I find myself asked occasionally about how a West Plano couple living a seemingly 'normal' suburbia lifestyle winds up in Gunter. My citizenship in the suburbs was once my only understanding of how to live. In a house, which was right next to another house whereby we often shared a fence with the neighbor's house, who we could reach out and touch. This is all I ever knew and had no idea that one day I would leave that life behind. The thing about living with so many other people in a neighborhood is that not everyone always likes everyone. Yet since that was the only exposure to living that I'd ever lived, I did similarly to everyone else and learned to coexist in a community of people. I never really gave it much thought at the time. For over 5 years now, our move to Gunter has shown me that dual citizenship is a wonderful thing. Being born and raised a city girl afforded me many opportunities such as close proximity to food, resources, libraries, schools and everything. My relatively-new citizenship in the country has presented me with a learning curve that never ends. It reminds me of a line in the sky that a rocket ship makes while heading out towards the edge of the atmosphere. A never ending line of so many lessons to learn out here. Life out here has no Uber Eats or "going up to the mall real quick". And does anyone go to the mall anymore? I don't even know the answer to that. I can tell you that people do go to the dollar store out here though.
The top rewards we've received by moving out to the country is cows for neighbors and learning to live without. Without the convenience of things in close proximity but also without all the noise. It's turned out to be a fair trade for us although I could see why it's not for everybody. We consider ourselves dual citizens because there may be a day in our life that we find ourselves in the suburbs again living right next to another human being. I think David would agree that we would chose the country life first, but unfortunately, we also have dual citizenship in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.
This dual citizenship of the well and of the sick is simply another learning curve we are experiencing. You see, while we are still considered 'well' with our cancers, we are able to sustain our lifestyle here on the Graves Farm. Yet, when the pendulum swings to the "sick" side of cancer, a life around resources may be in the cards again. This we do not know yet as our Magic 8 ball just keeps saying "cannot predict now". And since the Magic 8 ball only has 20 responses, 5 of which are non-committal answers and 5 that are negative answers, you can see how we could very well be around 50-50. The 10 affirmative answers we get along with the 10 non-affirmative/negative answers is like talking to our oncologists. They, too, have their own Magic 8 balls except they say different things like "Well, we'll see" and "See you next month". The one answer that seems to be universal for our Magic 8 balls is "ask again later" as time is the only one who will tell us what the future holds. For now, we are holding on tight to our citizenship of country life with eyes wide open.
Again, really now?
Yeah, really. How many times are we going to go around this block, I don't know. Yet we find ourselves thinking about this regularly - and feel a need to keep at this. What this is, is training new guard dogs for when Levi and Whisper need to take a step back and relax and maybe one day retire. Those precious gems that keep all our animals alive day in and day out are over 8 years old now. They have bodies that are highly used night after night. Therefore, David and I feel this compulsion to start finding and training their replacements/helpers, so that Levi and Whisper can relax a little.
Hold on, I've gotta overthink about this. I mean, the last two sets of guard pups were all chicken-eaters. That's not gonna work. I'm scarred from those attempts, and the idea of trying this again just eats a hole through my soul. We ended up training some wonderful chicken-eater guard dogs who were masters at guarding sheep and goats. But they couldn't stay and we were able to deliver some much needed guard dogs that we trained to people with sheep and goats that needed them. But here on our farm, we got nowhere fast with providing Levi and Whisper with some helpers. It's not easy to find and train guard dogs that don't enjoy a chicken meal here and there.
Then one magical day while scanning Texoma Craigslist like I usually do, I found a female pup in Oklahoma who is being raised around chickens. Now that's what I'm talking about. I showed David this information and before I knew it, we were driving to Oklahoma to a small town of population 12 with one lane gravel roads that seemingly lead to manufactured houses whereby all dogs run free because there's no one around anyway.
We arrive to the location we were given by our new Craigslist-post people out in the middle of random land in Oklahoma and meet a nice couple with Great Pyrenees guard dogs that look exactalackily like our Levi. Mammoth white dogs. The mom and dad were large and in charge. And not chicken eaters. And then there they were.......2 little Great Pyrenees pups who were all of maybe 8 weeks old with the biggest paws I've ever seen. A little girl and a a little boy. Wait, they were not little. They were floofy balls of soft white fur with big paddles for feet. I thought we were going to get just the girl, but you already know what David said: We'll take them both. But I didn't bring cash for both. So we are instructed by this nice couple where the nearest ATM was located, and hence we drive back down these one lane roads whereby 2 cars pass each other narrowly, on occasion. It takes time to travel these roads, or for us it did anyway. We arrive at the gas station where the ATM was to be located only to find out it was out of service. The kinda nice lady there has no explanation why, and instructs us where the next ATM would be, and we drive there. Sure enough, we arrive to ATM location #2 in a gas station/convenience store/feed store/cafe/plumbing goods store (just in case you might need some PVC pipe) and that ATM has a yellow post-it note on it that has handwritten note: out of service. Are you kidding me? Then the grandma (this could be me) behind the counter goes on to tell us she thinks it's out of money and begins a 20 minute dissertation on why she thinks that. She then directs us to the next town up who happens to have an actual bank with an ATM. Jiggity jig and we are off again but on bigger roads now. We arrive to this next town and sure enough there's a bank with a drive thru ATM. And it works. We hit the jack pot and then make our way back out to the middle of nowhere to find that same house again with the pups. I'm thinking that the nice couple thought we had fallen off the face of the earth by now, but we show back up after all. We pay for the pups and then some other odd things happen that I won't go into, but I'll just say we loaded up our new little floof balls into the back seat of our truck and off we went.
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| These sweeties slept most all the way home. David named them Penny and Dutch. |
The adventure of bringing new puppies to the farm and introducing them to their new home among the other farm animals and a new environment is always stressful and time consuming for everyone involved. But this time, David and I are committed more than ever to making it all work out. Remember that learning curve I spoke of earlier, well it has shown us what to do and what not to do. There's never a guarantee, but we are going to give our 1001% to try and make sure we do everything it takes to train these puppies to be our next generation of guard dogs and most importantly: not to eat the chickens whom they will be guarding. That will be the toughest part. Granted, these pups were supposably raised around chickens and their parents guard their chickens (and other livestock) but our chickens are not their chickens. I'm leary and unsure. David is pumped.
I’m pretty sure Dutch and Penny didn’t realize that someone has dropped them in Crazy Town where the Mayor is Sugar. After all, they did not get to pick their new home, and hopefully they will grow to love all the peculiarities of the Graves Farm.
Turns out, the last two weeks of having Dutch and Penny with us have been the most rewarding two weeks in regards to training rookie pups. I'm happy to report that all our chickens are alive and well. Dutch and Penny are happy-go-lucky pups who now know their names and sleep in the barn with the chickens. I can't even believe it myself, but I will tell you that the work we are doing with the pups is all in hopes of ensuring the safety of the chickens and bringing help to our aging guard dogs.
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| Must run and play so I can rest and nap. |
They are not doing guard dog things yet as they are busy playing, sleeping and growing. What's a little different this time around is 1) the age of the pups, 2) their environment prior to coming to our farm, and 3) their personalities. They mesh well here. So far Levi and Whisper are watching them, and will eventually mentor them when they get a little older. Right now, Penny and Dutch spend time around the farm animals, they play with each other, and love playing in particular with our Aussie, Tula. And then they nap. They play hard and then they sleep just as hard.
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| Most of my photos seem to be of them sleepin' |
I'd like to tell you the outcome of this new guard pup situation, yet this will take more time. When I ask the Magic 8 ball, it tells me: signs point to yes.
I like to party
And by party I mean farm projects. Our newest excitement includes installing an automatic opener for the front gate. To save some money, we decided to use our existing front gate and had some of our favorite fence guys come and install the gate opener and reposition the front gate to accommodate it. Success! We are so grateful to have wonderful experts to make this magic happen. Even the Magic 8 ball told us: outlook good. And it was right. Our solar powered/battery front gate opener allows us to come and go with the opportunity to shut the front gate regularly which happens to have a side benefit of encouraging the random farm animals that get out of their designated areas to not escape. I know that has got to sound odd. But it's part of life out here. Farm animals get past gates and fences sometimes. But now.....that front gate is shut y'all.
The record scratch in this is how am I to sell eggs now? People can no longer just randomly drive down our little gravel road up to the house and get their eggs out of the fridge in front of the garage. We would often times look out the front window of the house to see people in the drive, getting eggs and even walking around to see the animals. We have lived this open lifestyle for 5 years now and now all of a sudden, the front gate to the property is always closed.
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| Something about the jankyness of this feels right. |
I solved this dilemma by placing my "egg" fridge up in front of the adjacent property we also own. This piece of property is 1.4 acres and has a front gate of it's own with a drive into it as well. Now the "egg" fridge lives there and is plugged into the electricity on that property. I am so eggcited about this new egg selling set-up and at first it was confusing to the egg customers. I'm happy to tell you that everyone seems to have adjusted to this new configuration and I'm selling more eggs now with this road-side set-up. People can just stop on the road, jump out, grab some eggs, and be on their way. Who knew that in life that I would actually say the words, "I have a road-side stand where I sell eggs". I kind of laugh when I think about that. Road-side stand. Who has one of those. And I giggle, oh yeah, I do.
Since we are on a roll of project-doing, David and I decided to have the back barn floor cemented. It's a metal building we had built a few years back and was in need of a concrete floor. The issue though was its location on the property. The thought of getting a cement truck back to the back pasture was daunting. And I tend to put off daunting things. Yet, after getting so much procrastination done I finally made the arrangements to have huge trucks come and drive on the property and tear it up just so I can have concrete in the barn out back.
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| He's just driving around like no big deal. |
I would just like to say that this man driving this cement truck should get a gold medal for all the obstacles he had to maneuver to get his truck down to the back pasture. Yes, he ran over one of our septic system sprinkler heads and it busted off, so it maybe he should get the silver medal instead. Anyway, I imagine that he never even saw that sprinkler head despite the 7 yellow flags I had strategically placed all around it.
He had to go through 4 gates just to get down to the back barn, and then back out those gates to get out again.
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| I'm still surprised about this. |
I will tell you that this was likely the most stressful project I've been involved in here on the property because that cement truck was like a bull in a china shop around here.
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| Me watching the cement truck circus |
As the ginormous tires were tearing up the dirt and grass as it drove through each area of the pastures, I wondered how many hours this cement truck driver had to practice to get his license. And even though this was not my idea of fun, there was no way around this. If you want that much concrete there, you gotta get the cement truck down there. Let's end this with 1) there would be lots of dirt and grass clean up and 'fixing of things' needed after the project was completed, and 2) the back barn is now amazing with a concrete floor for the mini horses and sheep, as after the concrete dried, we placed rubber mats down for their comfort with lots and lots of straw on top. They are now golden for the winter months to come. And that's what it's all about.
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| They do this every day like it's no big deal. |
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| Who knew there were so many finishes one can chose for a cement floor. We picked "brushed". |
David is now busy putting up a divider gate and short fence inside that back pasture barn to separate the sheep and mini horses. Each will have an area of their own. I'm even thinking about setting the piggies free to go live with the sheep down there. Oh, so many new opportunities are bubbling up in regards to this updated barn. The main barn currently houses all the chickens and still has a stall for the mini's. But I have an idea that this barn in the back pasture will become the mini's barn-of-choice. They have more room there, and it should be warm and comfy for them all. As for the land (grass, dirt, septic sprinkler heads, etc) it will heal with time, rain, and some work by David and I. We knew this would not be easy. Yet, it's completely worth the work involved with that project. There was no Easy button to press for that project. Even the Magic 8 ball told me: Don't count on it. Whew, so glad that project is complete.
Our special blessing
On a more exciting note, recently, our little bundle of Brooks and I recently took a trip to the Health and Science Museum in Fort Worth. Inside are actually many exhibits, one of which is the Children's Museum. We had so much fun!
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| He learned about boat safety. |
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| Practiced being a fireman |
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| And even was a Post Man for a minute. |
I really enjoyed the experience of the adult exhibits and exhibits for children - all under one roof. You may have likely been there as well. It's a wonderful place to spend the afternoon. Both Brooks and I had a blast.
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| This was the favorite for sure. |
So many people enjoying this delightful museum and I was happy to be among them.
What cancer cannot do
As we are easily distracted by projects and grandbabies, we still have our cancer duties silently waiting in the background. David is preparing for his upcoming trip to MD Anderson for his next PET and MRI scans and as time progresses, the lens through which he sees life becomes clearer. After all, his 1st cancerversary has arrived. It was November of last year that he became "that person". You know them. The ones with cancer. And although there are downsides to cancer, there are an abundance of upsides I like to call gifts. A special gift it has brought David is that each day brings him a clearer understanding of what it is he desires to do and who he desires to be. Cancer does not shatter our hope nor steal our faith. Cancer does not take away our peace nor does it erode our spirit. We get to make the choice each day to be a face of cancer that reflects love, joy and appreciation of life. And as David moves through his life scan to scan, we continue to pray for courage as the fight against cancer is not something anyone chooses. What we do get to choose it how we move through it all. The farm has brought us so much tranquility and peace. And work.
I find that living on a farm and caring for animals who depend on me day-in and day-out can sometimes be the reason I think about putting whiskey in my coffee. I mean, some days it just feels like a lot, but most days it feels just like the first bite of a delicious warm spice cake with extra icing. I just can’t wait to go out to the barn each morning and say hello to everyone. There is no one happier to see me in the mornings than my farm animals. Well, except Sugar who has slept next to me all night and is somehow still overjoyed to see my face each morning.
Currently we are winterizing and readying the barns and animals for cold weather. We are pulling out the heated water buckets and placing straw out in the barns all while thinking about this past winter's snowvid - and all the friends who helped keep the animals safe and fed. We are forever grateful to all the support we received this last winter, esp while we were away in Houston. Not a day goes by that we don't think about the support not only at the farm, but also the support we received from you all while in Houston. We think about it everyday and will never forget the beauty, love and kindness of friends and family during that time. It stays with us. That kind of love touches my soul and fills my cup up still today. This moistness in my eyes reminds me of the big feelings I still feel and how gratitude is not a big enough word for it all. As we all have survived another year on this big beautiful thing called earth, we know just how precious it really is.
The Magic 8 ball says: Without a doubt.
Cyndi
I'm reminded of how delicate life is when an unusual, accidental accident happens with a farm animal. Even they cannot escape the oddities of life.
