Sunday, June 30, 2013

cherries


Yesterday Elliott & I drove to Royal City to visit my grandparents! It was good to see them and as you can see we filled our trunk up with enough cherries to make hubs sick for a week. He has no self control when it comes to cherries. To each their own.  I love to pit & freeze pie cherries for pies so we can have them ALL YEAR LONG.... I don't remember it being so  painful last year, but this year I pitted cherries into the wee hours of the night until my hands felt like they were going to cramp up and fall off while watching downton abbey reruns on hulu. Do we really have to wait until January for season 4? Why do you torture us so Masterpiece Classic?


I have always thought this shot is so beautiful, and someday I will do more than stick  my iphone out the window and snap a picture as we cross the dam, but here the potholes are in all their sagebrushy glory.

Husband spoke in church today. I was so proud of the man! I have never actually seen him speak in public and it was one of those times where you see your spouse in a new light and think " I bagged a good one." Bagged him good. What a hottie.



Saturday, June 29, 2013

orphan buggers

 You wouldn't guess that wet this kitty resembled more of a frog than anything. Unfortunately i don't have a picture of that.  She got a bath today because she got adopted!!! I sifted through my craigslist responses and found a sweet email from a couple who needed in a new indoor cat as theirs had passed away. Elliott had been wanting to keep his poofy siamese, but knowing that it wouldn't be a good indoor cat because I am allergic, and a white fluffer cat would basically look like a fantastic marshmallow treat to a coyote as an outdoor cat, he offered his sweet poofy to them. The woman cried she was so happy. Meeting random sweet strangers restores my faith in a kind and loving humanity. As opposed to Wal-Mart, in which I leave with  quite different feelings. But nevermind that now.


-farmwife

Monday, June 24, 2013

the irony of the farm wife

I rarely touch on the irony that I am this girl living this life. When I was in 4th grade, we moved into a rental home, and my bedroom had farm wallpaper. Little smiling pigs, big red barns and picket fences adorned my walls that year. I was a very conscientious child,and I was so mortified by that farm scene staring back at me from my childhood walls that I did not have one friend over the entire school year.

My sweet grandpa was a school teacher and a farmer. We would go to their house as children, eat strawberries until we couldn't anymore, catch tadpoles in the large irrigation ditch and try to catch wild kittens loose in the cinderblock  pile.

Soon we moved from Spokane to the columbia basin. I refused to learn the names of crops growing besides the roads the we drove past, and I was very skeptical of this way of life, the stereotype of the uneducated farmer in overalls & a straw hat somehow still so ignorantly carved into my mind. My future was skyscrapers & the hustle and bustle of a large city, fancy dinners and a husband with a briefcase, suit & tie.

Fast forward to 19, the girl falling in love with the quick witted UW student with deep blue eyes and a refreshingly brash way of going about things. My  future husband who would come home to the family farm on weekends simply because he loved it, and that is what he wanted to to. Our first date we went to the laser light show and wished on a shooting star. My wish? Happily ever after, which I would wish on every shooting star, and his- a million dollars. A farmer and ambitious? Spending time with him and his  family quickly dissolved my thoughts and feelings on the topic. They are and were lovely and a constant example to me.

For the majority of our engagement I lived in Kiev, Ukraine. I was head teacher for a group of girls teaching english through ILP. Skyscrapers and smog, strong women in heels and fur, the silence on the subway and the brisk pace excited me. I may or may not have said aloud at my sisters graduation a few weeks back that if people were to walk this slow in Ukraine they would get stabbed. Probably not. Probably just accosted verbally (which happened a lot regardless of what I was doing it seemed). It enthralled me, and then it confined me. I couldn't see out.


for the credit of kiev, it is beautiful in the springtime

So I marry the farmer. We get pigs. We get geese. We raise a massive garden and keep chickens. We work hard. There is a deeper understanding of life watching things grow by your own hand and die if you are not careful. A sense of self efficacy at a job well done.  I am soothed by the simplicity of things, and by the smell of freshly tilled dirt in the garden. If I look out my window on a clear day I can see Mt. Rainier from here. I open the windows during summer nights and hear the crickets and frogs, in a little country symphony, and drift off to sleep surrounded by a living farm wall paper.



I can't wait to have family garden nights with our future babies and their mini garden tools.

first world problems

Today was one of those days where you  open up your purse to pay for lunch and all you've got in there is a bunch of jelly beans. Completely useless.

I got basemented at work with the sniffles- all I wanted to do is dump a garbage bag of shredded paper on the floor and curl up in it like an oversized hamster and take a nap for two hours. But mainly I just shredded old charts.

I got a bowl of cookie dough ice cream after dinner, only for hubs to tell me that we were going over to his parent's house for dessert in 15 min. So obviously I had to eat dessert twice ( it was coconut cake duh). It was so hard. Not. But it is disturbing how much it feels like I have ruptured my stomach. Yet also worth it. Disturbing how worth it it was.

It should be said that I have nothing of importance to say at this point.


-farmwife



Friday, June 21, 2013

interior design fever for the broke

looks like a lot of pinning, a lot of plotting, and a lot of working my rear end off so that one day I can buy one of my afghan rugs that I am impossibly in love with. Grateful for hubs and his financial smarts rubbing off on me so I am no longer blowing paychecks as they come to me. Kayla of old  worked part time jobs before marriage, and then spent the other part of the time in nordy's.....She also enjoyed a considerably lower tax rate. But don't get me started on taxes. Adulthood. Sigh.






 I just want to roll all over this rug and maybe kiss it and then opt for a good teeth brushing afterwards.

abandonment and some laundry


Sometimes during special times in my life I get choked up over things easily, usually love stories or people trying really hard and accomplishing things... Hubby loves it (??) So obviously when they gave an old hurricane sandy couple their fantasic date I was all pathetic and sob faced.  I never claimed to like the bachelorette, but I have just started saving decent piles of laundry to fold for the occasion- so you aren't completely wasting your life watching it you know? I'm not wasting time I will never get back, I am folding laundry. And drinking a diet dr. p.


This week I have been walking the fine line between love and hate with this yellow deals!Also known as geese. Lucky for them with a lot of patience and more patience it has morphed into somewhat of a fondness for the little things. They way they toddle everywhere and eat all the weeds is pretty endearing.  Meanwhile in cat land, the babies have been abandoned by their mother at 6 weeks. That was all the mothering she can handle apparently. She probably saw the first one eating dry food and thought, "sweet i am outta here!". It is akin to leaving a 10 year old child at home. Maybe ok but also maybe a horrible idea. She wasn't our cat anyway, just kind of showed up to have some children or something I suppose.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

fried

2 Nights ago I was sitting at our kitchen table working on my Zaner-Bloser handwriting course for school, so I could have full view of the storm going on out of our big front window. All was well until I see a huge flash of light, a loud reverberating noise that made my insides tingle, and BANG, the telephone pole across the street in gets pulverized by lightning. And by pulverized, I mean some of the wires fell off but it is otherwise alright looking. Anyway I sat there in shock, when it happens again, at which point I respond properly (i.e screamed and ran and huddled in the bathroom where husband was taking a bath, because water is so safe when mixed with electricity and stuff). So Hubby jumps out to evaluate and do manly responsible things like call the PUD so that they can fix the wires and whatnot. The storm rages on, blah blah this is taking too long so I will skip to the good part, when the lineman is up there fixing things, and BAM!!! Lightning hits the tree 30 ft away from him. How uncanny, right!  And how devastating to two things 1) our water pump and 2) the internet. Fried.  Do you have any idea how many things you cannot do in the absence of water and the world wide web? Well. It is about 90% of the stuff I do turns out. There are SO MANY wonderful hours in the day that I have discovered, when you aren't working hard at procrastinating homework.


 The first ripe raspberry in the garden!
 Wiggled these out of the ground and we had them with dinner boiled with a little butter and brown sugar over them. mmmm
 Peek a boo with Rachey
and chocolate chip cookies for another rainy day!

Sunday, June 16, 2013

2 yrs & a day for dads

Happy anniversary to Elliott & I! We have unintentionally created a tacos el ray tradition. Unintentional in that Elliott forgot that we came here last year. We sat at the same table and whatnot all cute. It was a fun  little celebration, and fun to think back to how much we have learned about each other/life/ourselves since we sealed the deal two years ago.



I think it is safe to say that we had no idea what we were signing up for (few do), but we are happy that we did- it's been an adventure since day 1 and it keeps getting better.

ALSO IT IS FATHERS DAY!
.

Here is a cutie little shot of my dad with me and baby chelsi. So grateful for him. So here's so my dad and dad's everywhere, keep doing dad stuff!! Having jobs and being fun and teaching life lessons and whatnot! You're important.



-farmwife

Saturday, June 15, 2013

insta dump


In the litter of 9 kittens, we have two little runts. I have been supplementing whatever they get from their cat momma with kitten formula in a tiny little bottle. In the process I have created monster baby cats, When you walk into the shop, they run out to greet you with ferocious little meows and climb up your pant leg like the tiny poofy spiders that they are., while their fatty siblings just are mastering the waddle. The formula should come with a warning label: may cause severe kitten entitlement.


It seems like forever ago that we ordered this pilgrim geese. They are supposed to be excellent weeders. They arrived in the mail this week, and they think that my husband is their large goose leader. They toddle after him as fast as they can! They are living in our empty pig barn until they are big enough to not be cat food or mel food. Melly dog gets all possessed and starts shaking when she sees them, we have to keep an eye on her.


Jamie and I ran another 5k this last weekend as well! It was a super small race, but an eventful one for both of us. I may or may not have vomited all over the finish line in my aim at a medal, and Jamie missed the turn around and ran an extra mile. I was so worried, asking finishers if they had run past my pregnant friend. We both had a good laugh and I ended up winning my age bracket and getting second for women overall.

off to bed for this lady.

happy saturday!