editor's note: I planned on pictures, and I promise I'll be better at putting pictures up soon. However, someone used my card reader and the work's laptop I'm using right now doesn't have one. How antiquated - how cute. So I will either add pictures to these later and you can go back and see them. Or one random blog entry (all threatened post-it note style mayhem) I'll just make sort of an album.
PS - I didn't choose blogger for a reason. I wanted to start blogging. I knew nothing. I had too little equipment to do research just then. I use Gmail. No political or preferential statements, it just happened this way. So there. Now back to your originally scheduled programming.
Then, I started thinking about my first harvest. It is March, it will be a while, but my tomato plant has flowers on it...
I love the first harvest.
Then, I started thinking about cows. Cows are a lot of work, really they are. But wouldn't a cow just complete the set? I mean then I'd have my own milk, and I could seriously get around to making my own dairy products. I mean all cheese is just a variation on a theme. No scary growth hormones. And cows are cuddly.
I sometimes ponder this against the juxtaposition of my personality which requires me to live in cities larger than 500,000 pop., cities with culture and museums and have Ikeas in them. Yeah, you can dis Ikea all you want, I know I know, but I will always have a special place in my heart. (Ikea saved my life once, you don't forget debts like that).
That is why I am in love with the new Urban Farming movements. Let's bring it into the cities.
Still, I'm not sure I could get away with a cow. Los Ranchos in Albuquerque lets you have cows....
Wait, where was I?
A farm house, just the farm stead part. With a cow, a pony for the kids (the ad running on craig's list - Pony Seeking Young Girl to Love Him is killing me right now) and chickens. Some big lopey dogs running about. The kind that you don't have to let in the house if you don't want to. The kids, with ducks on the pond, catching tad poles....
Lost my train of thought. All this was brought to the forefront of my brain today by a conversation Stephanie had with her friend about why I keep chickens.
I suspect you have to have loved a chicken to get chickens. I'm not surprised, I mean they look like fat vultures and they make a real mess. There is that one, the Cochin that looks at me. No, you don't get it - the chicken looks at me.
Celia's baby Ameraucana doesn't move when you go to pick it up. She's so hand tame, she just sits there waiting to be picked up. Today, I realized her wings grew back when she head bobbed at me over and over and failing to notice that meant she wanted attention she flew onto my shoulder and into my hair. Baby chicken wings grow back at an alarming rate. So despite that she's half-feathered and looks pretty gawdawful, she got a kiss on the face, because she loves me. She peeps at me, she wanted to nuzzle my neck. Chickens are the new kittens.
To sum it up yes, in a heartbeat. I think I actually mentioned in a recent post (or post I've not edited and posted) that some of the happiest days of my life were spent on a family farm held by my cousins. I would quite happily take my children off to that environment - if someone else would do the work....
Which cracks me up on some level because I'm SO not country. Neither is my husband but he has the same vision. I think it has to do with the freedom of space we desire in our large family, and how feel-good watching kids around animals is. He was describing it to me the other day, free-range eggs. A safe work environment for people who want to go into Urban Farming themselves, or college kids working through college, or people with green cards who have a hard time finding work because they are still too other. A place the kids can have a pond, ride horses and have ducks. Organic food, grown on our own land by our own hands. Then, he went on to describe the inside of the house, with the movie wall - where one wall would be a cinema sized screen. Or his office with the most high powered computers words can describe. Or our satellite uplinks. We're so neither nor - but at least we match each other. Or maybe we just need to be rich, because looking at it that lifestyle describes the lifestyle of people with money and large estates.
So what's the plan?
