The Joys of Farm Life

Wow, thanks Sammy, that’s a glowing tribute. But you didn’t mention the maple syrup—I can work wonders with that too. Good stuff just seems to grow wild around here and I do admit to baking-up a trail for the grand kids to sniff-out all the way from the city to grandmother’s house just about every chance I get. They love running around and enjoying the 25 acres of heaven we are so blessed to own. They feed the horses and birds, pick up the eggs from the chickens, eat a peck or two of berries and play in the pool and playground Grandpa Tom made special for them to enjoy.

It’s true that we—or me, at any rate—were kind of farm newbies when we bought Peaceful Valley farm back in 2010. We’ve had our experiences with horses and cows and birds of many a feather, but now we concentrate mostly on the smaller animals—the chickens and the bees and other more stationary critters like maple trees and berry vines. And through plain hard work, my organizational skills and a penchant for list making—two things that Tom sometimes calls by other names—we’ve finally come into our own. And if, on a particular Sunday, we all need a bit of a sleep-in, I just go out to the barnyard and instruct the rooster not to crow.

But farm living isn’t all dungarees and pitchforks. Around here—where the flowers bloom like Geisha girls and the sunsets seem rouged by L’Oreal—it’s more of a compliment to mother nature than a contradiction that a lady of taste should harvest from her own silo of sparkle or barrel of bling from time to time. I mean, a girl has to compete with springtime somehow! If you should catch me in one of my many gardens, deep in mutual solicitation with my flamboyant cohorts—I to them with a pruning or a misting and they to me in a pageant of whispers that hangs like fairy dust just beneath the breeze—you’ll see that the counsels of beauty go both ways. I’m sure my grandfather, the Master gardener, cherished these bestowals as I am learning to.

Now if I can just bring myself back in from the garden for a moment, I’ll just say that I’d love for you to come with us on our journey of living and learning the ways of farm life. I hear that somewhere over across on the other side of the website Gramps is telling some stories, too, but without any of the juicy details and with all the dates mixed up. So stay put and you’ll get the full chronological renditions of stories of farm life, travelling, lyme disease (more on that later) sprinkled with all kinds cooking and baking tips. I even have a list of secret recipes as long as my arm, but you can’t have that…because my bracelets are on it.

Let’s talk some Grandma talk….