Windburn

GOOD LORD, life got busy! I thought it was busy when I spent all my time applying for jobs and writing my book and working part-time as a Life Coach and keeping up with friends and working on my other projects. But it wasn't.

For the past two weeks (and this is a happy thing), I've worked six days a week. Four at the Farm, and two half-days as a nanny for this huge chunky four-month-old-baby with a lady-killer smile. Next week, I get to focus more on the Farm. (Which, really, is more about the Foundation, and a lot about Education, come to that. I may even eventually get to do the job I was originally hired for, and preserve/digitize/catalog something. You never know.)

And it is SUCH a freakin awesome place to work! We have free-range wild ducks that are huge and black with red and blue and white bits here and there-- and they have little fuzzy yellow babies!! We have three grey barn kittens who keep sneaking into the house and onto peoples' laps when they aren't looking, and one old black Tom who lives by the kitchen stove. We have apple trees and pear trees and zuchinis the size of small sports cars. Lots of friendly male goats who come when called ("hhheeeeerrrr goat-goat-goat, hhheeeeeerrrr goat-goat-goat!") and really want you to rub behind their ears, and three dappled white Davenport-Arabian horses that all want to make sure they get some of whatever you're handing out.

We have school children learning to make butter and listening to the story of Florinda Geer who traveled the Oregon Trail with her parents when she was eight years old, and then planted a tree on her parents' land-grant farm in 1856 that is still standing and growing on that same farm today. We have farm-fresh dairy cheese made with an old recipe from very old hillside cave dairy farms in Switzerland. We have an archive with over 165 years of family history, letters, tintype photos, and furniture from that trip over the Oregon Trail in 1846.

What we don't have is money to keep everything going. We're still working on that bit.

Anyway, four days at the farm with long 45-mile drives to get there and back, plus working part time as a Life Coach, plus writing my book and keeping up with friends and working as a Moderator for an online information distribution website and carving out time to spend with my boyfriend and and and-- Well it's a heck of a lot busier than I was before. And I love everything I'm doing. I just don't get much sleep. And the days are flying by so quickly anymore, I keep checking my face for windburn.