Farm Life

The Farmhouse Path to Mary

April 26, 2010 By Sarah Reinhard 3 Comments

My old farmhouse plays quite a role in my life. As with some of my very favorite books, it is, in fact, a character in my life.

If my life was a novel like, say China Court, I might have a deeper appreciation for the high ceilings and the one-of-a-kind floors. I suspect it would be because I would be able to focus on those romantic features and not contend, instead, with the wasps and termites, drafts and whistles, space issues and loose nails.

If I was reading a novel about my house, I’d laugh at the antics of the woman living in such a place, raising little girls and planning meals and contending with 100-year-old construction that didn’t have electricity as part of the plan.

Recently, though, I couldn’t help but reflect on my old farmhouse and how it has challenged my faith, and especially my devotion to Mary.

I didn’t exactly plan to live in an old farmhouse. It just happened to be the house my husband owned. It’s perched on a lovely piece of property, one that continues to woo me with its gentle slopes and beautiful views. The creek bed, the surrounding fields, and even the weeds have an allure.

It was built at the turn of the 20th century, when life was very different. It started as a two-story four-room brick house in the middle of nowhere. Over the years, subsequent owners added on to it until my husband’s brother purchased it, 15 years ago. It’s now a quite nice amount of living space, though arranged very differently than modern houses.

So why is my first reaction to a friend’s comment about the possibilities a cynical remark about wasps and drafts?

Often, my old farmhouse forces me to step back from the fast track of life, from the internet that I’ve so embraced, and find silence.

Standing in my kitchen, with my hands immersed in soapy water after dinner, watching the sun set over our back barn, I can’t help but wonder if Mary had a view like mine.

Read the rest at Faith & Family Live: “Finding Mary in an Old Farmhouse.”

Filed Under: Inspired by the Virgin Mary, Mary Moment Mondays Tagged With: Faith, Faith & Family Live, Farm Life, Mary Moment Monday, old house, Virgin Mary, writing

Loose Sheep and Mary

November 16, 2009 By Sarah Reinhard 5 Comments

I was making my morning cup of tea (the cup I make after I decide that, in fact, a third carafe of coffee will be too much), talking to a good friend on the phone. I paused and gasped. Being a good friend, she asked what was wrong.

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.
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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.
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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.
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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…

Filed Under: Farm Life, Inspired by the Virgin Mary, Mary Moment Mondays Tagged With: Farm Life, Mary Moment Monday, sheep, Virgin Mary

Perspective on Pets

November 4, 2009 By Sarah Reinhard 3 Comments

The discussion over Ohio’s Issue 2 has had me thinking for a month or so about agricultural things. I have a bit of a background in agriculture though it’s been hidden for a while, put on a back burner. Back in my high school days, FFA is what gave me a glimmer of hope and inspired my desire to be a teacher. I have a whole degree in agricultural education, and up until I student taught, that’s what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

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.

Filed Under: Farm Life Tagged With: agriculture, Farm Life, life with pets, livestock, pets

What’s that gnawing in my closet?

October 17, 2006 By Sarah Reinhard 2 Comments

It’s that time of year when the leaves are brilliant, the corn is harvested, and the car is frosty. The clothes in our closets are mostly inappropriate, and the closet itself is awaiting the Clothes Swap Extravaganza.

There’s something else in the closet too.

In the wee hours of the night, Hubby woke up and turned on the closet light. Something stirred me in his moving around, and I sat up and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“There’s something digging in the closet.”

He left the closet light on for most of the night – it was off when I got up this morning, but I’m guessing the Critter didn’t do that. I went back to sleep, disturbed by dreams of Critters in my closet.

Just what could it be? And why does it think that my closet is an ideal place for it to be? How soon will we find it, or how soon will it get through?

I can’t help but look inward, then, and wonder about the Things in my soul, sneaking out of sight when I turn on the light of examination. They’re just under the floorboards, rattling away in the dark. It’s too easy to dismiss them as unimportant, inconsequential, silly little Things. But, like Thing One and Thing Two, the Things in my soul can wreak havoc if they get out into the big room.

As my husband said last night, “That critter doesn’t know we have a dog.” The Jack Russell Terror knows something’s up in our closet, although he doesn’t have it all figured out, because we keep our bedroom door closed much of the time. He hasn’t started his obsessive digging and clawing to rid us of the Critter (and we’re glad for that).

The Things in my soul don’t know about the Protector I keep there, or maybe they just don’t care. I think their sender knows, but doubts whether I keep that Dawg inside all the time. I have to remind myself to nurture my Protector and my Strength. I need to keep a steady diet of Scripture and holy writings, and I must not slack on my prayers. My focus must be heavenward, even as my feet travel along terra firma. With my head in the clouds, closer to my Maker and my Protector, I have to trust that the floorboards are strong enough in the closet of my soul. I have to be ready. I have to remember that my Strength comes from above.