May, 2010

For anyone considering buying a farm – my advice to you is to buy with one with all posts you will ever need already dug and placed. Every single one of them. I just came in from TRYING to dig two four foot holes. That sounds relatively easy, doesn’t it? Not when the ground around here is roughly 12 inches of soil and then hard-packed clay intermixed with rocks placed at angles making it virtually impossible to dig them out, nature’s way of suggesting I move elsewhere. I now have two holes, each about 2 1/2 feet down and now face a tomorrow of again standing out there for several hours trying for the other foot and a half per hole I need to be below the stupid frost line so it won’t heave my beautiful new farm sign out at some weird angle.
So if any of you are looking for that special holiday gift for me – could you send me the rest of these holes.
Me…I came in, soaked in a hot tub, got my fire going, stacked some more firewood next to my fireplace and I hope to never get up again from this chair. Ever.
Oh, and while the auger was running next to me, I was laying on the ground trying to dig a rock out of the hole and a pickup raced back because they thought I had either been electrocuted by my fence or had lost a limb since most of me was in the hole and I couldn’t hear them yelling. That was funny. That’s also life in the country – folks actually stop to see if you’ve chopped off a limb and if they can help.

This weekend is the weekend the first two students receive scholarships from the Jordan Lee Tucker Environmental Scholarship fund I set up in my son’s memory. It will be presented by his sister, Amanda. It will go to two high school seniors who have shown a love for and desire to help the environment. We all hope the fishing’s good in heaven Jord…and we miss you terribly…

For four weeks she’s worked vigilantly to understand it. She’s watched. She’s studied. For endless hours she’s attempted. She’s practiced. A week ago she figured out part of how to do it, the rest she figured out a couple of nights ago: Sunday has mastered the stall door latch and door opening.

The first part was fairly easy – lift the latch up and slide to the right. Soon each of the doors was found with the latches open but still closed because due to barn settling, you have to pull the stall doors open. Well…couple the latch opening with a head placed over the stall door and a step backwards and Sunday is now master of her domain. Looking out the next morning where only one baby should be free wandering the aisle of the barn and in the pen, all the young’uns and their ‘babysitter’ – an older horse rotated through to keep them assured all is well – are out wandering the aisle putting their collective intelligence towards the next big heist: how to unwrap the chains from the pen gate and get into the trailer where the good square bales are kept in reserve for sick or stalled horses.