A good friend of ours once commented that were were like a rolling stone-never in one place long enough to grow moss. I feel like a rolling stone. Our farm life is like that. I am here, there and everywhere. Not a bad thing. I don’t want to grow moss. Oh, no, I’d prefer not to sit still long enough to grow moss. No moss here.

We do a lot of traveling between MA and Vermont: farm business but mostly family business, keeping up with kids and grandkids. The best job ever! 🙂 There are pros and cons, of course. For one (con), not sure where I will lay my head down at night sometimes. The pro to that is I have the good fortune to have a place here or there to lay my head down and, of course, my wonderful family.

Moving around this much both exhausts me and invigorates me. It’s like the old commercial (way back in the day) “I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan” I (we) can do it all. Well we can, right?

Even when we are not on the road, we never sit still.

Too much to do and on the odd day that it’s all done and we have some “free” time, we find something else to be done, or we read what’s been sitting on the end table for weeks waiting to be delved into. Reading is good. When things go well, we find time to enjoy other things, like watching the pigs fly…just kidding! we don’t even have pigs ;-)!

Expect the Unexpected

Often times, just as things seem to be settling down for winter and slower days, you can expect the unexpected. A lamb will get stuck in the feeder and the vet has to be called, or the water in the coop freezes up, or the cattle eat twice the usual hay and we have to double up, and of course the chickens stop laying. It seems there is always something. That’s just farm life.

I remember early on in our farming, we had a relatively young cow just up and die in the field. It was the first time we had had anything like this. I called the vet for a necropsy, fearing something that might affect the herd. It was pneumonia. All the other cattle were just fine, but for some reason” Lucky” was not so lucky. I called Larry, our excavator/plow guy. I said, ” Larry, it’s way below freezing with 2 feet of snow on the ground and we have a cow belly up in the field! What do we do with her?” His unhurried response was, ” Bury her (read that slowly)…I’ll be up after I finish supper.” And he was and he did.

Maybe just a little Moss…

So now as winter is just around the corner, we are making sure all the critters are set up for the cold. Our “go to” guy , Steve, and our wonderful sheep and chicken sitter, Elizabeth, will be spending more time at our place, keeping an eye on things for us. We will be spending more time with family and enjoying the holidays together, and maybe gathering a little moss after all. Just for a bit. Stay tuned…