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Licorice is a little flirt!

So our three legged yard-goat is apparently “of age” and she happens to be a shameless flirt!

Freddy and Moose, our adult buck-goats are competing for her attention, even the youngest bucks have a hankering for Licorice. Lots of tail wagging, snorting/sniffing, tongue wagging, and the calling.

They call to each other like they are long lost lovers in a crowd at the end of a rom-com. Except there is no crowd, just a fence. A buck in the presence of a doe in heat gets absolutely silly.

Moose tried to climb the fence three times – he made it over twice, each time bending down a less secure section of fence with his massive Moose-ness. The third time he pulled a portion of fence down with his front weight but it sprang back up before his back legs cleared it and ensnared his leg just above the hoof. My son, Charlie and I had to work together to free his leg. I don’t know how long he’d been laying on the ground before I found him like that. He limped for the rest of the day, but even with an injury – all he could think about was the girl. Love conquers all, he just shook it off and limped straight for her.

What Moose lacks in grace and agility, he makes up for with fervent and noisy ardor. Licorice is often right next to him, still only separated by the fence of course, but she stays there and nibbles a bush or clump of grass feigning disinterest while he puts up the biggest fuss over her. She has a whole yard of food to chow down, obviously she doesn’t need to be eating in the 5 foot area of fence right next to Moose…the little tart.

More than once we’ve found Moose in our yard chasing Licorice. The doe, who I might add was fine with his attention as long as they remained separated by the fence. Oh yes! From opposite sides of the fence, she calls out to him like he’s her long lost lover. But once he’s on the same side of the fence, she doesn’t want him near her at all – so she is a flirt and a tease.

Poor Moose – It isn’t you, it’s her.
Billy goat is stuck in the “friend zone”.

Don’t you worry, there’s other fish in the ocean,
or in your case, other nannies in the field!

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Just One More Thing

God's One More Thing

We once knew someone who always had “one more thing.”   It was so random, at times, and then years later I notice my kids saying it too.  That might be because we started using the phrase, when its a joke, it’s fun!

Of course the consummate one-more-thing style belongs only to the infamous and rather off-putting tactic of Lt. Frank Columbo (tv show for old people), who would start to leave the room and then quickly turn and throw in one more question as if he just thought of something.  Apparently this strategy worked well for him because the tv script writers made sure he got a lot of new information throwing a “Just one more thing” question out there.  But in real life – it’s annoying, unless of course your family has made a joke of it.  Well, sometimes, that is still annoying but I will reward the attempt at humor!

Thoughts on the one-more-things of life:

1 – Super annoying one-more-things are like fine print.  This is a comment or a question that challenges celebration, postpones the party or kills the joy.  Also literally the actual fine print because now, at my age, it requires me to find a pair of reading glasses.

2 – Never ending demands of life are incessant ‘one-more-things.  There is always a dentist or doctor appointment looming, a car maintenance or repair required, an animal on farm in need of food or water, a room or space in need of cleaning, a child in need of learning, a family in need of food, my body in need of sleep.

3 – One more thing is even in the Bible!   Paraphrasing the story Sheila style.  This guy goes to Jesus, and says, “Good teacher, what do I need to do to have eternal life.”

Jesus basically says,  “you tell me, what have you learned about that since you were a wee child?”

The man replies, “Uh…..ok, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus says, “Bingo – now go do it!”

The man responds to justify his now rather pedantic question, “Wait!  One more thing….who exactly IS my neighbor?”  Clearly this is huge.  We have to understand this very, very important concept so that we make sure we don’t waste time loving the wrong person.  We should probably form a Bible study group to discuss it in greater detail…

Then Jesus gives us the famous story of the Good Samaritan – and BAM!  He turns to “One-more-thing” and says, “now who was the neighbor?”

I bet one-more-thing wished he had shut his mouth!   For the unfamiliar, the Samaritans were not a charming well-loved people.  It wasn’t the name of a hospital back then, they were considered half-breeds and often referred to as dogs by the Jewish people.  The Jews did not love the Samaritans….if he had kept his mouth shut, he might have been able to walk away in ignorance and think he was only required to love the people living on his street.  But no!  Now he has to love the ‘unlovable’ in his mind – AND so must we!

4 – There are some wonderful one-more-things though!

The moments when our children come back to hug us                                                                                    for no real reason.

When your spouse hugs you spontaneously                                                                                                           or grabs your hand for a moment.

When a friend calls out of the blue                                                                                                                                just to say ‘hi’

My favorite one-more-thing is at the end of the day                                                                                          when God gives us an amazing sunset.

May your day be blessed with all sorts of good one-more-things sprinkled among the mundane and tedious ones!

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21 Falls & My failure to stay upright on the farm!

My sisters and I did a hike in Tucson Arizona when one or both of my sisters were attending the University at the time.  The hike is actually called ‘Seven Falls’, but I remember it as ’21 Falls’ because there was actually a lot of falling happening between the three of us.

I am a bit prone to exaggeration, I might just be remembering 7 falls x 3 hikers = 21 !  In any case, on this hike I was the last one to fall on the return trip.  I think we were pretty close to the end of the trail, and I remember being so disgusted when my youngest sister quipped, “Now we can call it 7 falls!” because I was indeed the 7th fall of the hike.

That was Tucson, THIS is the Farm!   I’ve had a lot of tumbles over my lifetime thus far, but for some reason – the spills seem to be more concentrated in this period of my life that we will call the “farm years” – or maybe the “farm falls”? I’ve definitely achieved 21 falls here without my sisters help!

I’ve been completely pulled off my feet by dogs on leads (border collies), knocked on my butt by dogs not on leads (Great Pyrenees), I’ve even tripped over the leash of my daughters yorkie-poo.

I’ve stepped into holes in the field and stumbled to my knees or wrenched my back.

I’ve been out and about in the dark, putting animals away and tripped over pallets, or food containers, or various implements.  I think I fall a lot more than I realize, I am just usually able to stumble into a recovery of some sort.  I bet the video would be quite amusing.  My theme song, needs to include some ‘falling music’ – I’m thinking “I fall to pieces – Patsy Cline”, or even older “I Didn’t Slip, I wasn’t pushed, I fell” written by Eddie Pola and George Wyle.  I listened to the performance by Bing Crosby – love it!  Then there is Tom Petty’s “Free Falling”  That would work too!  So many choices….

I’ve always claimed that I have a body awareness issue, that is: I don’t know where my body stops and the rest of the world starts.  I am CONSTANTLY bumping into walls and doors, like pinball making lots of points!  Ding-ding ding-ding!  That is a reference for older folks – I don’t think kids play pinball anymore.

So pretty much at all times, I have bruises on my legs or arms that I usually have no idea where i got them.  Then one day, I’ll walk thru the living room and slam into the side of the sofa table and think, “oh that’s where that bruise came from – now I’m getting a new one!”

I’m writing about this, because yesterday I was trying to bring the water hose around to the back yard.  It was stuck on something, I tromped along the hose to trace the problem and it turns out it was stuck on my goat!  She had stepped thru a loop and somehow got a curl of the hose around her body and one leg.  I freed her and started pulling the hose again, and once again it stopped pulling.  I turned around and she was standing on it, prancing around and fixing to get caught in it again.  THIS is where I made a big mistake!

Here is the lesson:  When you turn around, for any reason, it could be to check on an animal, to check what’s behind you, to see if an animal is still chasing you…whatever.  STOP MOVING!  So dingbat that I was, I turned behind while I was still moving.  I wasn’t walking fast but I was walking backward to watch the goat.   I tripped over a partially assembled project that is in front of our detached garage and landed flat on my back.  I swear, the weirdest part of these falling incidents is during the actual fall.  It feels like slow motion and there is not a thing you can do to stop yourself.  I landed on the wood, one elbow scraped on the cement.  Good thing I got my tetanus shot from the last fall.

Here’s some observations – as if I haven’t made enough already!

1 – With my body awareness challenge, I’m already injury prone.  I will NEVER have a bruise free body.  Kissing my modeling career goodbye.

Since moving to our farm, there have been many times where i didn’t wear a skirt or dress to church because I look like a kid still learning to ride a bike with scabby knees!  BUT wearing pants actually puts fabric right against that knee, so it’s only done with lots of bandages.

2 – I am working on the wrong goals!  I keep saying I need to declutter, I need to organize, I need to clean….How about, I need to stay upright!

3 – An object in motion DOES INDEED stay in motion, especially when you trap its feet in a pallet, a hole, or a pile of wood.  For heaven’s sake, when I’m not looking where I’m going I need to stop moving!  Note: This would not have saved me from the dog falls – quite a few of those I was pulled off my feet and wasn’t moving at the time.

4 – This puts a whole new meaning to a verse, “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy – to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.”  Jude 1:24-25 (NIV)

This is powerful, I don’t want to diminish the deep aspects of this passage.  Yes, it is wonderful that God joyfully presents us without fault without stain of sin.  It is amazing to realize that the all powerful, mighty God of the universe is thrilled to do so.  I also realize that the “keep you from stumbling” is referring to falling into sin…but still…I could use a ‘keep from stumbling” in both aspects!

So here’s to an uprightness of both character AND my beat-up body!   Cheers!

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Laughter – much more than medicine!

Laughter IS the best medicine, I completely agree.  In our house, and hopefully in yours too, laughter is so much more.  Laughter can defuse an argument, keep the peace, soothe the frazzled and energize the weary.

When laughter is shared, it has the power to unite people who were once opposed.

Laughter in our home is the stuff of music and happy hearts – I love hearing my kids and my husband share a moment of laughter.  When we are all laughing, I am reminded of my childhood and growing up in my family.  Laughing was a regular part dinner time especially, I would save a humorous moment to share at dinner and particularly enjoyed if I could make both my parents laugh.

My husband is a great “Laugh Out Loud” laugh-er.  I can be in another room, and hear him laughing at something on tv, or something the kids said and I don’t feel the need to know what everyone thinks is so funny.  I’m content to just absorb the sound of mirth in my home, I welcome it because it signals that all is right for the moment.

Laughter is powerful.  My husband and I can be on the verge of a fight, all the sudden one of us will quip the perfect thing with just the right sense of timing that makes the other laugh and we can’t stay mad.  Especially because the fight is usually going to be about something small, usually of little consequence and basically stupid.

But we all know, laughter also has a dark side.

It’s not fun to be the one laughed at and I know we’ve gone there too.  It’s a delicate balance at times. Poking fun at each other can start innocently and then suddenly it slides to insensitive moments.   When it happens as invariably, it must, we try to pivot the conversation to teaching moments with the kids.  We remind them of other times and situations, so everyone remember when they felt the same hurts and move quicker to forgiveness.   More importantly, I want the kids learning how to share laughter with, and avoid laughing at – with lots of practice in the safe space of our home.

I love that my children are raised in an environment where they see parents who are not afraid to laugh at themselves.  Sharing laughter is an important part of creating strong bonds of friendship too.   My sister once told me that she believes your closest friends will share your sense of humor.  This has largely been true of my friends all my life, and I would add that you can be friends who don’t share your same sense of humor,  but I think your close friends will, at a minimum,  have a strong appreciation for your particular brand of humor in life.

LAUGHTER, YOU ARE WELCOME HERE!

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This is how we mow our fields…part deux

I forgot to mention in my first “Mowing post” that Sexion Tire is becoming our new best friends!  We’ve been there three times in two months!  Yes, two flats on truck and one tractor …. wondering if they have a loyalty card.  You know, 10 punches and your 11th flat is free???

Step 1 – So, back on the tractor and brush-hogging the mess out of our fields.  At one point, cross a section of lower land that you believe is dry…but it’s not. Get tractor with mower deck stuck in the mud!

This is how we mow our fields.

Step 2 – Time for a “date” to Harbor Freight to purchase a winch and straps – don’t be sad, this is ok because we figure it’s something we’ll need eventually. Every farm should have a good winch!  

Step 3 – Return home, set up a test of new winch powered by the truck battery. It doesn’t work…lots of wrangling with this step, involving testing for power thru battery cables.  Oh, there was a run to home depot, for screws to attach leads to the jumper cables which seemed like a really good idea.  This one step actually might have been more like 3 or 4.

Step 4 – Discover that the entire problem is the ground connection – let me pause here and mention, that this should take some time to figure out; anything shorter than an hour will just ruin the fun.

Step 5 – Cart all the equipment out to the stuck tractor location, using your ATV and trailer. Here’s another fun idea, ride in the trailer with your son – it’s pretty bumpy out in the fields and sitting on the bed of a trailer is bone-jarring, but son will find it hilarious.

Step 6 – Try a multitude of winch configurations (sun is going down, but don’t let that stop you, use flashlights and ATV headlights before finally deciding to try again after church on Sunday.

Step 7 – Next day – Finally a configuration that is solid to pull out just the mower deck – the winch is mounted on mower deck and strapped down….two other straps/chains are in a Y config around trees. START PULLING…..and the winch itself starts torqueing.  NOT Good.

Step 8 – Give up – enough of this self sufficiency stuff and go ask neighbor who has a tractor for help.

Step 9 – Super nice neighbors perform a free tractor-pull that could have avoided steps 2 – 8  (or  steps 16 – 22 if including the 13 steps in part one!

The men went to the tractor pull event, while the ladies visited.  Lesson learned, God maybe lets things happen for a reason.  I really enjoyed our neighbors and we were really blessed by their kindness.

After this, the brush-hogging resumes in evenings after work with a couple of modifications:

    • Carry 2 or 3 spare connector pins since the things tend to shear and get lost.
    • Come inside every so often and announce to the family that you got the tractor stuck in the mud just to see their reaction!  It’s a hoot!  If you start to losing their interest, you can switch it up with, “Tractor has a flat tire.”  That’s almost as good!

….and that’s how we do it!

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And this is how one mows the field on OUR farm!

Taking care of the fields like a boss in typical Martin Family Style, follow these steps:
1 – decide you should cut & bale hay this year, let it GROW, GROW, GROW!
2 – search for equipment to purchase or rent, can’t find reasonable priced cutting & baling equipment
3 – wait to make sure you weren’t wrong and talk to various people (aka friends and helpful, nice, Southern folk) about it, in this step receive 3 contacts/recommendations of someone to hire
4 – confirm all contacts/recommendations are too busy to work us in.
5 – decide its time to brush-hog, hook up mower deck to tractor and start (after work/cool of evening is best time here)
6 – in cool of evening Friday night about sunset, lose one of the pins from the mower deck. Traipse around the freshly cut areas with flashlights in search of said pin…give up and go to bed.
7 – Saturday morning trip Tractor & Supply to purchase a replacement pin.  Since they sell these, apparently we aren’t the first to lose one.
8 – Return home and install pin, discover the end isn’t large enough so the entire pin pushed all the way thru the hole.  That won’t work!
9 – Visit to Hay’s Tractor to get the ‘right’ pin.
10 – Return home and install pin, it fits! Yeay!
11 – Before resuming the mowing, notice one of the tractor tires is flat – take off tire. (luckily this step is easier on tractor than the truck, push the loader down to raise up the front end – piece of cake)
12 – Visit Sexion Tire on 36, these awesome people repaired the tire and they were FAST!
13 – Back home, replace the tire and start mowing/brush-hogging. AND just in case you think THIS is the end of the story…its not!  
                                                                 –          to be continued     –
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How cute…a missing sock or two!

My daughter and I went to one of those ‘antique stores’ that includes booths where people sell their crafts.  She took a picture of this cute sign that you would buy to hang in the laundry room.  It says “LOST SOCKS” with a twine clothesline and mini clothespins for you to attach the single socks whose mates hopefully show up in a future load of laundry.

That is so stinking cute!  I mean that, seriously.  The thought that someone exists out there who can clip a couple of lost socks to their ‘missing sock’ board is really funny to me.

In my house, we clearly have a serious problem – I have baskets of mate-less socks.  I absolutely hate matching socks, but I swear they reproduce like rabbits OR the washing machine is meticulously eating a single sock from almost every pair of socks in the house.

I remember my mom must have struggled with something similar, she bought these little plastic disks that you slipped a pair of socks into to keep them together in the washer and dryer.  Like a little pair of sock handcuffs…I could probably use some of those today.   Because I’m telling you, my missing sock board will need to look more like a wall of clothesline strings and clothespins.  Or maybe I could mount a couple of laundry baskets to the board?

Guess what?  I just searched for them and found them available for purchase the exact same disks I remembered – I’m going to get some now.  I’ll let you know how they work!!  Maybe it will be to report, bye bye missing socks!  Hello cute laundry board with just a few clothespins!

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Family Names

One day, one of the kids learned of Native American Indian names with English translations like ‘sitting bull.’  It was a dinner table topic that night; resulting in choosing names for everyone with representative animal and verb.  (Actually an infinitive with a  present participle!)

We had so much fun picking names to characterize each of our kids, and pretty much got unanimous agreement on these.  Keep in mind, this was a few years ago and before we even thought about moving to a farm.  These names came up at dinner tonight, and everyone thinks my given name is a riot now that we are here on the farm.

  • My eldest is ‘Slouching Rabbit’ – When I was pregnant with my daughter we called her ‘Thumper’ and bought her a little stuffed thumper from the Disney movie, Bambi.  Around the time of her name creation, she would not sit up at the table! Pre-teen!!
  • My middle son is ‘Farting Bear’ -He has always been my cuddle bear – he always needed to touch and I LOVE this about him.  He can also be gruff as he’s getting older, but most of the time he’s sweet teddy-bear type – he picked the descriptive action for himself and got a good laugh from all the boys (including Dad).  It stuck.
  • Burping Fish – When my youngest was a newborn we saw the movie ‘Finding Nemo’. In one scene Dory, played by Ellen Degeneres, finds a jellyfish and claims him as her pet and names it ‘squishy’.  My husband and I started calling the baby, ‘Squishy’ so we tried to use ‘squishy fish’ as his animal name – but our kids overruled us. You see, squishy can belch like he’s doing it for a competition. So that was that.
  • Spanking Buffalo – On a trip driving through Amish Country my husband kept joking with the kids that he was looking for an Amish Store to buy an Amish spanking machine (completely made up). My youngest son was just talking and kept repeating it, “a spanking machine?”  My husband’s always been a fan of buffaloes, so that name stuck.
  • Screaming Chicken – Now it isn’t exactly how it sounds… ahem. My husband has always referred to me as ‘chicken’. When I stood with my hands on my hips, he said I was holding out my wings (elbows), when I was cold and got goosebumps, he’d point out my ‘chicken skin’. Now that we live on the farm and actually have chickens, and I’ve heard them scream, I should be offended!

Well that rounds out our human menagerie of five, completely outnumbered these days by the animals. I should start a count one of these days… right now we have 8 goats, lots of chickens, and 4 dogs.

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Another reason my children have a headless mother

I’d just switched a load of laundry, picked up after the kids from various lunches they’d made themselves, washed dishes that I didn’t dirty, and pulled the sheets off my son’s bed. Said son was playing outside instead of doing what I’d asked him to do. I was also concerned about thawing meat for dinner that I still needed to cook when my dog jumped up on me which usually means, “I need to go potty outside.”

I asked Charlie to take the dog out and his first words out of that mouth were, “I already took off my shoes.”

I should have addressed that, but I didn’t respond because I thought my head might pop off.

Moments later a fight began between Susan and Charlie that would absolutely send me over that edge.

Like most of their fights, I’m not sure who started it and what it was really all about, but she started in on Charlie for picking up her dog. I heard, “Mommy, tell Charlie to put down my dog! Charlie! Put her down, now!!!!”

and I lost it.,,

Rant started with, I’m not telling anyone to NOT pick up a single thing! Everyone can pick up ALL the dogs as far as I’m concerned. While they are at it there is a host of additional things they should be picking up…
their rooms.
the shoes and socks that are kicked off and strewn over the floor.
whatever they got out to play with,
work on,
make,
or eat!
And if a dog gets picked up in the process – so be it!

Head – popped – off!!

Now my kids are probably hiding from the furious dragon their mother had morphed into. I’m currently standing over the dishes in the sink breathing my dragon fire and fantasizing. Oh, for the bliss to hear, “Mommy, Charlie won’t let me pick up the trash because he is already doing it!” Or “Mommy I’ve picked up everything I can, and I need something else to do – could I clean the bathroom for you?” Be still, my heart…oh wait, I’m just dreaming this dragon’s dream.

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When a dog stops drinking…

We have five dogs on our farm, two livestock guardians, two working dogs (in-training) and my daughter has one of those live-wire small dogs hat have no job other than to wiggle around and look stupid cute!  She really is a cutie and everyone likes to hold her, much to my daughter’s dismay.

This past week, my favorite of the working dogs, Jack, fell ill.  I tried tempting him to eat with rice and burger but when that was refused – off to the vet he went on a Monday and he wasn’t able to come home until Friday.  As I type this, it is Saturday night and I’m coming to terms with the fact that Jack is likely not going to make it.  He refused food again Friday night only hours after we brought him home.  All day today I’ve been giving him water and mixed up dog food by syringe after calling our vet tech.  She reached out to the vet and told us he thinks this rapid decline so soon is indicative of permanent organ damage.

I’m sad,

I’m mad,


and I’m not handling this well.

What really surprises me is that my kids take it in stride.  They know he’s likely dying – I interrupted someone’s Fortnite game to make sure they understood.  A year ago when we decided to move to this farm, I wondered how the kids would handle animals dying.  We’ve lost plenty of animals, two goats, ten chicks, and about 25 chickens and a couple of baby birds fallen from their nests.  This might be a good time to mention, that I agreed to move to a farm on one condition; I will not kill anything except for flies and bugs in the house.

One day while we were still in the planning stages to buy a farm, I reminded everyone of my ‘no-kill’ position.

Chuck:  So you won’t kill even a chicken?

Me:  Nope.

Chuck:  I guess pigs and cows would be a ‘no’?

Me: Yup.

Charlie:  But when you made dinner the other night with mussels, you killed them.

Me: Right, but I didn’t know I was killing them until Daddy told me.  I thought they were already dead when he bought them.

Charlie: Oh yeah.

Christian:  Remember, when she found out she killed ‘em, she cried?

Charlie: You did?!

Me: Just a tiny bit.

Charlie: OK Dad, we’re gonna have to work her up to it. Hmm, what is bigger than a mussel and smaller than a chicken?

Fast forward to when we actually had the chickens and we found a chicken hurt by one of our guardian dogs {another story}I would talk Chuck out of killing the chickens EVERY single time (ok only twice but still, both times it happened).  One time the chicken died the next day, but the other time Chuck thought the injuries were much worse than they really were and the chicken lived and was fine.

I so badly want this to be one of those times for Jack, the living and being fine. What just makes me so sad, is how trusting our companion pets are – he was dying, he couldn’t have been feeling well.  But every time I walked by him, or said his name, he looked at me and thumped his tail.  My sweet Jack.

Update: Jack died early Sunday morning – we miss you buddy!