August 24, 2011

everyone has a story to tell

August 24, 2011/ molly balint

....about yesterday's earthquake that rattled the Mid-Atlantic. We East Coasters aren't used to such phenomenon. I was on a conference call with my Babycenter pals when the whole house started to shudder. And of course, earthquake wasn't even in my frame of reference, so I immediately thought, "This is it. This old farmhouse has finally had enough. It's falling down.This must be what it's like."

I was relieved all the girls were outside "babysitting" Birdy while I was on the phone. I ran outside, staring up at the house expecting to witness the walls and roof give way. And I thought, "Shoot. I'm still in my grey pajama pants {in my defense I'd been cleaning all morning}. My hair is a mess. I have no make-up on. And the baby is wearing soaking wet clothes from playing in the water tub."

Of course, I was slightly mistaken. My house wasn't falling down, we were just experiencing the tremors of the quake in Virginia. (Which also happens to be almost EXACTLY where we were on vacation. We even stopped for ice cream cones in Mineral.)

And now that the earthquakes have subsided, we've moved on to the next natural disaster, waiting to see what this hurricane stirs up over the weekend....

But alas, let's discuss something much cuter....meet, Girl.

She was the special project that was included in our farm-sitting duties at my uncle's farm. Rescued when she was just a day or two old, she's been bottle-fed and cared for by their family ever since.

We saw her on her first days home, when she was refusing to take a bottle. Her legs like little twigs. I never imagined them to be so fragile. But now, having mastered the bottle, she's thriving.

Girl hangs out in the fields around my uncle's farm and comes in around the same time each day when she's feeling hungry. Some days she'd be eagerly waiting on the front porch, another day I only found her by the tiny brown ears sticking up out of the bean field.

These are the moments when I want to take my childrens' little faces in my hands, look them square in the eyes and say, "Do you realize how special this is? Do you realize how blessed you are, to be doing this?"

If there's one thing I want to instill in them, it's gratitude for these moments they experience almost every day, for the views out our kitchen window, for the open spaces to explore and run. For the closeness they have to the natural world around them.

August 22, 2011

farm-sitting

August 22, 2011/ molly balint

If you stand in our back field and look past the stream, over the corn and bean fields, and to the top of the hill, there sits my uncle's farm. While we were in Virginia two weeks ago, his oldest son, took care of our place--chickens, barn cats, Ruby, the doves and guinea pigs. So when my uncle's family headed on their own vacation last week, we returned the favor.

Along with the job of farm-sitting for my uncle comes the use of his RTV. It was our means to get back and forth from his place to ours--over the stream crossing, along the woods, up the waterways in the corn fields...(and yes, where I sometimes enjoyed my morning cup of coffee.)

With Mary kneeling in back, Elizabeth in the cab and Birdy tucked in on Emma's lap beside me, it was pure bliss for these girls. By the end of the week, the words "Let's take a ride in the Kubota." sent Birdy squealing and toddling to the porch door and everyone scrambling to find flip-flops and boots. (Why can't my children move so quickly any other time I try to get them all out the door?)

My uncle's chores are a little more involved than ours--pumping water Little House-style and hauling it to the horses, feeding, changing water and collecting eggs for his thirty-some hens, dogs, ponies, a pet turkey named Jimmy (who turns out to be a hen).

And my main helper was worthless--lost in a field of ponies.

But the other two did their best to help me get the jobs done, while wrangling the baby and rounding up houdini chickens who didn't want to stay in their pens.

It was nothing but fun. A little sweaty. Still fun.

But there was one special animal that we had to take care of that made the week even more amazing. She'd wander in from the bean fields, or be waiting for us (obviously running late) on the front porch. But she's cute enough to get her own page in the story, so for now, just a wee sneak peek.....

July 25, 2011

the great escape

July 25, 2011/ molly balint

Last week, I threw in the towel. The heat was getting the best of me. You'd have to be hiding under a rock (maybe it's cooler under there?) to not know about the crazy heat along the east coast. And with no air-conditioning, except for a puttering little unit in our living room window, I was going a little stir-crazy. Too hot to leave the room. Too hot to leave the house. There might as well have been a blizzard outside.

So on Tuesday when I called my mom and just the sound of her voice brought me to tears, I decided for the sake of my mental health it was probably time to get out of dodge.

The next morning we packed up (dripping in sweat) and hit the road to her air-conditioned house a few hours away.

We hid out through the weekend. Which included a brief excursion to my old 4-H County fair where my neices and nephew were showing their goats, dairy steers and home arts. (My kids were quite impressed when I used my royalty as former fair queen to get us in the door for free.)

Birdy was a big hit with the goats. Just their size. Soft and edible.

We came home last night and had to readjust to life without cool breezes blowing across our faces while we slept. Instead, we were back to large cattle-sized fans buffeting warm, damp, thick air across our tired bodies.

Today, it's our turn to prep for our county fair. A small scheduling oversight, and it turns out all our fair projects are due tomorrow, not Thursday afternoon. So it is a crafting-crazed madhouse over here. Stitching, sewing and baking in between coats of paint and mod podge.

But I'm convinced the panic keeps our minds off the heat.

So hello. How are you? Believe it or not, it's good to be home.

May 20, 2011

I carried a broom

May 20, 2011/ molly balint

I woke up in the middle of the night last night to the sound of a fox. Really, it's not that uncommon. We hear them all the time out the front windows of the house, in the fields across the road. But this time, the fox was much, much closer. In fact, I could tell it was in the back of the house and sounded close enough to be in our yard. I listened a little longer to be sure it wasn't just a dream or the breathing of the person in bed beside me.

You'd think I'd be desensitized by now, but I seriously HATE the sound of these foxes. They send chills down my neck and make me want to revert back to my thunder-storm-panicked childhood with hands clamped over my ears and covers pulled up to my eyeballs. But, I must put on a brave front for the little people in my house.

I coo to them, "It's just a sweet little fox. We're safe inside. There's nothing it can do. Just listen to it. Doesn't it sound so neat?" I'm such a faker. If they only knew.

Last night however, its proximity to the house had me a little panicked. I had visions of those little barn kittens scampering around the garden shed. I worried that we hadn't done a good chicken count before locking the doors of the coop for the night.

So I did the only brave thing a farm girl could do. I woke up Dan.

There's a fox!

It's in the yard!

The kittens!

Did we lock in the chickens?

What about Maggie????

Thankfully, Dan loves some good fox drama so half-awake he bumbled downstairs to listen more closely. Finally he opened up the mudroom door and Ruby went tearing off across the yard--whether it was after the fox or she just really had to go the bathroom, I don't know. But the fox either quieted down, or disappeared. Hopefully, the later.

Dan came back upstairs to find me and Mary standing in the hallway waiting for a full report.

Unlike many nights in this house lately, we'd played musical beds at some point in the nighttime hours. We stopped for a moment in the hall, discussed the fox, my concerns over the animals, maybe it was time to get some bullets for his gun, the fact that the little person sleeping in bed with me had slept through her need to go the bathroom, and was sleeping fitfully and kicking, and did I set his alarm for 5:30?

A small family meeting in the hallway. I felt like we needed to smack high fives and do a secret handshake before we returned back to our stations in seperate bedrooms with children needing to be snuggled.

The whole fox thing threw me off and I had a hard time falling back to sleep. My mind recalled stories of my mother's bravery. Of the night when she heard something attacking our guineas and raced down the steps and outside in her nightgown with a broom, a broom, swinging wildly in the dark at whatever was on the attack. She came back in and said something brushed past her legs and was gone.

I like to think that if neccesary, I could step up and have that kind of bravery. But for now, if Dan's available, I'll gladly default to him.

I did eventually fall asleep and my dreams involved a large mother bear and her cub which had gotten into the house. Dan and I were racing around upstairs dropping our children out of the windows to keep them from being gobbled up. A short fall obviously better than a bear attack. Maybe it had something to do with the bedtime story being The Biggest Bear, or the fact that Dan mentioned he left the mudroom door open so Ruby could come and go in the night.

All I know is that in my dream, I was brave. And I carried a broom.

photos? backside view of the house I grew up in. + my brave mother holding baby me.

May 17, 2011

on raising chickens and embarrassing your children

May 17, 2011/ molly balint

At ten this morning, I found myself hiking up the road--in my pajama pants and boots, carrying a big stick. I was walking behind the neighbor's teenaged bull, (who was once again in our yard), coaxing him back up the road and into the neighbor's pasture where he belonged. Mind you if this was the real deal, grown-up bull, I would NOT be doing this job. But this guy was young enough to not put up much of a fight besides a little head tossing and chomping of grass growing longer around the telephone poles.

Thankfully, my children are not at that age yet where the sight of their mother walking up the road, in her pajamas and boots doesn't completely mortify them. I know that day will come. I remember the days of mortification over the outfits my mother would wear to drive us to school. Even worse? When she'd have to drive us in the cattle truck--with its random outbreaks of a vibrating steering wheel you could hardly control and muffler that could be heard from two miles out. For now, I like to pretend that my children think my bravery and toughness is kinda cool, and they don't notice what I'm wearing. Please, just let me think that. Don't burst my bubble, yet. I have years of that ahead of me, I'm sure.

But this post is a chicken update! Enough with the bull...

Just days after I wrote about the joys of chickens in your bathroom I apparently reached my limit. I crossed my fingers and prayed that the temperatures were warm enough and the chickens feathered enough, and we moved the little girls out to a pen that sits at the back of our coop. If you ever find yourself building a coop, this pen is a great thing to have. It provides the perfect way to introduce new birds to your flock and allows them to get acquainted with their new digs before you let them go free range.

And did you know that the best time to introduce new chickens to your flock is after dark? Just slip them into the coop and when the next morning dawns, the original hens are less likely to make a big fuss over the newcomers. Apparently, chickens have some serious short-term memory issues.

The chicks did fine in the coop. We bedded them down with extra straw on a few nights when we worried about overnight temps, and tacked old yard furniture cushions over the window.

Not attractive, but effective.

Last week, we decided to give them complete freedom. We opened their door and let them see the true light of day.

Each day they get a little braver and now two or three of them are starting to venture outside of the coop, but still not very far. They still scurry back to their pen if I startle them. But curiousity always gets the best of them and they come out to see what goodies I might be offering.

It also turns out, just like last time, we're not looking at the addition of six new HENS to our flock. Turns out there's at least one rooster, maybe two.

Here we go again.