Back to Your Roots

I have always had sissy, city girl tendencies.

There I admit it.

I LOVE living 5 minutes from the grocery store, and the Walmart, and even a Target. Yes, I'm a mom in retail, mass merchandising heaven. I could walk to Target if I wanted, but how would I get all my bags of treasure home? I love city water and a garbage disposal. I love that the trash man comes and takes your trash away. Far, Far Away.

Yet, the farmer in me longs to come home to the land. Home to the sunrise over the trees with no accompanying morning traffic allegro. Home to rows of homegrown tomatoes, potatoes, room for cantaloupe, and more sun flowers than you can imagine. Home to creeks, and fields, and dirt roads. And home to a whole bunch of animals that love you because you carry the feed bucket.

One of the perks to Dad actually realizing that, "It's hot as Hades outside, and I need to stay inside," was that I got to feed all the animals around here. I started with the goats.

You know goats are not particularly picky about what they eat. Or even where or how they eat. In fact, as they saw me coming with the large galvanized pan of feed they quickly climbed into the feed trough. Nothing says thank you for dinner like a bunch of goats standing in their plate. The horse was not to be outdone. He quickly nudged a few aside to eat as much of the goat food as he could. At that point I realized I probably should have fed the horse first. But since I know from experience that goats will eat anything, and do I mean anything, I didn't worry about them starving and headed back to get the horse feed.

Now, the horse was still quite busy snarfing down the goat feed when I carried his bucket to the barn. I had to balance it carefully, because my old cat Jazz decided to rub up against each of my legs every step I took to make sure I didn't forget to feed her next. It's a little difficult to carry a bucket of feed and not crush the cat under your feet for a city-farm girl with no grace in her fancy flip flops. But I managed, fed the horse and looked around the barn for the cat food. Three cats giving me the stink eye and no food in the barn. You can believe I hustled it back to the house to find the cat food.

Dad helped by asking, "You didn't take the cat food with you when you went to feed the horse?"

Duh.

Rather than answering, I ran back up to the barn with the food to high kitty approval. Except for Jazz, who had been starving moments ago. I apparently had offended her by not feeding her at the proper time. She now sat off to the side of the barn giving me the look. It said, " I'm not hungry now. The food won't taste the same." Cats. I'm sure she ran all the other cats off and ate all the food herself as soon as I was out of sight.

The only animals left to feed were Dad and I. I got to pick my own potatoes, tomatoes, and cantaloupe that we had for dinner. Fresh and delicious. I even enjoyed doing the dishes. In the house that is. I loved my minutes of feeding, but when it comes time to clean that barn, I'm going back to claim my city girl status.