Simple Goodness Sisters

There are thousands of blogs written for parents who are expecting. I love reading these blogs and decided to share my own thoughts on what one can expect when expecting. To make it interesting, I thought it would be fun to share my experiences as a farmer. So, here are five things women who farm can expect when they are expecting! Enjoy! Don't be surprised if you compare yourself to livestock If you raise livestock, it is almost a sure bet that throughout your pregnancy you will compare yourself and your experiences to those of the livestock you raise in the barn. Don't be surprised if you accidentally or jokingly referring to your cycles as heat cycles, peeing on sticks as preg checking, your milk coming in as udder development and towards the end your husband starts looking for signs of labor! You probably know more than average Joe and Sally about the miracle of life Even if you have no experience actually giving birth yourself, you probably have a pretty good idea of the biology behind the miracle of life. If you raise livestock, you have probably been elbows (or shoulders) deep in an animal trying to correct a less than ideal birthing position, you may have helped hold the intestines while a vet performs a c-section, if you have dairy animals you know how to inspect, diagnose and treat mastitis and you are probably an expert at cutting umbilical cords! Although there are definitely differences between humans and livestock, farming has given you a good head start in understanding what will happen when your time comes! Your husband will find going to the hospital a total inconvenience Chances are if you raise livestock you probably live a decent distance from the closest hospital. If your husband is anything like mine, he will question whether you even need to go to the hospital. His argument will be that the animals do just fine having their babies in the barn, why should he be inconvenienced into driving you all the way to the hospital? Your "Preparing for Baby" checklist will look very different from your non-farming friends Your friends will have probably have a pre-baby checklist that will include normal things like baby proof the house, find a pediatrician, decide on a care provider, ect. Your list will likely include all those same items, but will also have a few not so normal items on there. Our "Before Baby Comes" checklist includes slaughtering the steer so we have plenty of ready made dinners, castrating the male goats so they can be sold to reduce our herd numbers, fencing in a new goat yard to make daily chores more manageable and getting a head start on tilling and prepping the garlic fields since we usually do that in October when our little one is due. You will be very tired! Yup, farming is hard work and it won’t get any easier when you are pregnant or have a new baby! Now that I am in the third trimester I am exhausted when I get home. And yet, I still have a barn full of garlic that needs to be sorted, graded, cleaned, braided and sold before planting season. Your husband will also be tired since it is likely that he is taking on more of the chores you used to do. You will probably see less of him, but remember that's because he is pulling your weight. My advice is work hard when you feel good and then relax when you don’t. Also, when it gets overwhelming, take a break, leave the farm and go have fun with each other if at all possible. It will make coming back and tackling the projects more enjoyable.

Do you know what I mean when I talk about the utter satisfaction of white paint? The catharsis that comes with rolling a coat of clean white paint over a wall studded with grease, dog prints and the history of a thousand foreign fingerprints? It's a feeling of release, that I imagine unwinds the tight strings of my muscles and lowers my shoulders just a fraction of an inch in a moment of pure happiness. Ok, so maybe I am a bit type A, and maybe I am overthinking this, but I really love what a coat of paint can do to a room. I've had the pleasure of that moment of joy about 47 times this week, as we've been working through room by room, painting each surface with Behr premium dual paint and primer with low VOC. The magnitude of that moment has reduced a bit with frequency, as all strong emotions are apt to be dulled via repetition and time, and I can't say that I love spending every evening with a roller in hand (I'd vastly prefer a drink, but then there is that whole growing a son in my womb thing at play, too.) I've cleaned paint brushes nightly and ran to the Home Depot for more paint three times now and we're still not done, but we've definitely made significant progress on the house in our first week of home ownership and I am excited to share it with you. Our goals prior to move in day (which we're hoping comes prior to baby's eviction day!) were to address the flooring and walls. Everything else we can do later, but those large things require open space, time for fumes to disperse and are a whole lot easier without furniture so they have been prioritized. Except- when you renovate nothing ever goes exactly to plan and when you start one project you begin to realize that although you tried to predict what other things might have a direct effect on this first project, there's probably something else you didn't expect to have to consider at the same time, that now makes sense to consider because of its dependencies. For sake of example, let's talk about the floors. The day we received our keys, Troy's first move was to sink and exacto knife into the emerald green carpet and begin to rip it out. We aren't carpet people, I hate vacuuming, and we definitely wanted to change the color scheme of the room (a scheme I have affectionately dubbed the Taco Time color palette, as it consists of dusty rose and emerald green hues that make me crave a soda with pebbled ice and a Veggie Fit Hit bowl.) Upon removing the carpet, we finally got to see the condition of the original fir floors that we knew were underneath. Though there was obviously significant work to do to clean them up, we were encouraged to find them in pretty good shape, with just one coat of paint on top that we identified as simply "annoying that it is there Latex" and not "entirely toxic and cannot be disturbed lead" paint. So far so good. In the dining area and entry, hardwood had been laid on top of the original floors and nailed in. This was a bit harder to remove and required a crew and some crow bars. Luckily, on Saturday family and friends began streaming into the house around 9 am, all eager to help us. We couldn't feel more thankful to the work they have put in to help us get settled. Having everyone we love around the house has already begun to make it feel like a home, so thank you to all who have stopped by, painted, demo'd, let us borrow tools, brought dinner, and provided us with loving company through this busy and stressful week. One night later in the week, after the living, dining, hall, office and downstairs bedroom floors had been revealed, Troy and my dad began to ponder about the likelihood of the same flooring continuing into the kitchen. So this happened:

Sure enough, trapped under a layer of linoleum and tar paper, the floors peeked through. In the process of removing the old cabinets to reveal the entire floor so work could begin to refinish it, a wood window in the kitchen was broken. So next we ordered 3 new vinyl windows. And finally, we ordered the replacement lower cabinets for the kitchen. To recap so far, in the process of re-doing our floors, we ended up expanding the flooring project to the kitchen, replacing 3 windows, and replacing our lower cabinets. But we weren't done yet. The flooring stressors continued as we debated whether to pay for a professional to re-finish the floors from start to finish, lay over the top of the old floors with a new floating hardwood floor, or try to refinish the floors ourselves. Aesthetics and budget were the big consideration factors, especially as our limited budget now had to accommodate the windows and cabinet costs. After a couple of quote and scheduling issues, we found a custom floor refinisher who is willing to work out a happy medium with us: we take care of the majority of the prep work, and he will provide the proper, professional final sand and clear coat of finish at a very affordable price per square foot. Inside, I rejoiced at the prospect of preserving these century old hardwoods, including every rustic dent and scratch, while Troy wilted a bit and tried to maintain a positive outlook on his long week ahead. Though he'd already removed the flooring on top (including chipping away at linoleum pieces, scraping tar paper, and pounding out the hardwood splinter by splinter) the carpet staples still needed to be removed and the entire first floor had to be sanded down with an industrial sander and heavy grit paper to remove the paint and polyurethane finish. And so leads us to today. The first floor is prepped for the final sand, the rose wall paper in the living room was sprayed with remover and scraped off in a process that was easier than any of us expected, and the majority of the walls upstairs and down have that fresh clean coat of white paint that so pleases me. Except the many walls that have the color that is supposedly Cathedral Grey and appears very purple in the lighting in our house- those have a purple-grey, and they will for a long while until I feel like picking up a paint brush again. Please keep up the prayer...

 

Our family welcomes any excuse to party. And we love a good animal race- horses, piglets, goats, you name it, if they've been raced at a county fair, we've lined up to watch and cheer them on. So last year, despite being months late for the annual Kentucky Derby, we decided that Grandma Nancy's surprise birthday bash was the perfect excuse to finally throw our own farm animal races in my backyard (a bucket list event for me if ever there was one!) The Kentucky Derby is a Grade 1 Stakes race for three year old thoroughbred horses run annually the first weekend in May. Held in Louisville, Kentucky, the race is known equally for its traditions of high fashion and infield race attendee parties as it is for its winners. We sent invites to the Kelly Derby to our nearest and dearest and waited for someone to blow the surprise but incredibly, no one did. I thought we almost killed gram she was so taken aback (and thrilled!) when she walked in to the yard to see us all waiting in our fancy derby hats, Mint Juleps in hand. It was one of the most fun parties I have ever thrown and a memory of our home that I will always cherish. We kept our party fairly simple with a Kelly green color scheme, a Mint Julep inspired drink in mason jars, a southern themed menu of fried chicken, cold salads and strawberry shortcakes, and hats for all. The DIY items for the party included pendant drink stirrers, colorful pendant flags strung around the porch, debonair Kelly green bow ties for the gents to clip on their shirts, and the race track my dad assembled out of chicken wire, metal stakes, and ribbon. From the excited goats foraging the flower beds, to my dad acting as the Post announcer and finally to the epic goat and dog races themselves, we had a ball. I'd love for this traditional event to become an annual party at the farm for our family and I highly suggest having a derby party of your own. Get your barnyard critters and loved ones together this week and, with a little bit of training, some bourbon and maybe even a "southern accents required" rule, celebrate "the Fastest Two Minutes in Sports!"