I've got something yellow coming out of my ear.

First and foremost, let me say – does anyone need a little crooked neck summer squash?  Or a lot?  Short of that – does anyone have a rockin’ squash recipe that uses up seven…or fifteen…pounds of it?  It’s a horrible drought, yet, somehow, we have been harvesting four or five big ones a day.

We got our garden in late, relative to most other vegetable gardens around here.  Anxious to get a good crop going on the first try, we pretty much over-seeded everything.  Then I was so excited when all the little sprouts started coming up that I just did not have the heart to thin them.  They were such cute, little baby plants.  I couldn’t imagine having too many plants in a garden.  So I let them all grow; I was sure that the minute I pulled half, or even a third of them, the rest were going to change their mind, shrivel up, and die.

Well, nothing changed its mind.  We compounded our lack of thinning with gross overwatering when we forgot the sprinkler – watering the garden from dusk ‘til dawn not once, but twice.  Despite the distasteful accountability of having to pay the inflated water bill, I still feel guilty every time someone comments on how huge our plants are.  Our soil is truly fantastic, but our abuse of the municipal water supply certainly played a role.

Now we have a jungle that is producing a harvest with which we cannot keep up!  I need to find ways to incorporate squash in breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late night snacks.  And if I’m successful at using up the squash, who knows what I’m going to do with all the cucumbers.  Trust me, I’m not complaining.  I’m just trying to mitigate my guilt.  Farmers are crying for their lost harvest this year, grocery prices are about to skyrocket, there are children starving all around the world, and I’m here, hording squash.  That’s me.  The Squash-Horder.

 “For the next ten days, let us have only vegetables and water at mealtime. Daniel 1:12

The baby ate a pill bug.

Her culinary experimentation didn’t stop there, either.  I was making photocopies at the church, allowing her to crawl around the workroom at my feet.  She crawled toward a corner and I heard her hacking and gagging.  I looked down and saw that she was poised near a pile of bug carcasses and when I asked her if she had something in her mouth, she drooled out a small gray remnant of rollie-pollie shell.  Although she seemed none the worse for it, I had to take a deep breath to avoid the dry-heave sensation that welled up in my gut.  Within a few days of the pill bug ingestion, I looked down at my precious bundle of purported “sugar, spice, and everything nice,” to find her smiling up at me with a ring of drool around her mouth that had two, tell-tale, translucent fly wings dangling in it.  While I was, again, disgusted, she seemed only proud of her ability to provide her own provisions.  In retrospect, I wish I’d gotten a picture, but at the time I couldn’t get those wings off her face fast enough.

This is all new to me.  My oldest daughter, the model of decorum, never put anything in her mouth but food.  My middle daughter, the scavenger, never put anything in her mouth that hadn’t at least at one time been food.  An M&M was an M&M, no matter how long it had lain beneath the shelf at Target waiting for her.  Now my youngest is putting me through the paces, happily chomping down on anything that her fine motor skills allow her to capture.

As we experience our first spring since the move to an acreage, and what with my baby’s ambitious critter consumption, I’m realizing that I’m going to have to step it up in one of two ways, or both: tighter supervision of the baby to intervene before the insect gets into her mouth, or acceptance of insects as potential nourishment.  If she likes bugs, we have a smorgasbord now.

There are, however, some flying insects that walk on all fours that you may eat: those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. Leviticus 11:21

I have a special super power.

Some people might label it “poor communcation.”  Others won’t acknowledge that it happens.  A few others might even call it sexism.  Since my husband and I see the world through the lens of super heroes and Jedi, I prefer to think of it as a super power.  We recently realized that I have the amazing ability to throw my voice, so that only one of the two other people in the conversation actually hears what I said.  It could be that I didn’t talk loud enough, or didn’t wait for a break in the conversation.  I would have chosen that explanation, as well, initially, but it didn’t happen only once – and the other people around seem to hear me just fine.  I’ve been using this special power most of my life, but I’ve stepped it up lately, it seems.

First it was the wonderful, elderly man who sold us the farm.  Several times, he was explaining some piece of machinery, or one of the mechanical systems on the house to us, and I would follow up with a question.  He’d hesitate briefly to look at me, then continue on with his explanation as if I hadn’t said anything.  My husband and I brushed it off, telling each other that at 90-plus, the apparent lack of regard for my question might have actually been due to hearing impairment.  Usually my husband would find a way to work my questions into his dialog with the gentleman, so at least we still were able to gather the information.  Because he was so gracious, kind, and helpful to us, I felt bad for using my super power on him, but I figured a person of his generation probably didn’t expect a person of my gender to be asking questions about mechanicals anyway, so he probably wasn’t that upset that I had made my voice inaudible to him; probably no need for me to apologize.

Once the old 9N tractor failed on us, I started using my super power indiscriminately.  The salesperson at the Kubota dealership was showing us a sub-compact with a 3-point hitch.  Although it had the 3-point, the machine looked too small to handle the pasture we need it for, so when he took a breath in his sales pitch, I asked whether that machine was powerful enough to run our 60” brush hog.  He looked at me just like the old man had and kept on talking, just like the old man had; but he was not an old man, he was our age!  I waited patiently through another few minutes of sales before finding another break to repeat my question.  This time, I spoke louder and slower, but got the exact same results.  It was so obvious that my husband glanced over at me uneasily, and we both laughed a little.  He didn’t pick up on our frustration and went on talking to my husband.  Finally, my husband interrupted him to say, “Hey, did you have a question?”  Apparently his intervention was Kryptonite to my super power, because the salesman finally heard me, and replied that, no, we would need to purchase a smaller brush hog.  Was he avoiding the no sale or did he actually not hear my question?  Was it because I was female, or because I was invoking my amazing Jedi mind tricks?  It’s not like I was asking what color it comes in, or whether it has a make-up mirror.

The new tractor delivery.

The same thing happened at the Case dealership, when I wanted to know how moving up a model size affected the price of the machine.  Then it happened again in our driveway when I suggested we move the trailer to the disabled tractor, instead of freewheeling the disabled tractor (that has no breaks!) down a hill to get it to the trailer.  When the tractor guy told us his seemingly life-threatening plan, I outlined my own suggestion for getting the tractor on the trailer.  He gave me the old man look, and then he repeated my plan back to us, as if he was suggesting it for the first time.

It may not be a complete coincidence that we made our purchase, not from a salesperson at all, but from a mechanic who came out of the garage and never once fell victim to my super power.  He patiently answered both of our questions; he showed us all the levers; he never took my husband aside to tell him to keep me away from the farm machinery.

I’m blessed by a husband who does hear my voice and show regard for my thoughts, ideas, input, and questions.  Being valued by the most important person in my life gives me the patience to stay gracious and laugh it off when my amazing Jedi abilities complicated communication elsewhere.  He even lets me drive the tractor.

They have ears, but cannot hear Psalm 115:6

P.S. Farming can be women's work, it seems.

Looking up info on our disabled 9N, I found this bit of nostalgia at http://www.tractorshed.com/cgi-bin/gallery/gallery_pic.cgi?pic=http;//www.tractorshed.com/gallery/vphotos/v9546.jpg&firstrec=9&Parameter=9n&w=vphotos&cc=0  Ad from March 1945 'Country Gentleman.'

Ad goes on to say: 'As effortless and simple to operate as her household applicances. Not only does the modern farm woman find the Ford-Ferguson Tractor, with its automotive type controls, as easy to drive as the family car, she also changes implements with no more effort or complication than shifting the attachments on her vacuum cleaner.' 'Raising orlowering the plow or cultivator with the Ferguson Finger Tip Control is as easy for her as throwing the lever to start the wringer on her electric washing machine.' The FergusonSystem's mechanical 'brain' controls furrow depth in much the same way that an oven temperature control 'watches' her pies while she plows.'

I'm reluctantly sentimental about a tractor.

It was my biggest concern when we considered moving to the hobby farm: the pasture.  In addition to the 2-3 acres of lawn mowing, owning this place was going to mean cutting down another 3 acres or so of pasture as many as half a dozen times every summer.  The seller had been using an antique tractor with a 60” Brush Hog to get the job done.  My husband reasoned, whenever I questioned him, that if a 90 year old could keep it up, all by himself, certainly we could together.

We got the tractor worked into the deal, and it sat under a beautiful, giant oak tree, snuggled under a tarp, all winter.  The image on the fender of a heroic eagle with a flaming pitchfork evoked the era of its manufacture, and reminded us that, with its revolutionary 3-point hitch, this machine had once been the essential workhorse of any Midwestern farm.  The seller had given us a briefing back in October and we had each taken a practice lap around the field.  Yet looking out at that tractor all winter, I couldn’t help but feel anxiety about the pasture.  Would my husband enjoy driving the old beast?  Would he want to come home from a 40-50 hour workweek and spend his free time dragging a Brush Hog around the property in the blazing sun?  Would the noise, the dirt, the grease, and the smells bring him the joy of rural life or the burden of it?  I already knew from my own childhood that mowing an acreage was not my favorite summer pastime, but I hoped he might like it.

On the flip side, even as I considered the possibility we might want to trade our working museum piece in for a modern, wide-bladed mower, I couldn’t help hoping that old tool would become the centerpiece of a new way of life for us.  It might pull a wagon around for hayrides.  It might run a tiller for the enormous garden.  It might drag tree trunks to the woodpile.  I imagined all the possibilities its heroic eagle evoked, and knew this machine was so much more versatile than any modern mower would be.  Who knows, maybe even I might find myself enjoying the work, when it was on my own property?

Getting her ready
for the maiden voyage.

Last week the grass was tall enough; it was time to move from anxious hope to reality.  Sure enough, the old engine started easily, and after airing up the tires and checking the oil, we fired up the brush hog.  My husband quickly found himself at ease at the controls, and mowed down the first section of pasture in short order.  With a big grin on his face, he crossed the creek and began to mow the front section, finding himself completely confident going up and down the hills and around the trees.  Our vision was actually coming true!  I was elated, and I am pretty sure he was, too.  Our stress melted away and jubilation replaced it.

Who smiles when they're mowing?  That's my husband.  Living the dream.

He waved as I passed him on my way out to pick up a kid and our grins matched.  It was, however, a different story, ten short minutes later, when I got back.  The tractor was backed into a brush pile at the edge of the creek, and my husband was leaning over to one side and the other, fidgeting with the controls.  He eventually came in to report that something in the drive had snapped, and the tractor had freewheeled, backward, down the hill.  Because the breaks only nominally work, it was only my husband’s lightning reflexes that had allowed him to steer the thing into a cushion of brush, instead of coming to a hard, possibly limb-threatening, stop by hitting a tree or landing in the creek.

Now, aside from praising the Lord for my husband’s safe landing, we’re back to square one.  While a clutch assembly is a mere $150, installing it requires splitting the whole machine in half then putting it back together.  My dad did that once to his old Case when I was a kid – he winched the front end up to a tree to do it.  We’re not so mechanically adventurous as my dad.  Plus, the thing is disabled, on the far side of the pasture, on the wrong side of the creek.  We may have to rent another tractor, just to drag it out of there!

Check out that emblem on the fender.  Awesome.

All logic tells me that investing in a newer model mower with the widest cutting deck we can afford is our best option, but the sweetness of nostalgia for the old ways, for the possibilities, and the ambition wrought by the image of a pitchfork wielding eagle make it hard to give up on our old 9N.

Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you.  Deuteronomy 32:7