her closet/room, and so on and so forth.  By day five, it should all be clean and we can relax on day six. To make the mess again, and begin the whole process all over again the next week.
O the joy.
Someday all the Farmer's Daughters will look back on having shared a room together with fondness and laughter.  Someday the Farmer's Daughters will use the same phrases their mother used and her mother used and I might think her mother had used..."If you can't find a place for it, don't keep it!", "Make a path from your bed to the door."  You know those, maybe you use them too.  Someday the Farmer's Daughters will have clean bedrooms.

You'll Eat a Pound of Dirt In Your Lifetime

It's a fact...well...I googled it.
Still, experts say that we will all eat a pound of dirt over our lifetime.  This is something we find humorous in our family...we live in dirt.
Well, not physically, but practically.  Dear Farmer works in dirt.  The children play on dirt.  The baby crawls on dirt.  The animals are covered in dirt.  We wash dirt off our veggies, strain dirt out of our milk, sweep dirt off the floor, wipe dirt out of eyes, and wash dirt off our hands.  Over half of our septic system must filter out dirt...or input dirt...however you look at it.
In Dear Farmer's world he lives, wears and breathes dirt.  So really, he probably eats about a pound of dirt every week.  We all probably do...the crawling baby most of all.
You guys are probably always sick!  And that, my friends is the beauty of dirt.  The more of it you eat, the healthier you get.  Well, the more ORGANIC dirt you eat...
Dirt builds up your immune system one molecule at a time.  Helping you gain natural immunity to the environment around you. Taking what might have been an allergy, and making into an immuno-booster.
Three cheers for not washing your hands!  No...that's not what I said.  We are still washing the dirt off, we're just not going to "freak out" the minute it gets on you.

Dear Farmer Holds Down the Farm...and we go vacation south!

Dear Farmer, loving man that he is, sent us away to our Fabulous Aunt and Uncle's house to vacation for six days!  While we were gone, he held down the farm by himself....Amazing man!
He learned some things while we were gone:
It's nearly impossible to run this farm by himself.
He's lonely when we aren't here to be loud and energetic.
It's quiet at night when he's the only one in the house.
It's been a long time since he's been the only one in the house.
The woodstove needs to be filled a lot through the day when it's cold outside.
Farmer does not live on cereal alone.
Home cooked food three meals a day is a luxury.
The puppy is not fully potty-trained.
The goats can be very demanding.
He really loves his family.

How Cold Is It?

Ask Dear Farmer how cold it is and you'll likely hear:

"It's so cold my eye balls froze."

"It's so cold when we milk the goat it comes out as ice-cubes."

"Cold?  It's not cold.  It's just the absence of heat."

"It's cold enough the cows are eating all day and all night just to stay warm."

"It's so cold we can't get vehicles started."

"It's so cold my clothes froze to me while I was working."

"It's so cold we're going to be selling fresh frozen chickens."

"The dogs are pup-cicles."

In reality it's so cold that Dear Farmer's hat froze to his head while doing chores...that would be the downfall to having a bald head when being a farmer.
In reality it's so cold that Dear Farmer HAS to keep moving, so he doesn't begin to get frostbite.
In reality it's so cold the 1000 gallon stock tank has frozen solid (and full) overnight.
In reality it's so cold that the milk does freeze the moment it hits the bucket when we're milking, the eggs freeze in the nesting boxes if a chicken isn't sitting on them, and the cows have icicles hanging off their noses and chin whiskers.

How cold is it?  As cold as it usually gets here in the North.

What Country-Folk Don't See

The trip to the City was eye-opening for both Dear Farmer and the Wife.  There's oodles of ladies walking around in fashionable muck-boots and riding-boots...they've never seen and ounce of muck or manure. There were no animals in a ten square radius of where we were.  There were lots of stop-lights at nearly every corner.  There were lights absolutely EVERYWHERE, we couldn't see the moon there were so many lights at night, it looked like daytime.  There were more cars than we count in a month.  There were so many restaurants to choose from, and then you could go to an indoor gym on each corner or strip-mall.
Country-folk don't see things like this.  When we look outside we see fields and trees, barns and equipment, fences, the moon and the stars. When Country-folk go to town, we don't dress like we do for the barn work.  So far as all those stop-lights goes...Dear Farmer has always said, "If the town has to get a stop light, it's time for us to move, it's getting too crowded."
For the record, Dear Farmer and the Wife are pleased here in the Country.  A day away from where you live is fun.  To see all the things you don't see on a daily basis.  It was wonderful for us and then to go home to what we know and love.