The Farmer's Life For Me?

When I started this blog, I entitled it, "The Flown Coop," to illustrate the fact that my husband and I were entering new, interesting territory; one in which the kids had all "flown the coop." I thought it was rather clever and a bit of a twist on the whole “empty nest” thing and never did I imagine that one day, I would actually find myself living on a property where an real coop full of live chickens existed. Unfortunately, as I'm only now finding out, my husband's plans for once the kids had flown the coop was to move to a home on a large piece of property where we could pretend to be farmers.  He saved talking about the becoming farmers part until well after I’d signed on the dotted line.

I admit, I wanted a little bit of what George Costanza from “Seinfeld” wanted when he asked for "serenity now." I longed for the peace of acreage, the beauty of empty fields, the end of neighborhood living and suburban driveways, but I never said I was interested in sharing those fields with any living thing that wasn’t on two legs. One afternoon, while taking a nice, peaceful walk on the property, a large truck pulling a flatbed trailer headed down my driveway. Annoyed and believing that, once again, my long driveway had been mistaken for a country road, I waved it off, yelling, “Stop! There’s no turnaround!” The driver stopped, climbed down from the cab and said, “I’m delivering your run in shed.” Confused, I asked,“My what? I didn’t order any run in shed.” Shuffling through some paperwork on his clipboard, he said, “I have a signature here on the order. Do you know a &%$ Smith?” Mother of God, I thought. “I sure do. That’s my husband. Did he tell you where this was supposed to be going?” The driver shook his head, “Nope.” Trying to remind myself that it wasn’t the driver that I wanted to kill, I reached into my pocket to grab my phone and dialed. When &%$ answered, I calmly asked, “Why is there a truck here with a *&^%%$# run in shed on it?” “Oh, shit. I forgot to tell you. Yeah, I got it for the sheep.” “The what?” I asked. I could tell he was caught. “I was going to tell you, I got some sheep. They are coming this weekend. It helps with taxes to have animals on the farm.” So this was the way he thought he was going to get me to acquiesce, I thought. “So where should I put this shed?” the driver asked. I handed him the phone. “Talk to him,” I told the driver. When the conversation was over, I took my phone back and just hung up. I mean, what was there to say? Evidently sheep were on the way and they needed some type of shelter. I signed the invoice, the shed landed in one of my beautiful fields and I started my tally. If he gets sheep and a run in shed, I would get myself something too, so help me God.

Since then, my tally has gotten pretty long. I now have the aforementioned sheep, who, by the way, have babies. I have barn cats, neighing horses, mooing cows, and baaaaaing sheep, all of which lead to a grotesquely high manure pile. There are farm hands riding around on giant tractors haying and fertilizing fields, and milling around doing various jobs using somewhat terrifying looking farm implements of every shape and size. And, of course, we have a full coop, although that coop is decimated by raccoons, hawks or snakes fairly regularly despite every attempt to keep them out. Due to the snake factor, I’ve never stepped foot in the chicken coop. For that matter, I don’t really have much to do with any of our four legged friends. I’m finding, farm life is not really my thing. I’m pretty sure my love of animals stops at my dog.

I’m sure my husband thought that once he got his farm going, I’d eventually buy in. But, I'm having a really tough time imagining myself putting on those rubbery looking boots and heading to the barn to feed the horses carrots or sugar cubes. (That's what they eat, right?) I’m definitely not Ma on “Little House on the Prairie” wearing an apron full of whatever it is you scatter around to feed chickens. Although I won’t ever be heading into the actual coop to collect eggs, I guess I could buy a lovely basket; all wrapped up in a pretty calico patterned ribbon that *&^% could use to collect eggs from the coop early Saturday mornings, so I can whip up those extra special eggs that are so farm fresh they are still warm; a fact that has, only recently, begun not to make me want to vomit. So far, we don’t have pigs, and I’m holding strong on that one. My husband’s been pushing for them and for some goats, but how are they different from sheep and how are sheep different from lambs? More importantly, do I care?

I guess I could try to embrace the idea of farm living by starting an amazing garden, if only there weren’t bugs, weeds and snakes, or it didn’t get so hot and dirty when working in one. It might be fun to be farm stand people, though, and have a little roadside stand with the honor code and sell tomatoes, corn, basil and eggs and maybe even goat cheese! Or perhaps, I could walk down and pet the horses once in a while and maybe even feed them a carrot or two. The baby sheep are really cute, and, admittedly, as long as I don’t have to collect them, the fresh eggs are delicious once you get past how filthy, and occasionally warm, they are upon arrival into your kitchen. Most of the time, though, I’m still pretty happy to collect my milk, cream, eggs and cheese from the diary aisle in ShopRite in packaging marked “organic.”

On the other hand, it might be time to cash in on the tally. I’m thinking a nice villa in the Caribbean…two legged guests only.