New Workboots

One of the difficulties of being a lady farmer…no, wait, one cannot be a lady AND a farmer…

One of the difficulties of being a woman farmer is the scarcity of comfortable, long lasting, affordable work boots. Most work boots are made for men, most have steel toes, and they are very expensive.

I have been wearing work boots for fifteen years now, and I have a brand I love. They fit right out of the box, and they last a long time. Sneakers and “cute shoes” just won’t work on the farm. I must admit, I used to wear little slip-on shoes when it was really hot. One evening, a flighty heifer changed all that. She got spooked by something, came down on my foot, and mangled my little right toe. While the pain was intense and it took a long time to heal, I did have the interesting ability to accurately predict any incoming weather system for at least two years! The farm is full of learning opportunities.

My boots see a great deal of use. I wear them daily. I’ve put thousands of miles on some of them. In addition to the miles walked around the farm, I find it therapeutic to walk back country roads. When the girls were at home, we walked miles and miles talking over life. My boots get stained and paint-splotched and stepped on. But, they are what I reach for no matter where I may be going.

My current pair of boots has been ready for retirement for about 6 months now. All that time I have been searching for a suitable replacement. From time to time, the brand I like is suddenly no longer available. This is completely disheartening. My feet are short and wide, making a good fit something of a challenge. I’ve bought other boots, only to have them cause blisters, hurt my feet and back, or wear out far too quickly.

But, I found them online last week. Oh, it was a day of rejoicing! I even got to order them from a company with a great name….SAFETY GIRL! I found the name amusing and the deal unbelievable.

They arrived yesterday. They are beautiful. It is hard to believe that my current boots ever looked so nice.






My current problem….I am almost afraid to wear them. I know that as soon as I put them on, they will begin the slow, sad descent to…












my “poor, old work boots” that need replacing!

April Showers

Tuesday morning we woke to the sound of rain…not the gentle showers usually associated with April, but the sound of a torrential downpour, that has become all too familiar. This sound is magnified by the fact that there is a plastic greenhouse attached to the back of our home. Thunder boomed as well. A peek out the window revealed Jed attempting to get UNDER the backporch. Interesting beginning to the day…

The plan for the day, prior to the rain, had been to take the old ewes to the stockyard. Prices are running pretty high right now, and a few less mouths to feed would be a good thing. The rain put a stop to that. It was doubtful we could get the racks on the truck and the truck to the loading ramp in the downpour. Unfortunately, if you don’t make the Tuesday sale at the stockyard, you don’t make the sale. There is a sale on Friday, but that one is generally cattle, and we can’t lose the time we could be harvesting. We will have to wait ‘til next week.

We are STILL trying to get the potatoes planted. The rain definitely postponed that job, too! A look at the forecast revealed that the planting may have to wait a long while!

The dump run still needed to be done. It doesn’t matter if it’s raining or not, you can almost always go to the dump! Farm bookwork is always looming out there, threatening to take over my desk. So, we wouldn’t be bored.

Tom has been wanting to put in another gate to the garden area. The rain-soaked earth will aid in that particular job. So, the plan for the day was to go to the dump AND get the supplies to put in the gate.

The rain let up some and we headed out to do chores. By the time we got to the barn (which is only about 70 feet from the house) the heavens opened. We spent some “quality time” in the barn surrounded by wet cats, dogs and sheep, waiting out the rain. Between the rain on the metal roof and the very vocal complaints from the sheep, it was a very noisy place. Thankfully the rain let up before we lost our hearing and our minds.


In the half hour that it took to do chores, we got another half inch of rain. My coveralls were STILL soggy when it was time to do afternoon chores! Slogging through the mud and rain is not my idea of fun.


The heavy rain made it impossible to let the sheep out to pasture after they had their grain. We are still keeping the sheep in the barn at night. The grass growth is still not robust enough to handle that type of grazing pressure. If we were to leave them out to graze all night, we would end up with paddocks of mud. I don’t think they were interested in going out anyway. They ate their grain and headed back into the barn.


When that rainstorm finally passed, I let them out to a new paddock. It’s funny when they go in a new paddock, the first one in just starts eating…right at the fence line. They all pile up trying to eat in the same little spot, until one finally breaks through and they spread out through the field. It’s kind of like a levee break when the water suddenly flows free.


All day, we had passing storms. When we looked at the “potato garden” around midday, there was water standing in the furrows. Definitely won’t be doing that job for quite some time.

There was yet another line of storms that rolled through about six o’clock. There were reports of hail with this one, although we didn’t see any. Hail is a dreaded weather phenomenon for farmers. You can lose an entire crop in a matter of minutes. So, we were grateful for “just rain”.

At the end of the weather event, we had over an inch and three quarters in the rain gauge. Everything is soaked; the ground is soggy and slippery. It will be days before we can consider getting back in the gardens. We need a stretch of at least three days for things to dry out enough to get those taters in the ground. Looking ahead at the weather forecast, I don’t see that happening, as more rain is predicted for the weekend. Big rain!


So, we’ll wait….we’ll do other jobs either inside or in the hoophouses, waiting for the rain to stop and the sun to shine.


One thing we will NOT do…we will NOT complain about the rain. Rain is better (in some ways) than drought. Although, we may want to start looking over plans for an ark!

Capable Hands

When I was a small child, I loved to sit with my grandmother and hold her hands.

Her hands were thin and worn, bearing the evidence of much hard work. I particularly liked how the veins stood out along the backs of her hands, how her rings fit loosely on the fingers, but wouldn’t slide over the slightly gnarled knuckles. There was a beauty in her hands, a sense of purpose in her grip. I wasn’t the only one who thought this. My grandfather, who was a sculptor among many other things, had once carved a copy of my grandmother’s hand, back when they were young, because he thought it was so beautiful. He had it for years, and it is one of the things I wish I had thought to request upon their passing.

My grandmother was born at the turn of the twentieth century, one of thirteen children, who knew more than her fair share of hardship. She was harsh and gentle, severe and kind. She loved me like no one else did, and I miss her to this day.

In our times together, she would take my small hand in hers, matching the fingers, tracing the lines. Every time she would say, “such capable little hands, Dolly…such capable little hands!”

This irritated my mother, who took the comment to mean that it appeared that I would have to work…to do menial labor (something my mother saw as beneath her, I suppose). But, I found it challenging, exciting….It sounded like Granny thought I could do anything! That seemed wonderful!

Lately, when I’ve looked down at my own aging hands, I see purpose, I see strength, I see the fulfillment of Granny’s comments from long ago. Yes, I DO have capable hands! I’ve done all sorts of things using these hands in my life here on the farm. A challenge or hardship is met with the thought that “I can do this”…although, I admit, sometimes I do have to add….”I HOPE and PRAY!”


So, this one is a THANKS with love to Granny…although she’s been gone for a LONG time…she may well have molded my thinking for the rest of my life….just by holding my hands!

The Week in Review

We’ve gotten to that time of year where it’s hard to find a chunk of time to sit down at the computer and document what’s going on around here. So, I guess we’re going to have to do some type of weekly review.

Last week was opening day of the S/A Farmers’ Market. While it was great to get back in the swing of things, somehow it didn’t rate a blog entry. Where last year’s opening day was gorgeous and wonderful, this year it was cold, I didn’t feel well, and it just seemed too early to think about the Market season. We had sun, rain, snow, sleet, and WIND to contend with in the weather department. But, we sold everything we took. This week looks like we’ll have more stuff to take. The weather looks to be…well, different than last week.

The weather has been a real challenge lately. The temperatures are running a little below normal, and it seems like it rains at the most inopportune of times. Our scheduled plantings are all out of whack. But as Mark Twain said, “if you don’t like the weather….wait five minutes!” That’s about the size of it. Last week was 80, today not quite 50…tomorrow is supposed to be at least 80!

We finally caught a break in the weather on Monday, and Tom decided to make the most of it and get the onions in the ground. When we talk about planting some crop, it may be assumed that we just go out and stick it in the ground. Now, that would be SO nice. There’s a lot of prep. work before anything ever gets planted. Sometimes the preparation alone takes hours. In addition to the time for preparation, we don’t plant things in the typical home gardener numbers. This year there are about 3000 onions to plant.


He went out to till and set up the irrigation system, I ran to town for feed and supplies. By the time I got back, he was already planting the tiny onion plants.
We order onion plants (not sets) from a supplier in Texas. This supplier has hundreds of acres of onions. One week alone they shipped 40 MILLION onion plants across the nation. It is far more efficient and cost-effective for us to order these plants than to attempt to start our own. We know…I have tried!

That project pretty well shot Monday. But, the onions were in the ground and the predicted rain showers would water them in for us. The “predicted rainshowers” turned out to be a huge thunderstorm that provided us with a half an inch of rain, not to mention thunder that threatened to bounce me out of bed in the middle of the night. Poor guard dog Jed, he hates thunderstorms. He was crying in the night, trying desperately to get on the porch…or under the porch! I keep telling him he's an embarassment to dogs everywhere, but it just doesn't faze him.

Tuesday was very wet and still had the occasional shower to contend with, so we did some inside work, and ran to town so Tom could get some stuff he needed for the management of the Market. We also worked the sheep again in preparation for the spring/summer season out on grass. Again, the weather is slowing things down. The cool nights keep the grass from growing quickly, and the sheep are still eating mostly hay. The hay supply is rapidly dwindling and the sheep are most anxious for a little of the green stuff.

Wednesday, oh Wednesday…is SUPPOSED to be our hoophouse day. We have found that if we dedicate one day during the week to the maintenance of the hoophouses, we can keep them in full production and the weeds don’t get TOO far out of hand. To this end, Tom headed out to till some of the empty beds after breakfast. He has this tiny tiller that works great for the hoophouse. Well, I should say…it works great for the hoophouse…when it’s working. It seems to have had more than its fair share of “issues”. This time it was a cracked primer bulb. Now, I don’t really know what that does, but, I do know that it wouldn’t work without it. That meant a couple of phone calls and then a trip to the hardware store. No work in the hoophouse could happen until that got fixed. I set off to the greenhouse to start seeds. There were squash and cukes to start for transplants and I can always start more lettuce!

While I was in the greenhouse, A called. She’s been fighting some type of illness for over a week, and was making her third trip to the Doc. The doctor’s office is one of the few things remaining in M’brook, so she was coming this way. She was in need of a little “mom time”, so I accompanied her to the dr. and took her to town to get some odds and ends to make her feel better. …and that was Wednesday. The day of hoophouse work never materialized. Although, Tom did FINALLY get the tiller in working order, and tilled the empty beds.


Yikes, that means Thursday had arrived. With Thursday comes a thought of Market preparation. I try to do some harvesting on Thursdays to keep from feeling too pushed on Friday. But, this particular Thursday was going to be gorgeous, and all those brassicas REALLY needed planting. The brassicas are broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, and I had started about 500 seedlings. As Tom tilled and placed irrigation tape,I got the planting done in the hoophouse from Wednesday. All the hoophouse beds are currently in some stage of production! Early in the day we had visions of planting potatoes and strawberries, too. By the time lunchtime rolled around, we were still planting brassicas. The taters and berries will just have to wait! We got all the brassicas planted, and watered in. Now, we just have to wait for them to GROW. I love putting transplants in the garden. It goes from bare earth to GARDEN just like that! Well, just like that....with a WHOLE lot of bending, plunking, and planting!





Somewhere in there, the post office called…the second batch of broiler chicks had arrived and was terrorizing the post office. Seriously, the post office lady doesn’t need to say anything when she calls; the peeping chicks raise such a ruckus! I could hear them when I pulled in the parking lot. They looked great, adapted to their temporary home in the shop, and will be gracing someone’s table in about 8 weeks.

Then suddenly, it was Friday. Friday is harvest day. Usually, we start picking right after breakfast. I pick the lettuce and other greens, while Tom washes and packs. By lunchtime the greens are picked and packed and we move on to other crops. At the height of the season, we start harvesting on Thursday and are finished with everything by suppertime on Friday. Tom prints the signs and I re-stock the freezer in the late afternoon or early evening. Again, we hit a snag. The sheep were looking for greener pastures and some of them got in the wrong paddock. The simple task of getting them from point A to point B proved to be a cussing job. Since they were being so uncooperative, we went ahead and moved them to a completely different place. This was BEFORE breakfast, mind you. Breakfast was late, picking started late, but we got back on track. Despite the cold, clammy weather that made picking a real chore, we had a great harvest and were finished in time for supper. Bedtime would come early…

Saturday starts at 4:30 AM…and it’s off to the Market!

Comic Relief

It is very easy to get all too caught up in the work to be done and the busyness of life on the farm to ever begin to enjoy it. To ensure that I don't get too bogged down, I try, really try, to find time to appreciate the ridiculous things that happen around here.

I was standing at the kitchen sink the other afternoon. The window over the sink faces the backyard. From there I can see the flower garden and birdbath, the barn and back corral, and this time of year…I can see all the way out to Middlebrook Road. I have been astounded at the number of odd things I’ve seen while gazing out the window. This day would prove to be no exception.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, the dogs galloped into the backyard, barking furiously. I assumed it was another skirmish in the ongoing “battle of the crows”. Not a crow in sight. They were quite adamant about some type of problem, so I went to the back door. As I opened the door, a chicken flew up out of the flower garden, clucking in terror.
The dogs were not chasing her, they were barking about the ruckus. I called Tom, and headed out to corral the chicken. As I approached the flower garden, a CAT jumped out!


Apparently, the cat must have seen all those Nature specials we’ve been watching. He was stalking that chicken just like a lion would a gazelle. He would crouch down and pounce out at her. Then, his sister joined in the “hunt”. When I yelled at the cat, the dogs got excited and began romping all about. They never tried to bother the chicken, but they were going to take on the cats.“Boooyyy” (that’s how his name is pronounced) got down to stalking again. He was even doing the little hunting twitch like the big cats. Tom was focused on capturing the chicken. The chicken was in no real danger; she is larger than the cat. But, we did need to get her back in the pen.


Then it hit me…the sheer ridiculousness of the situation just got me. Here is this poor hen, dumber than a post, trying to get back to the other chickens. She is being pursued by two cats, two dogs and two humans. It was no wonder that her clucking turned into shrieking as she ran first one way and then the other. I couldn’t help, I just couldn’t….I was just laughing too hard. Sorry, Tom!

Finally, the hen was captured, the electric fence re-energized, and all was right with the world again. If laughter is indeed the best medicine, I’m good to go for quite some time.


Whew, that was a good one!

Global Farming

We were wandering around in Lowe’s the other day, when we happened on these gorgeous plants. They were amazing….I wanted them….I wanted them all. Oh, wait….that wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing….

Our “mission” at Lowes was simple…Tom needed a bucket. He had a specific type in mind, so we ended up searching a couple of stores. Once we found it, we were heading out to the truck and the plants caught my eye. Unbeknownst to Tom, I am feeling the need to spruce up the old homeplace, and flowers top the list.

Amazingly, he was taken with these gorgeous plants as well. I had never seen anything quite like them, and neither had he. The name on the tag meant nothing to us. We left them there, hoping to find out a little more about them prior to buying.


When I got home and looked them up online, I found out that they are a Japanese hybrid. The world-renowned plant breeders in Japan have come up with a plant that will flower in cold weather, providing color and interest to the late-winter, early-spring garden. Thus, adding to the cash-flow of the garden centers around the world, and the beautification of yards and gardens everywhere. Yay, Japanese plant breeders!

That got me thinking about the Japanese tsunami. More precisely, it got me thinking about the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami.

Some of the most amazing things come from the plant breeders and seed houses in Japan…before the tsunami. I saw video footage of the destruction following the tsunami. I don’t know if these folks will ever be able to re-create their farms, their growing facilities, their lives. It didn’t occur to me until I was thinking of the pretty plants at Lowes, but this will affect the world…in far more ways than just tsunami recovery funds or radiation worries. There were great losses in the agricultural world, too. Eventually, this will affect the food supply…because, like it or not…we do live in a GLOBAL community!

When we plant our garden every year, we don’t give a whole lot of thought to where the seeds come from. When you purchase food, you don’t stop and wonder about the whole chain of life deal. At least, I don't.

All vegetables come from some type of seed stock. But, in order to have seeds to plant, someone….somewhere...must have bred the specific variety, allowed it to flower and then fruit, collect the seeds, and process them for use by the consumer. It is possible to do this yourself (on a very small scale), if you are using open-pollinated varieties. But most times we (the growers) rely on someone else to do this part of the job. Consider for a moment the large acreages required for the production of SEEDS. No one can eat that crop because the seeds are necessary for the raising of food elsewhere. The amounts of land, production crop, and seeds needed are mind-boggling.

Different areas of the country, and the world, are known for their seed stock production. Most seed potatoes come from Maine or Canada. We get our onion plants from Texas, where the producer has HUNDREDS of acres of little onion plants. They shipped out 40 million plants in ONE week. They are responsible for about 70% of the onions produced in this country. I’ve noticed on the seed packets that we grow seeds from Chile, Germany, Japan, China, and Mexico to name a few. Somehow, this gives me a new awareness of the smallness of our world.

All the current rhetoric concerning LOCAL, ORGANIC, SUSTAINABLE, etc. …. makes me wonder. Has anyone considered the fact that we are all somehow dependent upon folks we have never met, in places we have never visited, or in many cases…that speak languages we cannot understand? As the John Dunne quote goes….”no man is an island”.

The current prices paid for grains are affected by the drought (and therefore greater demand) in Asia, more specifically China. The supply of certain specialty items, seeds or other products in daily use are affected by weather trends and/or possibly war and civil unrest more than half a world away.

I know that I am not alone in my concern for our own agricultural community. But, perhaps I need to expand my horizons. Perhaps all of us should embrace the fact that it IS a global community, and as such what happens “over there” may well affect us here “at home”.

So, next time you see a pretty plant or an unusual offering at the garden center or possibly farmers’ market, remember that a farmer somewhere worked hard for you. Without farmers, we’d all be cold, naked, and hungry….and without the gorgeous plants that I fully intend to incorporate into the “farm beautification project”.

As a farmer, this is a humbling, awesome thought. As a consumer, I would hope that it would make me (and my fellow consumers) far more thoughtful and far more grateful to those who work so hard to provide for my needs and desires.

We Can Rest Easy Tonight

Ellie Mae is one of our guardian dogs. Nothing enters the property without her knowledge. That is, unless she is eating broken eggs in the backyard, then a whole lot gets by her.

She alerts us to strange vehicles, deer, cats, you name it. Amazingly, she can tell the difference between our barn cats and the feral cats that occasionally roam through. The barn cats are treated as her kith and kin, while the feral cats are the enemy to be driven away with great ferocity. Occasionally, we cannot figure out WHY we are being alerted. I guess this is because we are ONLY human.

Her biggest concern, for unknown reasons, is the flock of crows that lives in the neighborhood. They roost in the trees along the property line, pick up odds and ends from the compost pile, and eat the eggs that the hens occasionally lay outside. Perhaps this is the basis of the controversy…Ellie loves her eggs.


Ellie and the crows have this ongoing battle. They land in the yard, the field, or the orchard and walk around, talking to each other. When she catches sight of them, she charges out, tail spinning, barking fiercely. They fly up into the nearby trees and taunt her. Occasionally, she gets so frustrated with their taunting, that she continues to bark, and jumps around, causing bits of grass to fly around.

The other day, Tom pulled some old irrigation tape out of one of the garden beds in anticipation of tilling and re-planting. He rolled it up and hung it on the fence that runs around the garden, with the intention of picking it up on his next trip down the driveway.

All of a sudden, from out of nowhere, Ellie came charging down the driveway, barking furiously. Tom couldn’t see anything, but she was convinced there was some type of trouble. He watched her to see if he could figure out what was going on. Sure enough, she charged up to where that old t-tape was hanging on the fencepost. It didn’t move. She barked some more. She charged it, barked at it, but it wouldn’t go away. It seems then she got slightly worried and frustrated. Eventually, she gave up the fight. Only to charge out at it once again later in the day. She continued to do this as long as it hung on the fencepost.


Tom had a great time laughing at how she thought that old tape was a crow! He couldn’t understand how she could think such a thing, until A came out, and as she was going out the drive, she said “What’s that really ugly bird up there? Oh, it’s NOT a bird!” THAT gave Tom a laugh as well!

Now, I don’t know about Tom, but I will indeed rest much easier knowing that we will not be attacked by crows or worn out t-tape as long as Ellie Mae is on the job!