Taking a Break
A writer (and farmer) needs a break now and then. Every summer mine is to drive nearly seven hours north until the road runs into the waters of Rainy Lake (or crosses the bridge into Canada.) I stay with nine other writers on a small private island once owned by Ernest Oberholtzer, the man responsible […]
Bottle Lambs: A Three-Part Story
Every good story needs a beginning, middle, and end. Here’s the story of two bottle lambs that live on pasture with their moms, but get a bottle from me twice a day. (I tried embedding the videos in the blog post, but blogger went bonkers, so the best I can do is provide the links. […]
The Princess and the Flooded Barn
Sunday Melissa hooked up a hose to the barn hydrant so we could have access to water outside the barn. When she returned an hour later, the entire barn floor had flooded, covered in two inches of water. What?She dug and shoveled until the water drained out, but then we had to figure out what […]
Duck Drama: The Conclusion
Some of you may remember that in late May, a visiting (and unleashed) neighbor dog startled our duck, Mr. Bodgepie, into the air. Instead of circling around the house as he usually does, then landing, Bodgepie was so upset that he just kept flying. He flew south, and we found out a few days later, […]
June Mish-Mash
I keep waiting to have something interesting to say, but it doesn’t seem to be happening this week. I think I’m too tired from all the promotion. So here’s just a mish-mash of stuff: 1) I have 11 promotional events in June—3 left, and then I can hibernate for six weeks. I’m having lots of […]
Would I Choose to Farm Again?
At one of my recent presentations, a man in the audience asked if I would do it all over again, meaning choose to farm. It was a fair question, but hard to answer. I can’t ‘un-know’ all I’ve learned during the last fifteen years, so if Melissa were to once again ask me to help […]
The Duck Saga Continues
A month ago I wrote about our duck, Mr. Bodgepie, being startled by a neighbor’s dog and flying a mile to the south. Neighbor Bill saw the duck and called us. I ‘visited’ Bodgepie several times, but couldn’t catch him. And Melissa agreed that if she went down there with a net, she’d be so […]
Memoirist Caught Telling Lie
James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) and Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea)? Move over. There’s a new memoirist in town who’s been caught lying. In my first memoir, Hit by a Farm, I wrote about a doll I had as a child. The Jane West doll had bendable arms and legs, ugly tan plastic […]
How do we (as in all of us) do it?
It’s been a week since I’ve posted. Darn. And I was doing so well there for awhile. The good news is that I’m managing. I’m keeping the animals fed, moving them from pasture to pasture. I’m weaning the baby calves—down from 3 bottles a day to one. I know which ones are likely to sneak […]
Meet the Lambs
It’s been two weeks since we finished lambing. (Hurrah!) Everyone’s out on pasture and doing great. I tried to take a video of the two lambs I’m supplementing with bottles running toward me, and then feeding them. Two hands holding three things? I held one bottle between my knees, and one in my hand, while […]