The Burr Farm

Keith was a farm kid. I was a farm kid. What do two previous farm kids do????

We buy a farm!!!

Now as I say this, I am sure you are envisioning this picturesque farming situation, full of flowers and sweet little animals and bright and cheery buildings. My little family all rocking in wooden chairs under the covered porch as chickens free graze for bugs in the front lawn.

So wrong.

We are in the midst of buying a farm. Not just a farm, a dilapitated farm. We decided to pick a farm that was in some serious need of TLC. It is in the middle of nowhere, on a dead end road and it is surrounded by hunting properties. It is also a couple of minutes from a State Park and a few miles away from my parents, thus it's appeal. We wanted to buy a place where we could learn to be more self-sustaining as a family, teach the kids a recycled blend of life skills and not have to worry about them getting hit by a car.

In return we got a farm that needs to have the life breathed back into it little puffs at a time.

This last summer we had a full team of people completely renovate the existing farmhouse... all 900 some square feet of it. It had to be made handicap accessible, and it needed many many upgrades!. Our home was built in 1916 and it is as small as small can be. We love it. We will eventually build on, but for now it helps push us to get these kids outside learning how to children. It helps get us out of that blasted recliner and forces us to have the longing to all eat at a picnic table. I cannot wait till we get our first shipment of baby poultry and piglets and introduce the kids to them. To bury their tiny hands in the soil as we plant our first garden. To build our first playground for them in the back yard. To let them run naked through the summer clover.

With that being said, I feel I should tell you about our very first task at getting our farm ready for this Spring, and ultimately our first "Chicken Little" moment.

In the field beside our house, where my garden is going to be this Spring, inhabited two long rows of very old round hay bales. I waited patiently all Winter for them to become covered enough with snow so that we could burn them. Finally after months of waiting, after a brown Christmas, we got a nice snowfall. On Wednesday morning there was no wind so hopping with glee, I sent Keith outside to get them "fired up". He lit an end and let it smolder, and smolder it did. It smoldered so much, that by 10:00am the next morning, only about one fourth of it had burnt down. So off I went to wake him up and fill him in on my idea to light the row in numerous places to get them all burnt before the weather changed and our chance was gone. He crept out of bed, begrudgingly agreed to do my bidding and out the door he went. Melissa was here and she and I took turns eyeballing the bales of hay as Keith went to work on them.

Within two hours I realized that my idea was a completely awful one. About an hour into the process of burning, the wind had picked up, changed direction and was now blowing full force at my house. There was absolutely no risk of a fire, but it was blowing all of that awful smoke towards the house that my sick asthmatic child was playing Lego's in. Keith roared into the house in a flurry and I ran outside to help him. We carried hundreds of five gallons buckets of water in the time-span of three hours to try and slow down the burning. Awful billows of smoke were rolling at the house and I rushed inside. The house started filling with smoke and my throat started to hurt... Melissa was looking peek-id, Gage was hacking and Bo and Cote were looking more pale than normal. Soooo... We loaded up the car and went to Grandma Kathy's.

Fast forward to today.

We were at my moms until last night. Our house house is completely aired out now, but I still feel bad for my Keith. He is married to the chick with all of the bright idea's and somehow ends up being the one to get the wrath of the situations.

I told him I would start to keep all of my idea's to myself and he just looked at me like, "Yeah right".

Poor Keith.