Thanksgiving on the Farm

In the past, I've wondered why Thanksgiving, a harvest festival, is held a month or two after the garden has frozen and there's not much fresh food to be had, other than the turkey. This year was different. With a late start, the garden was not in full production until September. Our usual mid-September frost did not happen and the weather stayed pleasant until shortly before Thanksgiving. Thus we had for our harvest meal: carrot raisin salad with carrots freshly dug (although I had to pour warm water on the soil to thaw it before digging the carrots), potatoes unearthed shortly before the ground froze, squash and pumpkin pie from Hubbard Squash newly harvested, dressing made with herbs picked fresh that morning from the garden (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme).

Friends Barb and Mark brought more pies and salads... and a dragon, Barb's latest creation for Portland's Christmas Revels. Steve and Munazza brought our grandsons Kestrel and Cedrus (not to eat, just to enjoy). 3 1/2 year old Kestrel was not amused, although the rest of us were, when his father appeared to nearly become food for the dragon.




Johnny believes you have to work off all that Thanksgiving dinner, so he put the wee boys to work. Never too young to haul in firewood, Johnny says.


That was fun for awhile, but more fun was climbing the ladder to the loft of the new goat barn under construction...



And feeding comfrey leaves to goats, gathering eggs, and throwing seed out for the birds. The California Quail were very appreciative.




Hikes are mandatory on our farm so, besides the usual Fink Family Farm arboretum tour, we took a short drive to the newly reopened Yoncalla Falls trail. At 1 1/2 years old, Cedrus could only take so much of this exhaustive farm life: he went on strike. Steve had come prepared with a stroller. This was not a trail designed for strollers, but it worked. (So did Steve.) Kestrel was a trooper and hiked the whole trail up and back: he loves bushwhacking. The waterfall at the end of the hike made all that work worthwhile. (Well, only if Mom was holding him, as far as Cedrus was concerned.)










Kids... and parents... and grandparents (whew!) need to sleep after all that activity.

What could be cuter than Kestrel in his skeleton jammies and Cedrus in his snowman jammies?






Thanksgiving 2010 was a harvest of garden goodies and happy memories. And now to rest up...

Company Boxes and Dad's Life Story

Whenever company is expected, I "clean" the table by stuffing all the assorted mail and papers and whatever-else-I've-stashed-on-the-table into a big cardboard box which I then hide in Johnny's study, to be sorted later. Someday. Hopefully before the next round of company. I am currently two boxes behind. But now that's it's raining daily, I have time to sort.

So, naturally, I've found something else to do: compile my father's life story. Dad died over two years ago. For about the last eight years of his life, he and I each tried to write down his stories. I now have all those notes and writings and what not on a table in my office, along with photos from his house that I have not yet gone through. It was too sad to deal with these memories in the first year after his death. Or the second. Now I'm able to do it without too many tears.

Dad mostly wrote about his military career of which he was rightfully proud. I tried to get other stories out of him... about his childhood and about his courtship of Mom. I am so glad I did. Now I'm working on my brother, who is 5 years older than I, to tell me stories of our childhood that I don't remember. I remember little of those years. Heck, I remember little that happened yesterday, how could I remember 60 years ago? Bob does better. His memories tend to revolve around boat racing and fishing and hunting, interests he shared with Dad. My memories revolve around horses. Dad was a good horseman and supported my horse craziness.

Once I get all the stories together, my brother and I will add photos. Here's one I found awhile ago and scanned into the computer. Dad is a young airman in the Army Air Corps here, before it became the U.S. Air Force. This photo was probably taken sometime in the 1940's. Dad was born in 1918 and entered the service when he was 18.


This project promises to be a lot more fun than sorting "company boxes".

Catching Up

Today was supposed to be my catching up day... catching my breath after a busy several days. Friday I drove 6 hours to the Washington kids' place to attend and help with another fabulous Shannon Peters clinic over the weekend. And to play with grandson Ian who has a cool new game for his WII, "Just Dance". Here he is during a clinic lunch break, following the WII dancer's moves.





Ian didn't have much time to spend dancing, though. He manned the concession booth at the clinic both days, selling hot coffee and muffins and a multitude of other things. Between customers, he played games on his portable computer. Ian is a high tech kid. But he knows how to make change in his head... no calculator needed.



The whole trip, not just the dancing, was fun but exhausting. I could get tired just watching Shannon working with horses and riders from the ground. At times with long lines, at times with longe whip and/or bamboo pole, she helps create the "inner fire" and instant response so necessary for dressage. She gives the horses (and the riders) positive reinforcement when they make the right responses and both horses and riders try hard to please her.












I drove home Sunday afternoon, before the clinic was over, so I could go to my Monday jump lesson. This was at a different barn than usual but with the same wonderful instructor. One of these times I'll have to coax Johnny into coming with me and taking photos. Mr. Smith and I had great fun learning to bounce. No, not the kind of bouncing on horseback I do without instruction. This kind of bouncing is jumping several jumps in a row with no strides in between. We did four jumps in a line, bouncing in and out. Very fun but, again, exhausting.

Today was supposed to be a restful day after all this excitement. But my animals, as usual, thought otherwise. Animals seem to be tuned into my moods and as soon as I'm tired and need rest, they do something to make sure I don't get it. This morning I discovered that Jessie Anne had, sometime before I arrived on the scene, managed to get herself on the wrong side of the electric fence, tearing it down in the process. I spent the first part of my restful day repairing fence.

Then I fed the horses their breakfasts. As I was doing so, I noticed Shirley Puppy headed through the bushes for the woven wire fence separating us from our neighbor. Mister McCoy (more commonly known as The Big White Dog) was right behind her. Those delinquents oozed through a widened space in the woven wire and disappeared eastward, toward the road. I screamed at them. McCoy reappeared, joyfully wagging his tail, and squeezed back through the fence. Shirley followed reluctantly. Once the dogs were on the proper side of the fence, I praised them for coming home but told them they must not go outside our boundaries.

Knowing I would be ignored, I shoved a spare white electric fence post into the ground, fastening the wires to it in hopes of blocking their escape route. Of course, the dogs are perfectly capable of creating other widened places so I wove branches through wires in other likely escape spots. I do not want McCoy roaming the neighborhood.

Finally, I headed for the goat barn to do morning chores, only to realize that I first needed to unload the feed I'd picked up at the feed store on my way home from my jump lesson yesterday. Eventually, the 10 sacks of goat feed were unloaded, goats milked and fed, barn cleaned. Johnny, who spent the day working on the new goat barn, helped unload the 10 sacks of horse feed. By now my catching up on rest day was half over with nary a sign of resting.

But in the afternoon bills were paid, appointments made, and too many hours spent on this computer trying to find lost information needed to make those appointments and pay those bills. I guess that's a kind of resting, just not very relaxing. So I elected to relax by catching up in this blog... instead of doing something useful, like unpacking the car... and my suitcase... from the weekend.

And now, before I get on with the evening's work and apropos of nothing, here are some recent images...

Elk and a Cedar Waxwing at Finley National Wildlife Refuge;













the big white dog where he's supposed to be, with goats in the goat barn;










and Johnny on top of the new goat barn, working late one evening.