No Rest For The Weary

Retirement. What comes to mind when contemplating that word? Perhaps that certain time in life when you can kick back, relax and enjoy some long-awaited downtime. I remember that is what I once thought every time a coworker of mine would retire and move to a genteel new reality. When John and I left New York last year after taking early retirement, our dear friends there wished us well and talked about all the time we would have in our new future to relax and enjoy. Er, not quite! We knew that owning a farm would present some tough challenges ahead, but I do not think we knew how monumental those challenges would be until we found ourselves knee-deep in them at the beginning of this year. We are definitely not sitting around eating bonbons here, but in no way am I complaining. In fact, I would not change a thing. Friends and family on the East Coast and beyond have been curious as to what our year has been like so far. So, let me try and sum it up if I can.

We arrived back in Missouri at the end of January 2020, so we had a couple of months to try and unpack all of our worldly possessions before the warmer weather set in. Unpacking and organizing our home is still an ongoing project and may be for a while, as the weather turned for the better around March and it was time to get outside and do some work. In addition to attending to our many creatures - the chicks, the honeybees, and our very energetic yellow lab puppy, other chores abound. I have attached photos of some of those here, per your request. John is featured in most of the photos as I have been deemed the "photographer," so don’t worry, I am helping him!

It began with yard work and repairing all of our flowerbeds, which requires a lot of weeding, preparing the soil, and sometimes repairing mole damage which disrupts bricks and earth borders, making them uneven or even knocking them over. This requires undoing the flower bed barriers, straightening, and leveling everything, and then putting the borders back in place. Afterwards, the fun part - planting the flowers.

Then there was the planting of our very first garden, something that we have talked about doing for a long time. We planted a variety of herbs including my new pet project, lavender. Additionally, we planted kale, red cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, corn, mini watermelon, broccoli, cauliflower and beets. This involved tilling the rows, sowing the seeds, and weeding throughout the season. We had our best luck with the tomatoes, peppers, and beets. Next year we will be more prepared to deal with opportunistic insects and raccoons. This was a lot of work but a great learning process. It was also extremely rewarding biting into a homegrown veggie, especially those tomatoes. There is no comparison in the taste!

One of our biggest and most tiring chores here is, and always will be, clearing and repairing fence line. It is gratifying to see how neat the fence lines look after a lot of effort, but it will only be a few weeks before everything grows back, and we must do it all over again. We will soon be buying our own farm utility vehicle, probably a Polaris side by side, which will be a great help with the farm work.

The most frequent chore is definitely mowing our yard, pond, and clearing the ditches of weed trees. We mow about twice a week in the summertime when the grass is growing rapidly, the ditches get attention about twice a season. While it is a chore, at least you get to sit down for the most part, and there is not as much heavy lifting, except when mowing around the pond of course.

In the Midwest, we are used to extreme weather and high winds. This year we had a microburst take down a large tree in our yard, and also part of a fence line across the street at the farm. A microburst is a type of mini-tornado. Luckily our sweet nephew was flying in from Maryland to help us do the cleanup work. He is such a joy to have around, and he is a great, hard worker. Anytime you want to come out nephew, you are always more than welcome. This is the big tree that came down in the yard.

And here is the fence damage at the farm. It was a ton of work, but it looks as good as new again. Thanks again, nephew!

Fortunately, we have neighbors in the area who help us greatly with haying our fields. They can use most of our hay for their animals, so when they hay our fields they can have most of it. In exchange, it helps us keep our fields cut and looking good. A nice barter system for sure, and it is such an interesting process to watch. It begins with tall good quality grass, mostly Timothy and Alfalfa, which horses love, that has grown to about two or more feet. Then the grass is cut and raked into rows using a specially designated tractor attachment. After that, the baler travels over the raked rows and scoops up the cut hay, forming them into the large round bales that you see in the last photo here. Things have come a long way from when I was a child and I saw the haying process while visiting my dad’s family’s dairy farm in Connecticut. The bales then were smaller square bales, which they do still have today, and everything was done by hand using hand tools and a flatbed truck. Talk about hard work!

Occasionally, saving a critter's life is a feel-good moment for us, and there are a lot of them around here. I had to include this photo of John rescuing a gigantic snapping turtle from the road, and putting him or her back into our pond. It must have weighed upwards of 25 pounds and it would have been a terrible shame to have it struck by a vehicle, especially since it probably took about 25 years or so for him or her to get to that size. They do like to wander though, and the next afternoon I saw this one crossing our yard heading towards the creek next door. I sure hope they found what they were looking for, with no mishaps this time!

Then, of course, there are the sweet rewards. Around mid-June, our sour cherry tree erupted in a riot of red as it produced an overabundance of beautiful cherries. Well, what did we do with them? We made pie of course. Delicious!

We are now preparing for winter, and everything usually comes down to, well, more yard work of course! We have an abundance of oak and other trees in our yard, and the leaves are piled up high on the ground now. We usually blow them into large, tall piles with the mower, and then burn them in place since there is just an overwhelming amount of them. We will also prune the trees, bushes, and plants back as well since they are on their way to becoming dormant and going to sleep for the winter. This way, the pruning will not be as traumatizing to them, and it will help them to grow better and faster when they awake in the Spring.

Those are some of the chores that have kept us busy this year, and I hope this helped with some of your questions. There is still a ton more on our “to do” list, but then again, I think there always will be. Someday, when I have some free time to myself, I would like to try my hand at canning, jam and jelly making, and, well, so many other things, but that will have to wait.

The weather is starting to change here now, and we had our first snow of the year this past Monday. I am not sure that I am ready for winter and the cold weather yet, but, as always, we are sending you our warmest wishes from the Heartland.

Until next time . . .

K.