Luck and Love

We marked where the joists were with spray paint so we didn’t accidentally step through!

I have a wonderful husband. For the last year, he’s been working in a town 3 1/2 hours away from our farm. So he is there during the week, and here on the weekends. This separation has had the effect of making us really appreciate the time we get to spend together. And those rare three and four day weekends are especially welcome.

So what did we do over Memorial Day weekend? Reroofed the old chicken coop/now garden shed, of course! All of the old outbuildings on our place are roofed with tin, in various states of rust and disrepair. In some cases (as was the case with the coop) whole sections are simply missing, lost to the wind or the snow. The coop had been leaking for a while, and one section of cross pieces was rotted out as well. So off came what was left of the tin, off came quite a few old wood singles (picture 50 years of fine dust and mouse nests), and out came the rotting sections, to be replaced by salvaged wood from other parts of the farm. Then on went a donated corrugated plastic roof, left over from when my Mother-in-law reroofed her car port. Sweet.

I love that everything in this fire ring was salvaged from here, right down to the septic tank lid at its base.

What does one do with a bunch of pieces of rotten wood and singles? Make a fire and BBQ pork ribs over the coals, of course.

My husband and I both have a real pull towards the Asian aesthetic.

In November 2000 my husband and I took a trip to China. When we got married, we had asked friends and family to donate to a honeymoon fund. But then we were both newly minted college graduates looking for jobs, and it seems irresponsible to use our only savings for a vacation. So we waited…2 1/2 years. The trip was fabulous. It was a China sponsored tour, and each day, as part of our itinerary, we stopped someplace to shop (got to love those tourist dollars). At a pearl shop, a clerk looked at me, with my blond hair (they loved my hair), then looked at my husband and said, “oh, she very pretty. You big lucky.”

This has become a catch phrase in our marriage. We regularly stop to recognize just how lucky we are to have each other, and the sometimes seemingly magical things that happen when we are together. I also use it as a phrase that never ceases to get a laugh when things are tense and Michael is wondering how he is going to get through the next five minutes with me. So I say, “Don’t forget. You big lucky!”

Kind of makes you wonder what’s in the soil, huh?

Over the course of the weekend, Michael had told me how as a kid, he used to sit in a patch of clover and look for four-leaf clovers. He said he often found them. Then, while sitting next to the fire ring, having a beer, he reached down to a clump of clover growing by a stump, and started picking four-leaf clover after four-leaf clover. What can I say, we’re “big lucky”.

Meanwhile, the birds on our place have been getting lucky as well. Lots of nesting going on.

We have a total of 10 bird house boxes up around the property. These tree swallows are nesting in the one closest to our front door.

The whole time we were in Colorado, I hoped for a Wren to nest in our nest boxes. They never did. But now we have one in the back yard, and I hear the male singing as I wake up in the morning. We watched the female bring nesting material to the box on Saturday.

Yesterday, I attended my first ever farmers market as a vendor. Pretty exciting, as I’ve only been thinking about it for a couple of years, and planning for it since last fall. After I have a few more under my belt, I’ll write about what I’ve learned so far.

Miles Away Farm Blog © 2011, where we think that the key to enjoying life is to appreciate every day the good things you have, or just are privileged to witness.