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In Search of Authentic Homesteaders by Sheri Dixon PAGE 6 of 6 <BACK |
Guinea Fowl: Something Different the Guinea Fowl, is fast becoming not just the friend of the poultry farmer, but a friend of the avid gardener as well Home-schooling for Homesteaders our modern society is not well in many ways, and if we continue to immerse ourselves and our families in it, we will soon be ailing right along with it. Build and Maintain Your Own Trails, Roads and Driveways One day we reopened that crude, intermittent log trail and converted it into a crude continuous log trail that took us all the way from our back porch to the highway in less than half the distance |
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I live in Texas. Texas is big. But driving through South Dakota, Texas didn’t seem all that big anymore. South Dakota is more sky than land. More farmland than city. More wild prairie than cultivated acreage. More…. hey - what’s that? My husband had just asked me how we would recognize our hostesses since we’d never met them before. Confidently I told him, “I’ll just know”, as I gazed ahead of us (wondering how on earth I’d recognize our hostesses since we’d never met them before). Low and behold, up ahead of us was a very tall woman standing alone in an empty lot on the corner of our arranged meeting (at the ONE gas station in town). She wasn’t quite alone - she was holding a leash, and at the end of the leash was a darling, tiny, fuzzy goat. Yep. We were here. Neets and Fruityy live on a farm. Ask any child what a farm looks like, even if they’ve never been outside city limits, and they’ll happily draw you a picture of Neets and Fruityy's place. Two story white farmhouse, pick-em-up truck, huge barn, chicken house, silo, veggie garden, pastures, sheep, horses, dogs, cats, and a baby goat sitting at the dinner table. Wait. What? Neets and Fruityy live on a farm that is located roughly in the center of the middle of nowhere. Miles of open space, punctuated by farmhouses, sewn together with one-lane threads of dirt road, their place is (to me, anyway) the comfiest square of the prairie quilt tucked across the earth as far as the eye can see. Beautiful gardens, dear old house, barnyard full of the usual cast of characters encountered on a farm, the general atmosphere is one of happiness, contentment and the natural assumption that each and every creature there has a unique personality, and that each and every personality is to be accepted and celebrated. So it doesn’t seem the least bit unusual for there to have been a tiny goat on a leash at the gas station, or that the same goat lived in the house. Not, lived-in-the-house-in-a-pen-in-the-kitchen, but lived-in-the-house-slept-on-the-bed-ate-at-the-table-and-pottied-outside. Petal came home to Neets and Fruityy's as a bottle baby, and she adapted to life as a house-goat with grace and assurance. I’ve had goats for years and although I know they’re personable and intelligent, I’d never had the inclination to bring one (officially) as "inside" as Petal lived. She’s not only a good house goat, she’s an excellent ambassador for the entire goat species - tagging along to the nursing home, the building supply store, even the plant nursery and behaving herself better than most two-legged kids.
When most people would’ve been listing the "why-you-can’ts" of having a house-goat, Neets and Fruityy pondered the “why-nots?”, and came up with nothing adverse that was noteworthy, and brought her in. Their whole place is an exercise and testament to “why not?” When most folks are winding down their workload and chores, especially those that can be chosen, sorted through, and made easier or discarded, Neets and Fruityy are farming - with all the hard nasty bits still very much in place. But you can’t have a rainbow without rain, and you can’t fully appreciate the joys and small wonderments of farming without the difficult and sometimes heartbreaking bits. Neets and Fruityy know this, accept this, and fully embrace every accomplishment, but almost more importantly, embrace and own every heartache as well. In their survey, both state that their best moments are the ones when they can say, “We DID it!” What makes them so special is that they don’t stop - every single “we DID it” is a launching point for the next project, the next hurdle, the next sunrise. People who choose to work a farm, on any scale, take a tremendous amount of responsibility onto their shoulders - and the larger your piece of earth, the larger your shoulders must be. Oh, to be sure, those shoulders need to be broad and strong to support all the physical labors that go with farming, usually with a "normal" job pulling around the edges. Shoulders that can square up and haul feed in the rain; wrestle with a downed fence during an ice storm; rest the shovel handle on while taking a breather between the tears that accompany digging a grave for your favorite critter. But those same shoulders can hug several children to them at once - children smelling of fresh air and sunshine. They carry baskets of bounty from the garden, and armloads of baby animals rest tiny heads there - safe and content. The shoulders of farmers are right where they need to be - the strength, the dividing line and support between clear heads filled with learning that never ends, and hearts filled with the love of their land and their place in it. Hearts that may break from time to time, that may grow so tired from worry and care, but that heal themselves magically with each and every small miracle - beating to the rhythm of Mother Nature herself.
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