One morning last week, I was walking up the drive to open the gate when the song from Sound of Music, My Favorite Things, blew into my mind. I started singing, but as I started singing, I thought I actually felt a raindrop. Could it be? I was ecstatic! We need rain so badly. Huge cracks zigzag across the fields, some of them almost 2 inches wide. I was coming upon the peaches I had planted when the song naturally came to my lips...
"Raindrops on fruit trees and feathers on chickens..."
Pleased with myself, I continued,
"Cast iron skillets, a good read of Dickens...
I was on a roll now.
"Cows that are grazing on pastures out back.
No virus worries on my brand new Mac."
Okay, that wasn't exactly farm-related, but I have been so pleased with my new computer and so elated that I have not been having to share it with two teenage boys. It is off limits.
I searched for a refrain as I opened the gate and started up the road with Sadie to the GMO corn fields just past our pastures. It's a special treat for her when we actually get off our property and go for a longer promenade.
"When the chick dies, when the bee flies
Right into my face... "
This has happened on more than one occasion. I don't especially like bees but I can appreciate them. I'm learning to like them since Kent has started his own hives...
The last line came easily, though I admit it is a bit hokey...
"I simply remember I'm in paradise,
I'm out of the old rat race!!!"
I made the mistake of committing the song to memory and sharing it with the boys at breakfast. They were not amused. Kent was more forgiving when I sang it to him. That's one of the many things I like about him.
Several days later, I was in the garden, humming my song but feeling quite unsatisfied with the fact that I only had one verse. I needed another one before I sang the refrain about the chick dying and the bee flying. I was watering the potatoes (still working on that irrigation system) and I started to sing softly to myself (Hadley was nearby)...
"Potatoes are growing, the green beans are showing,
Corn is all planted in rows slightly slanted.
Tomatoes are bearing their first signs of fruit,
Fig cuttings planted beginning to root."
There! That was it. All I needed to complete my song. I could now happily go on to the refrain.
"When the chick dies, when the bee flies,
right into my face.
I simply remember I'm in paradise.
I'm out of the old, rat race!!!"
Honestly, I like Houston. I really do. I like the people and I like that I can get in my car and be walking into Target in less than 5 minutes. But I love the farm. I love looking out of any window and seeing cows instead of concrete. I love seeing the stars (I saw a shooting star last night! How wonderful was that?), I love having things to do outside every day, even when the weather is not the greatest. I love my huge clothesline that is protected by the upper porch ceiling so I can hang out clothes in most kinds of weather. I love the cardinals and the blue birds and, yes, I even love the two swallows that have persisted in making a nest over my front door (despite the rubber snake stapled to the wall) and who, along with their 4 little babies, have made a horrible mess on my porch floor.
It is a busy life here. I imagine people who know me have a vision of me lying on the hammock or sipping lemonade on the front porch for long stretches of time. I have done that, but it has been a special treat. I need to do more of it. Mostly I am working. I still have laundry to do and meals to cook, bathrooms to clean and homeschooling to oversee. But I also have fire ants to eradicate, irrigation to wrestle with, new trees to water, pastures to mow, gardens to weed (and to continue planting), chickens to move, water and feed, and low tree limbs to lop off. And more. Much more.
So, it's not that it's an easy life as much as it is a simple life. It is straight forward. I don't get in the car everyday and spend hours driving here and there. In the past 9 weeks, I've had to fill up my gas tank twice and that was because I had to take Harrison to Houston for an emergency trip to the orthodontist. I filled up 1/2 a tank going in to Houston and another half a tank coming back. So, one tank of gas in 9 weeks.
I'm not looking at the farm, or this chicken project, through rose colored glasses. It has been hard. I've been up at all hours of the night hunting coyotes or turning on a space heater on for baby chicks. I've worked on irrigation until my whole body hurt, I've gone to bed every single night covered to one degree or another with chigger bites or fire ant bites. I haven't been itch free in the past 6 weeks. But it has been with extreme gratefulness that I've taken the bad with the good, the hard with the easy, and the harsh realities of nature with its intrinsic beauty and never ceasing miracles.
I feel a bit like the woman that my aunt told me about when she was in line at the airport, waiting to board a plane for Hawaii. The woman in line ahead of her turned around and breathlessly asked (in a decidedly Southern drawl) "Where are YOU going?" To which my aunt smilingly replied, "Hawaii."
"So am I!" she shouted. "Pinch me, I'm going to Hawaii!!"
"Pinch me!" I want to shout. "I'm at the farm."
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