Updates

I'm back after a LOOOONG break

Greetings! I am sure you are thinking to yourself, "you are horrible at this". Many true bloggers would be quick to tell me I'll never get a following if I don't get more consistent, and you'd all be right. But let me back up to 2018 when I decided to STOP writing on the blog. What I purposefully left out of the short bits I wrote about last time was that we are not only building a farm here but we built a house. We built that house for 2 years. WE built the house. Brent designed it and we did all the general contractor work on it, while both working full time and raising two kids and living with my in laws, then a 2 bedroom apartment then with my mom for about 5 months. Phew! All in all we owned the land and were building a total of 3 years before we moved into the house. It was a lot. So much that I was caving under the pressure of building. I didn't do a garden last year, we lost all of our chickens to a predator and so we now have none and I didn't even care. I was consumed by the entire building process. AND in typical fashion for our family our son had a week long hospital stay for Meningitis then later that year I had surgery and needed to be in the hospital for 4 days, didn't heal well and ended up with a drainage tube for 5 weeks and our daughter, well she just kinda always has something pop up every 6 months that needs addressing. So LIFE sometimes slowed our process down and then sometimes it was the weather and a lot of times it was money. Cash flowing a house build is not like cash flowing a bathroom remodel. SO I told you all of that to tell you this, the reason I stopped writing was because I had to dig so very deep to come up with anything positive or good to even think I couldn't bring myself to write. And lets face it, no one really wants to hear a middle age woman complain about how stressed she is about a house build. That's not a pretty color on ANYONE.

So, you are moderately caught up on house stuff. We live here, we will never be done with the house because that is just not how we roll. We still are running from one project to another because there is ALWAYS something to be done or could be done on the farm or the house.

2020 Our new farm has changed a lot! We are now the proud owners of a Great Pyrenees

The night we brought Kahlua home!

She is the absolute sweetest! She is a momma's girl and is nearly 6 months old now. She is true to her breed with being stubborn and challenging to train but she is getting better each day (I think).

We are currently in the process of transitioning her to being outdoors all the time. When we first got her we did not have anything for her to guard and she has bonded to us fairly well. Since then we have added 4 KuneKune pigs to the farm. 2 males and 2 females. She was not real sure what to make of them the first time she met them but now that she is getting older and so are they its getting better. One of our females, Ms Piggie, will allow Kahlua to climb on her and basically just mess with her and the pig just doesn't care. The other pigs don't always react this way the rest of them get away from her or scare her off. Well, except for Chris P. He is the runt of his litter of pigs and she knows it. She will go after him and he is still pretty small so he can't fend her off. Because of this we have her set up in a yard next to the pasture the pigs are in. They share a fence line and all 4 pigs will come and give her nose kisses through the fence. The goal is to get her older and Chris P bigger that way they can all be around one another. We shall see!

KuneKune pigs were introduced to us very briefly by the woman we bought Kahlua from. These funny little pigs are not a typical, commercial pig. They are referred to as domestic pigs and they GRAZE grass. Crazy, right? No slop buckets or muck to deal with, they eat grass. While the fields are down due to winter we feed them a grass protein feed but now that Spring has hit we can back down their feed because they are on pasture. This breed is very friendly and the girls love a belly rub. Also, they don't get as large as a typical commercial hog and they take much longer to mature. Which is why a "hog farmer" wouldn't really mess with this breed. The time it takes to get them to full size cuts down on the profit margin. Which is why from everything I've read this breed is more popular with the homesteaders and small family farms. So, we thought we'd give them a try!

The boys are smaller than the two girls however they are younger

An additional reason Kahlua is kept apart from them is because she loves their poop. And I'm talking the fresh poop, none of his been laying in the field for a day or two poop, oh no! not for this girl. And even though she is not a dog that licks a lot and I would never allow her to lick my face I just CAN'T stand her eating poop. YUCK!!


COVID 19 is here too. We are quarantined and doing school and work from home just like the vast majority of the country. The biggest difference is we are social distant the majority of our lives when we aren't at school or work. If anything its made taking care of the animals easier. I get up, before the sun, take care of everything with 4 legs and then get to work at the kitchen table around 7AM most days. Which is fine with me. I know many people are struggling, and its not all rainbows and sunshine here either, but tonight as I look back at how far we've come I'm trying to focus on that. I'm trying not to focus on all the what ifs and fears of the unknown. I've lived in those days and places before, I know how bad it is for me and my family to have me in that head space. So tonight I'm catching up, smiling when I think about our goofy looking pigs. I'm choosing to not get upset that Kahlua got away from me tonight and ran because she got a deer bone from the woods, I really should clean that up since she keep going back to it, and then we had to convince her to drop it and come to one of us as she ran roughly 8 acres. Tonight and tomorrow I'm going to choose to be happy at home not merely healthy at home, because this home that we are building can be frustrating and hard but mostly it is beautiful and fun and we laugh at ourselves more than anything else.

Hope everyone is staying calm and healthy during these weird times of virus and money uncertainties. Prayers for us all.

Happy New Year

Happy 2018. I’m still writing 2017 on everything. I figure I’ll catch up in about two weeks.

I hope all reading this had a healthy, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years.

Here on the farm we have a new saying, “it’s stupid cold”. Yes those three words have been uttered multiple times a day for the last two weeks and if you live in the USA you know why. Each time I go check on the chickens I think, please don’t let them be dead. Brent laughs and will ask, do we have frozen chicken nuggets yet? However I’m happy to report that they are still hanging in there. They’ve stopped laying eggs but honestly who can blame them?!

Thanksgiving break and part of Christmas break we spent trenching lines for water and electric. If you’ve ever thought, for even a second, that you’re somehow better than those people digging ditches and such....trade places with them and see how lucky you have it. Good grief that is back hurting work! But we are trying to make sure our infrastructure is getting placed in a way that we can easily access it to add on barns and fences and such. I’m sure we didn’t think of everything, no one ever does, but we gave it the best we could.

Last night Brent asked me, “what kind of farmer do you want to be?” Ummmmm a good one?? But no, in all seriousness I want to do a little of everything. I need to contact a local farmer I follow on FB and ask if I can talk with her. Kinda learn some tricks of the trade from someone local, if she’s willing. Which reaching out to a stranger like that isn’t exactly in my comfort zone. But I’m pretty sure we busted that zone to bits when we bought the farm so might as well keep on going. Maybe by putting it out there that I need to contact her I actually will?! Keep you posted.

Fall time on the farm

WOW! My blogging start has been slow and bad. Apologies!

However, while walking the field the other day it hit me, I even like the smell of our farm. The wind will pick up and you can smell hints of leaves being burnt, grass drying out and certain trees even. I’ve found myself over the course of the last couple months sneaking away to just go be there. Just to walk around and be in the fields doing nothing but walking. It centers me in a sense. Sometimes I accidentally sneak up on a deer or two and they’ll run away and bound through the open field until they hit the woods. And I think, this is mine. I get to live here. Thankful doesn’t seem to be a grand enough word to describe the feeling I have. My inner being swells with peace and I know what it means to love the land in which you live.

The air has been crisp and windy recently but the sun was bright all Thanksgiving weekend, which we were so glad since we were digging trenches and installing water and electric lines. As my daughter was frustrated with the house build and the farm work in general she, in anger, said “why do you want to raise your kids this way?” To which I replied, “so you can learn how to work and stand on your own and when your an adult you can decide then how you want to do life. But when someone wants to charge you $10 a foot to put in a utility line you can either pay them or do it yourself because you’ll have the confidence to do either” she thought a little and did some math and said “I think I’ll do it myself” And there ya go, 1 farm lesson learned.

Much to the dismay of Brent I am never satisfied with the amount of work completed in one day. We work hard and long and then when you take a look at what was completed at the end of the day I say, “that’s all?! That’s all we got done?!” It’s not a good quality in me but I like to work fast. I’m like a combustible engine, I wake up early and want to work hard and fast all day but when that sun goes down I am ready to turn off. Needless to say the winter months are not easy months for me because I don’t work well past dark. 😀 What can I say, I’m not a night owl.

Oh yeah!! Chickens are HILARIOUS! They have their winter coats in and so they look all big and fat. Especially are one little silkie, Felicia. (Bye, Felicia! 😂) she is like a round cotton ball with a beak and feet. Both kids agreed once we move into the farm in a couple months we need more chickens and the talk of goats has come up again. (They’re from the Devil I tell ya)

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and as we enter into the time of Christmas let’s be kind to one another and remember everyone around you has a struggle in their life.

36 degrees getting ready to glue more  Schedule 40. We got this. 

Pawpaw getting in on the trench action. 

Out on the farm

When you've had a full week and Life stresses just become too much it's really nice to just go to the farm on a Sunday evening, climb up into the tractor and til up dirt.  The troubles just kind of meltaway. Today's weather was nice and breezy as I was walking up and back through the fields just thinking about nothing I am thankful to be still and there with the beautiful purple grass, because yes the grass is purple right now, Soemtimes working on the farm is the break we need. Yes, it's still work but it's different. It's tangible and it's not exactly rushed. Even when it sounds like I've got it as just another "To Do" list item, it's really not.

I don't know if I'll always view it this way. And I guess if I'm honest I don't view all the work with rose colored glasses. Some work, like cleaning out the chicken coup, I strongly dislike. I agreed to get chickens this year and although I don't regret it I must confess, I HATE birds. All birds. Including chickens. I'm not the chicken woman who's holding and cuddling my chickens. Oh no. I tend to them with the kids and make sure they are well cared for but really, they creep me out! With their beedy little eyes on the sides of their heads so they have to kinda turn them to look at you. And our chickens are so used to us they run right up to you and then just stand there and stare at you. And when their in the coup that makes them level with my cheat! Yuck!

The next addition may be goats. We'll see on that one. I know all the advantages to having them and I've read about what to do to fence them in and I'm certain we can learn to take care of them. However, I HATE goats too!! Their eyes!!! It is like they are the spawns of the devil himself!!! I can't hardly look at them they gross me out so much! I have these aweful day dreams of one of them standing up on their back legs and talking to me. Good grief I just don't know if I can do goats. But they seem like they'd be easier to handle than cattle and I REALLY don't think I'm ready for cows yet.

Farm life is an adventure, that's for sure. Purple grass, chickens, dirt and poop, chicken poop to be exact. We're all a big part of my evening today.

But, I chose this life and tonight, no regrets!

A Truth

I know. I know I'm a slacker blogger. I try people, I do. But life is BUSY. But I'm going to pull the veil back a little bit on farm life today.

 But first, let me be abundantly clear, I do not consider myself a farmer. I feel like my ineptitude towards farming can not possibly put me into the same category as those hard working men and women who truly farm. Maybe one day I will be comfortable enough calling myself a farmer, but not today.

That all being said, farming is hard. I know it's become kinda hipster like with urban farming and the slow food movement, which I stand behind, but to truly do it in a scale larger than your back porch, I'm talking truly make a run at it with a big garden, animals and it all that's a whole different layer of hard. It's like having a child. You think you know. You think you're ready. But you don't know. You're not ready. I don't regret jumping in whole hog, well today I don't regret it. But there have been MANY times in the past 16 months where we have looked at one another and said, "what have we done?!" That is just the times we have been comfortable enough, or desperate enough, to say it out loud. Every time you think you've made a stride forward something breaks, it rains, we have a drought, or an animal tears it up and you realize you've done a lot of work and made little gains. It is frustrating. It is soul crushing. It is not for the weak in body or in mind.

My Dad grew up on a farm and farmed the first half of his adult life. He use to tell me he wasn't any good at farming. I was too young to remember that aspect. But I don't think he's right. My Mom says he WAS good at.  He's told me that you have to be very stubborn and optimistic to keep at it. THAT I believe.  I think, no I KNOW, that in farming if it can break or go wrong it will. That we as man have tried to bend the business of farming to our will and our ways. And guess what, nature doesn't work that way. It is gonna do what it is gonna do. You can work the land, nurture the soul and feed it to make it a healthy living organism and still squash bugs, deers and raccoons will come to feed.

A couple weeks ago I messed up and ran over fencing. Nothing broke but I was good and hung up and Brent, who was incredibly busy with work, didn't get angry just changed into jeans at 8PM and went and fixed my mistake. He wasn't angry or frustrated or anything. I on the other hand was beating myself for, number one, making the mistake and, number two, not being able to fix it myself. For hours I had the internal dialogue of "I can't do this". As I was thanking him for coming to my rescue and not being mad at me he just nodded and said what has kinda been a joke between us but is spoken with truth behind it, "Farming is hard. It's you and me against this farm."

Pictures of some FIRSTS

Here are just a few pics of when and where we first began. Every time, and I do mean every time, I pull onto our farm or look at pictures I am overwhelmed with thankfulness and awe! I'm in love with this place and LOVE watching my family work on it, play on it, just BE on it.

Side note, we have more chickens than that. This was like the very first picture of them. The 2 brown ones are, well, chickens and are skiddish. However they're funny because they do not let any other bird land on the fence ledge of their yard. They run at the fence with their wings out wide and SWAK! It is hilarious.

Welcome to the Farm

If you've found your way here, welcome! Like any good little blog I'm gonna tell you a little bit about us here. It may be a slow, meandering tale but pour yourself a big tumbler of iced tea and enjoy.

I guess really this tale began back in 1999. Back when Brent and I were college students at the University of Kentucky and we had just started to date. He'd take me on long, back country drives and I'd have no clue where we were and we had no destination or time deadlines. If the weather was nice we'd have the windows rolled all the way down and sing along to Alan Jackson, Hank Jr and sometimes he'd let me pop in my new Dixie Chicks CD. Looking out the window while singing, or just looking without talking at all, the bluegrass rolling hills would go by. We'd see multi million dollar horse farms, farms that seemed to be carved into a hillside with a trailer that had boards for windows and you'd think "how does someone live there?" and yet they did, we'd also see wide, open farms with cute two story old farm houses perched right in the middle and all the barns right up next to it. There were times we'd go so deep and get good and lost that we'd have to turn around in the road because we'd gone as far as that road would take us. On those long drives we'd talk, or not talk, and yet no matter what we were comfortable and at ease with one another. The silence was easy.

After a couple of the these long drives, he was seeing if I checked off a list item for him I suppose, he said to me, "We're gonna have a horse farm one day. One where the neighbors aren't right on top of us and our kids can run in the yard." And I immediately changed all my dreams of going to Chicago (where I had NEVER been and I have no idea WHY I thought that is where I wanted to be) and wanted to be on that farm with him! I was hooked! I was hooked on him and on the farm and the little people we would have on that farm.

We had a typical college relationship from 1999 forward and then in 2003 I left him and Kentucky behind and went back to Florida. He wasn't moving fast enough for me in the getting married department. We stayed in contact, obviously, and in 2004 I told him I still wanted the farm and I wanted our first daughter to be named ViviAnne. He wasn't immediately sold but I won him over :)I came home to Kentucky and we were married.

We lived in a tiny, tiny house for starters. It was on as big as a lot as we could find and afford. Babies came fast, we moved for his work and to be closer to both of our moms. Our second house Brent bought it with me never laying eyes on it. We were living on his friends farm in the rental house on the property and I was so sleep deprived with two babies under age 2 that he could have told me anything and I would have agreed. So when he walked in after work and said "I found us a house. I looked through the windows and it goes for auction tomorrow." I said, "ok I'll see you after the auction and you can tell me if we have a house." We turned that house into a home. The neighborhood was fantastic. God had placed us in a great place and we needed it because 10 months later is when ViviAnne was diagnosed with Leukemia.

Our farm dream from our very early years was starting to go so distant into the back of our minds that we were resigning ourselves to thinking it was just that, childish dreams. The daily grind of chemo, kids, money troubles and work were taking their tolls. Then, probably because we were broke both money wise and marriage wise, we started taking drives in the country again. Only this time it was with two car seats in the back of a mini van and goldfish and juice was usually being passed around. Alan and Hank still played on the radio and bluegrass hills still rolled past our windows. And on those drives our dream started to come back to life. We started to find common grounds again. But how? How do we make the shift?

Years of struggle, doing finances different, me growing the garden in our side yard bigger and bigger each year went on. All in reaching for the dream. We listened to a podcast of a farmer who said they'd basically been doing the same thing and that his uncle, who was a farmer, had said "at some point you just have to jump". YES!!! I thought, its time to jump!

So we made an offer on a 20 acre farm that had nothing. I mean nothing. It was a field. They turned us down. So we drove around more, 1 year more people, and one day I saw this sign in another field on a tiny road I'd never been on and I snapped a picture of the sign. We called and were given permission to walk the field. Because it was just that, a large rectangular field with trees on 2 borders. Brent wasn't convinced but I told him I loved it. He said, "you love them all". And he was right! Up until that point in our lives I'd made houses that I didn't really like into homes and I loved them. I love the people inside of them is why. But I could SEE my son running through those fields, and shooting an arrow into a hay bale as his sister and I walk hand in hand chatting about whatever we want.

After a week Brent and I went back and walked it again. Unbeknownst to me he'd looked up the plot in public records and found out that through the trees, at the very back, was a creek. He'd always dreamed of a creek on his farm, after all these years I'd missed that part of his dream. So we walked all the way back through the trees to the creek and back out again. Once we hit the field he knew where I stood. He knew I loved it and that I was of the mindset of it's now or never. The kids are getting older and it won't make sense. We either pull the trigger on this dream or we never discuss it again. No more country drives dreaming of a life that we can't have. I'd felt we'd already lost so much with going through cancer and I couldn't keep living for a "someday" dream. So, he said "let's do it" We made the offer, without telling the kids or our parents or friends. It was a dream that he and I had initially all on our own and all on our own we were going to take the first step. The offer was accepted.

And so began Wild & Unruly Farm.