It’s Ashley here, reporting from Vomitville, Ontario. The kids have had a tummy bug all week, rounded off with some delightful bronchitis. I’ve not slept for more than 30 minutes since Sunday night and have been thrown up on more times than I can count. (The dog even wore it last night, take that Puppercini!) Scott has not been present for the festivities, as he has been gone for the week to an all inclusive resort in Mexico for a friends wedding. Oh, the river of my discontent runs deep my friends.
Touch wood, Bob appears to be eating this morning and Mags hasn’t thrown up since 1am, so we may be on the up and up. Wish us luck! Speaking of luck, I couldn’t feel luckier than I do right now to live so close to both sets of grandparents, holy geez. They are the only people who handle getting hacked up on by your children with such love and grace.
Not being able to leave sick kids alone in the house, nor take them out to the goat shed with me for chores, has been an interesting scenario. It prompted me to scrawl down a basic list of things I didn’t know before moving to “the country”, and I thought I would share.
1. Heavy lifting. I severely underestimated the amount of heavy lifting and physical labor involved. Heaving sacks of grain, moving bales, carrying giant water jugs, shoveling manure, tilling the garden, planting the garden, weeding the garden, moving chicken tractors, wrestling goats for hoof trimming and meds… none of these things are light or quick and some of them involve horns! And it has to be done, period. Pregnant, tired, injured, nobody else is gonna do it but you.
2. Shit, it stinks. And out here, there’s a lot of it. Living next to an industrial chicken barn in Armow was an experience I will never forget. The periodic wafts of chicken death and shit were, in a word, repulsive. As a result I can now play “name that manure” as good as the next less-than-10-fingered folk. I mean, that’s a sterling quality to have if I had to pick one. Sure. Baby chicks are cute. For the first day. Before they start to get feathers and their brooders fluffy wood shavings have been replaced with a substance that can only be called “Poo-Crete” (thanks for that one, Jules). We do deep pack bedding with our goats, and that gets pretty delicious. We are up to our eyeballs in poop, yet we want more: we haul in truck loads of the stuff composted for our garden. If you can’t handle having shit on your shoes, your clothes, under your nails and just about everywhere else… the country is not for you.
3. Bye, bye beauty. My beloved french nails lasted for about two months. Two months of breaks, cracks and cursing. I keep my nails short and bare now, because there’s no other way. The dry cracks in my hands have thin lines of dirt in them that cannot be scrubbed out. Accessories have no place here, they are only a liability. And no footwear you can’t spray off with the hose or leave outside to dry.
4. You cannot hide death, or hide from death. Nature is as cruel as it is beautiful. Circling coyotes, invasive weeds… there is as much brutality as there is splendor. I have learned firsthand that when you start playing God (be it by gardening or keeping livestock) you have to ready to bring the axe down. That pretty flowering weed WILL kill the tomato transplants you started from seed. That runty baby chick WILL be pecked to death by it’s siblings if you let it live. Vegetable or animal, your investment may NEED protecting from other living creatures, which, while they may be cute, may not be easily deterred. There are varmint rifles for a reason. The upside is of course that you are totally connected to what you eat. My kids know exactly where their food comes from and are as familiar with the insides of a chicken as the outside. And you can do fun things like make your city friends kill their own supper. Creatures who have lived and died with love and respect not only taste better but are better for us, too.
5. Staying put. You keep animals, you need to be there to feed and water them, twice a day, no matter what. Rain, shine, hail. They need feeding and watering when you are sick, when your kids are sick, when you really want a day out of town. Those spontaneous vacations to the city? Kiss ‘em goodbye. You’ve got arrangements to make, before you can go anywhere for longer than 12 hours. You better have great family, interested friends or kick butt neighbours.
6. Neighbours. They are so far away, they can’t ever hear you (unless you light off fireworks) and you can’t hear them. In our case, there are no inhabited farms within VIEW of our house. We can walk down our concession and around the sideroad (essentially just walking around the “corner”, which takes at least an hour) and not see another person. It’s truly a delightful thing not to have to live on top of another family, in a row of people you may or may not like, or even know. It is a tremendous luxury, the quiet and comfort is staggeringly wonderful. You wave when you pass eachother in your vehicles, you know that even though you hardly ever see them, they’ll be there for you whenever you may need them.
6. You’ll never want to leave. The peace and quiet, the superior sense of satisfaction that comes from being connected to your food source directly, feeling like you have an active role in sustaining your families life in a healthy, conscious way… man it cannot be beat.
