Remember

 

I sprained my ankle. It had already been a killer morning on the farm. Many things had gone wrong, not the least of which was, the side-by-side wasn't running properly. (Thank goodness it is under warranty so they have already come to pick it up and get it working.) At the tail end of a bad two hours of things not being where we needed them, grass not being mowed, transportation not available for hauling feed, etc., I sprained my ankle and was down for the count.

John got off at 4pm on Monday and was able to swoop in and (with the help of the boys) get the turkeys moved.

I'm continually learning lessons on the farm. One lesson that I have learned (repeatedly) has to do with moving sheep. Over the last 7 years, I have gotten better and better and moving these animals, and now, we rarely have emotional eruptions that occur because "everything went wrong" out in the pasture.

(They actually have shirts that say "I'm sorry for what I said while we were moving SHEEP or moving CATTLE" because people just lose their minds when things go wrong!)

Here are a few things I have learned:

• Avoid working when it is BLAZING hot
• Avoid working for over 90 minutes (45-60 is ideal)
• Avoid not having enough people to do the job
• Prepare ahead of time by doing some "preliminary" work so that the day of the move, everything is where it needs to be
• Don't be lazy and leave tools, things in places of unknown origin. NO ONE wants to walk around a paddock looking for the hammer or jumper cables. Put things where they belong.
• Think ahead. 
• Plan ahead.
• Slow down and enjoy nature/the animals/the people who are with you.
• Remember that being able to walk is a GIFT!

We didn't remember any of those things when we started to move the turkeys. We are processing the birds on the 20th of August. We want it DONE. We aren't as good at moving birds as we are sheep. We have to be more INTENTIONAL.

And sometimes, you just have to stop doing anything because you hurt your foot ...

He ran the line

I never was a farm kid. Never really knew a farm kid.

When I became a teacher in Kentucky, I first met farm kids. They are a different breed of kid. They dress differently and look differently. Their bodies and muscles simply morphed by the feedbags they carry and machines they drive. 

Even Isaac, who I never, ever thought would accept the farm family lifestyle, has slid into farm chores and has even started looking the part. We credit his big cousin, Gabe, whom Isaac has been doing farm chores with for some extra money. 

Sidge has always loved nature and animals and his farm. And Sidge is quite mechanically minded. He likes woodworking and can figure out locks and farm problems with a farm-kid mind. 

Yesterday was a big day for Sidge. He RAN his first line. Here's a photo I took after he completed it:

It's hard to explain what line running is. This picture shows what it looks like in the background. Normally, the kids are simply the "hookers." They follow behind the adults (or Gabe) who know how to actually run the wire. Running the wire means following steps to put make sure the line moves back and forth across the paddock properly. 

I've been showing Sidge how to do it a little bit here and there. But yesterday, I was out there with five children. Because I was the only line runner, we weren't moving as fast as I would like. I had too many "hookers." So I gave Sidge the reel and said, "It's time. You be the line runner."

I took two kids as my "hookers" and he took two kids as his "hookers" and we were off!

To other people this may seem like nothing big. 

But it was a huge and monumental moment. This kid is Uh-mazing. He is SO smart. He is SO like his Dad. He is focused and determined and drive and his brain is a very busy place.

I love my Sidge!

So much truth in these words

“Farm work doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you anything. It reveals you.

There’s gym strong and then there’s farm strong. They’re mutually exclusive. The toughest women you’ll ever meet spend their days on a farm.

There are more uses for twine than you can possibly imagine. You can tie up a hole in a slow feeder, fashion a tail strap for a horse’s blanket, mend a broken fence and use it as a belt.

“Well that certainly didn’t go as planned,” is one thing you’ll say quite a bit. Control is a mere illusion. The thought that you have any, at any given time, is utterly false. 

Sometimes sleep is a luxury. So are lunch and dinner. And brushing your hair.

If you’ve never felt your obliques contract, then you’ve never tried stopping an overly full wheelbarrow of horse manure from tipping over sideways. Trust me, you’ll find muscles that you never knew existed on the human skeleton to prevent this from happening.

When one of the animals is ill, you’ll go to heroic lengths to minimize their discomfort. Their needs come first. In summer heat and coldest winter days. Clean water, clean bed, and plenty of feed. Before you have your first meal, they all eat.

When you lose one of them, even though you know that day is inevitable, you still feel sadness, angst and emotional pain from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. And it’s a heaviness that lingers even though you must regroup and press on.

You’ll cry a lot. But you’ll never live more fully. You’ll remain present no matter what because you must. There is no other option. You’ll ask for so many miracles and hold out hope until the very last. 

You will, at least once, face-plant in the manure pile. 

You’ll find yourself saying things like, “we have maybe twenty minutes of daylight left to git ‘er done” whilst gazing up at a nonspecific place in the sky. 

You’ll become weirdly obsessive about the weather.

You’ll go out in public wearing filthy clothes and smelling of dirt, sweat and poop. People will look at you sideways and krinkle their noses but you won’t care. 

Your entire day can derail within ten seconds of the rising sun.  

You can wash your coveralls. They won’t look any cleaner, but they will smell much nicer.

Farm work is difficult in its simplicity.

You’ll always notice just how beautiful sunrises and sunsets really are. 

Should you ever have the opportunity to work on a farm, take the chance! You will never do anything more satisfying in your entire life.”

-Author Unknown

Lettuce in the garden

 

Mr. Lloyd at our house today getting his stitches out (so sorry I got it sideways!)

I pull into the driveway to show Grama Joni the property our friend Anni bought. She purchased seven acres behind Mr. Lloyd's house last year, and in the next few months, she'll be leaving her home in Knoxville and spending her life here with us in Bulls Gap. 

I have no idea how old Mr. Lloyd is. Like most of the older folks around here, their life story isn't the first thing they want to talk about. They laugh when you ask them their age. And many times, your questions are lost in the space between your mouth and their ear.

Mr. Lloyd with some of the fish he caught.

We see Mr. Lloyd, messing with a tree in his front yard. He sold that acreage to Anni to simply his life. "Less to mow," he told her in his "Lloyd-voice" a mixture of laughter and shyness all rolled into one. 

But you wonder if he knows something. Is he simplifying life because he knows he's near the end of it?

He doesn't have children. We think he was married once, a long time ago. But we have no details. He has a girlfriend who comes around, and they seem to be good friends. He attends the tiny Presbyterian church across the street from his house with the other "veterans" of the area ... John's parents attend there also. Two-dozen folks all at least 70 years of age. Most of them raised their children in this church and then watched them leave the rural area for bigger things.

As I swing around his house to show Joni the property our friend Anni will be calling home, Lloyd comes waddling over. I say waddling because like many of these Appalachians in their later years who have spent their life doing hard-labor work, their knees are going. And it causes them to walk with their legs swinging a bit out to the side. I've grown used to the gait and don't really think much about it now ... unless I am writing in recollection. Like I am now.

Lloyd's face is drooping on one side. He dropped a muffler on his cheekbone last week, and John said he was really lucky not to hurt himself more than he did. With the blood thinners he is on, it could have been bad. Because Mr. Lloyd lives alone, he does carry an old cell phone -- which is more than a lot of the locals do. If you want to reach them, you call their house phone and wait for them to finally be in from their farm and answer. 

The bruising after the muffler incident was so bad, Mr. Lloyd drove right over to see my ER-doctor-husband who initially let it be but later, put a few stitches into his face to remove the hematoma that was sort of "stuck" under his cheekbone.

(John often does medical consultations in the driveway for our elderly neighbors. They'll be sitting on their four-wheeler or side-by-side, and John will check them out from the seat of their farm vehicle.) 

Lloyd will often catch fish for us in our pond, clean them, and hand them to Grama Mary: "I don't eat much fish," he'll say in his normal mixture of laughter and sing-song words. The fish is his way of "paying" for John's help. But he'd never say that. Neighbors here don't keep track of how they help each other our here. 

Today, as I point to the goats peering through the fence at us in Anni's yard, Mr. Lloyd asks me if we eat lettuce. "Of course we do!" I say, and he pulls back a clear tarp and hands me a pair of scissors. "My hands don't work so good anymore," he says, "But you cut yourself out there some lettuce." Underneath are beautiful greens -- a basic romaine and a black-seeded Simpson -- more than he could ever eat himself. I know Lloyd doesn't spray his food at all so I begin cutting, and try to stop, and he tells me to keep going, and I keep cutting and keep handing it to Joni.

He tells me just to go home and squeeze some Mayonnaise directly on a piece and that it will be delicious.

The next night we will go home and Joni uses that lettuce to make a delicious salad -- avocado and tomato and mango mixed with Mr. Lloyd's greens.

And I think to myself: "How many people in our world have gotten to accept fresh lettuce from their elderly neighbor who was born and raised on the same street he now grows his lettuce on?"

And I think to myself: "I could never, ever, not live right where I am."

While home was never Tennessee and it certainly wasn't rural and prior to my late 30's I never ate anything that didn't come from the grocery store, the life here in Appalachia has now wound itself deep into my bones, and I know I can't ever live anywhere else. 

I know the world pictures old racist white folks. But that isn't what these people are at all. They really don't care at all what someone looks like or what they do for a living or where they work. They just love their neighbors.

And feed them lettuce.

There is a culture here and a people here that sits so deeply inside me. I've lived and loved many other places. But as the sun sets on my farm, and I sit on the porch without TV or radio or the sound of anything but simply ... Earth ... I know I will die right here just like Mr. Lloyd will. I pray that there are young people around me who will come and eat the lettuce out of my garden that I hand them scissors to cut out because my fingers don't work so well either. I hope they will come see me and enjoy the silence and solitude with me. 

Home, 

 

We Bought a Farm: Having Oxen

• “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; But much increase comes by the strength of an ox." – Proverbs 14:4

Today, kicked my butt. 

• Our "puppy", Raven got into the girl's new playhouse and destroyed a bunch of the girls toys.
• Due to a miscommunication, she got in there a second time. 
• A wild animal (Bear? Coyote?) ate the head off of one of our bottle-fed lambs. It was awful.
• Raven is in heat but shouldn't be bred during her first heat. So we have to keep Ritter away from her. Easy enough, except he managed to get spooked by shooting and climb OUT of our outdoor kennel through a hot tin the fence he should have never been able to fit through.
• We had to repair the fence. 

And that's just the farming side. Honestly, the kid side felt nearly as bad. Lots of bad behavior. Complaining. Disrespect. Frustrations. Arguments. 

Did I tell you John is working three 12-hours shifts in a row? That he had to squeeze an entire month of work into three weeks in order to take the vacation with us?

And then a farming friend shared the scripture I posted above with me. And it really hit home. Things happen on the farm because our farm is ALIVE. Our house is crazy because there are CHILDREN in it. Life is hard because we are living it. And it's real. Animals die. Children misbehave. But without these dogs, we'd lose the joy of raising Australian Shepherds. And without the sheep, we couldn't manage our pastures or eat delicious meat. Without my children? Well, enough said. 

To those of you who had a day like I did, remember. It's crazy because there ARE oxen! What a great thing.

 

Farming Hoses

Before I became a farm”her”, I had zero appreciation for hoses. How happy they could make you. Or how out of your mind they can make you. Or how expensive they are. Or how quickly they can get a hole. Or how important it is to purchase thicker hose. (Very hard concept for a cheapskate.)

Example of hose crisis: you have to run water to your sheep in the pasture. You get four hoses all lined up only to discover that hose three has an end that is slightly dented.

That slight dent means they won’t connect. So you swap it with hose four but it is also dented (which was why someone had picked it to be the end of the line) and now you can’t get water to your sheep without finding a whole ‘nuther hose.

That’s challenging enough on flat land. But we have tons of rolling hills.

Pulling hose and winding it up to move it is a better workout then CrossFit. Seriously. Don’t pay CrossFit. Pay me and come pull hose here at the Bauernhof.

Other lessons learned:

1. I still don’t understand how a very nice circle of hose can end up tangled.

2. Cold hose means it doesn’t cooperate even more than before.

3. Frozen hoses = really stinky.

4. Hoses a few feet short will make you scream up at the sky and do some sort of rain dance before trudging off for another hose somewhere. However, that hose won’t connect because we all know the end of the house is dented.

Oh and completely unrelated lesson learned: throwing a shovel of crappy hay into the wind is a bad idea. Don’t do it.

It’s a cementing kind of day on the farm

We finally got the cement done down in the garden! This secures some of our posts and allows for a garden shed and washing station. Isaac is in the picture but it is actually Sidge who helped in the morning. Jacob was out of town but Jake C. was here as well as Gabe, JB, Grampa, and Sidge.

Who would have guessed you can rent a whole cementing machine for $36!

Wendi pulls a lamb

Well this morning, while placing two of our baby lambs into a paddock with the "big" sheep, I noticed that our favorite sheep, Snowball, was in labor. Here was a video I took of her:

  

In six years on the farm, I've probably now witnessed about a dozen births. I'm far from a professional. However, I felt like I've seen them enough to know that something didn't feel right about this one. This baby seemed really large. Normally, once the head and front hooves come out in a "dive position", the baby will be delivered within moments. But this baby was staying there for a long time.

Once I turned off the camera I thought, prayed, talked to Jacob, tried to call John, and then decided to pull the lamb. Here's the video:

And it's only 10:45am on Monday! Here's to another week!

Bauernhof: Selling a Ram

 

Not that anyone who reads my Blog is probably a ram buyer, but it's fun to remember what's "going on" on our farm at different times. 

Purebred Katahdin ram for sale.

$500

Developed from the Virginia Tech parasite-resistance breeding program.

He’s never needed/received an antibiotic, dewormer, or vaccine.

He’s been our back-up sire for this last season.

I have not weighed him, but I know he is over 150 lbs (probably more), and he’s got more growing to do still. His sire was the largest Katahdin ram I have ever seen in person. His twin brother is just a bit larger, and he is our flock’s main sire.

He has thrived on our less than ideal pasture with rotational grazing. No supplemental hay given, ever.

He’ll be 2 years old this Spring.

Rams really reach their prime at 3-4 years of age. Rams usually are taken out of breeding between 6-8 years.

He’s gentle... not bottle-fed gentle, but we occasionally hand feed our sheep alfalfa pellets, and he’ll follow a bucket with the flock in a second.

Located in Bulls Gap.

East Tennessee.

The Goose and the Covid

Sometimes things on the farm go exactly like you hope they should. So good in fact that they actually surprise you. This is exactly what we hoped will happen. 

The plan: Arabelle will drive the goose back into the enclosure. Simply. Purely. Easily. 

Of course, this is rarely how things go. So much so that you can hear on the video the surprise in my voice when things go ... 

exactly like we hope they will.

 

I suppose LIFE is a lot like a farm. We have the way we hope things will go. We pray that they will go this way.

But it is life. 

And life rarely follows the plan.

Last night I had a talk with JB about COVID, and I asked him the question that I've put off asking him. 

"What," I began, "Is your greatest fear?"

He paused a minute and said, "I most worry that because we are so busy, I overlook something I normally wouldn't overlook. That we don't get to something we normally would easily get to. That I miss something and someone dies that shouldn't die."

Our family feels SO carried by prayer right now. So if you can pray for anything right now would you pray for the Lord's miraculous wisdom to be bestowed upon my husband? When he is in the Emergency Room, he is the only physician there. He is the TOP person in the "room." The "buck" stops with him. If something gets missed, in the end, it is "his fault."

My fear with COVID, in my mind, is really big. The fear is that patients won't get to John in time. That they will die waiting in the parking lot, the ambulance, the waiting room. I hear the stories of the psych patients that must be held there for 14 days. Patients that are threatening to try and give them COVID. Patients in the waiting room who are mad that they aren't being seen and threatening physical force. But these things are not actually what concern John the most.

think those fears, while possible and real, aren't the more "tangible" fears right now. For John, the fear right now is that he is ONLY ONE PERSON. And that the one person is a human being. And that human being is supposed to be able to pitch a perfect game every single night. 

Most nights, John actually pitches that perfect game. But COVID is making the likelihood of that more and more impossible. Less space. Less nurses. Less beds. Slower transfers. Sicker patients. Longer lines. Bigger burnout. Psych patients with nowhere to be transferred to. Nursing home patients.

These fears are real. 

My husband is truly the STRONGEST man I know. He is the SMARTEST man I know. Your prayers are SUSTAINING us. Will you commit him to prayer over the next weeks and months? Pray for all healthcare workers, but specifically, pray for my John and the doctors and nurses he works for. The nurses he works with are quitting rapidly. They don't get paid enough to deal with this stress. I cannot blame them. His fellow doctors are getting crabby and weary. There are only five full-time doctors that work there. Losing one (and heaven forbid two) would cause the system to completely fall apart.

Some days, everything goes exactly like it should.

And some days, COVID enters the picture. 

But either way, Christ is present.

And prayer is real.

We Bought a Farm: My New Life Was Marking Me

 

 

I would never put any book up there with the Bible. It's in a league of its own. But after the Bible, The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball is truly the book that I would say has most affected me as a reader. And even moreso, as a farmer. A farmher. 

I have written about this book previously on my Blog. I feel that Ms. Kimball wrote the book that I always wanted to write so what is the point in me writing that same book? 

Seriously. 

Okay, so the key players would be different. And she came from New York City and I came from Fort Lauderdale. She married a farmer, and I married a guy who just dreamed of farming. But still ... her words, nearly all of them, could have been my own. 

So because she's already said the things I wanted to say but said them better than I ever could, I've decided to instead start writing about her best quotes on my Blog. I'm gonna break the quote down and share why it just "gives me all the feels."

My new life was marking me.

It happened without me even realizing it. Gradually. One day I had never touched a chicken. Then I was forced to pick one up. Cut off one's head. Save its life. Boil its feet. End its life. Eat it's life. Make sure none of its life was wasted. 

At first I would tell people that I lived on a farm. That I was married to a guy who liked to farm. But suddenly, I realized, that it was my life too. And I wanted the identity of it being my life. 

It wasn't just about the husband. It was about me. And the children that were both of us.

There was this one time that we had to put some pigs down. It was an awful story and we felt terrible that it had come to this. And I didn't want to participate whatsoever, and I told my husband as much. "I'm out. You kill the pigs." 

But then he came in the house and took off his hat and said: "I need you. I need another person to help me. I can't do it without you. If you are going to raise animals, you have to be able to kill animals." 

I may have said something back like: "I didn't want to raise these animals. You did." 

But it was truth. What he said was truth. We had done this together. And we'd have to end it together.

So I stood in the pig paddock with my hands over my ears and my eyes squinted shut tight, tears running down my cheeks, thanking these pigs for their lives and apologizing that we hadn't managed them as well as we should have, and helping my husband drag them to the four-wheeler and into the woods where some other animal could feast off their death because they were too small for us to process and eat them ourselves. 

I was affected. I wanted to feel this. And so I did. 

And more than even feeling it, I now knew where food came from. And I was changed by it. I could never go back to the "not knowing." I had seen how much work it was to raise animals correctly. How quickly it could get away from you. And I wanted to make sure to always do it right.

"Maybe most important, farm food itself is totally different from what most people now think of as food: none of those colorful boxed and bagged products, precut, parboiled, ready to eat, and engineered to appear to our basest desires. We were selling the opposite: naked, unprocessed food, two steps from the dirt."

It was happening so quickly.

I remember the first time I realized I was not the same girl I had been. We had friends in town. Friends from my "former life" and one of them remarked: "Wendi. Is this really you? I mean you are checking on this laboring pig and not afraid to just climb in there and get dirty and, this just doesn't seem like the Wendi we know."

And I realized it wasn't me. I mean it was me but a totally changed version of my former self who worked for a cardiovascular researcher and wore dressy clothes and ate downtown. And while I missed my old self, I suddenly realized, I could never bring her back again. Because to do so would mean losing the amazing person this farm had helped me become.

There were intermittent spells of resistance, during which I'd pluck and moisturize and exfoliate, 

I would take a break and go to a hotel or have a spa day. I would want to go out for dinner and get dressed up and pretend that I never got dirty. And while I still like those spa days, and I was never really a "girly girl" in the first place, those days really are behind me. I don't desire the fancy stuff. I like my farm. I like eating our food. I can try to pretend that my farm life doesn't exist, but even if it didn't, difficulties don't cease to exist.

"There is no such thing as escape after all, only an exchange of one set of difficulties for another ... It wasn't Mark or the farm or marriage I was trying to shake loose from but my own imperfect self, and even if I kept moving, she would dog me all the way around the world, forever."

and then there was a period of grieving for my old self, 

I'd feel sad about that a bit. I'd think: "I'm never going to live in a neighborhood. I'm never going to be able to just run down the street to go to the grocery store. I'm always going to have to get up in the morning and tend to something, and I was a bit sad about that. Sad for the life I thought I would always be living. Teaching. Coaching. Living "in town." Shopping at Target. Eating out. The farm would never give me a break. It would always be there. And was that okay with me? 

"A farm is a manipulative creative. There is no such thing as finished. Work comes in a stream and has no end. There are only the things that must be done now and things that can be done later."

who seemed to be disappearing toward the horizon, 

But interspersed with that grief of what I never would be was the knowledge that this life was what I wanted to live. Someone asked me once: "Is this hard?" 

Terribly. 

"Would you change back to who you were before if you could?" 

No. 

Absolutely not.

Never. 

It's not possible.

In fact, in the beginning I always thought: "If something happened to JB, I'd move into town and start over there." Now I can only think: "If something happens to JB, I have to do everything in my power to make sure I can keep me and my kids here. On the farm. Where we belong. Forever."

"Cook things, eat them with other people. If you can tire your own bones while growing the beans, so much the better for you."  

and then I relaxed into it. 

And I've accepted it. This is me now. I don't want to be anything but this. I'm often dirty and sweaty and wearing clothes that would embarrass my teenager if they weren't a farmer too who has been taught that you've just go to be comfortable and practical when you are farming. 

I listen to country songs about small towns and the slow life, and I ... relate. I'm happy being a person who can relate. 

And I don't want it to change. 

Ever. 

"...farming takes root in you and crowds out other endeavors, makes them seem paltry. Your acres become a world. And maybe you realize that it is beyond those acres or in your distant past, back in the realm of TiVo and cubicles, of take-out food and central heat and air, in that country where discomfort has nearly disappeared, that you were deprived. Deprived of the pleasure of desire, of effort and difficulty and meaningful accomplishment."

 

 

TF Homeschooling: Mushrooms

I love when homeschooling and the farm come together so seamlessly. John (and our wwoofers: Jacob and Jake) are working on creating mushrooms out of logs. I never understand all the details. However, I have figured out how to share my husband's Facebook posts to give more details. 

Here you go: 

  

We Bought a Farm: Fall has arrived

The first beginnings of colored trees are popping up in our tree line. 
The air is getting cooler. 
Crisper. 
And the kids are clamoring for more time outside. 
Eating dinner on our front porch. 
Donning a hat for morning chores. 

Hello fall.

 

The slow life

*** I am reposting this article I wrote back in June of last year. It seems my "vision" has become a popular one recently with all kinds of articles popping up about SLOWING down. I have updated my bullets with how we are doing on each item. I continue to link to articles on the bottom of this blog so check them out and join me on my crusade for a normal paced life!

Without a doubt, the main thing that our JB and I "feared" about our return to America was losing the slow-paced life we had come to know and love in Turkey and the Azores. Few options and small communities had created a very limited amount of outside influence in our lives for four years. While sometimes the difficulty in finding things we needed and having choices and opportunities bugged us, generally, we knew that this was unique to where we were and we embraced it.

JB and I talked extensively about our return to America and what our plans were. We know we are planning to buy land and farm. We know that will take about a year, but it could take longer as we plan to make sure we take our time in finding the perfect place. We therefore know we will eventually be more rural and removed very soon.

Until then, we are in the suburbs. Why? Well, we decided, more for the sake of the kids and I that we did not want to live in one small town and then a short time later, move again to another small town. In other words, I wanted to only adjust to small town life one time. We are not sure where we will buy land. We are pretty positive it will be in Tennessee. And hopefully somewhere within about four hours of where we are now. But other than that, we don't know.

JB got a job at a small, country ER with an organization that will allow him to move to a different ER when we choose exactly where we are going to live. He will be doing shift work. This means he will either work 7pm to 7am or he will work 7am to 7pm. He will do approximately three shifts a week or eleven shifts a month.

The good thing about a small, country ER is that he will not see much major trauma. People needing major care will go to two local trauma centers. He is hopeful that this job will be something he enjoys because working shift work (with the option to drop to part-time) will be much more conducive to farming than a full-time family medicine schedule.

(A small side note. Country ER's are generally staffed by family medicine doctors. Doctors who specialize in ER care are in bigger hospitals.)

So how, while living in the suburbs, can we continue to embrace the slow life we have come to know and love? Well, I'm going to tell you the things we have decided to do. I am not stating these things as gospel or guaranteeing that we will always follow these bullets. We only know we are going to try these things ... for now. We know that it is easier to shut things off now when we are used to not having them then to try to shut them off later, after we have gotten used to them.

• No cable -- We plan to have movies and videos available for us and the kids but since we have adjusted to life without real TV (and especially commercials), we are hoping to continue that. [UPDATE: Doing great with no TV!]
• A Sabbath Day -- Because JB won't always have Sundays off, each week we will pick a day to be our Sunday. This day will be primarily spent at home or outside, without Internet and without a lot of technology. It will be a time for our little family to grow together. [UPDATE: We do this as often as we can. JB's work schedule limits us sometimes but we have been continuing to do this whenever we can. We LOVE taking a day off!]
• A Family Day -- Because JB won't always have Saturdays off, each week we will pick a day to be our Saturday. This day will be a time for doing something fun. Maybe the zoo or a hike or a little day trip. It may also just be spent at home too of course. [UPDATE: This has not been so easy to do with JB's work schedule. But we have been purposeful about finding outdoor family activities to do.]
• Phone limitations -- I have decided to get a basic phone without Internet on it. JB is not worried about becoming addicted and so he will get some cool "features" on his phone that will be helpful. I also plan to not answer or be on my phone when out with my kids. I will return calls at my convenience and use the phone the way I want to use it. [UPDATE: I was not able to get a phone without Internet on it and have been more blown away by the Smartphone than I believed I would be. But I still make a point to try and limit my use on the phone, especially when "out and about." I also try to keep my cellular data turned off so I can't utilize it whenever I want.]
• Entertaining limitations -- We used to entertain a LOT. We loved it. But we have realized that this doesn't really fit for us as the parents of four young children. So ... (a) we have already started implementing this a bit since having the kids. We are not having people over as much for dinners. These take a lot out of us and while it is something we enjoy, with little kids, we feel the need to avoid doing this regularly. (b) For a little while, we are not allowing guests to stay with us while we adjust to our new place. Once we feel we have settled in, we hope to have guests, but to try to keep our routines and normalcy when these guests are staying with us. (Things like homeschooling, Sabbath Day, etc.) (c) I've had a few friends in my life who have requested that I not just "stop by." But I have always had an open door policy and my house had a revolving door. I have realized that that worked fine when the kids were very little. But now that we are trying to school from home, we want to encourage people to call first so we can ask them come by at the best time for our school schedule. [UPDATE: This has been easy to do as we have not met a ton of people here. We have really enjoyed limiting our entertaining schedule both at our home and at other people's homes.]
• Follow routines -- We want to have some set school hours and a bit of a normal routine to our days that doesn't change much from day to day. Kids who attend school have routines, and we want to try to have five days a week that are the same each week. [UPDATE: I have actually enjoyed varying our school routine for variety. I thought I would crave a schedule, but I have found that right now, the variety keeps my kids from getting frustrated or bored.]
• Limiting activities -- We do not plan on having the kids involved in anything right now. We may join an AWANAs group in a few months. But generally, we are going to avoid weekly commitments. This will be especially helpful because we are not planning on getting a second vehicle right away, and when JB is gone with the van for work, I won't have transportation. [UPDATE: We still don't have a second vehicle, but we have had help from my in-laws with their vehicle and our friends in Kentucky who loaned us a truck for many months. Despite that, we have still been very purposefully avoiding extra activities.]
• Limitations on travel -- We will be taking trips but we are not planning any big ones right now. We are keeping our travel small and trying to get used to our new home. We want to be home for awhile. [UPDATE: We did keep our travel down for the first 9 months we were back in the States. But then we did do one trip to Disney World. We plan to continue to be purposeful about our trips and will not be taking another one for quite some time. We do want to travel and see the USA with our kiddos but want to make sure we don't do too much.]
• Purchase restrictions -- We want to make sure our kids continue to think that buying things is not easy and that options are not numerous. In addition, we want to teach them that there are cheaper ways (and more fun ways) to do things than just going to the store and buying the first thing we see. An example: both the boys need/want a bike. Instead of buying new bikes, we visited numerous Goodwills and scoured Craig's List. Yesterday, we found two bikes at a thrift store that JB is going to fix up with the boys. [UPDATE: This we have continued to do! We try to buy everything that we can second-hand with the exception of birthday or Christmas presents. The boys have really gotten into looking for legos, clothes, and shoes second hand. We've done a good job in this category!]
• No fast food -- We have gotten used to eating at home or eating higher quality food. We are going to eliminate fast food from our life. An exception: Chik-fil-A just to give ourselves one, slightly healthier and cleaner option. (In general we are going to work on making healthier food options now that we have those options available to us -- but that's not really related to this post.) [UPDATE: This one has gone great!]
• Embracing the rural life -- We hope to get familiar with Farmer's markets and parks and hiking trails and outdoor activities. [Update: We have not done this quite as much as we hoped mainly because any free time we have had has been used with purchasing our land and making trips to our land. We do, however, see this changing greatly when we settle at the farm in June.]
• No video games -- While we will allow learning-based games on our iPADs or the computer, we've decided not to have our kids play video games. We just think that this is something we can avoid since they haven't gotten into them yet. I grew up playing video games now and then and enjoyed them, and we don't think they are completely bad. But we do think they are use up a lot of quality time. [UPDATE: We've done great with this one!]
• No technology in public -- We want to continue to try and have our children have other things to occupy their time when out. Coloring and books and games. I like what my friend Stebbs once said about allowing the iPAD to be part of your arsenal but not the main tool. We will allow it sometimes, but generally, we want our kids to come up with other ways to entertain themselves. (UPDATE: This one has gone great. It requires really being intentional when going to restaurants or other places where it would be so easy to just let the kids use the iPAD. We instead bringing coloring or a deck of cards or other activities. While there are exceptions to this rule, we really make this a focus both with tablets and with our phones.]
• Avoiding commercialism -- We want to try to limit our children's exposure to malls and places with overstimulation. [UPDATE: We have done really well int his category as well!]

I would love to hear from you all with questions or comments. I do not expect everyone to agree with us but thought I would share our "outline" and then update readers on how it is working for us. We definitely know that all of these probably won't "stick" but we are hoping that the majority do!

Here are a few blog articles I have found (or written) that support our notions:

• Busy is a Sickness
• A Helpful Guide to Becoming Unbusy
• Enjoying Life in the Slow Lane
• Three Ways to say Yes to Rest
• Reflections on the Slow Life (by Grama Di)
• What God Really Wants for Moms with Young Children
• Exhaustion is Not a Status Symbol
• New research suggests nature walks are good for your brain
• A mile wide an inch deep 
• The Disease of Being Busy 
• 10 Things our parents did that parents today should bring back NEW!

"Rammin' heads" in pictures

Jacob, JB, and myself went out to catch three rams that needed to go to the processor. One of them really didn't want to get caught and tried to jump past me. Only he hit my head. Check out the developments of this nasty bump!

There once was a farm girl and ram
They met in a pasture for lambs.
They went head to head, the girl and the ram
Each determined to win and then-BAM!

The blow could be heard across the farm
The pain so intense, all we’re alarmed!
But the farm girl survived, though left black and blue
While the ram-defeated, received his ‘just do’!

Now, the word’s spreading quickly, all around town.
“Have you heard about the farm girl who took down the ram?”
“She’s pretty and sweet but don’t you be fooled-
If you mess with the farm girl, you’ll most
likely lose!” 

-- Mary Kitsteiner

Thursday morning 5 minutes after the incident

Thursday night before bed

Friday morning as soon as I woke up

Selfie on Friday before lunch.

Saturday morning 

Saturday morning

Sunday night

Wednesday morning

Beeee-utiful day in the snow

"Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; was me, and I shall be whiter than snow." Psalm 51:7

We were supposed to read for the advent today at church. But a pretty bad snow/ice storm rolled in overnight. Many churches were cancelled, but being as our's is in the city, they still held services. However, all the country folk don't attempt roads out here. In Tennessee, they don't invest in a lot of road care so it will shut towns down. 

It was so great that JB was off today. We had NOTHING on the calendar. We had no one here with us. (Anni was supposed to come and had to cancel due to weather. That bummed us out.) But mannnn, what a great family day we had from the warmth of our house.

Enjoy some of these photos (and videos) of the wintry white Bauernhof. 

I just LOVE this photo with our snowman behind it. One of my new favorites.

So pretty!

The electric line caring quite a bit of snow and ice.

Our sheep hanging tough!

Our solar panel to electrify sheep fence with quite a bit of snow on it