bullywoolly

How do I bore thee? Let me count the ways.

You know how I said this blog didn't have a theme? I changed my mind. The theme of this blog is "how much I like living in the country -- stay a while and let me bore you with stories of how many pea pods I picked today and don't even get me started on the strawberries".

Five. That's how many strawberries I picked today.  And when you take five strawberries and quarter them and divide that number by three(ish) that equates to three residents of this house feeling pretty satisfied with their lot in life. We're easily pleased, all of us.

Combine that with a lovely sunny (albeit windy, but not tornado-y) evening, hence the opportunity to cut the grass after work, and it leads one (if that one is me) to the conclusion, as I haul the lawnmower up and down the bank, that this really is the life.   For reals. And then it got even better, because the neighbour from up the road came down on his tractor and asked me if I want to borrow some of his cows. Now, how many times would I have got that offer living in the city, huh?

Sadly I had to decline his offer, because I'd already taken up the offer of the next door neighbour to borrow some of his goats.  It's all about the sharing, out here in farm land.

Peas (in which the pinnacle of blog-worthiness is reached)

But as Sir Edmund Hillary said, getting to the top is only half the battle.

Anyway, as the title of this post indicates, it's all about the peas. Namely, the first peas off the vine.

When we were young, not wanting to run the risk that Mum would cook them, my brother and sister and I would steal the pods off the vine before Mum could get to them. We'd run our thumbnail down one side of the pod to open it up, then run a finger down the inside, pooling all the peas together at one end, and finally flick them into our mouths.

Today I discovered I hadn't lost the art of pea-stealing. And the peas are still as sweet as they ever were.

The long long grass of home

The previous owners of our place didn't have any stock, apart from a goat who is now our goat but she was tethered to a fence so there was no need for fences.  But! I want to have stock (goats and alpacas) who are untethered, and so over the last year my Dad and I built stock fences. Okay, so my DAD built the fences, I just stood there and did what I was told (as in 'hold this straight. No straight! I mean vertical. *Exasperated sigh* Never mind, I'll do it myself'). I would like to add, however, that while stock fences are generally my father's domain, I did actually manage to put a picket fence up all by myself. Which was great until the trampoline came down upon it.

Anyway, the paddock that was created as a result of the fence building has been all set to contain stock for the best part of a year now, and oh my god does it ever need stock in there because the grass? The grass is up to my armpits and admittedly I'm not tall but still, the grass is longer than it should be according to the laws of rural grass management (as in: the neighbours are looking at me askance and even asked me if they could put their goats in there) BUT there are two young oak trees in the paddock that require stock-proofing and I can't let the goats loose in there because they will strip the trees bare.  Strangely, no form of protection for the trees has miraculously appeared in the time since we got the fences finished, and everytime my Dad comes to visit it is too cold/wet/tornado-ish to actually do anything outside, so I have taken it upon myself to build some little (actually they're gonna have to be big suckas) tree fences.

Each fence is a triangle, needing three posts. And I need two fences. So that's four more posts that I have to (1) dig holes for (2) align properly and (3) stabilise by ramming (ramming with an iron rammer) the earth around them.

So far, I've done two posts.

Good god it's hard work.

Son of a gun, we're gonna have big fun on the bayou

A long time ago, when I lived in marriage-land, my husband did most of the cooking.   I can still hear the echoes of the wondrous tones of my mother and pretty much all my friends, exclaiming over how lucky I was to have found ('cos I just tripped over him) myself a man who could, and would, cook.  Never mind that that was his only domestic skill (oh okay, he was pretty good at ironing) and he couldn't use a dishcloth to save his life and seriously, I think the last time his toilet was cleaned was in 2003. By me. Just before I left.

Anyway, since then I've obviously had to take on cooking responsibilities.  Once the girls learnt about the food pyramid at school they cottoned on to the fact that two-minute noodles were not providing them with a balanced diet.  So I had to buck my ideas up, and I did, but in the process I've begun to enjoy cooking very much.  Admittedly, being in a place where we can grow our own vegetables helps, and similarly, cooking and eating fresh and healthy food kind of goes with the country lifestyle.  We've been trying out a lot of different recipes for pasta dishes, various pies and casseroles, my own (secret) recipe for crispy chicken (baked, not fried! We call it Tauwhare* Fried Chicken though because we're funny. At least we think we are), and even jambalaya (but not crawfish pie or filet gumbo).

And baking even! Because it goes with my (highly sought after) image of rural housewife.  My folks are visiting tomorrow and I've already made these

(ABC mini-muffins = apple, banana and chocolate)

and this

Sour rye bread (it has beer! in the bread!) 

And I will be getting up at the crack of dawn to make cheese scones. Because that's just what we do in the country. That, and chase goats.

* Because that's where we live, see? Not Kentucky. Geddit?

Not quite enough to top a pavlova...

...but it's our very first produce this year.

The girls weren't home when I picked it and I could have quite cheerfully popped it into my mouth right then and there and no one would have been any the wiser. But my conscience got the better of me and I saved it. The girls decided we should divide it into three, in order that there be a ceremonious devouring of the first fruit of our labour.  It tasted pretty good, I think.

The Wind That Shook the Parsley...

...and uplifted the trampoline and threw it at the house, breaking the fence in the process.

Fortunately, for I am weak of heart when things go bang, I was not at home last night.  It would appear a mini-tornado paid a visit.  Look what it did to the parsley.

It has almost gone to seed anyway, so the fact that it is now growing horizontally does not bother me too much.  But then, there was this.

After a thorough scene examination, I have concluded as follows: the tornado lifted the trampoline, blew it some four or five feet from its usual position, and then upturned it, hitting it against the roof of the porch. Then it has hit the fence on its way down, more or less knocking all the supporting posts over, and now the fence is simply propped up with nothing but gravity keeping it vertical.  If I breath on it, it will fall over. The trampoline mat has been rent in twain, (well, it's been rent in two places, at least), some of the springs are broken, and I'm not entirely sure the frame isn't buckled as well.

Here's how I worked out that the trampoline had hit the roof.

See that blue thing? That's a trampoline bumper-pad. See the buckled roofing iron? Not like that this time yesterday.  Hear that noise? That's the sound a no-claims bonus makes as it vanishes. 

All I can say is, it's a good thing the goats were tethered to the fence otherwise they could be flying over your house right now.

Town versus country

Last night I attended the end of year school music recital and since I was meeting the children there, and I had to grab a bite and kill some time first, I took a wander through my old hood.  It’s been eighteen months since I moved to the country, and I think it’s timely to appraise the difference in living situation.

At the old place, within walking distance there was:

·          KFC

·          MacDonalds

·          Subway

·          A nice Thai restaurant

·          A bank

·          A post-office

·          A school (or rather, the school, as in the one in which my children are enrolled)

·          A lotto shop (crucial to my retirement plan)

·          A hardware store

·          Numerous cafes and other shops

·          Two pubs

·          A park

At the new place, within walking distance there are:

·          Cows

A surprising number of people have asked me if I’m ready to move back to town, and a television programme the other night essentially dismissed the idea of rural living as a futile exercise since all of the people they interviewed gave up the lifestyle after a few months and headed back to town.  One particular couple chucked it in because they didn’t realise there’d be so much grass to cut.  Yeah dude, there really needs to be more concrete in the country.   Moving back to town would kill me. Okay, no it wouldn’t, but a little bit of hyperbole just adds emotion to the story. 

And perhaps this might sound a little too evangelical, but living out here does wonders for ye olde mental health.  It’s pretty hard to leave for work in the morning without a smile on your face when this is what you see when you step outside your front door.

Maybe it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it is my cup of tea.  It hasn’t always been plain sailing but by crikey, I’ve learned a thing or seven (at least) since I’ve been here.

1.                    Goats are stubborn.  (I know! Who’d have thought?)

2.                    Water pumps run off electricity. When the power’s off, so is the water.  It took me a while to figure out while the toilet wasn’t flushing during the first power outage.

3.                    Goats know when the power is off.  Electric fences? Not so good for the keeping in of the goats. 

4.                    Mice are nothing to be afraid of, but in any event, there’s no one around to hear you scream.

5.                    Never turn your back on a goat.

6.                    It’s not so much a matter of making hay while the sun shines as it is of making hay when the grass is dry. That is why your neighbour will cut hay at 11 p.m on a Friday night, not caring that his tractor headlights are illuminating your bedroom at 3 minute intervals and causing you to suspect an impending invasion.

7.                    You can’t catch a goat while you’re wearing slippers.

I wasn't lying about the vegetables

Vegetables
Originally uploaded by bullywoolly.

I would never lie about vegetables.

What we have here are peas, lettuce, broccoli and corn. In another part of the garden we have tomatoes and courgettes, strawberries, and herbs. I may have left it a bit too late to get the potatoes in.

The first few plants I put in this year were decimated by slugs. I tried to be all organic and made traps out of orange halves, but cleaning those out every morning got old really quickly and I was slathering on bait pellets within a couple of days.

We should be having corn and peas and tomatoes with our Christmas lunch, with a bit of luck, and assuming neither of the goats gets free in the meantime.

Hi

Hello. Welcome to my bloggy-thing.  You're obviously lost.

But since you're here, I'll talk very quickly at you and try and tell you as much as I possibly can about myself before you realise you're in the wrong place and head back the way you came. I don't get many visitors. No, really.

Hi. I'm Brenda. Pleased to meet you.  I live in the little house on the prairie. Only it's not on a prairie since there are no prairies round these parts.  Round these parts is farmland, but little house on the farmland isn't nearly as pioneer-sounding as I'd like. Not that I'm very pioneer-y either, but I do bake my own bread, or at least my Sunbeam breadmaker does, and I do grow some vegetables, spin yarn and and do my own modest house renovations, but mostly that's just because I'm cheap.

My fellow inhabitants in the pioneer house are two daughters, 10 and 8, two cats, 14 and 12, two goats, 6 and 1, lotsa mice, birds, spiders and frogs of assorted ages and stages (foetus to mummified). Mmm-mmm.

I set this account up as an adjunct to NaNoWriMo (is adjunct the right word? I so do not know. perhaps NaNoWriMo is not my cup of cha?)  But then I decided, hey, my life is so fascinating that I should write approximately 1700 words about it every day as well! Only I won't because I'm bone idle. And while I astounded myself by completing NaNoWriMo last year, chances are 2006 will be a dismal failure. I'm a one-hit wonder.