Rock People

So, I'm really in the people business. Sometimes I say I'm a farmer, or domestic goddess, or a soap maker... but really I'm a people person. Cause without the people, there is no business. I get that and I like that. However, sometimes I laugh at people.

What is it with the rock people? As many of you have seen, I have a rock display on my tables at the market. These are polished river rock and they look nice on the table with my body products and also help hold the cloth down. As I gain more exposure, I am gaining more rock admirers. Last year, it was just mostly kids that liked the rocks and I liked their innocent admiration of natural rock. I remember as a kid collecting rocks and painting them or skipping stones, etc. It was nice. And I still like to skip slate into our pond... but I guess I outgrew the fascination and don't want to steal other people's rocks.

There are people that want to know where I get the rocks, what the rocks are for, and how they can have one of my rocks. Many of my rocks have been stolen. Sometimes people think the rocks are to rub the lotion in, sometimes they think they are jewels and can't believe I leave them on the table (uhm, it is just a black rock, it ISN'T onyx, I swear). Sometimes Mike has to deal with these people when I am away from the table. He just says "my wife will kill me if I let you take her rocks." He is very patient and listens to their rock stories for a long time. Then he takes it out on me later. He beats me with rocks, no I am just kidding.

The best is the person that gave me a rock! A big old dirty rock plopped down on my table and a request to "swap rocks." I had to politely decline because my rock collection is declining. Then I had to wash my cloths. The rock came out of a pocket with cigarette papers and what appeared to be marijuana.

I'm sure if you haven't seen my display, you are just unable to contain yourself and are piqued with curiousity. You, too, can see and touch my rocks if you come to one of our farm markets.

ps- since I started writing this, I went to a farm market. I had two "rock people" to visit with, one of whom wanted to take one home to her friend in another state.

pps- today I had another market. One guy wanted to get a rock. He was a black man and part Indian, or so he said. Well he didn't say he was black, I could tell. Anyway, he wanted to get some rocks to take back to an Indian reservation somewhere.

Farm Girl Coffee break

Why is it that wild carrot proliferate in my vegetable garden, pushing out my delicate seedlings, and yet the actual carrots that I planted are hardly growing at all? I'm also starting to wonder, are wild carrot that bad? Maybe we can eat those instead. Hell maybe I can sell them. I need to research that (along with 400 other things). They grow well enough here. grrrh. Now that we've been in the country a few years, I sometimes wonder about that stuff and more....

• Where are all the teeth of the people that we meet?
• Why does Morganstern use an Old Roy dog food bag as a window treatment? What does his place really look like on the inside? That is a twisted sick thought. I will get a drive by photo and post it soon enough (hold your horses... I'm busy you know)
  
• How can I find one of those old school buzzers that will alert me when some one is in our driveway? You know, the kind that the car trips and it buzzes really loud to say "hey, someone is here"? I don't like turning around when I'm outside half naked and realizing some old geezer wants to know if he can go fishing in the pond
• Why are my black raspberries ripe in places that are impossible to reach?
• Is this why people have kids, I mean to do help with the yard work? Cause I need (not want) about 6 of them.
• Can you actually convert to Amish? I mean what is the difference now, they have cell phones.
  

Mike is starting to wonder:

• If it is something in the water and we'll be losing our teeth soon
• Why did we move out of nice city houses with manageable yards to 22 acres
  
• Did we really need get 84 chickens?
• If its possible that the dogs have destroyed so many things that our house value has actually depreciated
• Why Morganstern lets his "jennies" in the house and if I will soon think it is a good idea too
  

Its great out here, really. The stars shine brighter, the air smells better, the grass IS greener. It is just that some days, I look outside and wonder how I'm going to get it all done. I turn my back on the garden for two days to make soap and go to the farm market and it has spiraled into a demon weed bed that taunts me. And some days, I just go to the post office. Yes, that's right. We have a post office at the 4 way. Population Middleburg: 52.

I'm still working on getting this blog updated regularly with farmette stuff. I'm thinking of doing a weekly post on Sunday and one of ramblings on Thursdays but I'm not full of time you know, I AM a farmer now. Plus I need Mike to proofread it and give me his hilarity.

Chickens are here! Chickens are here.

As you can tell from the last post, I haven't updated this in sometime. It isn't that I don't have anything exciting to say, but that I haven't figured out how blogger works yet. You can read most of the important things at www.mikamymeadows.com in my newsletter archive.

After much ado, the chicks have arrived. Yay! Now I've justified the farm in farmbilly. Prior to this I was just a hillbilly because we live on a hill.

Anyway, the guy who brought the chickens, let's call him Dave (his real name is Dave) was very late. Like a week late, and then about 5 hours late. But better late than never. All 60+ survived the first night.

With only several months to prepare for this, I didn't have time to get proper feeders so they're eating out of candle lids right now, in true farmbilly fashion.

So I guess I just wait about 6 weeks for the cockerels to identify themselves as dudes and then either I start the cock fighting ring or I try to keep the peace until they are big enough to eat. Hmmmh, another thing.... I need to get a hold of that Pollyanna Yoder to see if she will still teach me how to butcher a chicken. And in about 4 months, I'll have the Farm Fresh Pastured Eggs from an heirloom chicken ready to market. To market to market, to sell a fat egg

Retarded Delays

School is delayed, again. I don't have kids, but if I did, certainly I would now be questioning whether I should just start homeschooling because it appears the schools haven't had a full day in like a month. How are kids supposed to learn anything when school is canceled half the time? For god's sakes the fog isn't that bad. The snow wasn't that bad, either. And while I'm ranting about the school delays, I'll go on to to the Benjamin Logan School update we receive in the mail (which again, we don't have kids so I don't even know why we get this thing) but anyway, it is riddled with errors... capitalization, punctuation, and grammatical mishaps or typos. So apparently out here in the sticks, the kids don't go to school and when they do, people that can't (or don't) use proper grammar are teaching them. Pfghhhh. Homeschooling makes more sense every day. I'm off to something else now, hopefully less irritating and more productive.