RIP, Little Guy

We had a chicken fatality a few weeks ago, when the dog dashed into the coop, so we here bid fair travels to our cute little Bantam (it was the one from the unsexed run, and we hadn’t determined if it was a rooster or hen when the dog claimed it). I always thought this was the prettiest of the chickens: its feathers were black and white and it was half as big as the others. Ah, well.

I wish I had gotten a better picture of it, but my favorite cool chicken website (Seriously! There IS such a thing!) didn’t have a good one either.

White (aka MJ)

My husband calls this hen “White,” but my niece, “Junie” to the public, named her “Junior” after hearing my colorful tales of the hen’s enthusiasm for wasps. MJ (my niece’s real name begins with an M). I’m not sure what breed she is for sure (we probably should have paid attention to that when we were at TSC, huh?).

Red #1

She’s one of our two Rhode Island Reds. And she has also endeared herself to me with her love for killing and eating wasps.

You might notice that behind her, there’s another Rhode Island Red…

Red #2

She has the same wasp-killing instinct as the previous two. Hard not to have a HUGE love for these three hens.

Black #1

We have two Australorp hens. They don’t seem to have the interest in insects (specifically wasps) as our other three.

I still like them, though.

Black #2

I picked the Australorps out, so maybe I have a higher investment in them than I should.

Then again, seeing them roost on the edge of the box, before we had the coop ready for them, was pretty hilarious.

Not Exactly a Chicken…

…but you don’t care, right?

Jen at Conversion Diary hosts 7 Quick Takes every Friday, so be sure to stop by and see what she has over there!

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I’m pretty sure that Lisa knows I’m not crazy, though Arwen can’t be so certain. (She loves me anyway, though.) After all, last weekend, we got ourselves some chickens!!! And, folks, I agreed to this!

If you want to hear about our new chickens from me directly–as in, me talking–head on over to this week’s Faith & Family Live Cast.

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But, of course, you’re getting a rundown here, too. How could I not write about our new chickens?

After all, with this, I follow in the footsteps of one of my favorite people.

(My husband accused me of wanting chickens just so I could be like her. He was joking…sort of.)

-3-

So, without further ado…meet our chickens.

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There are six of them, purchased last weekend from our local TSC. My husband’s been wanting to get chickens and we had planned this. We’re ordering more from a local feed store–these are the “testers.”

“If the girls love them to death,” he said, “No big deal.”

-5-

Poppa Gene, carpenter extraordinaire, is building us a chicken coop. Right now, to keep them safe from the cats and the dog and the myriad of other critters who would do them harm–oh, and to keep them warm–they’re living on the porch.

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Best thing about them, so far?

They eat wasps!

(I have a long history with wasps. Those poor folks on Twitter know all about it, though I’ve posted rants in the past, too.)

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And, for the stats: five of them are girls, one is…we’re not sure (in an unsexed run). We have two Rhode Island reds, one that will be white (we failed to note the breed), two Australorps, and one Bantam (that’s the one that might be a rooster).

They’re not named yet. This is…shocking to me. My girls name their play horses with a relish that I didn’t think could be tamed.

Maybe they’re just cooking up some REALLY GOOD names.

Or…maybe we should have a naming contest here. Hmmmmmmm…

Head on over to Conversion Diary for the Quick Takes round-up.

I usually notice it, mind you. This is one of my favorite times of the year. But I can’t help doing a double take more often when I pass a tree with flaming red leaf tips or a particularly brilliant patch of orange. I spy a combine in a field or a tractor pulling a load of grain down the road, and I think of how she’d be pointing her camera without a second’s hesitation.

Her enthusiasm for the changing leaves and the many forms of harvest all around has me smiling. On her way to take her daughters and our nieces and nephew to school, she’s bound to stop and take a picture. They laugh, but she challenges them to look around and see the loveliness they have taken for granted.

It’s so easy to take things in life for granted, from the exquisite fall fashion show right outside my window to the people who pepper my life with blessings. In this season of things dying and gorgeous color, I find myself reflective. As a foot edges into my ribcage, proof of new life within, I think of the life we can’t forget and the grief that hovers on the edge of our days.

I find myself wondering if there were flowers blooming on the path winding to Golgotha, if there was evidence of hope even there, in the desolation surrounding the Cross. I clutch my rosary this month, in the midst of rainbows in trees and cerulean skies and apples everywhere, and I think of how it took the Cross to achieve the Resurrection.

There’s some comfort in that, but it’s distant somehow. The fact that there’s a host of shocking color and breathtaking splendor everywhere I drive feels more concrete, more like evidence of God’s love and His hand in the working of things.

Fall is a time of things dying, and the dying is beautiful. How can this be? When I examine it closer, I struggle to apply it, to make it more than a theory that applies only to agriculture and nature.

These pictures I found on my camera, evidence of a passion that can’t be dampened even in the face of heartache and tragedy, give me hope the same way that meditating on the crucifix gives me hope. They speak to me of so much more than Ohio autumns and someone with an eye for my taste.

There is hope. There is always hope.

I think this must be the way that Mary, even as she faced the incredible pain of the Cross, comforted the disciples and those around her. I think of my sister-in-law, facing her own struggles, as my very own Mary, living proof that God not only loves me, but that He will reach down constantly and touch me through every aspect of my life.

Maybe, in fact, that’s what we are to each other, each of us, as we face the uncertainties of life and the hurdles in front of us. Maybe we have Mary beside us to guide us in how we are to minister to each other, how we are to, most importantly, love each other.

For that, I’m thankful. With a dose of apple butter and a bright streak of maple leaves on top.

At the end of July, our infamous Jack Russell Terror died suddenly and unexpectedly, and we found ourselves without a critter dog. Though we have another dog, a cattle dog who shall henceforth be called Pita (and yes, it stands for just what you think it stands for), she has failed miserably in the critter dog department.

After a bit of research, we found Jack Russell pups in central Ohio and we spent a Saturday acquiring them. They were cute and lively and full of spunk.

And then, sadly, the unbloggable happened and they were no more. We mourned, and we had a busyBusyBUSY August.

Two weeks ago, after a bit more research, we found two more Jack Russells. These were year-and-a-half old females, and the owner was prepared to give them to us. (Flag! Flag! Flag!)

We went, met them, and brought them home. No sooner had we gotten them into the back yard, though, when one of them took off. She must have felt slack in the leash and…BOOM! She was gone!

The other dog, while shy and never a proper Jack in the proper “Hi! How! Are! Ya! Happy! To! Meet! Ya!” sense of the breed, that we had gotten very used to with our other Jack, stuck around. Bob spent the evening bribing her with bologna and ham. We figured she would acclimate with Pita and all would be well. We wrote the other dog off.

So, on Sunday that week, we went to the other place, the one that had pups. And there we met a little puffball who we promptly whisked away with us.

What followed was a week of spotting the runaway dog here and there, communicating with the dog warden (who was unsuccessful), trying to avoid the two grown female dogs fighting, and keeping track of the pup. To call it a week of dog drama feels like a gross understatement.

Last Friday, by the grace of God and the dog-love of the former owner, the runaway dog was caught and the unhappy other dog was reunited with her rightful owners. I had gone to get a second puppy, because we had decided to take the adult dog back no matter what (and we had high hopes of catching the runaway, as much as she was being spotted and as hungry as she had to be).

Today finds me with only two Jack Russell pups. And, lemme tell ya, that’s PLENTY.

~ 1 ~

If I’m awake at 3:15 AM, I’m not usually online and blogging. This strikes me as common sense. But since I was WIDE AWAKE this morning (or is it night?), and since I hadn’t scheduled my Quick Takes (did not, in fact, know what all my Quick Takes would be, prior to this session with my laptop), I thought I might as well share with you what it is that brings me to my WIDE AWAKE state today at 3:15 AM.

~ 2 ~

I’m here because of our Cattle Dog*, who has been barking for the last four hours. She’s been outside, on the porch side of the house, barking. And barking. And BARKING.

Our late Jack Russell Terror used to have barking jags too, especially once he became an outside dog. But, the thing is, with him, it was always for a reason, like a coon or a critter of some sort.

Oh, and she’s not barking anymore. I put her in her cage. Why did it take me four hours to reach that point? Well. Good question. I’m asking myself at exactly what point I thought she would just…stop…with her barking. Was I waiting for someone else to take care of it? Maybe it’s safe to say I was just trying to sleep.

*The Cattle Dog needs a catchy name like the former Jack Russell Terror had…any ideas?

~ 3 ~

After I caged the Cattle Dog, I thought I’d check on the pups. (For those of you who didn’t see it on Twitter, Facebook, or my post on Tuesday, we jumped off the deep end last weekend and got not one, but TWO Jack Russell pups.) We’ve been keeping them on the porch, and a niggling little voice in my head was wondering if the reason for Cattle Dog’s barking was something with the pups. She was barking on that side of the house, after all.

I walked onto the enclosed porch, and one of the pups jumped right out of his cozy little bed, ready to play.

But where was the other one?

I called him. I made a kissing noise. I asked the bouncing pup where his brother was.

And then I heard the whining.

From the freezer.

~ 4 ~

The puppy was IN THE FREEZER. We recently redid our porch and it’s still cleared off, because I was expecting to paint the floor. After we got the pups, I decided to wait until we had completely moved them outside before I did the floor.

All that’s on our enclosed porch is two dog beds, a stepladder, the dog dishes of water and food, and a chest freezer.

~ 5 ~

I could hear him on the other side of the little vent thing on the side. Aside from wondering how in the world he got in there (he’s pretty small), I also wondered how I was going to get him out.

This is the sort of thing that falls under my husband’s domain. It involves a screwdriver and solving a spatial puzzle.

I was unable to wedge the vent open (how did he get IN THERE?!?) and also unable to find anything resembling a screwdriver (I’m SURE we have them here somewhere). So I did what the situation warranted: I went upstairs and told my husband.

“Puppy #1 is in the freezer.”

He hadn’t been asleep. Cattle Dog had been barking for FOUR HOURS, remember? Only the kids slept through that, and then only because I took them to the fair last night.

His head never left the pillow.

With one eye open and his head still cradled in his arm, he mumbled, “He CAN’T be in the freezer.”

I didn’t stick around to bug him about it. Someone had to rescue the pup, after all!

~ 6 ~

Was I going to have to go to the barn to find a screwdriver? I was dusting off the area of my mind that ineffectively deals with this and telling myself it was NOT okay to call anyone, rationalizing that the puppy would probably live until morning, when I stepped back onto the porch.

Puppy #1 was romping with his brother. He was out of the freezer.

~ 7 ~

I have NO IDEA how he got in or how he got out of the freezer. I put a full can of paint in front of the vent, and if he gets back in the freezer, he’s going to be there until morning, because I’m going back to bed to salvage some sleep.

My husband is going to be laughing at me for at least a week over this, and I am filing it as the beginning of another decade (at least) of Jack Russell tales. (I have quite a few from our last encounter with this breed.)

Puppy #2 (top) and Puppy #1 (bottom)

We have Jen at Conversion Diary to thank for our weekly dose of Quick Takes. She hosts every week, rain or shine (or incessantly barking dogs), and we are eternally grateful.

This week, our life was inexorably altered when our dog Petie, who I’ve been calling the Jack Russell Terror in this space for years, died unexpectedly. In honor of the years we’ve spent together, and because it makes for good material, I am dedicating today’s 7 Quick Takes to dog tales…about him.

~1~

Terror…not Terrier

My relationship with Petie was, at best, love-hateHateHATE. I didn’t cry when I saw that he was surely going to die. (I did shed some tears later in the evening, though, because, truth be told, I do miss him). There’s a reason that there are so many Jack Russell pups in rescues…these dogs DO. NOT. STOP.

He spent years as an inside dog. When we finally moved him outside, my life improved immeasurably. In fact, any love I had for him grew exponentially in the last two years that he  spent as an outside dog.

So, to those who wondered on Twitter if I was misspelling, no. He was (and remains in our memory) a Jack Russell Terror.

(He chewed that sweater. He was ALWAYS cold in the winter, and would lay in front of the wood stove until his skin turned pink, but would NOT let us “dress” him.)

~2~

Curiosity Killed the Coon (written December 2005)

In thirty years, if we are still living in this old farmhouse on our beautiful patch of property, I have an image of myself. My back will be stooped over from carrying babies and firewood and trying to only make one trip instead of the wiser two.  My hearing will be worse than it is, and so I will have to blast music even louder than I do, and dear Bob will have to be even more patient when I can’t hear him the third time he repeats himself.  I’ll be able to stomach all kinds of horrid you-live-in-the-country-if things, and I hope that I will also be able to cook better than I do now (hey, thirty years is a long time, so there’s hope!).  I’ll use words like “ain’t” and “rassle” without any thought of correctness, because I will have been in the country so long that it just won’t matter.  I also know that in thirty years, I will not be banished to wait by the wheelbarrow while a certain unnamed dog attacks a coon (or was it a cat?) in the underbrush.

Last night when we were making our daily trip out to fill the wheelbarrow with firewood, we stopped in the tin shed (which is sort of like a garage, but made of tin) to put out food for the cat.  Suddenly, there was a baying and a growling and a scuttling of small creatures behind the building. Bob, ever the unimpressed farmer type, shrugged it off as “Petie getting into something again.”  And then the cacophony changed to a higher, more urgent pitch, Bob grabbed the flashlight, and we went out to make it a spectator sport.

The snow was falling in lazy clumps, and the air was cold enough to make it hurt with every breath.  Even so, standing there behind Bob, peering into the dark mess of underbrush and wondering if my legs were safe from the dog and the thing he was harassing, I didn’t notice any of that.  Nope, what I was wondering was whether this would be a Shotgun Incident.

Petie tends to find the little critters in the area (it is, after all, what Jack Russells are bred to do), and to get into a good bloody mess as he corners them and attempts to kill them. Sometimes they get away from him enough to get only injured, and Bob will have to get the shotgun (or sometimes a large heavy object – that was last week with the possum) and do the humane thing and kill them.  Petie will not leave an injured critter alone until it is dead.  He has no compunction about his quarry’s size in relation to his 13 pounds of muscle and willpower.  (Does this make him courageous or stupid?)

Suddenly, in the midst of the scuffles and the growls, there was silence.  Bob had still not been successful at locating them with the flashlight, and in the silence, I looked over at his stoic unimpressed countenance, and asked, “Is this silence normal?” to which he replied, without batting an eye, “Nope.”

Then I asked the question that had been nagging me: “Am I safe standing here?” It turns out that I was right in the path that the critter would probably take if it got out from its corner of safety and made a run for it.  I repositioned myself, and Bob looked up long enough to say, “If I was you, I’d go up by the wheelbarrow.”

Considering that the last thing I wanted was a riled-up critter rushing my way – insert scene from “Christmas Vacation” where the door opens and the squirrel and the dog tear up the neighbor lady – I slouched over to the wheelbarrow where I really couldn’t see what was going on.

After the silence, the two duked it out some more and it got pretty loud.  Finally, the coon (or was it a cat?) made a dash off toward the west side of our property, with Petie in hot pursuit.  It was at this point that Bob began to question whether it was a cat instead of a coon.

Petie didn’t get the coon/cat last night, but he was a happy pup all the same. Nothing gets his juices running like a good rassle and a chase through the cold night with a cheering section calling his name (to the effect of “PETIE!  Get back here RIGHT NOW!”).  Although he had to deal with a bath, he also had his Hero (Bob) call him Good Dog at least four times

~3~

Cute…but Maddening

We happened upon Petie because the family that owned Petie had to get rid of him (an allergic daughter). They knew my mother-in-law was looking for a smaller dog and they called her. She couldn’t resist him and brought him home. My husband, seeing his mother apparently happy wasn’t going to say no either.

He was about five pounds then and cute as could be. That honeymoon period lasted a while. Maybe even as long as 48 hours.

And then the strong will started shining through. My husband, who has always been a natural Pack Leader, met this head-on. For almost ten years. He became Petie’s hero, and when Bob walked through the door at night, Petie

We ended up with Petie when my mother-in-law moved into an apartment and then he just sort of stayed. We joked for years and teased my mother-in-law that she could have her dog back anytime.

~4~

Inventive…with Anything Round

Oh, how he loved to chase a ball…

…or squash (the pumpkins never made it that year, either…he got them ALL)…

…or a shot put…

…or full-sized basketballs…

…or tires (which is what did him in, in the end). He was fast, which was great when he was attacking a rat or a coon or a groundhog or a cat. (Not so great if I was trying to get my kid’s ball back.)

When he was in the house, he used to hide under a buffet and poke his ball out. You were supposed to send it back to him. If you didn’t, he growled at an increasingly higher pitch until he was barking.

Lacking any other amusement, he would hide his toys all over the house, even…

…in the dryer!

~5~

Mr. Protective

Petie claimed us. He also claimed our kids and the people who were “with” us (friends and family who visited, etc.). Though I read that Jacks (or any terriers, for the most part) aren’t recommended for kids, we had a great experience with him, at least in his younger days. (The kids didn’t climb on him or tackle him as much once he became an outside dog.

The day we brought our oldest daughter home from the hospital, my mother-in-law came over. Petie growled at her — a serious, “I will bite you if you take one step closer” growl — when she leaned over to look in the crib.

He also used to curl up on the couch with us, especially with my husband. He didn’t take kindly to anyone waking up the person he was with, especially if it was Bob. He was spanked MANY times for growling at me when I would shake Bob awake at night for bed.

~6~

Life without Petie (written March, 2006)

I have a love-hate relationship with my Jack Russell. On the one hand, he’s the doggie equivalent of my energy, joyfully intelligent, and quite humorous as a source of stories.  On the other, he is insistent, annoying, and never-ending, and often highly annoying (like when he does random bark-screams in the middle of the night).  Lately it seems the pendulum has been hitting the hate end of the relationship more, but then we had a Scary Incident.

I was home alone and the baby was tucked away, snoozing peacefully upstairs.  I was either reading or online (or maybe both), when I saw a white blur streak across the room.  Looking up, I saw Petie run into something.  Now, if his ball had been on the other side of the said object, this would not have been unusual.  However, it was random wheels-not-working movement, and it was weird.  He was whimpering and obviously not happy.  Luckily, Bob came home right about then and I let Petie out, right before discovering some unintentional destruction.

I spent some time pondering what my life would be like without Petie, something that we joke about all the time but which I haven’t really considered in depth at all.  Who would entertain the baby in the mornings?  Who would clean up the kitchen floor after her meals?  Who would alert me to raccoons in the front yard?  Who would hide balls in my laundry hampers and then pull towels through the tiny holes in an attempt to retrieve them?  Who would steal all my blankets at night?  Who would greet Elizabeth in the mornings?  Who would keep me company on Bob’s school nights?  Who would greet me with unadulterated joy whenever I came home, even if I had only been gone for two minutes?  Who would have as much energy as me in the morning?  Who would shed white hair into every single possible imaginable place in our belongings?  Who would scare off the spiders?  Who would fight me for the couch?  Who would play fetch with me?  (no wait, I think I meant…who would play fetch with Elizabeth?)

We weren’t sure what was wrong, and still aren’t.  He seems fine now; back to the full swing of obstinate outdoor exploration while I’m still in my pajamas and calling for him to come in, barking at the slightest provocation to his Dad’s-not-home domain, and curling up in the crook of my legs when I go to bed early.

~7~

Posts from the Past

If you want to read past blog posts inspired by our late JRT, here you go:

• Jack Russell Terror (which is actually one of my favorite posts of all time, whether or not anyone else likes it)
• What’s that gnawing in my closet?
• Playing God
• Life on the Outside

Jen has all the Quick Takes at her place, which is worth stopping by and staying for a while. Visit her and maybe even participate with your own Quick Takes post!

Part of the Mary Moment Monday series

I had an attack of PoorMe the other day. There was no good reason for it (but, really, is there ever?): I was just not feeling well and was watching a home improvement project take longer than usual (which is, sadly, normal with this place…we always seem to get into more than we bargain for). It was discouraging, somehow, to see two men I love dearly working so hard and coming up against hurdles and complications.

I was facing my own series of challenges in the house, between my temper and my girls. I saw a hole where a wall used to be and wondered how this house would ever be a haven, a place of beauty, a home. My washer had stopped working earlier in the week, and little things that normally don’t phase me were bringing me to my knees.

It was all looking pretty hopeless to me.

Things got better later in the day, and on Sunday, I woke up and, after breakfast and the semi-completion of the project, started thinking in a whole different way about things. What if, I thought, I made our porch entrance into something that would make us smile? What if I made a few small changes (valences on the windows, repainting the floor, moving the freezer to make the area look larger) and did a few small (and, for me, unfamiliar and uncomfortable) decorative improvements?

When I mentioned them to my husband, that Prince Charming who not only puts up with my whims and who keeps our castle livable, he was supportive. He even let me use his tape measure. I measured here and I measured there. I made a list and a plan to go to the home improvement store where they must recognize us by now.

And, this morning, after my quiet devotional time, I went out and started the first step of my Pretty Porch Plan. I swept and lugged and battled cobwebs, all to the tune of the Divine Mercy Chaplet. I considered how differently I was looking at my entire house in light of this one small project.

Over the last ten years, I’ve come to the conclusion that home ownership is highly overrated. I might protest it, loudly and often, if not for the fact that I love the land that makes up our property, and I see beauty and peace all around me.

And then there’s the thought of what Mary would do. Did she feel ill-equipped in her home? Did she find herself wishing, longing, hoping for more and better? Did she wonder what God had in mind, exactly?

And if so, where did she find the strength to continue to say Yes, to embrace the call to higher work in the ordinary humdrum of her days?

I find her here, with me, in this old farmhouse, and it gives me hope. I need that hope right now. I’m clinging to it.

And I’m looking at color swatches for other areas of the house.

I laughed.  “I thought I saw the sheep getting out,” I said, and then recounted a tale from the summer of the sheep being in the front yard.

Then, for some reason, I went into the laundry room, and out of the window I saw them.

Out in the yard.

Enjoying the lush green grass.

NOT IN THE PASTURE.

“I gotta go,” I said, in what I thought was a calm-I-can-handle-this voice, and hung up.

I went out to…well, what exactly was I going to do?  My role with the sheep is usually to write about them, take pictures, and, enjoy seeing them graze in the back pasture from my kitchen window.  I’ve petted them through the fence, but I’ve never tried to herd them back into their pen.  Though I knew the theory of it, I’ve been around long enough to know my book learnin’ ain’t worth much in the face of real animals.

So I did what I always do when something is wrong on the farm and I happen to be home to see it.

I called my brother-in-law.

No answer.  Left a message, fully confident that he’d be right over.

That’s why, when the nice farmer down the road pulled in, got out of his car, and started helping me get the big ewes who were not.going.to.move moving, I assured him all was well.  (I don’t blame him for looking doubtful.  I was a sight for doubtful glances, in my sweats and slippers.)

“My brother-in-law will be right over,” I told him.

He stayed in his car a few minutes, but he did eventually leave.

I called my brother-in-law again.

No answer.  Left a message.  Again.

I called my mother-in-law.

Straight to voice mail.  Left a message.

I called my sister-in-law.

No answer.  Left a message.

At this point, the reality of the situation was sinking in:  I was on my own with 20 ewes (who were quite happy to eat in my front yard, staying well away from the blacktop of the road) and two little kids in the house.

I called my husband.  He didn’t answer his cell phone, and so I called the office.  The new receptionist answered.

“May I tell him who’s calling?”

“Yes, it’s his wife.  And it’s pretty important.”

I was impressed at how fast he got on the line.

“What’s up?”

I found out later that he was pretty amused by the whole situation.  (He still is.)  At the time, I couldn’t understand why his first words to me were “Calm down.”

As it turns out, after I got off the phone with Bob and left a few more family messages, I went into the house to put on my boots.  While I was in there, I called my friend back, and I asked for a favor that will be in her top five for quite a while, I’m sure.  “Can you come over here and just…be here?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said.

The kids were screaming, though my four-year-old perked right up at hearing that there was a full-blown Adventure going on outside.  She put on her clothes faster than I’ve ever seen her, and headed out the door to help.

I had my doubts about how much help she could be.

We went outside, me with my boots and kids with their smiles, and I started rounding up the sheep, again.  There are tricks to herding sheep and getting them to go where you want them to go.  The problem is that I don’t know those tricks.

Eventually, I got the sheep in the barn…again.  (This was the third time, I think.)  I called my four-year-old and asked her to go in the house and get the scissors.  The reason I hadn’t been able to get the gate open the last time I’d had them in the barn was that I couldn’t get the knots undone on the gate.  Normally, this is no problem.  The guys carry knives in their pockets, after all, and you don’t want the sheep getting out because of a slipped knot.

My four-year-old came out with the scissors and saved the day.  She walked through the ewes, petting them as she went, cut open the twine, and opened the gate.

It was almost too easy.

My friend arrived to find the sheep in the barn.  I made a third carafe of coffee and we laughed as we savored it.

The lesson?  Asking for help — from a four-year-old or from the Mother of God — might be hard and might not even make any sense.  I’m always doubting, wondering, questioning.  What’s the point?  Can it really make a difference?  How can she really help me?

Well, maybe it doesn’t seem like she can.  Maybe the situation is beyond ridiculous, a law suit waiting to happen.  (Can you imagine some teenager heading to school crashing into a 200-pound ewe in front of my house?)  Maybe all the usual help is unreachable, phones going straight to voice mail.  Maybe the only help you’re going to get is going to come from what seems like the unlikeliest of places.

I find Mary’s touch in some of my craziest days.

The photos in this post are from the ewe’s escapade in our yard this summer.  I didn’t have a chance to get pictures the other day.  I did think about it, but decided I’d better focus on getting them back in the pasture… 

The discussion over Ohio’s Issue 2 has had me thinking for a month or so about agricultural things.

During college, I learned a lot about agriculture from people who actually grew up on farms.  I was involved with the dairy club, though I had zero background with dairy animals or life on a dairy farm.  I just liked cows, and I was accepted into that group (though perhaps with a few raised eyebrows).

I did grow up in the country, though, and my dad had an agricultural background.  I credit that with what I now think of as my farm girl sensibility.  Through the years, one thing that has stuck with me and has continued to be reinforced in my various agricultural exposures: most people, and especially those outside the small percentage who actually work in agriculture, do not understand or fathom what’s involved in bringing the bounty of food from the field/barn to the store to their tables.  In that lack of understanding comes some very misguided conclusions.

I can’t help thinking, considering the mud-slinging I’ve seen in my inbox over Issue 2 (which passed, by the way), that some other folks could use some farm girl/boy sensibility.

Livestock animals are not pets.

There, I’ve said it.  It’s been simmering in me for weeks.  Now it’s out there.

I don’t agree with making laws by constitutional amendments (but I forgot to vote yesterday, so my voice was silent in the whole debate).  I also don’t agree with the humanization of animals that’s going on in our country.

As our dogs and cats — our pets, which are animals — become more important, have more rights, it trickles over into other areas, like animal agriculture.  As more and more people get a farther and farther distance from their country roots, livestock — cattle, swine, chickens, and so forth — start to seem like pets of a different nature.

The danger of that is that then the same parameters you use to determine if your dog — who you probably think of as a family member — is comfortable start to seem a logical set of criterion for determining if any other animal is being well tended.

The line between abuse and humane starts to look ridiculous, in other words.  And don’t be surprised when the price of your food starts to skyrocket.

The reason for some of the practices that you might not understand, that you might mistakenly think are inhumane, is to increase efficiency, raise productivity, and, in the end, keep the price of food low.

Unfortunately, you can’t have cheap food and livestock as pets.  Perhaps even more importantly, livestock do not need to be treated as pets.  (Your dog doesn’t either.  But that’s a different discussion.)

There’s a danger in this humanization of animals, a danger for us. If animals are equal to us — and I don’t believe they are, though I’m not in any way advocating abuse — then what’s the next step?  If abortion is a right we have already, and unborn babies aren’t people until some point that we’re all going to argue over in a quest to deny the Truth, how does animal rights encourage the dehumanization of us?

I’m out of writing time this morning, so I’m going to leave it at that.  For further reading, check out The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellectuals.  It should be required reading, as far as I’m concerned.

–1–

To the person who found me by typing “can you pray one decade at a-time” into the search, I reply, YES! YOU CAN! (I hope they found this old post or this article link or even my review of one of my favorite books of all time.  But just in case they didn’t, I’m going to say a little prayer for them when I’m praying my rosary.)

–2–

Tuesday (September is the feast of the nativity of Mary, or, in language I can understand, Mary’s birthday (Marymas?). Who better to host a giveaway, and what better giveaway to get, than Ginny Moyer, author of one of my other favorite books, Mary and Me (which I reviewed here).  Win your own copy by leaving a comment at this post over at Ginny’s place.  Good luck!

–3–

I’m back to work this week, and we’ve started homeschooling (two weeks early!). However, it’s going well this week.  Better than I expected. I never would have thought that typing that first sentence, I would follow it with this one: I’m laughing a lot.  There’s nothing like a pair of four-year-olds punctuating their time with “School RULES!” and “Can we keep doing school?” to motivate the rest of my day.  I mean, work makes school possible, right now, and school makes certain other mentalities possible…so it’s really feeling like God’s plan.  I’m glad I had eight weeks of rest to prepare for this, though.

–4–

I’m still digesting all that I’ve learned in the last eight weeks, from my seven sabbatical lessons to my daily bread. I am pretty sure there’s going to be something about life in the present moment and how multitasking is overrated.  (With links, because these aren’t necessarily my thoughts, just things I learned over the summer.)

–5–

Our Jack Russell Terror has an inborn talent for finding critters. It’s an endearing trait.  Really.  On a farm, you need a critter dog and he’s really good at it.

Except with possums.

It’s the nature of possums to be the kind of critter he should like, to get into the barns, to go after the dog food and any number of other garbage-y stuff.  They are worse than raccoons (which is saying something!), in part because JRT can’t kill them.  They play dead.

It’s pretty interesting to watch, and the girls and I happened to be outside playing and bug hunting the other day, when JRT brought us his possum catch.  I told my four-year-old, she of the Never-ending Curiosity, that even though JRT was carrying the possum around and it looked dead.

“It’s dead!” my four-year-old insisted.

“Well,” I told her, “let’s walk down to the barn and see if the possum is here when we come back.”  (This also gave me a chance to teach her an important farm lesson: if you see a possum or coon during the day, stay away and get an adult.)

When we came back, the possum was on his feet, the dog was long gone (having showed us, been admonished to “KILL! IT!,” accepted that as praise, and moved on to the next critter), and my four-year-old was fascinated.  I called the dog over, and he did what he always does with possums — he gave me a confused look, then noticed the possum moving, pounced on it, looked up at me triumphantly, thinking it dead again.

My husband, the Chief-in-charge of Critter Control around here, didn’t get home until we went into the house and the possum made his escape.  He heard the tale, though, from our excited four-year-old, and I think maybe that took some of the sting out of his late hours.

–6–

Speaking of farm life, it’s breeding season for the sheep. That means we have a ram out with the ewes, and the ewes are sporting colored patches on their back ends.  That’s a good sign; it means the ram is doing his work.  It’s also a chance to explain the natural order of things to that child who is asking all the questions around here.  It also means that Shepherd D will have lambs come January (and, actually, he should have fall lambs soon, so we’re going to have some science time in his barn later this month).  I just love lambs (and the photo opps).

–7–

We went to the library three times this week. My four-year-old found the section of horse books.  Guess what we’ve been reading all week?  (No complaints from me or my husband!)

Jen invented and hosts our Quick Takes fun every week, so go give her a visit at Conversion Diary.