Pre-Trip Day 1

Pre-trip, rushing over to Dollar Store for some Sunglasses for the kiddos for the trip, and we spotted a Bald Eagle eating some carrion on the side of the road. This is pretty unusual for our neck of the woods -- only the second time we've ever seen a Bald Eagle here in TN and first time we've gotten a picture!

Sidge's

Sidge

Sidge

Abigail

Abigail

The truth of the year 2020

 

Yearbook Dedication

Our yearbooks came in for 2019-2020. (They will do a small edition for the 2020-2021 school year for which we did not meet as a homeschool group.) It was really neat to see pages dedicated to John and the work that he's done. There's many heroes. But it's fun when someone you love is a hero!

a

Where we are headed

As I previously mentioned on the Blog, sometime in December, when COVID was at its worst, we decided to plan a HUGE trip WEST. Actually, John decided. He needed this on the horizon. He needed a focus-forward activity.

Our kids have been to/lived on three continents, but other than our boys doing a flight to Washington State once with us when we were little, none of them have been West of the Mississippi. John and I did significant travel in our early marriage years. My college roommate, Kristi, got married in New Mexico, and John and I did two different trips our in that direction camping along the way and seeing as much as we could see. (This was, of course, back in 2000 or so, long before you could have a phone with you to help your journey.)

We have a dear friend, Erin, who will be moving to our farm this summer. It's a long story that I will share more of later, but her husband is deploying, and she has decided to relocate here with her two children for additional support during this challenging time. She is going to be renting our new camper! Her making this decision allowed us to make a firm decision to buy a camper. (Our old one was too heavy to be towed by our Expedition.) Her making this decision also allowed us to move forward on "hip camping" on our farm. But again, another, story for another day.

Here are a few of the highlights of our upcoming trip!! Stay tuned to the Blog for much, much more! We leave in just a few days.

• Bayou Segnette State Park (New Orleans, LA)
• Galveston State Park (Galveston, TX)
• Galveston Island
• The Alamo
• Big Bend National Park
• Carlsbad Caverns
• Portal/Cave Creek Canyon 
• Saguaro National Park
• Grand Canyon
• Petrified Forest National Park
• Blue Water Lake State Park

Women's Retreat at Longview Ranch

We first "met" Longview Ranch during our first few months on the farm. A youth group from Michigan was staying there and came to the farm to help us do work. In June of last year, we were given an incredible gift when our family was gifted (by the camp!) a weekend away at their very properly socially-distanced family camp. I happen to know the President of the Board very well, her daughter was one of our first babysitters and has one of our puppies ... the connections are numerous.

This weekend, they hosted a women's retreat. I saw them advertise it a few weeks ago and thought: I need that. Aside from COVID, I usually did a pretty decent job getting a day away from the farm and my kiddos every 4-6 weeks. I find it is so important to remember who I am as a woman and refocus myself as God's child. 

But since COVID, that's been nearly impossible. Until this past weekend. So when I saw it advertised, I invited my friend Jessica, who had never been to something like this. She and I and our other friend, Kelley roomed together with another lady we got to know on the weekend, and I simply had a wonderful time remembering the God I serve and who I am as his child. I needed it sooo much.

Now, we are making BIG plans for our West coast trip! Grand Canyon ... here we come!

 

Friday Funnies

Our farm has turned a page in our play book. Finally bit the bullet and bought some heavy equipment.

12-year-old Sidge was immediately interested in learning how to use it.

“I got it down, Mom. Dad said I’m on my way to being able to use it. I’m working on figuring out how to lift my sisters up in the front bucket.”

John smiled and informed him he just backed himself us three years on permission to use it.

*****

Me: “I need you to get totally ready for ballet.”

Anonymous Child: “Do I have to get dressed?”

*****

The type of texts that go back and forth on the phone of permaculture guys:

Emerging from the COVID

It's so wonderful to get "back to normal" a bit amidst COVID. It's not completely the same world, of course, but slowly, we are starting to do "regular things" again. Man, the things you've taken for granted after a year of hunkering down.

Years from now, what will I tell my grandkids about this year? I'll remember a lot of pain. I'll remember a lot of beauty. I'll remember a lot of sweetness and heartache and discomfort and frustration and fear. 

And I'll remember slowly inching our way out of the pandemic ... and having friends over: like Jama and her girls: Miley and Melyna 

Here's what Jama wrote about our morning together: 

We spent some time with the Kitsteiner family on their farm today (which thanks to Covid, we hadn’t been able to do in a really long time). We caught up a little, ate some amazing homemade basil pesto pizza, got lots of doggie kisses, walked the farm, loved on some baby lambs, let our kids “free range”, talked about God, and made numerous jokes about our difference in height. It’s been a really good day.

Melyna

Height different in the flesh

Our favorite chicken: Talula

Miley: an incredibly talented singer and actress

A beeee-utiful rooster of our's. I hope he keeps behaving so we don't have to eat him.

Sweet southern Jama

So long Heidi

 

My friend Lara came in to visit. She left with one of our puppies. Little Heidi has gone home forever with her. I love the name. I love Lara. I love the puppy. So excited how lives continue to intertwine and that our farm can continue to be an oasis in the storm for others. 

Lara wrote a Blog post about her quick 12 hours on our farm. Here it is!

A beautiful day!

 

This post goes out to

Brooks Gray

and

Betsy Horst

.... a few weeks ago I wrote this post about my frustrations with laundry.

My friend Nicole's husband, Brooks Gray,

(father of 5) wrote the following:

"We had the same problem. I felt horrible for Nichole because she’d be doing laundry when I left the house in the morning and putting more laundry in as we were getting ready for bed. She was doing it all day almost every day. Our solution - buy a huge washer and dryer! I’ll never forget the first day. We had two hampers overflowing with a mound on the floor and washed it all in about 3.5 loads."

And then John's Aunt Betsy replied to that:

If this is so...that your washer and dryer are not the biggest you can get.....then you need to regroup. That is a bit nutty on a working farm in my humble old lady opinion. ..silly kids washing clean clothes or not. Golly....do everybody a favor and beef up the appliances. It's a false economy . Time is a valuable resource....

And then

John Kitsteiner

came home and read his Aunt's comment and said: "I am buying you a 'we got through COVID' celebration present."

And his cheap Dutch wife said: "I have a machine that works. I don't need a new one."

And he said, yes you do. And he bought this. And it was delivered today.

And I kept telling the delivery men how they are changing the world, one housewife at a time

Our little family in Tennessee does COVID

By: Wendi Kitsteiner

On the nights he is home for dinner

the boys sit next to him (if it's an even day of the month)

and on odd it's the girls turn.

I sit far away.

Happily.

Because I had over 15 years with him before we had these children.

And my heart is so happy he gets to be a dad.

I've loved him since I was 16.

And Lord-willing, I'll love him for much longer.

I'll wait.

We've lived so many lives together.

Already.

Art school (for him).

Basketball (for me).

Medical school (together -- his brains studying, my job supporting us).

The Air Force on three continents

and as a physician so much very hard stuff.

Suicides and depression and death and abuse and mistakes and accidents and illnesses and catastrophe and war ... and the things you can't forget like the child who choked just eating dinner and John tells the parents he couldn't fix it and they cling to him and fall into his arms and they don't take her home.

And so when I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of sobbing from my rock of a husband just a few months after first hearing the word

COVID

I am ... shocked.

I've watched him perform CPR on a boat in the middle of the ocean and stood by helplessly as dead bodies are wheeled past us in Nigeria and pushed him out the door when a young airman has had a tanker flip on top of him only to see him return with a shake of his head as he tells me he had to pronounce the boy dead and I ask how old he was, and he says "Twenty" and I cry while we push our sons on the swings.

So how is a virus causing him to cry?

I don't understand.

He's done much harder.

Hasn't he?

He works in an Emergency Room where he sees people at their worst and sin at its greatest.

And yet this virus is breaking him greater than the infertility that brought us to our knees did a decade before.

I hold him.

We pray.

We cry together.

We regroup.

We hunker down.

And make changes.

Protect his downtime.

For the first time in 25 years as his wife I realize that he needs ME to protect HIM.

There is too much noise.

And I can help quiet the noise by listening to it for him and telling the noise he can't listen right now.

When you are fighting a virus up close

And standing in the middle of the storm

And then coming home and hearing people telling you it isn't real

Your heart breaks a little.

When you are expected to PROVE you are in a war

By having to tell stories of the casualties,

It crushes you just a little bit more every time.

But even more telling is that this weariness doesn't come out while he is awake.

While he is awake he says he is okay and he plays with the kids and tends to our farm.

It comes out in his sleep.

The COVID grief has FORCED its way out of him.

Strong.

To a fault.

He's going onto the frontlines.

Fighting.

Coming home.

Protecting.

Fighting on so many battlefields.

Simultaneously.

Fighting the virus.

Fighting the public.

Protecting his family.

Educating.

And his body is saying: "I'm breaking."

So we listen as his body is wracked by sobs like I have never heard from him, and I don't tell anyone about publicly.

Until now.

We move forward together and we survive a patient giving the virus to him and him infecting all of us and all of us being sick together.

And then nearly a year after it starts, I watch as he comes home and doesn't go first to the side door to shower and he reaches for me and kisses me without first disinfecting his entire self, and I think ...

We made it.

He is still seeing this virus and he is still seeing the other things that I think are even more horrific and yet, you can see all over him that his spirit has come down to rest.

And we will rest together.

Our little family in Tennessee.

P.S. I wrote this at 3am in the morning in about 15 minutes. I had to get up and write this when it came to me while I was sleeping.

P.S.S. VERY EXCITED and HONORED that KEVINMD chose to feature my piece on his website!

Rabies shots

A note from John via Facebook: 

Working a run of night shifts ...

I slept at a friend’s empty house just down the street, since our house has kids and puppies and lots of noise.

Well, it turns out the house wasn’t so empty!

This little guy was on the door frame when I woke up. Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus).

Sure, bats in the house are not cool... but I love nature, so bats in someone else’s house is cool!

UPDATE: So, after reading up on rabies exposure, CDC recommends post-exposure prophylaxis for my situation with rabies vaccine and rabies immunoglobulin.

UPDATE 2: I’m status post 4 intramuscular shots... bats in anyone’s house are NOT cool now.

But outside bats are still cool.

And hey,

Wendi

...

Sherrie

saw my butt.

P.S. From UpToDate:

From 1990 to 2007, a total of 34 naturally acquired bat-associated human cases of rabies were reported. In 15 cases, physical contact was reported but no bite was documented, and in 11 cases, no known bat encounter was reported at all.

My comments:

First, rabies is 99.999% fatal.

Second, there is no cure for rabies.

Third, about 1/3 of rabies cases in humans in the above study occurred when there was NO KNOWN ENCOUNTER. We can identify the “strain” of rabies and know it came from a bat. 

Fourth, CDC recommends that if you wake up to a bat in the room, or if a bat was in the room with an inebriated person, an infant, or a person with mental disabilities, then they get the post-exposure treatment.

Fifth, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I could get out of it.  But data and fatality information are too convincing.

Where are our kids are at the end of the pandemic

Being a mom is hard.

I would die for these children. And yet I want to kill them (not literally obviously). How can this be simultaneously possible? 

Tonight I feel completely zapped. I don't write much about the "details" of my kiddos because as they get older, I want to protect their privacy more and more. But I do what to remember who they are at the end of this pandemic. (It isn't completely over but this is us as we are "moving" to the other side of things.)

Isaac: Isaac is 12 now. He'll be 13 in May. He'll be a teenager. He already sounds like a man! We have often said that if we didn't have other children, we probably wouldn't ever have an issue from Isaac. He's really very mature. Always been an old soul. Mostly it's tiny little hiccups in helping him be respectful, full honest, diligent, etc. that work us. He loves to collect HotWheels cars, is still amazing at the piano (although he'll tell you he doesn't like it), and has been working on the farm for pay (in addition to the chores he does for "free") with his cousin Gabe in order to support his collecting habit. 

Sidge: Sidge is 12 now too. He has a heart of gold. He loves all animals and nature. He craves the outdoors and being outside. If he goes to do his morning chicken chore, he may not come back for a half hour just walking around the farm looking at things. Sidge is a lot like me in his "1+1=57" mentality. I often have to stop him and have him write down the schoolwork he has due so it doesn't feel as overwhelming as he thinks it is. He is ecstatic about our West Coast trip as he loves National Parks and loves to play Wingspan with me. (We play at least one game a day together!) He also enjoys building in the "workshop/garage" with his Gramps. 

Abigail: Abigail is 9. She'll be 10 in July. She is so into birding. She still does ballet and enjoys it -- chomping at the bit to go on pointe. She is incredibly artistic, science-minded, a good writer, and actually very talented at piano as well. Lately she's struggled with some adrenaline at bedtime that's been challenging for her ... she's a BIG thinker. She does not like school much and doesn't care much about reading -- unless it's birds. She can read about birds all the time.

Hannah: Hannah is 7. There is just something about our Hannah. She is such a unique and fun individual. So her own person. She just loves life. She thrives. She is always getting into something new, finding something to do, trying something new. She's emotional, excitable, energetic, and enjoyable. She makes us laugh SO hard and then makes us pull our hair out. She is reading at a fifth grade level, but then you'll catch her putting something in her mouth like a young kiddo. She isn't really into anything. She simply likes to be with people and is always up for an adventure -- but nothing holds her attention for very long. 

Classic Hannah

Sometimes I capture a moment that simply puts my child into perfect perspective. Hannah is constantly finding things to do that are funny, silly, creative, active. Everywhere we go, she is never sitting. It isn't that she's running around like a crazy person. Instead, she will find things to build with, people's shoes to try on, jackets laying around. Her favorite thing to do when she was little in the ballet studio was play in the Lost and Found Box.

Today, Abigail and her friend, Remi, had a duet rehearsal. Their dance is still in the very early stages of development so I am often called upon to record it near the end of a rehearsal so they remember changes they made. 

I edited this video down so you can discover what I found Hannah doing in the midst of my ballet recording video ....

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!

Saying good bye to five puppies

Today, five of our puppies went home. It was an emotional day, especially for my sweetie-pie Abigail who nearly single-handedly raised this litter. But she's doing well, especially because three of the dogs will be with us for another week!

 

Abigail with Liberty

Sidge with Mando

Abigail with Madison

 

 

Hannah with Madison
 

Abigail with Jack

Abigail with Toby

 

 

Embryo Dilemmas

John's Aunt Betsy sent this link to me this week:

The anguish of saying goodbye to my 25-year-old embryos

Just this week I've been put in touch with relative of a friend dealing with infertility. It never goes away. It's always there. And decisions regarding embryos are very big. Very hard. 

As an anti-abortion Christian, we made the decision that anything we froze during our IVF journey, we would use if at all possible.

But what if you can't?

What do you do?

 

Putting COVID behind us FOREVER

Grama and Grampa K. have gotten their first vaccine shots! And today, I turned a corner in my own COVID journey and went for a JOG.

It was C25K jog: Couch-to-5K. This is a program that helps you to basically go from not running AT ALL to running 5K in about eight weeks. I had done it right before I got sick, and now I'm doing it again.

It felt so wonderful to be out there, running. It also felt wonderful to have my dog, Arabelle, with me. 

Tomorrow, we will say good bye to five of her eight puppies. She has done her job. Four litters. And now we will fix her and retire her. And she and I will have plenty of years to just go for jogs with each other. 

The hospital has also slowed down as far as COVID considerably for JB. It's so amazing. When you are in the depths of a crisis, you start to think to yourself: Maybe this is how life always feels. Maybe I just forgot. Maybe I won't ever feel peace again. 

But then the crisis passes (or mostly passes) and you start to think: Oh. Wait. No. That felt awful. And this feels normal. And normal feels ... great. 

John is still seeing COVID. In fact he's seeing a lot of people chronically ill from COVID. (Example: an older man who got COVID a few months ago and came back in with pneumonia, went home, and is back now with something else that due to his elderly age, will probably end his life.) But it's SO much better. You can feel it on him when he comes home each evening. We are bringing this pandemic to a close.

PRAISE THE LORD.

 

The Day of My Life

American Woodcock: Farm Bird #122 (Photo from Audubon)

Wow. I find myself more and more behind on Blogging. More and more days going by since I last posted. 

So I'm going to try to update you on our life. 

First up, tonight we saw another bird. Well, I didn't see it. Well, in fact, no one actually saw it. Did you know that if you hear a bird it counts as a seen bird? Not only was this a first for our farm, it was a "lifer" for John and the two kiddos two. 

John said: "I've been hearing a nasally peent call right at dusk for the last few evenings, but I couldn't place it. I kept thinking it was a frog. But then this evening, some memory clicked in my brain, and I realized it was a bird ... a shorebird ... a snipe ... or a ... woodcock."

(Tomorrow night they are going to set up a stakeout to try and see it.)

(And if you have been REALLY wanting to see a woodcock dance, well, now is your chance. Click here for just that very thing!)

Lest you think the whole world is birds to us, well, I assure you, it is not. 

I mean, how can life be boring when you have DUCK WEED on your counter. Seriously ... this is growing so it can be added to our pond and do something wonderful out there. 

(It truly has become a running joke as to what else Wendi can have on her counter.) To see other items I have had as part of my farmhouse decor please visit here.

In other things dominating my life: puppies. Oh man these cute little piles of fluff. They are SO sweet but the older they get the more work they are. We are keeping them all the way up to eight weeks this time, and I see now why breeders "oust them" closer to six weeks. They are so smart and so curious. New trouble is brewing every single day.

(If you want to see a LOT more pictures of our pups, visit our Facebook page at: Bauernhof Kitsteiner Australian Shepherds. 

If you didn't think it was possible to feed four bottle baby lambs at the same time, you haven't met Wendi ... check out my MAD skills below:

Between all the lambs and puppies, life is a wee bit crazy. Here's a few funnies I've recorded over the last few days:

On the way to church. “Hey kids, I’m sorry this morning was so chaotic. All the puppies and lambs and kids and farming we had to do just got me frazzled.”

Silence.

“Any comments?”

“Mom, does 8x8 equal 64?”

*****

Facebook fact checkers have confirmed this is accurate:

Two anonymous children can be in tears (and one howling) over a fitted sheet and who picked it first to put on their bed.

*****

Quick calculations:

If you have four children and each one has just four needs/questions/requests/comments before bed, there will be SIXTEEN replies you need to make before you can go to sleep.

P.S. if one of your children (anonymous of course) has 47 needs then that number will be 59.

Tonight was at least 59.

And here is us delivering Girl Scout Cookies to the Emergency Room. My friend Kristin Girton helped me spend the last $365 I had raised for the nurses!!!

Hazel, Eliza, Isaac, Hannah, Abigail and Sidge