life. faithful.

Here in our little corner of the world, it usually seems a bit like paradise. We're tucked into the hills and the woods, and you can't look out without noticing God's beauty. Right now, though, sometimes it's hard to see the beauty. Like right now--we haven't had rain in about a month, and the ground is so dry that it is cracking.  The small creek that runs through our property is the lowest I've seen it in all the time we've lived here.  This time of the year is normally hot (typically with highs in the mid to upper 80s), but this year we've had highs in the mid to upper 90s. Our cows are never still, roaming over every inch of of property looking for grass. It's so dry that we had to feed hay this week, in the first week of July, and that was only because a neighbor told us he could spare two bales--no more because he doesn't know when he will have to start feeding his own cows.  Our driveway is nothing but powder. When we drive down our dirt ...

  I live down a couple miles of dirt road. I love where I live--protected by the hills all around, tucked back where we have to cross the creek multiple times to get to our house--but it isn't the ideal place for my little Prius. While my tiny hybrid is an ideal vehicle for my 2-hour round trip every day, it isn't ideal for rough dirt roads, creek beds, and a driveway that winds through the field. So it wasn't surprising when I had a flat. Frustrating, and a definite inconvenience when we got home Sunday evening, but not surprising. My husband was going to be volunteering at our kids' JR High track meet on Monday, which just happened to be in the town where I work, so we put off fixing it for the night and I just bummed a ride with him for work Monday. When we got home, then, Nathan jacked my car up and got the tire off. That process wasn't without it's own challenges (which I won't get into, but which involved my dad and the tractor), but it was done. My da...

Cows are funny creatures. I was reminded of that this past weekend when I was home to visit and got to help Pop move his herd across the road. Summer in Arkansas means hot and dry most of the time (though the start of this summer hasn't been too bad), and that means the grass can't quite keep up with all the cows snacking on it all day long. Since I was home to help, Pop wanted to run all his cows in, put wormer on them, and move them across the road to where the grass was greener... on the other side of the fence... sorry, I couldn't resist. It went relatively smoothly at first, and most of them came up when he hollered and started up the tractor. We even managed to get them worked relatively uneventfully--Pop only got kicked a couple of times, and the only one to kick at me graciously stopped her foot a good couple of inches in front of my face (yes, my face. Pop's comment was, "She's a bit of a high kicker, huh?"). But then, we had to try to get...

My last post was getting a bit long, so here's part 2 of lessons from the dairy :0) A) Competition can bring out traits you never knew existed--and what works for one may not work for another! ~When my parents bought the farm (wow, that comes across a bit strange--maybe I should say "purchased"...), a Border Collie came with it. His name was Jimbo, and he was incredibly timid--so much so that he was sharing his doghouse with a litter of kittens when we moved in. Border Collies are great herding dogs to be sure, but Jimbo didn't know us and he seemed unsure of himself around the cows.      On the other hand, we brought with us a Great Dane & German Shepherd mix named Duke. He was a huge black dog with more energy than he knew what to do with and a major chocolate addiction. His tongue was huge, and when he ran it flew out of the side of his mouth, waving like a flag, causing him to run crooked to compensate.      Duke thought the cows looked like...

*Note: I typed "lessons from the diary" first, but that would have been a whole different kind of post!* When I was scraping the snow (which was over a sheet of ice--not much fun) off the sidewalk last week, one thought kept popping into my head: This is so much like scraping the holding pen after we milked... Since that was my thought at the beginning of scraping, I had a decent amount of time to dwell on the thought...so naturally that turned into me figuring out how to write about it. This, my friend, is the result of my snow-scraping exercise: Lessons I Learned as the Daughter of a Dairy Farmer 1. Mornings aren't entirely bad. ~If you know me, you know how dramatic that statement really is. Growing up, it took at least 3 wake-up attempts to get me out of bed in the morning. One of those attempts was undoubtedly my brother jumping onto my bed, placing one hand on the bed beside each of my shoulders, and bouncing me as high as he possibly could while holle...