Author: Franch Girl (Page 7 of 9)

I was sprawled out on the ground.  I felt the wet grass of the pasture soaking my pajamas.  I could smell a pile of fresh horse manure nearby.  I blinked my eyes as the raindrops pelleted my face.  Charlie was standing over me looking guilty and repentant.  How did I not see that coming?  He must have watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving with our children at some point.  Clearly, he knew what happened to Charlie Brown when Lucy pulled the football away.  Charles Schulz, the founder of the Peanuts comic, once explained why Charlie Brown never got to kick that football, “You can’t create humor out of happiness.”  Well, I certainly wasn’t happy lying in that muddy pasture with Charlie looking down on me.   So, this better make you laugh.  Charlie had sidestepped just in time so my kick didn’t make contact with him.  I had lost my balance.  Thud.  Just like Charlie Brown.  The “Lucy” in this story is a Great Pyrenees dog named Charlie.  He was a rescue that we were trying to rehabilitate.  He had been abandoned and left to roam and survive on his own in a rural Texas town.  Sadly, our patience with him was wearing thin because he was killing and eating a chicken every few months.  Each time he seemed to understand his wrongdoing and his sheepish eyes convinced me that he’d never do it again.  Yet, it went on.  The first chicken he ate, leaving only feathers behind, was named “Fence.”  Yes, you know, the one our four-year-old would play hide-n-seek with for hours.  The heartache of telling her what happened to Fence was still fresh in my mind that day.  I will always remember her carefully voicing each word, one at a time, as she caught her breath between her cries.  “Not (sniffle) Fence (sniffle), she (sniffle) was (sniffle) my (sniffle) best (sniffle), best (sniffle) friend (weep).”  That day, out of the corner of my eye and through a back window, I spotted Charlie in the pasture with yet another chicken in his mouth.  Without hesitation, I sprinted out the door, still in my pajamas, into the pouring rain and through the pasture gate full speed toward the dog.  He saw me coming.  He immediately dropped the chicken (it’s still alive!) as I planted my foot on the ground and swung the back leg toward him.  He moved just one step to the left and I missed him completely. I don’t remember the last time I fell that hard on the ground.  As the dust settled and I sat up, I glanced over making eye contact with the stunned chicken.  I know that at least one time in my life I thought the same thing as a chicken.  “Did that really just happen?”

One day, like every day, I was hurrying to cook dinner.  My then four-year-old daughter skipped in from outside and announced, “Fence likes to hide in the white cabinet.”  You need to know that Fence is the name of her favorite chicken (the reason for the name is another story).  I responded the way I always do when I’m distracted on the franch and not really listening to my children, “Wow, that’s interesting.”  I began to chop the cucumbers for the salad and requested that she set the table.   Once finished with her chore, ten minutes later, she immediately asked to be excused to go back to playing her game.  “What game are you playing?” I asked finally giving her my full attention.  She explained matter-of-factly that it’s a game of hide-n-seek and the chicken had chosen a good place to hide.  Her earlier words started to make sense.  “Show me!”  She led me out to the garage and opened the white cabinet with all the sporting equipment.  Hilarious!  Fence was indeed inside and seemed very relieved to be found.  I don’t know why that surprised me as much as it did.  Our children have developed very strong and meaningful relationships with their farm animals.  Life on the franch is quite busy, so sometimes scheduling time with the children’s human friends gets postponed.  When that happens, it makes me feel better knowing there are some real benefits of having friendships with farm animals.  I will only name a few.  First, it warms a mother’s heart so see how happy the animals are to see the children.  All the animals come running when our children head out to the barn (even when it isn’t around feeding time).  Secondly, farm friends have a positive influence on the self-esteem of our children.  Our children do not feel judged by the animals in any way for who they are or the way they look.  Third, I don’t have to worry about my children running with the wrong crowd or negative peer pressure.  Even though there is a chicken posse on our franch, the worst they do is trespass in the garden and ruin plants with their aggressive pecking and scratching feet.  Our children usually do not play games of “copy me” where the animals choose the action to be imitated.  So, they learn to be confident in their choice to not always do what their friends are doing.  A fourth benefit is that our children almost daily hone their shepherding skills.  Our children are always in the lead of any sort of follow-the-leader game with the sheep and goats.  Our children also get a lot of exercise chasing the chickens who’d rather play a game of “you-can’t-catch-me” instead of going into the coop on their own in the evenings.  Yet another benefit of farm friendships is that the silly antics of farm friends are always making them laugh.  And lastly, a game of hide-n-seek never ends in tears as the farm friend is always easily found.

Do you remember learning the four types of literary conflicts in high school literature class?  Let me refresh your memory.  They’re man versus man, man versus nature, man versus society, and man versus self.  Well, there’s one more that isn’t in the textbooks.  It’s man versus water pipe.  Now, do you remember all the elements of a good story?  The story I’m about to tell you is non-fiction.  It takes place on our franch.  There is only one character to develop in my story.  It’s my husband.  He is incredibly skilled with a stethoscope and intubation tube but not so much with a pipe wrench and plunger.  The setting is in the barn and pastures near water troughs or anywhere there’s an outdoor pipe.  The plot of this story repeats itself every couple of months.  A pipe starts leaking.  Sometimes a few days pass before we realize there’s a problem.  It’s usually when our well runs dry and there isn’t any water coming from the kitchen faucet in the morning.  Often still in pajamas, a frantic search ensues for a puddle of water.  You’d think the climax of the tale would be when the leak is located.  Not quite yet.  It’s just the beginning of man versus water pipe.  It usually takes several attempts to get water flowing again.  This occurs over several days (sometimes weeks) because my husband also has to save lives in the emergency department.  He’ll return home one day from a shift having inserted a tube into a patient’s windpipe to restore airflow and feel inspired to finish the pipe repair that restores water to the barn.  The climax of the story is when we no longer have to fill the water troughs with buckets of water from a house faucet.  The theme of the story is that mistakes are opportunities to learn something new.  Each way that doesn’t work in repairing the water pipe is actually a step forward in the right direction.  My husband rarely makes the same mistake twice so he’s eventually successful as George Bernard Shaw encouraged, “Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.”  Conflict, in whatever form it takes, can make us grow in ways we never anticipated.  I must admit, my husband has become quite skilled at outdoor plumbing.  Still, even with all his successes at the barn, only expert plumbers fix the pipes inside our franch house.  I don’t think my husband is quite ready to take on “man versus wife.”

Is it a dream of yours to someday become a francher?  If so, a sense of humor is required.  Don’t do it otherwise.  The only way our family can live on a franch without losing our minds is that we have no problem laughing at ourselves.  There are many things that have happened on our franch that if we hadn’t seen the humor in it there would have been a “For Sale” sign on our front lawn the next day.  We also don’t mind people laughing at us either – we’re usually laughing louder than them anyway!  No doubt, you’ve all heard that “laughter is the best medicine.”  This originated from Proverbs 17:22, “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.”  You can easily find information written about how and why laughter and humor greatly benefits our physical, mental, and social well-being.  So, if you’ve laughed with or at us living the franch life, you’re welcome.  You’re now a bit healthier!  And it means you have a sense of humor.  So, you can go ahead and get the franch!

That’s a good guess.  But, I’m not talking about my in-laws.  My in-laws are in fact pretty cool.  It’s all the critters that think our barn was built for them.  Our experience with barn intruders all began when our grain bins were dumped over several days in a row.  So, we assembled our first trap to catch the culprit.  Hilariously, the first thing we caught was a hen.  Oops.  It was soon freed once the children declared her innocent.  Next, we captured our barn cat!  Oops again.  Well, it turns out we were housing a family of raccoons and all their cousins.  Over the next couple of weeks, we became quite the ‘coon trappers and could have clothed our entire family with coonskin caps like frontiersman Davy Crockett and explorer Meriwether Lewis.  Our then 3 year old pitied one of the trapped overweight raccoons, so she colored a raccoon family picture and placed it on the cage as a gift.  Apparently, raccoons do not like coloring pages, or perhaps it’s that they don’t like their kind being colored all the colors of the rainbow.  The paper was completely shredded within 15 minutes.  Eventually, our bins did finally stay upright overnight and the traps were empty every morning.  Word must have spread quickly among the Hill Country brush that we had become ruthless trappers.  Or maybe it’s because we moved all our grain bins to the tack room and locked the door every night.  It doesn’t really matter why – we outsmarted those raccoons.  One problem solved.  Soon after, we were reminded of the predation-prey theory which we learned years ago in ecology class.  You see, our barn cats could not get in to the locked tack room but the mice could still find a way in through the cracks, and we were soon overrun with mice.  Sticky glue traps were the answer for those unwelcome guests.  Our success in eliminating the mice had one unfortunate consequence.  We actually almost lost one of the chicks being raised in the tack room.  It had escaped the brooder-ring and decided to test out how sticky the mousetrap really was.  I was able to free the thing even though most of its feathers remained behind (thankfully, feathers grow back and it’s now a fully feathered healthy hen).  Exhaustingly, our battle against unwelcome guests continues to this day.  Our barn is present-day home to the smelliest of all guests.  A skunk!  Oddly, it likes to spray our tractor wheel for some unknown reason.  We recently read advice that playing music in your barn will keep critters out.  So, we’ve been blaring continuous Christmas music for the past week in our barn.  Hopefully, the skunk shares views on Christmas that are similar to Mr. Grinch’s opinions (prior to his heart change!).  So, if you’re ever visiting the franch, and you start hearing Christmas music 24-7, it may be a sign you’ve overstayed your welcome.

I simply love writing about our adventures on the franch.  A friend recently inquired, “You are surely going to run out of stories to tell, aren’t you?”  I immediately responded, “That isn’t possible – you know who I’m married to.”  Life with my husband is never dull.  There is always a new adventure to be lived.  Our family once visited nearby Enchanted Rock with my parents, which is a massive rock dome formation rising approximately 425 feet above the surrounding terrain in Central Texas.  It had been a very long day of touring the Hill Country and we were all quite worn out.  I had also been the victim of a poisonous asp caterpillar sting at a nearby winery only an hour prior.  How could we possibly now complete a hike on this rock, all before sunset?  As we stood observing how those on the rock summit were the size of an asp caterpillar, I turned to my exhausted parents and warned, “We are here with my husband, so…we’re going to the top.”  I think we must have set a record for our climb that day with three children in tow.  I don’t know how it happens, but my husband always seems to fit in way more than there is time to do every day.  You’ll often hear me say on our franch, “We don’t have time for that!”  Yet, somehow we do one more thing.  I feel like we live a decade in every one year of life together.  So don’t fret, I will never run out of stories to tell.

It’s drizzling outside today.  It is days like today when I sometimes regret my decision to let our new puppy in our home.  I had been very firm about one rule that could never be broken if I agreed to move out to our franch.  Which was, we can have as many animals as our sanity (and our land) can handle as long as they ALL live outside.  Every wife needs a place of refuge from the chaos of life on a franch.  Well, I soon learned the meaning of the expression “give somebody an inch and they’ll take a mile.”  My eldest daughter wanted to buy some hermit crabs with her hard-earned chore money and keep them inside the walls of our home.  I figured what harm could they do – they’re approximately one-inch long and live their lives hidden.  I justified my leniency with the expression “out of sight, out of mind.”  I softened on my rule one time, and it was soon as though it never existed.  Months later, the children carried their brand new border collie puppy over the threshold without a moment hesitation.  I remember opening my mouth to lecture the children about the rule violation, but their genuine smiles and infectious laughter as they played silenced me.  It warmed my heart to see the bond so quickly cement between a child and dog.  So, on rainy days such as today, there are muddy paw prints all over my kitchen.  There are still moments when I’m frazzled and threaten to re-instate the rule.  But, I calm myself, with controlled breathing, knowing our children will remember their relationship with their dog more than they ever will how well I kept our home.  Thankfully, “a little dirt never hurt anyone.”

The simple rubber band is a nifty item with many different uses that range from simple, functional purposes (keeping bundles of papers together) to clever, creative ones (turning regular jeans into maternity pants) to downright silly pranks (we’ve all been victims of the slingshot rubber band to get our attention).  You’ll find a plethora of them in all shapes and sizes and colors all over your home.  You will also find them in a barn.  If you are easily made squeamish, you might want to stop reading at the end of this sentence.  Why?  Well, there is method called “banding” that all ranchers know.  It is the most common method used to castrate a buckling or ram lamb by placing a rubber band around the male parts of livestock.  We’ve had to perform this act a few times now.  Our kids do not shy away from any opportunity to learn something new on our franch.  But, for this franch task, it was a little awkward to hear, “Can I do it too, dad?”  It turned out to be an impromptu opportunity to teach our curious children some real-life anatomy.  My husband explained the different male parts, and how to make sure the testes is pulled through the band with the scrotum without forgetting to detail why that was important.  Eventually, the male parts shrivel up and simply drop off after a couple of weeks.  That’s all it takes – a rubber band.  Squeamish yet?  Perhaps, Stephen Perry wouldn’t have followed through on his invention of the rubber band in 1845 had he known castration would be on the list of its many uses.  This same method is also used to dock the tail of our sheep.  My daughter likes to search the pasture for the tails once they are no longer attached.  It’s like a treasure hunt for her.  Thankfully, she has been lucky enough to only so far find tails…  It’s likely you will never look at a rubber band again without thinking about how ranchers castrate their livestock.

Several years ago we were offered two beautiful Nubian kids (a.k.a. baby goats by the franch layperson) for free if we promised to provide them with a loving home.  These goats came with paperwork verifying their outstanding pedigree with great milking lines.  Yes, someone actually keeps records of how well certain goats produce milk over the course of history.  We knew if we just left them in the front pasture to eat our weeds, it’d be a waste of all the careful planning and time of the breeders listed on the pedigree.  Anyhow, I was ready to get them milking after reading all the existing literature on the health benefits of goat milk.  The demands of the franch often leave little time for exercising, so I was all for a healthy beverage option.  I was also starting to plan how I’d spend all our savings at the supermarket not having to buy milk every week.  I think my husband was anxious to get milking because he wanted to show off his pinch-n-roll technique he mastered milking cows in his youth.  At first, I thought this would be an easy endeavor.  Well, of course, goat utters don’t just start producing milk because you want a cold cup with your cereal every morning.  They need to have babies.  So, the buck arrived and, if you remember, ruined the innocence of my children.  After five months of waiting, there was finally milk! Though it wasn’t for me yet – the goat kids had first dibs.  So, there I was with three more animals to care for and my cup was still empty.  My anticipated savings at the grocery store was spent on a homemade milking stand, udder cream, teet wipes, milking buckets, milk jars, milk strainer and filter, and more.  I needed to get drinking to make up for all that.  Finally, the day came when the kids were weaned, and it was time for us to enjoy some wholesome milk.  It was truly wonderful (after I got over that the milk was just squeezed with my own hands out of the udder of an animal in my backyard).  Well, we certainly got what we wished for as the milk just wouldn’t stop flowing and flowing and flowing.  Our goats were together producing about 1 to 2 gallons a day.  That pedigree was no joke.  We were milking twice a day every day.  Our refrigerator was filled with gallons of milk.  Initially, I didn’t want to waste even one drop.  I made the children feel guilty for not finishing their milk by saying it’d make the goat sad (not my finest parenting moment, I admit).  It just kept coming.  We were soon exhausted.  Instead of quiet evenings gazing at the stars, we spent hours learning how and making almost every kind of goat cheese possible.  And still there were jars of milk on the counter.  I’m tired even thinking about it again.  It’s important to give goats some time off from milking for them to stay healthy and, we learned, for us too.  After months of milking, it was truly a relief to see “milk” scribbled on my grocery list again.

Life on our franch is unpredictable.  So, there are days when we don’t make it out the front gate as planned.  Other times, we actually do make it beyond our fence, but it’s way later than intended.  It’s humbling for us as parents because we teach our children the importance of promptness and how changing plans last minute is disrespectful of others.  We also lecture our children to accept responsibility and offer simple apologies for doing wrong without giving excuses.  We discourage “I’m sorry, but…” in our home.  Yet, my husband and I are often apologizing and giving excuses for being tardy and changing plans after something unexpected happens on the franch.  One day, dinner wasn’t ready for out-of-town guests because we spent the entire afternoon walking our colicky horse in circles.  Our daughter missed basketball practice when our cow was noticeably in labor (and we didn’t want to miss the birth!).  We were well over an hour late meeting friends at the town plaza for the Christmas event because we first needed to chase and catch all 15 of our chickens (who hadn’t yet gone in the coop on their own for the night).  I missed a school meeting because I was hauling a calf we sold to its new home.  Then, there’s the one time the children and I missed church while my husband was deployed because our sick dog, who was happy to see me, wagged his diarrhea-soaked tail and I didn’t get out of the way in time.  Once the children were late for school because the cows were found grazing on the wrong side of the fence during morning chores.  Unfortunately, we had to cancel a weekend getaway reservation when we were off on due dates and our goat unexpectedly gave birth to twins the night before.  Sometimes, these excuses elicit a laugh from the offended party having never heard anything quite like it.  Usually, there are just stares of disbelief in response to our excuses.  Occasionally, my integrity is questioned with a suspicious response similar to, “And, did your dog eat your homework too?”  Well, I know I’m not practicing what I preach to my children with all these examples of excuses for being late or missing events.  I’m really sorry, but we live on a franch.