Still Pretending to be a Farmer Over Here

The other night, six babies sick and Daddy at work, I took to the garden with my baby and picked dinner. There were green beans and squash snapped and chopped for frying. There were fresh dug potatoes and onions and garlic that still had dirt on ’em. When everyone is sick, and even when they’re not, I am so very grateful for homegrown food. I believe strongly that cooking 95% or more of your food at home, from real food ingredients, is the foundation for health.

And they ate it all, these ailing loves of mine; vegetables, potatoes, and the spicy garlic-herb sauce all down the hatch. When the hungriest of the hungries loses their appetite, Mama worries. But this night they were back, not in their full multiple-heaping-plates glory by any means, but hungry they were. And to eat fresh potatoes while feeling the blister on your hand that it took to dig them, well, there is no grocery store equivalent.

***

The next morning, Stewart off to work extra early to beat the storm and the boys still flat on their backs, I was headed out to do animal chores in the rain. As much as I am always wanting to add to our flocks and herds, I am not much of an animal person. To serve eggs, dairy, and meat that we know the history of I am all for, but actually handling animals is not something I excel at.

The first problem arose when I went to throw on the muck boots and realized that, ignorant of the coming rain, all of the muck boots had been left outside the front door the night before. Tiny house living is often glamorized on the internet but let me tell you, friends, eight of us in 700 square feet often means chucking muck boots out the front door, carrying totes of dirty dishes out back, and Mama constantly giving and throwing things away because, sorry, but there’s just no room.

So crocks it was. The oversized raincoat was donned and I stepped out the front door to find standing water for who knows how many feet. I was grateful to just barely be able to reach the concrete pavers we had stacked next to the front door (which, by the way, work much better when laid out in your flooded front yard than when stacked in a pretty pile next to the front door). So I carefully placed one after another, thinking this was going very well… until the last one slipped out of my hands, soaking my skirt far more than if I’d just hiked it up and toughed it out. Oh well.

To the barn I went to feed our bottle-fed kids and lock up the straggling goats for the morning cow milking. Thankfully, Elijah was able to pry himself from his bed for the morning milking and all I had to do was get everything ready. Wrestling with a far-too-large-to-be-bottle-fed buck, I finally got all four kids in their stalls, but not before our full-sized goat Lillie decided me bending over the kids made a prime target for a proper goat-butting. Did I mention we do not de-horn our goats?

So maybe I was a little sore but I could now head back inside to let Elijah know that everything was (relatively) successful and Mabel was in the stanchion and ready. It was pouring now so before leaving the barn I put the hood of my raincoat down a little lower thinking I might be able to keep these clothes from getting so wet and muddy that they would need a washing. Just when I thought I might be successful, it felt as though I had just dropped one of those concrete pavers on my head. Once I gathered myself, thankfully still upright, I realized that it was actually my head meeting the mesquite tree in front of our house and I staggered the rest of the way inside. Eyes watering, I sat down to gather myself. Perhaps pulling the raincoat hood down was not such a good idea, after all.

By this time Elijah was coming down the stairs slowly and, in my spinning head, I knew I was going to ask him something but couldn’t remember what. As I watched him slowly come down the stairs, I wondered if that’s how I was plodding along too. The Lord has been very merciful in so many ways through this illness, one of the big ones being that Stewart and I have been spared thus far. But I knew I wasn’t getting very far with chores and I knew the house was a wreck and I knew I had a deadline with my publisher that very day. But it wasn’t so much waking up several times a night with sick babies and crying toddlers as it is the worry (and frankly, fear) that possesses me in times such as these. And I wonder if it’s not actually a gift to be up in the middle of the night in a quiet house, rocking a hot baby, giving Mamas everywhere a moment of peace to cast our cares upon the Lord. I know it has been a gift to me.

Thankfully the baby was no longer feverish that morning and Elijah was now asking where the milking pot was. The pounding in my head was no longer so I got all of the milking stuff ready along with the pig and chicken feed. I wanted to finish up chores before Hannah woke up from her nap. We were about to head out when I remembered what I was going to ask Elijah.

“Hey, does Lillie butt you guys a lot when you’re out in the barn?”

“No,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation. “Never, why?”

“Oh, never mind,” I replied with a smile. He, ever so slowly, cracked one too, and I wonder if we weren’t both thinking the same thing…

Mama’s still pretending to be a farmer over here.