It rained and rained and rained and rained. For almost three days. Some say we got six inches. The Green River is fat. My pond is a quarter of the way full. The ruminants aren’t drinking out of the water troughs because there is so much water on their food, and the chickens are tripping [...]
The past couple mornings I have opened my eyes feeling a heaviness that would hold me in my bed if it weren’t for the sound of the chickens on the porch, the roosters crowing, and the cows coughing at the water trough. I worry about the coughing and remember what’s it like to have too [...]
I guess I’ve been depressed for a week or so. Now that it’s been going on for a while, I am starting to recognize it. My grandma died. She was 103. No one from our family was with her when she died because it wasn’t convenient for anyone, including me. It’s funny how life works. [...]
Moon is eleven months old and I am struggling to train him to come when I call him. If I have a pocket full of treats, he is very attentive. But if I don’t have a pocket full of treats, or if he is too far away from me to see that I do, he [...]
The last post gave me a chance to complain and get all my angst out of my system. The big picture is actually lovely. I should be thankful that Moon has turned out to be such a cool dog, my sheepskins took only 30 lbs of salt and not all of Utah to cure, my [...]
I heard a woman say she loved farming but every once in a while it kicked her in the stomach. Today I got kicked hard. My farm helper, Catherine, spent the morning clearing a pasture fence line so we could move the cows to new grass this afternoon. All I had to do was build [...]
It’s a cold spring day. The cows luxuriate. In the garden, the greens are lush and the peas are popping. I took Moon for his first walk in the woods. For years I hiked these trails daily, but my dog got old and my husband got sick, and the forest was beyond my horizon. So [...]
My friend Alejandro took this picture of me in autumn of 2009 when, with the help of a professional butcher, I harvested three cows for beef, killing, cleaning, and quartering them out behind the barn, then driving them to the meat locker for aging, cutting, and packing. The grim expression on my face reminds me [...]
Every group of living things has a pecking order – the most dominant creatures are at the top, the weakest and therefore most submissive creatures are at the bottom. It’s obvious among the chickens – the most dominant birds get the highest rungs on the roost, and the weakest birds get their feathers pecked until [...]
My fabulous bullmastiff, Henry, died on November 4th. I didn’t think I was going to get another dog. More than one friend challenged me. ”You can’t have a farm without a dog.” But I just wasn’t ready for the emotional attachment or the risk of loss or the extra work. Then one morning I was [...]