My husband and I celebrated our 44th anniversary last month! It got me thinking about the time prior to our meeting. I had determined in my 21 years of living that I didn’t want to marry a farmer or a janitor. Now, don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against farmers or janitors. I just knew that wasn’t the life for me.
My decision to avoid farmers stemmed from the couple of years we had our 20 acres in Oregon when I was a kid, and we tried our hand at “farming”. It really had nothing to do with farming. We didn’t grow any crops, we just had a few animals and a pitiful garden.
We had chickens, rabbits, and a cow. It was a jersey cow we named Julie. Dad would go out and milk her daily. Maybe it was twice a day? I don’t remember. What I do remember was the wonderful rich milk and cream she provided which we then turned into ice cream flavored with luscious, locally grown strawberries. That didn’t last very long, though, because Julie continued booting dad out of the barn. We’d get her in the stanchion, give her a section of hay to eat while dad would set up his stool and start milking her. She wasn’t having it, though. She’d start kicking and snorting around, until she’d finally give him the boot. Dad finally decided he didn’t want to mess with her anymore, so we sent her to be butchered. The meat was so tough that we ended up grinding it all into hamburger meat. Dad said Julie got the last laugh! Haha!
Our next adventure on our “farmette” was chickens. We got a bunch of Rhode Island Reds. They are beautiful as far as chickens go. That is, until they aren’t. Maybe all chickens go through this but my only experience was with these. They molt!! They lose their feathers and, to a 7-year-old, they are scary looking! We did enjoy the eggs they produced. There’s actually no comparing a fresh free-range egg to a commercially grown egg. However, as a child, I can’t really say I enjoyed having the chickens to take care of. I especially didn’t like it when it came time to butcher them. I do remember that we processed them and immediately put them in the freezer as my mom couldn’t stand the smell of it in her kitchen. Nope. Into the freezer they went.
I don’t have any bad memories about the rabbits. My brother fed them, and dad butchered and skinned them. I only got to enjoy them in my belly! We did use their manure in the one pitiful garden we tried to have. The problem was, in addition to not knowing what we were doing, my parents didn’t really have the time to devote to gardening. So, we didn’t grow our own, we just enjoyed the u-pick gardens around.
These were my first impressions of “farming”. I’m so glad that my first impressions didn’t last a lifetime, though. While my husband isn’t a farmer, he is an avid gardener, a love he inherited from his dad. He is always trying new ideas like companion planting, natural pest controls, etc. We now live on a small piece of land so we will get to have some raised beds and maybe even a small greenhouse. We are even researching chickens! I seriously think I could take care of a few now, almost 60 years later! Haha!
I’ve been introduced to a beautiful essential oil by Belle Aroma®, Clary Sage. It’s a wonderfully sweet and playful aroma that, when diffused in the Belle Aroma Esprit de Fleur™ Essential Oil Nebulizer, relieves my feelings of anxiety and irritability. I enjoy diffusing it in our bedroom in the evening so I can have a tranquil night’s sleep, waking refreshed and ready for my day. My diffuser is the Light Stone Finish and is heatless and waterless. It has three levels of intensity and automatically shuts off after 8 hours. One 10 ML bottle of Clary Sage will last up to 80 days!
I’m even thinking of growing it in my flower garden. The scientific name is Salvia Sclarea and I thought how fun it’d be to grow it so I could enjoy the aroma outside as well as inside.
Lori Herr for The Gift of Scent