Bits of Farm Life captured just for you.

As promised, some pictures of life on our little spread. I would post pictures of our garden, but it's in a sad state this year. The massive amount of rain we've had has stunted everything but the grass & it has flourished where it shouldn't. It doesn't help that I have had absolutely no drive to get out & work in my garden this year so the weeds are thriving while my beans are struggling. Whoops.

Instead, I offer you a picture of Bitsy rocking in the yard:

I should explain that her hair is not always that fabulous. She had in pigtails & was looking as cute as a button, but decided she'd had enough of them. When she pulled the bands out, she refused to let me try & comb her hair back into submission....hence the wings.

She was trying to rock Moon to sleep (Moon is the little black fuzz ball on the ground fleeing from Bitsy's loving intentions). Moon was uncooperative, so Bitsy decided to rock by herself & shout at Moon to go nigh-night instead. Oddly, her plan did not induce Moon to nap. I wonder why.

We spent some time naming cats this weekend. Some of last years kittens had never really been named & three of them that looked very similar were named Rose. Baby is our oldest cat & mother/grandmother to many of the others. Jasmine is probably next to her in age. Now we also have Baby's Rose & Rosebud (to differentiate two of the three named Rose), Sweetface (who used to be the third Rose, named after Did's dearly departed cat), Sydney, and Sammy. The kittens are Moon, Follow Cat (named by B.B. because "he follows me"), Amelia, Grey Ghost, Fiddler, and Teveya (both named for Fiddler on the Roof characters because of their penchant for hanging out on the roof of Fort FarmHands). There are two others that need to be named, but as they're hard to tell apart, that will have to wait until they're a bit bigger. That's a lot of cats!

While we were exploring the creek last week, we lugged a bucket with us to gather up our treasures so I wouldn't end up with pockets full of rocks in my washing machine. The FarmHands decided to gather up pretty rocks & bits of shale to put on Andrew's grave and a few crab apples. I found the piece of glass.

I never have figured out what the glass was from, but it was covered in writing & was fairly thick. The dogs found it & drug it out into the drive-way where I found it smashed up yesterday. But here's a closer shot of what it said:

I could make out dates & a few words, but would love to know what it was from. One of my favorite things about living in the country is all the old "junk" that can be found when you take the time to explore. Not all of it is fun....we've found lots of rusty barbed wire buried on our land. Chunks of broken jars & bottles are not uncommon in ditches. But then I have a decent little collection of bottles brought up from old country dump sites. The FarmHands like to find old bones. A cow leg bone is often mistaken as a "real life T-rex bone!"

Such adventures! There are times when I miss living a half a mile from the grocery. There are times when I long for sidewalks & paved roads. There are days when I wish we could still walk to the library. There are moments when I miss having the neighbor kids knock on the door to come play with BabyGirl. But then I see something like this & I don't miss it so much anymore.

If we lived in town, the FarmHands wouldn't be the FarmHands. They wouldn't spend hours fishing tadpoles out of the pond. They wouldn't have 8,000 kittens to pack around. They wouldn't have a creek to get plastered in mud in. They wouldn't have "Huckleberry woods" to tromp through. They would be different kids all together.