Five and a Farm

I have a secret that not many people know.
I am pretty sure any one who knew me in high school or college would be shocked.

I want to be a farmer.

It's true.
I have a secret love for farming and well, more than being a farmer, being a farmer's wife.
This love for farming has grown over time and is just now boiling over.
I've always been a city girl and proud of it. I love that Fort Worth is city and yet small enough and unique enough to have a little country in it. When my parents moved to their second house it was sort of "out in the county" but is now right smack dab in the middle of suburbia! I remember my whole family mourning the loss of the trees and fields around our neighborhood. Maybe this is where it started?
My family also has a very strange thing it loves to do on lazy afternoons... go for a drive. We load up the car and hit up a gas station for some cokes and snacks and then we just drive. We go out and see lakes and mansions and all sorts of things out past the street signs. Even when I only slept in the back seat, I still loved going for a drive. To this day, I love a good road trip and even driving from Texas and Kentucky sometimes just feels like a long drive in the country to me. Maybe this is where the root began?
Then a couple from my church in college decided to leave the life of the "city" of Bryan/College Station to move out and start a farm. They have an organic farm where all their animals are free-range and they don't use any chemicals or toxic anything to keep them alive. They are very natural and so far, very successful. They have a quaint little house with a huge front porch. The wife makes bread and tends a garden and helps with the chickens, cows, goats and pigs. I love reading about their farm and pretending to be there.
We've also gotten more into organic, I know, you Texas people probably don't understand... but here it's what every one seems to be talking about. After doing a little research I am mildly convinced (as convinced as my budget will allow) that all these chemicals and preservatives are just not good for us. Look at all the illnesses that are becoming more and more common in America... especially in kids. (ADD, Autism, Severe Allergies etc) In researching about my allergies (which if you know me, you know are severe) they are finding all kinds of links now to these chemicals and hormones in the food that may trigger allergies in certain people. Well, that alone makes it worth it for me to at least try some organic.
We are also members of a farm co-op where we pay in advance to get vegetables and fruit from local organic farms once a week for 25 weeks. This is a way of supporting our local farmers who are doing the merciful thing for their animals and their clients in the way they raise food and livestock because they don't get as many (if any) support from the government pocket.
All of these things have been cultivating my love for farming. I would love to just go back to when it was a little more simple. People helped each other harvest their crops and then they traded what they needed from one another and had a lot of community going on all the time. Kids helped on the farm and therefore got to know their parents, especially the dad, and matured and developed character by learning how to work hard and help with family. etc... I can just see myself making fresh bread and pulling weeds and sweating a whole lot. That's the surprising part b/c most of my girlfriends know that in the past (and probably a little still) I have not prefered to get sweaty if I could help it! haha.
Well I found some one who is sort of holding on to this old way of life without computers or cell phones. Wendell Berry. Berry is actually a native to Kentucky and occasionally teaches senior English at our local classical school. He writes poems and essays and novels all by hand and his wife types them on their typewritter and then his other peeps finally get it into a computer.. that's what I've heard at least. He's sort of a legend around here. Well I just finished my first novel by Berry and it was inspiring. It is all about this small town and some nobody in it. There is this constant theme of being led, which is always compared to "the river" and how it rises and falls but always flows. Berry doesn't let the smallest detail get away without at least a paragraph dedicated to it and he makes the country come alive in your mind. It makes you want to get your hands dirty and break a sweat or sit on a front porch with friends and just talk about life. I cried a lot in this book because it also shows the end of the family farm era. It shows the effects of war on ordinary human life. It shows what it means to really love some one even if there is no happy ending. It made me want to simplify and take a few steps back from this world that is running constantly headlong into who-knows-what. I'll keep the internet and A/C but I could stand to let go of a lot of the technology and corruption that has come along. I would love to know my neighbors and know that neither of us was going anywhere for a long time (Lord willing). I would love to be in a place where community was more important than social status or careers or privacy.
I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't like it once I got it. But maybe there is a little call from Eden or The New Earth in my heart calling me to want to cultivate the earth and rule over it as we were meant to. Maybe eternity is just planted in my mind and only comes out in the costume of this or that that I want to grasp on to... but I know we will never be satisfied until He comes and restores us and the world... but until then I hope to be more like Berry and enjoy the simple pleasures that are all around and suffer well.
read it... it's good. ( ha I never told you the title... Jayber Crow The Barber of the Port William Membership)

Purple Hibiscus

I love my in-laws.
I really loved them from the beginning... and all along the way... but Friday I especially loved them.
Friday I received a box with 9 novels!!
This is quite possibly like sending a suffocating person oxygen.
I love to read and the summer is really the only time I get to read fiction or anything of my choice. I don't really know what to read since I've read almost all the classics and that's where the in-laws are especially special. They own Logos Book Store in Dallas (go check it out and buy something) and they are always loaning me and giving me cool books to read. Drew's dad with his sly grin has stretched my mind and my heart with many of the books and authors he has given me to read over the past couple of years. His mom, full of joy and spirit at all times, gives me books of heart and soul that usually lock me in from the start. Not only have they ordered many a school book but in the summer they load me up with lots of interesting things. Everything I've read from The Shack to Purple Hibiscus this summer has been from their hand or recommendation.
That brings me to this book... The Purple Hibiscus.
It is written by a Nigerian woman who is currently living in the US. The story is well written and the author has a wonderful way with words that bring out such a vivid picture with out giving you everything. There are so many great inferences included in even the smallest ways that just make my brain so happy. Her writing flows smoothly and the story is very intense. I finished this 300+ page book within 24 hours of receiving the box.
The story is sad and doesn't have the happiest of endings but is very realistic about how life actually turns out. It is interesting in the religious realm being very anti and very pro Catholic all at the same time. The book fits nicely between The Poisonwood Bible and The Secret Life of Bees (the former being a personal favorite and the latter being one of my mother-in-law's favorites).
I shed a few tears but nothing too intense. I had a lot of moments where I wanted to yank on the characters and tell them to say something or do something very different from what they continued to do. But that is what a good book does, right?
It is also interesting because it has Nigerian history built in, which is always interesting to me. Pick it up if you have free time to read.... but if not you can just contact me and I'll give you the recap.
Now I'm on to some Wendell Berry, who gives my mind goose-bumps... he is so well written!

The House

This is actually a picture of a picture in our buyers portfolio! Doesn't that sound intense?!

Here is the house that we might own in a month!
The tree you see on the left is actually no longer there. I'm not sure why they cut it down but I am planning on putting in a beautiful pink flowering mini tree like I have seen all over louisville! That's pretty far down on the list of things to do though.
Hopefully when we're done with it you will walk in to a beautiful living room with hard wood floors followed by a dining room and then the kitchen. Today I looked at IKEA and found some great ideas for the kitchen. I can't wait to go to the scratch and dent place and look for the appliances. I'm pretty sure that will be my most favorite part!
The back consists of a bedroom that will be the masters and a laundry room... did I mention that the laundry room is already painted pink?! hmmm... I guess we can leave it since we have so many other things to do! hehehehehe. It's probably the only room that I will ever get away with being pink since I do the laundry around here! haha.
I also know that I forgot to mention my favorite thing about this house. You might laugh, but it's important. The backyard fence is lined with blackberry bushes and honeysuckle!! HURRAY! Our friends (who are moving..sad) found blackberry bushed behind their apartment (right off the highway too!). They were kind enough to share the information and when they were out of town Drew and I went and picked a bunch of blackberries and baked with them. Well, they had to build some sort of flood wall thingy and tore out alllll the blackberry bushes. I have been so sad about this and thus it is so fitting that this house would have them right in the backyard.
We signed our contract and now we have 15 days to do all our inspections and stuff and decide to close... the whole deal should be done within 45 days at the most! I can't believe it and I can't wait! I'm sort of nervous but I'm pretty sure it's a healthy fear.

Going one, Going twice....SOLD!

When I say camelback... what do you picture??


This?
or


This?

No, no... I do not mean either of those things... how silly!
I mean...

THIS!!

Since most of the people who read this blog are from Texas or currently in Texas I will explain. Here in Kentucky there is this architectural masterpiece called the shot-gun. They are houses that look like a one-room-house from the front but actually are really long. These houses fill up most of the city neighborhoods because they can be smooshed up right next to each other on these long, narrow lots.
When we moved here, these were the ugliest thing my eye had ever beheld. But after living in Louisville for almost two years now, my eyes have grown accustomed to them and some of them are actually really nice and can be made cute! The insides vary but for the most part they consist of room after room after room...usually ending with the kitchen in the back.
They can be awkward because often people have to walk through a bedroom to get to the kitchen or the bathroom.
Most of these houses are 100 years old and so they also all have only one bathroom.
A camelback is a shotgun with an added on upstairs...get the picture?

So we have been looking to buy a house and we really want to be close to the seminary and close to church due to the amount of time we spend at those places and due to gas prices! There is a lovely area right behind/next to our church where a lot of people from our church have moved... it's the east side of Germantown. We thought we could get something super cheap in this area but 4 months later and we were still searching. These are small houses but we felt we needed around 1000+ square feet in order to still be able to host lots of people etc etc. I showed you the last house that we loved... we still love it... but with all the work it needs, it is just too expensive for us to buy. Then when meandering around the internet I found a house that I had never seen online before. It was a camelback approx. two streets over from our church, right in the area we really loved. This street is nice because the houses are up on a hill and a little further back from the street than many of the other houses. It looked nice on the outside but it was a HUD home, which means it was government controlled and probably nasty on the inside. Usually they are foreclosures etc.
So we went on Saturday morning to get a look and it wasn't that bad. In fact, it was a lot better than some of the non-foreclosed on houses we've seen. The price was SUPER and most of the work that needs to be done... we can do ourselves with help from our friends over time! Drew was obviously pumped. I really liked it too, especially b/c of the large kitchen! It has three rooms and the kitchen, bathroom and laundry room downstairs and then an almost finished room upstairs. We decided that the first room would be a living room and the second a dining room and then the kitchen and then the master and upstairs for now will be a guestroom (when completed). The house has NASTY pet/urine carpet that will be the first thing to go... and then we have to finish the hardwood floors. The walls are wood-paneling, which will also be quickly gone! Scratch and dent appliances will spruce up the kitchen nicely and paint does wonders everywhere!!
Well I am getting quite ahead of myself! The way Hud homes work is that they are put on the market "as is" for like 11 days and then they take bids. You can bid but you have no idea what other people are bidding. Owner-occupants (like us) get preference over investors who can pay more but will just flip and rent/sell. The funny thing was.. bidding closed on SUNDAY.. the very next day. So we prayed about it and felt like there was nothing else we had seen like this for so cheap and with so much promise and there was no harm in bidding... so we did. It was crazy! So quick after looking for so long.
Monday they were closed and monday night I dreamed about houses all night and woke up convinced we would not get the bid. How could we at such a low low rate? So I got up and prayed a lot about it and was working on my Hebrew when Drew called to say...
WE WON THE BID!! HURRRAYYYY!!
So now we have 7 days to get inspections (it has already been inspected by the gov't but we are going to double check) and decided... then it takes a little more than 30 days for them to process everything and give us the keys!! This is perfect because our lease is up at the end of July and we should get the house (if all works out) in mid-july.. in time to get some work done before the move!!
I am so excited I barely know what to do. Good thing Drew gave me some specific instructions on what to do! haha.
If you know inspectors who would love to donate services or have a great rate.. please let us know! We need all the help we can get!

One More Makes...Three...

Book number three has come and gone... Sense and Sensibility.
The more I thought about it, and the more I desired to have another novel in my hands... I realized that I had never read Sense and Sensibility but had only seen the movie long ago when I was really more tired than interested in the movie. I had no idea what it was about.
So now I have read it and I can say that I liked it just as much, or close to as much, as Pride and Prejudice. It had all the annoying characters, unknown secrets and in the end the plain, sensible girl wins! hurray.
I just previewed a couple of the different versions of the movie and I have to say I am disappointed already! Even the BBC version seemed to take a large liberty in there interpretation. The BBC alluded to sex (what?!) and the other version didn't have a single line in the preview that was actually from the book. hmmm.
Austen does such a good job of making everything so twisted. No one's character is what you think they will be at first (well sort of.. they all have skeletons or unknown passions it seems). Hopes are always dashed and come to life again. I was really pleased that in this book there were so many characters that voiced the opinion that money was not a good reason to marry. There seemed a lot of (what would have been considered back then) progressive thought. It was also one of the only books where a man and a woman are allowed off to themselves..seems rather scandelous for the time.
I of course loved Elinor and could see much of my sister Claire (minus some of the foolishness) in Marianne! She is beautiful and much more outgoing than I am but I am probably a little more sensible than her at times... but mostly b/c I'm older and already made some silly mistakes that I wish she didn't have to make too!! They love each other like friends...as we do, and always rejoice in the other forming a good relationship! Like Marianne, Claire was always especially good at giving evil looks and cold shoulders to boys who broke my heart!! I am glad she doesn't have a Willoughby on her hands though! whew
I also really liked Col. Brandon... broken hearted, gossiped about and yet always steady, generous and loving. At first I did think his age a little much but his sweet and long-lasting love of Marianne was very convincing. I wouldn't have been sad to see him go for Elinor though. I liked the idea of him confiding in her and then one day realizing she was more his type anyways since he barely knew M at all. But that would be hard to know your husband initially liked your sister better. No thanks.
If you're looking for a summer read I highly recommend it. Now if you have recommendations I need them and quick.. I'm all out of books and trying to avoid having only Hebrew at my command...
Yay for novels... I don't think I'll break my record from last May but I'm coming quite close and getting a lot more done that is actually needed too!!

Two and a Half...or Three

Well my wonderful husband was out of town this weekend selling cars in Owensboro.
Since the weather has been so nice and mild Enterprise likes to have car sales on the weekends. We can't complain too much because some months these sales have been a real booster to a slow economy... but it is sort of a bummer that they take all our nice biking days! Soon it will get too hot to sell cars and too hot to bike =( The great news is, he's on his way home and he sold 3 cars at the sale!! The month of May has been our best month since December, so it's nice to see things looking up. He has a new boss that we really like and we are just trusting the Lord month to month to provide and He has. We're so thankful for a successful month!
This weekend is one of the out of town sales, which I hate, so I scheduled a girl's night and got some MORE reading done and slept on the couch!
The girl's night was amazing... we had lots of popcorn, lemonade and made snickerdoodle cookies! We used to pretend we would watch a movie, but this is the third girl's night and never have we actually watched the movie... so we didn't even pretend. We always have more than enough to talk about!
Last night we discussed a lot about organic food and cruelty to animals, boys/marriage, this weird colon detox thing with NASTY pictures only, Charlie bit me on YouTube and all sorts of other things in between... plus a few of us painted our nails!
Well, when Drew is gone I usually can't sleep very well so I picked up another Austen book from my huge collection book and read it in the last 24 hours.
Lady Susanna.
I had never even heard of this book, and now I sort of know why.
It is completely comprised of letters between characters. It's hard to get into but it gets pretty interesting. You find out all the plot and progress of the story through letters from different characters to each other. It's all about this woman who's husband (who she didn't really even like) died and now she is scandelously pursuing other men for herself and her daughter. She is selfish, hateful, manipulative and the biggest liar ever. She neglects her daughter and doesn't care about the feelings of any one else. She actually gets joy from tricking people hurting others. Nasty! She seems to get her way though despite our knowledge that she is evil.
It is only about 100 pages and then at the end things start to fall apart for her and the author just writes the conclusion on the last page that tells you every body's end, which is neither strikingly good or bad.
It definitely passed the time and I did read the whole thing, but I definitely wouldn't put it on par with Pride and Prejudice.
And don't worry, I didn't relate to any of the characters.
Next I really am scheduled to read the bio of John Owen...

Book Review Two

I know you can't believe it but I just finished my second book... that's two books in less than five days! whoop!
I was seriously sad after I finished my last book because I haven't gotten all of my summer reading books so I was temporarily stalled and without a book!
Then I remembered at Christmas I got the complete Jane Austen works in one book and there was one of them I hadn't read! Scandalous! So I picked up Northanger Abby on Wednesday and finished it yesterday before dinner! It was good but probably one of my least favorites from Jane. There were too many author comments in it for my taste and there was SO MUCH tension through out the whole thing and then she concludes the whole book in two pages. I think that is just a little wrong!
Still I liked it over all.
I can relate to the character a little because she is really naive and for most of my life I have been really naive and just not thought things through all the way to their consequences. I feel like most of the blunders I have made in my life have been from a lack of thought or even the need to think about something. She is also easily taken in by friends who are obviously using her and manipulating her but she doesn't even realize it until the very end.
Also, the hero in the book is a nice guy but she doesn't really develop his character very well and he seems so aloof for the entire book... that even if you've read much Austen and know what is going to happen in the end... you might start to doubt yourself with this guy.
I have also found that I need to be a little more aware when I am reading a book. I get completely engrossed and can barely think of anything else but the book until it is finished, which is why I get through them so fast. But my husband has been soo loving and doting on me lately and I've half ignored him until last night when I realized what I was missing out on!! So, I am trying to be more conscious and disciplined of the attention I give to a book when my number one is around!
Speaking of the hubby... he had surgery yesterday!! Well... kind of. He's had this weird growth thing on his wrist for a long time and it's super irritating to him so he finally got it removed. I thought it would be not big deal but he even had to get a few stitches and he couldn't use his arm all day. It was a little funny seeing him try to do stuff with only one arm and he was pretty concerned about it, which was also cute coming from my husband who doesn't care if he is bleeding or putting his life on the line in most cases!
We both had 9am doctor's appointments and then we walked over to Panera before his next appointment to have it removed. It was actually a fun date. In Lindsey news I have NO POLLUPS! My nose is completely clear and free as far as the doctor could tell, which is amazing and the first spring I think I've ever made it through clean! haha. I think the allergy shots must be helping. He also said this Spring was record highs in every kind of pollen for Louisville and it has been really bad. Our cars were covered in yellow and when I would go running my sunglasses would actually have a film over them in the end of pollen...yuck! I was starting to have headaches so I went in for my long overdue check up and am glad to have happy and free news!
Tonight is girl's night at the house and tomorrow is my mentor/friend's son's third birthday party... fun fun! Well, I've got an apartment to clean and lunches to pack before I get ready for work and lunch with Drew ( i am subbing for a friend at his work).