Just another Day on the Farm

Its going to be ramble of a post this morning folks..

1) Yesterday morning was the first morning that I looked at the bucket of grapes, the half bushel of tomato’s, the green beans, the peppers and the corn that came in the night before and thought.. enough already!, then I got busy and made grape juice, lamb pasta sauce, and a huge batch of chili sauce, along with making a big batch of bread, now between those and the regular chores that should have filled my day, but fate it seemed had different plans for my day..

2) the closest farm to me has horses and I looked out the window’s to see what was getting a soft grunting woof from the hounds in the living room, and there were the horse’s grazing on my grass in the front lane, so out I went to catch them, no go, they were not going to let me catch them yet and down the road they went, the third horse is kicking a fuss so I head over to see if there is any chance that farmer T is home, and ring the bell, now normally she is a happy gal but she greeted me at the door in tears, and a look like “not now” so I said, horse are out, and what is wrong!  Well, I won’t share more then two things, the big one being that it was her birthday, and that she was having to put down her 16 plus year old dog, and she was having a when it rains it pours couple days.

So I helped get the horses back, talked to her a bit and she asked if I might stop by after she got home, so she would have someone to talk to as mate is working away at the moment, so I said yes, trotted home, and tried to get this canned, and that baked and the pressure canner was done (I was freaking out a little that I had left everything going but I had only expected to be gone for a few min only)

So after I got everything at a break point, I headed to town, and picked up a small birthday cake, a card and a multi picture frame as a gift for when the time is right for a collection of her puppies photos, so when she got home, she beeped me, so over I went with my little gifts, I know from watching my mom, when my dad was working that, its hard to be home on the farm with the children and that sometimes just having someone come with a garden basket of fresh stuff, and b-day cake can be a little high spot in a bad day..

3) So headed down to pay farmer R for my hay, and I have been saying for a number of years now that I am going to stop in at a certain farm that must have a thousand plus rasberry canes but they keep their farm as tightly locked down as I do, but the gate was open and someone was working out in the lane and a itty bitty tiny sign on the post said, local honey, so I pulled in and got the same look I give when someone I don’t know pulls in, and even got the “can I help you” so I said, do you have honey for sale? Well 35 min later, I have a jar of really amazing truly local raw honey, a trade of some compost for all the canes I want to dig out and move to my place, a trade of some lamb meat for some fresh pressed jugs of organic apple cider, and a shirt full of hertitage Russian Black Krim tomato’s from the garden to bring home, a offer to come help with his maple syrup in the spring, turns out he is the one across the road that taps and has the suger shack there, and if I want it, the chance to buy organic (non-certified but nothing on his land for 14 years) hay if I want it. He was hoping that he might get to have a walk-about in my own gardens etc.

4) Spent the evening giving my guest rooms a good once over, as my Dh’s ma arrives soon for her visit and DH’s uncle is coming up from about southern part of the province for a visit as well, so heaven help me, I am going to be trying to fit in visiting among all the fall work, I figure I will just drag them around with me, and see if I can’t put them to work just a little bit in helping..

Wonder what they will think of my plan.. welcome, want to snap beans? want to help build a new jug for the barn, want to help bed down the fruit trees? guess we will find out..

Now, I gotta say that I am both unhappy and a tiny bit amused that with all my farm and house cats that a fat sneaky mouse ended up in the one very rarely used cuboard..

 Needless to say out came a mouse trap with some peanut butter and within an hour, snap, everything got hauled out and washed and wiped with bleach water, and then the little hole was found, stuffed with steel wool and two more traps set out just in case.

Last night on the local news, they showed that a local childrens park was closed due to there being a local rat population,  I’m sorry that they closed the park but here comes the interesting part, the first thing they showed afterwards was truly lovely big raised garden beds and with a qoute right along the lines of ” there was a community garden right near by that may have helped attacted them” then they also showed garbage cans, and reminded folks to have tightly fitted garbage can lids.

Now this really caught my attention because they were not showing a compost pile or anything like that, these were clearly well cared for, cleaned and perfectly bare (no green cover) raised beds with neatly mowed lawn around them, and yet somehow the community gardens were the top reason that the rats had moved in.. Not good for the general public’s view of the postives of a community garden.

We did have rats move in on the farm in our first summer here, along with a thriving mouse population as my DH did not believe in barn cats, only in indoor house cats, now poison was out, no way was I having that on the farm, so we drew our lines in the sand, no barn cats was his, and mine was,then figure out a way to get rid of the rats and level out that mouse population, he got this trap and that trap, he made rat catching buckets and some got caught but the population continued to grow, we moved all feed into steel rat/mouse proof garabage cans, I found and bought metal wood holding box’s and moved them into the barns for holding extra’s and I was extra careful on bleaching down my milking stand and got more and more vocal about the fact that this was NOT GOOD!

It came to a head one day when DH had feed the chickens and was just standing there to enjoy their happy clucking, and as he was standing still, the mice all came out to enjoy dinner with the chickens, first one, then three, then four, then more.. in the end, hubby came in and said that there had to be a dozen and just to add insult to injury, a rat had taken his rat trap when it got caught and hauled it away 😛

Needless to say our first barn cats were introduced the next day, It took them a bit to get attached to the buildings and they were locked up with food/water and litter box till they got more comfortable, Since then I have never seen any showing of a rat colony, the cats do bring home the odd rat to leave as a gift on the doorstep, but mainly they bring mouse or moles as gifts, they don’t just hunt my land but all the farm land around our farm is also hunted, some of them are more homebodies and are always around and some of them hunt both in fields and in the woods, but when winter comes, they all take advantages of the barn setup for them, including the their big heated waterbowl.

As this is the time of the year that the mice will be doing their best to head into the houses, how do you deal with this in your own area, do you trap? do you use bait? do you have farm cats? If you don’t use Bleach, what do you use to clean the area that you find mouse droppings?

So yesterday a big truck backed its way into my driveway, on it was a number of pallets, some carrying cedar bedding, some full of feed for my critters and some strapped down with full sheets of plywood and 2 by 4’s etc.

Its the first time I have paid to have a load delivered, we normally just pick up a truck load full on the way to and from need to do trips, but full sheets of plywood would not fit in our vehicles and we didn’t want them cut, so I figured in for a dime, might as well go for the whole bunch as the delivery price is the same for one thing or a full flat bed truck load.

Olderish (late 40’s or early 50’s) gentleman comes out of the cab, smiles at me and says, want to go get the tractor, to which, I smile back and say, we don’t own one.. the smile slowly fades, and I say, I told them, that I didn’t have one when I ordered and that we would have to take everything off and restack it, guy sigh’s and says, well this will take a good while, so I smile and say, I will give a helping hand and we will get done sooner then you think..

He does the eye flick, and with it, my ire is just a tiny bit up right there, but I smile sweetly, he says, I don’t know mam, the bedding is 40 pds, most of the bags are either 60 or 80 pds (does he think I don’t know the weight of the feed bags I ordered?) might want to let me do it..

Now, If I had thought that he said it because I was busy canning, and said I needed to be in the house, or if I thought he said it because I looked sick with a snot running cold, I would have been fine with it.. but he said it because he saw that I was heavy..

Farmgal is not thin, I am overweight, I have lost weight in the past two years but I would by the medical field need to lose alot more before I am going to be within their norm, not that I ever would be, even in my teens and early twenties when I could work a full time job, a part time job and still have the energy to go shake a tail feather on the dance for another couple hours, I was still well over 200 pds, I am the shortest in my family at 5’10 but I am still ahead of the average in height, and bone in regards to female structure. 

So I said to him, how about we just start and see how it goes, so off comes the first pallet of shavings and he pushes them down, I stack them, he gets down and starts helping me, him”hey, you are doing really well at this” smile and nod..

Second pallet of shavings, and he is starting to puff just a little, says to me.. no farmers around here will come and unload for you, smile at him.. no, its fall and they are all busy and can’t book them when I didn’t know when you would come, they just said, sometime today, finish that pallet, and he is huff, huff.. think we should take a break.. ok.. Looks at me, looks at the farm, so what do you have for equipment.. nothing much I say, don’t even have a snow blower, he looks down the lane.. no way you need one of those, I smile, the odd storm, we pay to have it cleared, but most of the time its done by hand.. guy, just shakes his head..

So I smile and say, we had better get that next pallet of feed done, he says, these is the really heavy ones.. I can throw them off, I go, don’t want the bags to break, that would be bad, just bring it to the edge and lower it and I will get it and restack it on that pallet.. so bag after bag and the guy finally says, guess if you do it all by hand, you are stronger then you look, and I give the eye flick again.. and we keep unloading the bags, and then the wood, and he starts his cleanup and tie downs, I go get tarps cover them, then put sheets of plywood on top (he came around to help me get them on.. thanks.. head back to the garden edge and he just stares as I come around with a full size tire in each hand, and throw one up on top each, shakes his head and says, you have a good day now and I head back into the house.

So here is my question? Why does everyone think just because someone is heavy and or overweight that they are weak and/or lazy?! 

I have meet stick thin ladies that are as weak as a wet noodle, and I am friends with a few girls who are one the thinner sides and they are strong girls, I have meet thin ladies that are lazy by their nature, and I have meet thin ladies that are hard-working, I have meet heavier ladies that are workhorses, and have meet heavier ladies that do next to nothing and are weak as kittens..

Why is it so hard for folks to figure out that judging someone on if they are strong in body by their size does not eqaul out in real life.

So what do you think, given that I am heavy, should I just expect folks to judge me, and water off a duck’s back, or do you think that regardless of size, you should be judged on what you can do, not how you look?