Bloom Where You're Planted Farm

Although I grew up on a farm, I never owned a cow until Molly came into our lives in late May 2007.  She was just a day or two old at the time, and had been born via Caesarean section to a neighbor's cow.  After all that trouble her mother didn't want anything to do with her (and the neighbor didn't want anything to do with bottle feeding her.)  So, Terry bought her and brought her home, the first "livestock" on our farm.

 She was so tiny and adorable.  Bottle feeding her was a chore I actually enjoyed doing.  I spent a lot of time with her, sometimes just sitting on the ground outside her pen to keep her company.  Needless to say, she became extremely tame and pretty darn spoiled.

 She was a bit of an escape artist, and if we waited too long to feed her she'd come looking for us.  There were several mornings that first summer where we'd awake to find her in our front yard.  One evening, after arriving home from the state fair at around 10 p.m., she came bursting out of the shadows near the house and nearly gave us both heart attacks. 

She's now in a more secure pen and has another cow for company.  Thankfully we haven't seen her in the yard since this past summer when she broke through a weak spot in the fence and went exploring.

 Just before Thanksgiving we took Molly to Terry's parents' farm to run with their bull for awhile.  She's now back home, and we should find out soon if she's pregnant.  If she is, her calf should arrive just in time for pumpkin patch season.

I never dreamed I would have a "pet" cow.  And I'm sure that Terry, who has a degree in Livestock Management, never dreamed he'd have one either!  But, even with the risk of making him the laughingstock of his college alumni, I'm pretty sure Molly will never make it to the dinner table!

The snow is coming down and there's no doubt it's winter outside.  Thankfully I'm inside today and thinking SPRING.  I got out my seed catalogs, last year's leftover seeds, and the list of what we bought in 2008 and sat down to place this season's pumpkin, squash and gourd order.  

There are always the old stand-bys that we order every year.  They're great performers and customer favorites.  That makes up the bulk of my order, but I always like to try a few new varieties each year.  Last summer I ordered the beautiful book "The Compleat Squash" by Amy Goldman.  It is a gorgeous coffee table-style book full of photographs of squashes, pumpkins and gourds.  I found one adorable squash in the book that I ordered online today from an heirloom seed company.  While on that website I found two other interesting squash which I also decided to add.  These, plus a couple of gourd types that we've always wanted to try will round out our new inventory for 2009.

As long as we still get excited when the new seed catalogs arrive, we'll know we're in the right business.  Four months 'til planting time -- yippee!

I always seem to get reflective and nostaligc this time of year.  My grandma, who lived on this farm for over 55 years, passed away two years ago this week at the age of 92.  Her name was Florence (Meisinger) Brandt, and she and my grandfather Bill bought this farm in 1944.  They'd been married for several years, and grandpa was anxious to own and work his own land, rather than working for another farmer as he had been doing.  They started their family here, raising my mom and her older sister on the farm. 

Grandpa died in 1973, but Grandma stayed on the farm until the late 1990s when she moved over the hill to my parents' house.  Terry and I bought the acreage a few years later, and Grandma was thrilled to have us living in and caring for her old home.  She didn't even seem to mind that we gutted the whole place and made it completely different than it was.  She realized we needed to make it our own, although she did think we were a little crazy to expose the old ("cold") pine floors rather than recarpeting.

Having grown up just a mile from Grandma's house she was a huge part of our lives.  We almost never had a babysitter -- we went to her house or she came to ours.  She had more faith and love of the bible than anyone else I've known.  She loved music, children, cats and dogs.  I wish that every child could live over the hill from their Grandma's (and/or Grandpa's) house.  It was a great way to grow up.

I learned to be frugal from my grandmother, although not nearly as frugal as someone who lived through the Depression as she did.  As we cleaned out the cupboards and drawers of her house in anticipation of moving in, we found sacks full of old bread bags, piles of used twist-ties, a bag full of slivers of nearly-gone bars of soap, and tons of buttons, zippers, fabric scraps and rags, all kept around "just in case."  It gave me a new appreciation for how lucky we are now.

Living here in this house makes me feel close to her.  Her handwritten sign "Please Close Door Tightly" is still stapled to the back of the basement door.  She loved cats and dogs, but HATED mice.  :-)  I miss her and think of her often, and that sign always makes me smile. 

Thank you for letting me share these memories with you.  Have a great weekend, and stay warm! 

--Teresa

90th birthday, September 2004

It's almost creepy, the amount of birds that are around our yard this time of year.  The grass and flowerbeds this morning were absolutely teeming with Yellow Finches, Dark-Eyed Juncos (a.k.a. snowbirds), Cardinals and sparrows.  At the same time on the trees I saw a Nuthatch and several Blue Jays.  I even saw a chilly-looking Robin who was probably wishing he was somewhere further south. 

This fellow is a Red-Bellied Woodpecker.  He came to our corn feeder several times while I watched.

These are Northern Flickers.  There were three all together, rooting around my Stella de Oro daylillies.  I don't see them around here very often, especially that many at once.

You just can't beat the beauty of the male Cardinal!  It's one of the best things about our Nebraska winters.

I'm the first to admit that I'm a procrastinator and very good at putting off the paperwork that goes along with running our farm-based business.  I can't get motivated until the last minute, and the last minute is here.  My Nebraska state sales tax forms are due very soon and I've been working on them all week.  This involves going through all our cash register tapes and entering the information into a spreadsheet.  I'm sure there's a better way or a computer program that I could use, but this is the fate I'm stuck with, at least for this year. 

Our cat, Willy, was very helpful.  He went through all of my discarded register tapes to be sure I didn't miss anything.  Now if I could only teach him to run the computer!

I spend most of my time indoors during the winter -- especially this week, as it has been at or near zero degrees during the day for the past couple of days.  There's nothing I love more than being outside during the spring, summer and fall, but winter I can do without.  As I walk through the house I'm constantly glancing out the windows looking for wildlife.  I really got in the habit of this last winter when we had a major beaver infestation around the creek.  I desperately wanted to spot one of the little boogers but never did.  Thankfully, they left in the spring and haven't returned, but the habit is still with me. 

Snow on the ground makes it easier to spot visitors, which are usually birds or the occasional squirrel.  Yesterday I spotted this guy stopping by the creek for a drink and a rest.

Have a great weekend!

Teresa

I just stepped outside the back door and took this photo across the field.  It is snowing big, pretty flakes, and they're blowing around in a sort of mini-blizzard.   I'm looking forward to a cozy evening in the house eating comfort food.  Stay warm!

Happy 2009!  Now that the holidays and the first week of the new year are behind us, our thoughts begin to turn toward this fall's Pumpkin Festival.  There is so much to do in the next 9 1/2 months!  We have lots of plans, and although much of it can't be started until warmer weather arrives, there are plenty of office-type tasks to keep me busy inside.  Sales tax, income tax, insurance quotes...  Besides our farm business, Terry is a self-employed building and remodeling contractor and that makes for even more fun and exciting recordkeeping duties.  Although these tasks aren't my favorite, it sure feels good when they're done! 

The weather this morning was sunny and relatively warm, without any of that good old Nebraska wind that seems constantly with us in the wintertime.  So, I grabbed my camera and headed out to visit the horses.  They were enjoying the weather and feelin' downright frisky. 

Did you ever wonder what horses do for fun, when they think no one is watching? 

...

They walk around on two legs!  Or maybe Sully was just raring up, I can't be sure. 

They also enjoy a good roll in the hay ... literally.

I hope you find plenty of time in this new year for horsin' around!

Teresa