The rocking chair wobbles on its fragile frame.  This is the third generation of babies it has cradled.  Naptime for my young grandson is imminent.  Jonathan rubs his eyes and fusses a bit, so I  lay aside the afghan I am crocheting for his soon-to-be sibling.  Jonathan’s rocking days are numbered. I know that full well.  But for now, he snuggles on my shoulder. His short breaths and fluttering eyelids succumb to sleep.

The rocking chair speaks to me of good times spent in its embrace.  The harmony of our hearts beat a cadence of silent symphony. I remember time spent in the rocking chair on Granny’s screened in front porch many summer afternoons.  It was my favorite spot to read a Nancy Drew mystery or write in my diary.

Years later, my daughters would climb into my lap in the bentwood rocker giggling and wet from running through the sprinklers.  Wrapped in beach towels, we read adventures from the library books we’d lugged home.  No matter that the caned back occasionally threatened to dump its massive load.  My two merrymakers remained oblivious. 

Starlit summer evenings would find us back in the rocker.  My two mischief makers holding jelly jars filled with lightning bugs. Our bug lanterns provided ambiance for bedtime stories retold to tousled sleepyheads.  And our old friend with her raspy voice embraced us all.

The same lullaby links the past to the present.  She shimmies with our weight.  Her bolts need tightening again.  And I really should give her joints a spritz of WD-40.  My procrastination has to do with what my great grandmother once said, “Rocking chairs are supposed to creak, it’s their porch music.” 

This past week I’ve been working many hours and late nights trying to get our annual Blurb book wrapped up. Last year, we made our first book on blurb.com and gave a sort of photo tour of our year. It was important to start our books that way because the plethora of photos gave a sort of “ground zero” for everything to come.

This year, Blurb upgraded to be able to “slurp” blogs off the internet and place them ever so neatly into the book making program. I chose this route seeing as we had so much about our farm life neatly wrapped up in our Transitional Traditions blog.

And photos. According to Blurb pricing structures, we have up to 160 pages before we hit the next cost jump and right now, we are on page 154. That is what this post is for.

I am going to give an end-of-the-year blog a little early in order to upload the book and publish it before the month’s end. Stories of our year that didn’t make it into other posts seemed like a fun way to do it.

Miracle Pears

We’ve been asked, more than once, what a Miracle Pear is. I guess the definition of a Miracle Pear really comes down to how you define what a miracle actually is. Do you feel it is something that could not have happened in the natural and therefore must be an act of God (such as a person healing from softball sized tumors overnight)? Do you see miracles as more of “everyday” things that are just amazing to behold (the birth of a baby, for example)?

We define miracles as more of everyday things. Like, the fact that last Saturday, Andy almost died in the haymow, but didn’t (more on that later). Or we’ve had a bill that’s due, and we got the exact amount of money in a check we weren’t expecting (down to the penny).

In our backyard, we have several ancient apple trees that were planted by my ancestors at the turn of the 20th century. A few have fallen and the three that are left are in serious need of revival ... or a re-graft on the roots. My mother began planting her own trees back there when I was a child and as I just started high school (or there-abouts) she got a single pear tree. I don’t know what kind it is, maybe a Bartlett, but it was a pretty little thing. Every spring it bloomed with luxurious flowers and sprinkled our lawn with whites and pinks and reds. And every summer I’d watch anxiously awaiting our first homegrown pear. This was a treat I had not experienced before! However, summer came and went, the apple trees bore their delicious fruit, and there sat the pear tree. Barren.

At first, it was explained to me that the tree was too young to bear fruit. This satisfied me for a few years, but over time I got a little frustrated. “Won’t it ever give us pears?” I’d ask. As I moved away from home in the college years, I forgot about the tree. Once or twice over the next ten years, I go take a look myself, to see if there were any fruits to be had. Nothing. That tree might as well have been a Maple for all the fruit it bore!

Then, in 2007, my parents moved off the farm and we moved in. There was no fruit that year, and we had decided that some time in our future (mine and Andy’s) we’d cut it down to make room for a fruit tree worth its space.

In the summer of 2008, we met a friend of a friend who asked if she could pray over our farm for blessing. This was a relatively new concept to us, but we welcomed the gift. She spent an afternoon walking the property and praying God’s blessings on our land and for the future of our endeavors. It doesn’t matter what you believe, or if you believe in God at all. One can still appreciate the kind gesture that this was.

Personally, we believed in the blessings she asked for and decided to take up the cause ourselves from time to time.

A few months later, Elly and I were toddling around the back yard, sampling some late summer apples and enjoying the warm grass. We happened upon the pear tree but didn’t take notice of the leaves or branches. At one point, I got this sense that I should examine the tree a little closer. I did, and I gasped.

There, plain as day, was a miniature sized green pear, growing vigorously from a low branch. I began to search the whole tree and saw another. Then another! In all, there were about 15 pears growing surreptitiously above our heads. We waited a month or so until they were ready to drop. Then I got a picker and collected every one.

Miracle Pears, 15 little beauties. Andy and I believed on the spot. An older woman, upon hearing the story a few days later, came up to me and stated, “Well, obviously someone in the neighborhood planted a pear tree and the pollen crossed. That’s all.”

Maybe that was all. But don’t you think it’s even more amazing with that explanation? I mean, for 15 years, that tree bloomed and blossomed and produced nothing. Then, the very year that we pray for blessing and fruitfulness on the farm, a neighbor’s pear tree, planted however many years ago, reaches maturity at just the right time? Forget about it! That’s amazing!

Just so you know, we got pears this year too, about twice as many. We even made Pear-Apple sauce out of them!

The Straw-Mow Scare

As I said earlier, Andy had a near-death experience last week. He was pitching down bedding for the cattle from our straw-mow. (mow rhymes with “wow”). Actually ... I’m not even sure what “mow” means. Literally, it is the cavernous space above a traditional barn that holds the hay and straw for the farm animals during the winter months. Hay bales can be pitched down holes in the mow floor into the barn area below, be it a dairy or some other animal housing structure. Likewise, straw is stored in bales and blown in loose.

The loose straw is what Andy was working with. It is the left over plant stalk after wheat (or barley or oats) is harvested. My dad and Andy collect it every summer/fall and use a special machine to literally blow it into the barn mow. There, it piles up and creates a giant mountain of straw that is about as stable as it sounds.

There is a large wall holding it back from the rest of the hay and a small opening through which the straw can be pushed. Inside the hole is an auger that propels the straw into a waiting wagon or in our case, a TMR mixer. In order to reach the straw, one has to step inside the straw mountain area and sort of pitch the straw towards the waiting hole.

Andy was doing this and had carved out a nice little dig in the side of the straw hill. This hill is about 30 feet tall, and he noticed a little movement from the top. He had this sense of “get out of there!” So, he ducked back through the retaining wall opening. He had his head, shoulders and one leg out of the straw area when the mountain collapsed all around him. In an instant, the other half of his body was fully encased in straw and he had to pull it carefully from the avalanche. How many farmers have died in their own haymows over the years? he wondered. It was a very scary moment for him, yet one to be thankful for.

I shuddered to think that when I was little, I used to chase cats in that very straw-mow, climbing up the mountain and sliding back down again. Of course, there were a lot of things I did on this farm as a naive child that made my guardian angels put in overtime.

The Doll

When we first got the store built and furnished with fridges and freezers, Andy knew it needed some country decor. We had gotten to be friends with a few homeschooling families and every spring and fall, they have a rummage sale. It’s not really a sale at all; they put tons of great items from their own homes and donations from others into one big weekend and give it away. They don’t charge a thing! If people feel led to donate money, every cent goes towards funding their homeschool projects or field trips. It’s a really great idea, and they have had the opportunity to really help some destitute families.

This May, we stopped in, looking for a few items to decorate the newly established on-farm store. Andy was looking for American country ... like chicken statues and quilted sheep, homemade wreaths or lidded canning jars. He found a few of those items and also a single doll. She was a floppy, hand-sewn girl, with a patterned dress and handmade bonnet. She was the kind that is stuffed just right in the tush so that they sit up and can be displayed. Or hugged!

We put her on a shelf in the store and allowed her to greet all our customers. Elly wondered why the doll was sitting up there and not in her arms, but we explained that this doll was special and needed to let all our farm friends know that they were welcome.

This was in May. Just last week, we welcomed a new family to our farm membership and gave them the tour of the farm and store. A few days later, the wife came by with a friend. I got this Facebook message from her a few hours later:

Hey Becky! I saw the cute doll you put up on the fridge in the little store. I just had to share this with you. That used to be my doll, and I put it in the homeschool rummage sale. I actually had a hard time parting with it, but I did because it was kept in a box for years. My childhood friend made me that doll for one of my birthdays when we were about 12 or 13. Her parents were extremely strict and she was never allowed to have friends over or go to anyone else’s house. She wasn’t even allowed to be in extracurricular activities or sports. We always had birthday parties in our group of friends, but she was never allowed to go. But one year she made that doll for me. It was really special for me to see it today. I’m glad its not in a box anymore, and now I can enjoy seeing it whenever we stop at your place! Thanks for giving her a home! :) Love, Lori

I was so touched that I asked if I could include the story in our blog sometime. Lori was totally ok with it, and I am so happy I got to share it with all of you. What a neat way of having something come full circle. Is this something you’d consider to be a miracle? Maybe so.

Some Things Are Ever Changing; Some Things Are Never Changing

Last year, I ended our Blurb yearbook with a dramatic shot of the farm in December, under a fresh blanket of pristine snow. If I took a walk today to the same spot in the field, you would hardly tell the difference in the farm.

So it is that another year has passed by, and, from the outside, very little has changed. The same machinery sits in the same field. The same cows loiter about the same out-buildings. The same garden sits dormant with the same brown stalks of summer.

But then you look harder. That machinery is lined up neatly in a row. Those cows are no longer heifers, but lactating mothers. The out-buildings are housing more and different animals. The garden has gone from one to two.

And it’s not just physical appearance. The feel of the place is different. Much more than last December ... the farm is beginning to feel like “ours.”

As we take on more of the farm projects and assume more of the farm bills, we are continuing to learn about the roller coaster that is Farming. And we are learning about ourselves. And who our friends are, and our family.

As I conclude this year in words, I have to look back and smile. Is it not a small miracle that we are even here, doing what we do? I believe it is.

Merry Christmas and blessings on your New Year.

With love,

Becky, Andy, Elly and Ethan

I’m sitting here watching my dear husband cut onions for our Thanksgiving meal, wearing these hilarious goggles because the vegetable causes him to cry so bad. Next to me, Elly pretends her slices of apple are ladybugs that can fly over her head. Over the baby monitor, Ethan sleeps deeply and all we hear is the light hum of the fan in his room.

It is Thanksgiving today, and I would like to join the rest of the country in counting my blessings. Counting blessings is not foreign to me. Sometimes, it’s the only way to pick me up on rough days. Other times, it would be criminal not to smile to the heavens and just sigh ... THANK YOU!

Today, however, I’ll make a special consideration for the blessings that have been showered upon us here at the farm.

I think of the work that has been accomplished in the last year. We have come so far and have so far to go. There are so many big things that define moments on a farm.

Getting the last of the feed stored for winter.
Installing new wiring in the outbuildings to allow easier (and safer) access for electrical equipment.
Adding 18 cows to a milking barn in three months.
Getting the hay in just before the big storm.
Planting a garden late, only to see it bloom and flourish anyway.

But I’ve come to realize that though those things are important, and wonderful ... they don’t make the farm what it is.

It’s the people and the animals. It’s the small moments. The kind words. The everyday miracles. The things that are so easily overlooked. The smiles. The wonder. The gift of being able to reach out to people in ways we never thought possible.

They came to us, looking for an alternative to industrialized food. What they got ... and what we got, was a relationship and a place to retreat.

People would come out in the summer and spend an afternoon watching us work. They’d participate in the weeding of the garden. They’d sweep hay to the cows. They’d walk with us the quarter mile to pick eggs.

A young mother drove from 40 minutes away every Tuesday for a month to help me in the garden. She aspires to own a little farm and sell cut flowers directly to consumers. She brought her incredibly well-behaved 8-year-old son, and he spent the time pulling the biggest weeds, talking about video games and chasing cabbage moths out of the garden. He got to watch Andy milking one morning and asked a bunch of little boy questions.

Then he asked if the milkers on the cows would hurt them or cut the “things” off. We weren’t sure what he was talking about, so we questioned him further. We finally figured out that he didn’t know what udders actually were, nor the teats. He had no idea that this was how milk came from a cow. I was delighted to show him that the cows enjoyed being milked and that the vacuum machines never hurt the animals. And it was that morning that it began to dawn on me; we were doing something here that attracted people from far and wide.

It wasn’t the milking, per say. It wasn’t the organic gardening, exactly. It wasn’t even our open door policy. No, it transcended our family completely.

It wasn’t about us. It was something bigger. And it is growing. There is a desire in our nation to return to something real, something solid. A return to the earth and the land.

For most folks that’s just not possible at this point. But what they do have is an opportunity to meet their farmer. Become a part of a farm. And we were suddenly sitting here, offering that option unconditionally. Our mission had been to provide a food choice. Though that has not changed, our idea of how it works certainly has.

We had a mother stop by in June and wander behind the store to see us weeding strawberries. She asked innocently, “What are those plants?” I laughed, thinking she was joking. She didn’t laugh with me. “Oh,” I recovered, “they’re strawberry plants. See these white flowers? The middle part gets pollinated and grows into a big red berry.” She exclaimed in excitement that she’d never seen strawberries growing before and marveled at the tiny flowers amidst the greenery. I was blessed that day.

We offered a limited CSA to two of our good friends because we knew they would be understanding if our gardens totally flopped. Upon a July visit to the farm, I gave them a tour of the gardens growing their food. Nothing was ready to eat yet, as we planted very late, but they were excited nonetheless. I remarked that I was so excited for the tomatoes to come because we had ordered some really unique heirloom varieties. Then one of them bent down and gently grasped the tomato leaf in his fingers. He stood up, took a deep breath of his hand and sighed heavily. “I haven’t smelled a tomato plant in so many years. I love this smell! They are my favorite fruit.” I was blessed that day.

A family from nearby sent their two oldest children to help us in our garden this summer and without them, we wouldn’t have even planted. Nearly every day from June to September, we enjoyed the company of Bret and Cortnie. They helped us weed, water, plant, and harvest. But they also helped us feed and water chickens. They picked eggs. They built fence with Andy. They fed calves. They greeted milk customers. They babysat. They mowed lawn. They taught us a lot about the love of our God in heaven. Because of them, we were blessed. We were able to mentor them a little and help them through some tough situations. They were able to center us more than once on our mandate here on the farm. Youthful exhuberance and ideals, complete with a supernatural maturity on their part, caused us to step back more than once and re-calibrate. After all, we were here for people just like them. Many garden days this summer, I was blessed.

In August, we hosted a large event called a Pasture Walk. We had nearly 70 people show up, mostly curious consumers who wanted that connection to someone who was with the land. We signed up a lot of new members that day, some over an hour away. We were blessed that day.

One morning, a mother of two stopped in after working a night shift at a hospital. We live on her commute home. She didn’t call in advance. She just needed ... something. We welcomed her in and made some hot tea and let her have a little moment on her own while we prepared our breakfast. She didn’t stay long, but she left in completely restored spirits. We were blessed that day.

This fall, the mother of Bret and Cortnie came out by herself one brisk summer morning. She grabbed a mug of apple cider and walked by herself into the morning fog and down the lane towards our grazing herds. She had a morning with God out there, looking around the farm and seeing His hand in her own life. She later told us all that she’d learned in an email. We were humbled ... and incredibly blessed that day.

As we follow the Earth’s path around the sun, the seasons change and the chores differ. We come to the end of the Autumn season and brace for the bitter cold of Wisconsin. We take 7.5 minutes per child to dress them just to walk to the barn and back.

But some things aren’t changing at all. And that is our amazing place here on the Earth. Andy and I are farmers. We are homesteaders. We are homemakers and dreamers. We are a haven of peace and rest for people who need ... something. And it’s not about us. It never was, nor will it ever be.

It’s the atmosphere of a welcome mat on our hearts. We love our customers. They are more than people who stop by and buy meat from us. They rally around us when we are hurting. They bring us treats for no reason at all. They are our extended family.

And then we come to it. Thanksgiving Day today and the nation is counting it’s blessings. My heart is full to overflowing. How can I possibly count something that outnumbers the stars that shine? All I can say, to God ... to Andy ... to our family ... to you ...

Thank you. I am abundantly blessed indeed.