Seattle to Portland 2015

I try to get out to Seattle at least once a year, to catch up with family and old friends. Whenever possible, I time the trip to coincide with my favorite ultramarathon cycling event: the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic (STP). It's an unbelievably well-organized ride, with an extremely scenic (but relatively flat) course, which draws 10,000 participants every year. Most take two days to cover the 206 miles, but some of us crazies prefer to go the whole distance in a single day.

Why? I've done the two-day ride. Once. And, quite honestly, I think it's easier to just keep going and pull all the way through to Portland before stopping. It's a lot easier than riding a hundred miles, sleeping in a tent or on the floor of a church basement (if you're not lucky enough to book a motel room, many of which sell out the summer before the event as soon as the dates are announced), and then getting up the next morning and climbing back on the bike and riding another hundred miles. I've done lots of hundred miles rides in my lifetime. I can't remember a single time I woke up the next morning, even after sleeping in my own bed, and thought, "Hey! You know what would be a great idea? Going out for another century ride!" Some people mitigate this on STP by going past the midpoint on the first day, even as far as 140 or 150 miles, before stopping for the night. Still...I'd rather just be done with it and enjoy waking up in Portland. But to each his own.

Every year, after getting home, I put together a ride report / write-up of the trip. I've tried to include a number of details that would be especially relevant for other "out of towners" who may be considering going out to the Pacific Northwest for this terrific event. All of that follows, after the break.

Spring is Back! (And so am I...)

Where has the time gone? One thing led to another, and the next I knew...the blog had been dormant for two years. Thanks to all who sent messages encouraging me to post again, and my apologies for the length of time it has taken to get back in the saddle.

What's been happening? After my last post, in the spring of 2012, professional work more or less took over the rest of that year. As a public opinion research consultant, presidential election years are my absolute busiest time --- and 2012 turned out to be even busier than usual. In addition to voter microtargeting, and analyzing survey data, I am also part of CNN's election night decision team; we're the ones who decide when to project a race for a particular candidate.

Then, shortly after the election, we got big news of great joy: Mrs Yeoman Farmer and I were expecting a baby. However, the pregnancy turned out to be a physically challenging one for MYF, which meant the rest of the family needed to come together in supporting her and picking up a bigger share of the farm work. The garden was scaled back, as were the numbers of livestock we were raising.

Our new baby girl was due in mid-August, but couldn't wait to join the fun. In mid-July, more than five weeks ahead of schedule, she decided it was time to get moving. At 7am on a Monday morning, in the car driving home from the airport after a wonderful weekend trip visiting friends and family in Seattle, I got the call from MYF that her water had broken. Once back at the farm, I whisked MYF to the hospital. We spent the rest of the day there, undergoing tests and observations, until the medical team decided Baby Girl needed to come out by emergency Cesarean.

Baby Girl is doing well and thriving now, but there were numerous complications that kept her in the NICU for nearly a month. And then she needed heart surgery in October. I will write more about some of these issues in future posts --- but for those interested in a general overview of what we went through, I recently had an article published which describes that roller-coaster. Thanks to the skills of some truly amazing medical professionals, and the prayers of countless people all over the world, Baby Girl is expected to live a long and very happy life.

I don't want to dwell too much on the brutal winter we're now finally emerging from here in the Upper Midwest. Suffice it to say that this was easily the worst winter I've personally experienced in my 45 years. The snow that fell before Christmas is still out in our pasture. Our hay field finally became visible again last week, as did our lawn. We expect cold winters in Michigan, but what made this one so difficult was its relentlessness. Usually, we get an arctic blast and some snow --- and then a few days where the temps go above freezing, the snow melts, and it's merely "cold" for a little while before the next storm passes through. Those periodic thaws are the stepping stones that make Midwestern winters tolerable.

This year, we didn't get a single thaw for the entire winter. All the snow that fell...stayed. And no one knew what to do with it. We shoveled and shoveled our driveway, but soon had walls of snow high on both sides. Our church, and many big shopping centers with large parking lots, have enormous mountains of plowed snow that have now turned into stubborn icebergs. We joke that kids will still be sledding on these things in mid-May, when it's sixty degrees out.

Today it's in the forties, and is expected to stay above freezing all the way into next week. Our whole property is rapidly turning into a mud bog, but I'll take that over the snow. It's unclear when things will dry out enough to allow planting, or when the pasture will revive enough to turn the animals out on it. This year, it seems that all bets are off. So, we're taking things one day at a time. I'm just glad we put in a larger-than-usual supply of hay. And firewood.

We had several goat kids born over the course of the winter, and are now enjoying an excellent supply of milk from the does. Surprisingly, despite the bitter cold, almost all of the kids survived. We lost a  couple of them, but for the most part were able to keep the barn buttoned up tightly enough to keep them from freezing to death. I also discovered a very useful tool for winter kidding: a blow-drier! The mother goats usually get the kids licked off to dry them, but in the dead of winter...a nice warm blast of air from a hair drier gave some much-needed assistance. Also, getting the kids thoroughly warmed up means their bodies are less stressed. It seems to have helped a lot.

But the true heralds of spring are the lambs. And our first ones were born last night! I went out to the barn a little before midnight to make my final checks, and discovered that one of our mature ewes, Conundrum, had delivered a set of twin females. Both were on their feet, but pretty wet. I tried to give an assist with the hair drier, but Conundrum objected loudly. Given that it wasn't terribly cold last night, and that our Icelandic ewes are outstanding mothers, I decided to butt out. And, indeed, they had a good night. Both lambs were dry and dancing around this morning.

I'll leave you with some pictures of them (note the snow shovel used to block a gap in the door -- there's a stubborn chunk of frozen dirt that's preventing the door from sliding all the way shut):

Notice the black one was even climbing all over Mom:

It's good to be back and blogging again. I promise the next post will take less than two years to go up!

How Open?

It's now been over a year since we've adopted Yeoman Farm Baby, and I've been wanting to share a few thoughts about the experience. Above all, we remain deeply grateful to the birthmother who entrusted him to us. It takes an enormous amount of love for a mother to recognize that her baby needs to be raised in a home and family that she is unable to provide...and then to actually go through with releasing her child into that more appropriate situation. We've had three biological children of our own, and understand the depth of attachment a mother establishes with her baby during a pregnancy. We cannot imagine how difficult it would be to have to sever that tie.

By way of quick recap: about a year and a half ago, we were contacted by a friend of a friend of the birthmother. She was still relatively early in the pregnancy, and deciding whether to put the baby up for adoption or raise him herself. Her friends and family were helping assemble potential adoptive parents, to give her a sense of the kind of life that other families may be able to offer her child. The go-between approached us because, for various reasons, she (the go-between) thought our family might be a good fit. We thought so, too, and after prayerful discernment decided to offer ourselves as candidates. To our great joy, the birthmother agreed that our family was just the kind of home she wanted her child to be adopted into.

One of the early questions that we and the birthmother needed to agree about was the degree of openness we would have in the adoption. Options can range from completely closed (no identifying information is exchanged, and there is zero contact after the adoptive parents assume custody), to completely open --- to the point of the birthmother actually visiting and playing some ancillary role in the child's life.

In my own personal experience as an infant adoptee, I was grateful that my own adoptive arrangement was completely closed. I could imagine the confusion and divided loyalties that would've been introduced had my birthmother been lurking just off stage and making regular contact with me. I know it would've undermined our family's sense of unity, and caused me to question where I really belonged. When I grew old enough to understand, my parents explained very matter-of-factly that some children join families biologically (like my younger brother), while others join families through adoption (like my sister and I did). But once we're together, we're together. Everyone is a full and equal member of the same family. Had I been getting visits from my birthmother, I know that mixed signal would've confused me.

To this day, I have not had a desire to meet my birth family. I have one mother and one father, and they are really my parents. I neither need nor want any different ones. That said, however, I have a natural curiosity about the birth family, and the circumstances surrounding my origins. The agency through which I was adopted provided a basic two-page overview of the family's social and health circumstances, but nothing about the reasons why my birthmother thought it best I be raised by another family. I'd like to know more about that, and I'd like to be able to tell her in a letter how grateful I am that I was raised by the family that did raise me. It's truly the best thing that ever happened to me. I want to thank her for that, and to let her know that my life has been happy and successful as a result of that self-sacrificing choice she made for me.

These are some of the personal considerations I brought with me, in trying to decide with Mrs Yeoman Farmer what kind of arrangement we wanted for our own adopted son. We wanted to be able to tell him, as he grew older and asked questions, the sort of person his birthmother was. That we'd met her, and gotten to know her. How much she loved him, but why her situation wasn't right for him. If he wanted to know what she looked like, we wanted to be able to show him. If, as an adult, he wanted to meet her or even just send her a letter, we wanted to know how to reach her. But we wanted to ensure our privacy and that he wouldn't get confused by ongoing contact from her in his youth.

We decided, with the birthmother, on a "semi-open" arrangement. We would not exchange last names, and she would never know exactly where in Michigan we live (not even the town or metro area). We did provide her with a very long family profile letter, and many photos, to help her be as comfortable as possible about where her baby would be growing up. We visited with her before the baby's birth, and met her family, in her city. We agreed to take custody of the baby upon his release from the hospital, and invited her to visit us/him while we remained in her metro area. In conjunction with her, we agreed to email update letters and photographs every three months for the baby's first year and every six months for his second year; we will decide together what to do after that.

This has proven to be a good arrangement for all of us. The birthmother has been able to know how well her baby is thriving, and to see how happy he his --- and to see how much happiness he has brought to our whole family. She's been able to hear about his growth, his doctor's visits, and all his milestones. We've been able to tell her how much we appreciate having him here with us, and how much we love him. She's also sent us some notes of her own, which we have been able to keep and tell YFB about when he gets older.

But the most surprising benefit is that the process has forced us to sit down and think about and document all of YFB's milestones. Yes, to be honest, I sometimes feel some resentment when the "due date" for an update is approaching and we have to take time away from normal family activities to write it up and organize the photos we'll be sending. "He's ours. This is our family. This is our time. This is our life," the voice in my head complains. But now that we've been doing this for 12+ months, I've come to realize something: we have a more complete written record of YFB's first year, all in one place, than we do for any of our biological kids. And we have more photographs of him than most families ever have of their youngest child. (MYF is the youngest in her family, and has almost no pictures from her youth.) Because we've wanted to show how much YFB is part of our whole family, we've also ended up taking a lot more pictures of our other kids --- especially #3 --- than we would have otherwise, or than we did before YFB's arrival.

I realize that these kinds of "semi-open" arrangements don't always work out the way people would like. There may be less detailed contact than the birthmother would've wanted. There may be more contact --- or more intrusive contact --- than the adoptive family would've wanted or expected. Some adoptive families opt for an international adoption, in part to avoid all of these issues.

In our case, cooperation and understanding on both sides have helped us come to a solution that's worked well for everyone. In reflecting on YFB's first year, I wanted to share this with you; I know some of you may be considering adopting, or be in a position to advise a birthmother who is putting her baby up for adoption. I offer our family's experience as an example of what can be done to help make a difficult situation as optimal as possible for all.

Rest

As mentioned one of this blog's earliest posts, our family has grown to have a great appreciation for the custom of Sunday rest. Unless some kind of true necessity arises, such as unavoidable professional work or bringing in hay before the rain ruins the crop, we spend Sundays going to church and hanging out with family or close friends. We try not to even shop on Sundays, apart from last-minute dinner necessities that may arise.

I was initially skeptical --- and resistant --- about this new approach to Sunday, but Mrs. Yeoman Farmer insisted we give it a try. For that I am grateful; it's really changed our family for the better. I can't imagine trading our current Sundays for the ones we used to spend.

Especially when I'm forced by circumstances to revisit those "bad old" Sundays, as I was a couple of weeks ago. Two Sundays before Thanksgiving, we planned to spend the day visiting MYF's brother and his family in the Detroit suburbs. We hadn't seen them in awhile, and the timing was also good for delivering the Thanksgiving turkey.

The day didn't go as planned. Oh, we made it to church just fine that morning. We came home and got ready to go to Detroit just fine. We got onto the freeway just fine. But less than a mile down I-96, I heard the unmistakable sound of one of our minivan's tires blowing out and rubber flapping on pavement.

I managed to steer onto the shoulder, and got out to inspect the damage. The right rear tire was basically shredded, so I prepared to fix it. Keep in mind the weather was cold and overcast, and cars were whizzing by a few feet away. Mrs Yeoman Farmer was in the car with all four kids, plus our new dog (Pepper), who we can't yet leave alone at home for extended periods. We also had the frozen turkey in a cooler, of course.

On a Dodge Caravan, the spare tire is under the chassis and must be lowered by turning a bolt inside the vehicle. I'd done this once before, so was familiar with the mechanism. However, unlike that other time, on this particular day the tire refused to lower itself. The bolt turned fine. The cable of the winch system played out just fine. But the tire itself remained stuck to the bottom of the van. I pried at it with the minimal tools available. It wouldn't budge, no matter what I tried.

Thank God for AAA. They got us a tow truck within about 20 minutes, and the driver (a really nice, younger guy) had fortunately seen this exact problem before. After a couple of minutes of fiddling and prying with his crowbar, the spare tire dropped free. He filled it to maximum capacity with air, lifted the van with his hydraulic jack, removed the old wheel with his impact driver, and had the spare installed in no time flat. He even gave us a jump start, because we'd run our four-way flashers so long the battery no longer had enough power to turn the motor over.

We thanked him, and were again on our way toward Detroit. This was my first time driving with one of those lousy temporary "donut" spare tires, and it was as bad as I imagined. Even fully inflated, it wasn't safe to drive more than about 55-60 MPH on the freeway. The handling was terrible. We stayed in the right lane, and let everybody else buzz past us.

We arrived very late, but all in once piece. I dropped everyone else off at my in-laws', then headed up to the local Sam's Club in search of a new set of tires. There was no way I was driving 70 miles home that night, in the dark and in the cold, on that temporary thing, with the whole family in the car and no spare to fall back on. Given that we'd put over 70,000 miles on this set of tires, I figured it was just a matter of time before the rest of them started going. This was definitely the day to get a whole new set.

Unfortunately, the Sam's Club just up the street didn't have a tire center. The tire store in the same shopping center was closed on Sundays. As was the Belle Tire a few miles down Grand River. My brother in law suggested I try the Sears Auto Center at the local shopping mall; they did in fact turn out to be open. But because they were pretty much the only place open that day, everybody and his brother had come to get their cars worked on. (With the cold snap that morning, they apparently were doing a booming business installing new batteries.) They did have a set of tires in my size, but said it'd be 90 minutes to get them installed. I had no choice but to get my car in line and wait.

And wait. And wait. They did have a football game on in the waiting room, which was nice. But I'd a thousand times rather have been hanging out with my in-laws, watching the game at their place with them. The game dragged on, and then the late game came on. Sears ran into problem after problem with my tires; first, they turned out not to have the cheaper tires in the right size for our vehicle and had to get my permission to spend lots more installing a more expensive set. Given that I was basically stuck, I told them to go ahead and do it. Then, as they were pulling the old tires, one of the mounting studs snapped off. They had to find me again, ask if I wanted to pay for a new one, and then search around to see if they had the part.

Once it became clear my van would be unavailable for a lot more than 90 minutes, and I'd lost interest in football, I decided to take a stroll through the Twelve Oaks Mall for a change of scenery. All I can say is: I am never going to willingly set foot in another suburban shopping mall again. Especially not on a Sunday. The place was jammed, and already decked out with Christmas decorations in mid-November. Kids were getting their photos taken with Santa. But the worst part was the cacophonous noise, and the impossibility of escaping from it. That, and the utter frivolity and idiocy of so much of what was for sale. Not just the skanky lingere stores. Or the "clothing" aimed at teenagers. So much of what the stores were peddling were frivolous trinkets, and junk I couldn't imagine letting my kids waste their money on.

I grabbed a cup of coffee and retreated to the relative peace and quiet of the Sears Auto Center waiting room as fast as I could. Our van didn't get finished until nearly 6pm, so I had plenty of time to be alone with my thoughts. I was grateful for several things: that we homeschool, and our kids aren't asking to dress the way most kids at the mall were dressing. That we live so far away from suburban shopping malls, and don't need to visit them for anything but emergencies. That we've rejected the frivolity and consumerism on such blatant display at these places. And, above all, that Sundays have become such a welcome refuge for our family from all this noise and chaos. When I was single, and living in the Detroit suburbs myself, I used to regularly patronize this very same mall on many Sundays...and used to think nothing of it. In fact, I used to enjoy getting out and going there. Now, as I sat in Auto Center Purgatory, I couldn't imagine any more foreign place than a suburban shopping mall to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Once the van was ready, I hurried back to rejoin the family for what remained of our Sunday refuge from the world. Dinner was just being served as I arrived, and it was absolutely wonderful. Not just the food, but especially the company. I was sorry to have missed so much of the day, but grateful to at least be spending the main meal together. And especially grateful to Mrs. Yeoman Farmer for her insistence that we live the custom of Sunday Rest the way we have. Catching a glimpse of what life is like without that rest was a powerful confirmation of its value.

And I must add one more thing for which I'm grateful: the AAA dispatcher, the tow truck driver, those folks at Sears Auto Center, and all the others who must work on Sundays to ensure that families like ours can still get the essential services we might need. I sincerely hope that all of them are able to get some other day of rest with their families during the week.

The Gibsonater

Tonight at dinner, I happened to mention something to Mrs Yeoman farmer about an extremely funny comedy piece featuring Mel Gibson. It came out quite some time ago, and we'd both laughed very hard as we'd watched it.

But tonight, when I mentioned the comedy piece, MYF's reaction was quite different. "I'm sorry," she said, "but I've lost a lot of respect for Mel Gibson lately."

Before I could reply, Homeschooled Farm Girl piped up and asked, "Why? Is it because he adulterated?"

MYF and I both began laughing, and I was soon laughing harder than when I'd watched the original Gibson piece.

"What?" HFG asked. "Why is that so funny?"

To which I only laughed more.

Finally, Homeschooled Farm Boy told her, matter of factly, "I think he's just tired."

Which is true, actually. But it was still that funny.

Adoption: No Waiting. Or Much Less, Anyway

Our adoption of Yeoman Farm Baby continues to more forward; it isn't final yet, but we recently completed an important step: the post-placement visit from our local agency. Our case worker came to the house, sat down with the whole family, and we spent about 90 minutes talking about how things have been going. She had certain questions she needed to ask, but the whole process was highly conversational. She'll now write a report, which will be sent to our attorney and filed with the court in the state where YFB was born.

Our case worker shared some interesting information with us: they, and other agencies, are currently suffering a real dearth of adoptive parents. The numbers are sharply down, meaning far fewer families seeking the same number of babies. Particularly if a family is open to adopting a child of color, the wait time is very short right now. Our agency believes the uncertainty of economic conditions, especially here in Michigan, is largely responsible for the reduction in numbers of parents looking to adopt. The economic downturn has also caused problems for agencies themselves; ours was very prudent with its resources over the years, and had reserves to weather the storm, but she said that many other agencies have had to close their doors.

But the babies are still being born and still need homes. If adoption is something you've ever considered or believed you might be called to undertake, but were intimidated by horror stories about the number of months or years it takes to get a baby...this may be the time to take another look.

Stranded

I've been stranded at the Baltimore-Washington airport for the last couple of days, due to this enormous winter blizzard. Flew out here Friday morning, and had meetings with clients all day and evening. I also took about 30-40 pounds of meat with me, as Christmas gifts for clients; it's hard to describe how pleased folks were get a heritage turkey, or Icelandic lamb chops or leg roasts. Although we did sell meat to the public at one time, for now we've found that it makes more sense for us to give the meat away to friends, family, and clients as gifts; it's something very special, very personal, and something that cannot be purchased in stores. We may eventually sell to the public again, but for now the "gift" approach seems best for us.

The plan was to fly home on Saturday morning, but 20 inches of snow begged to disagree. All three DC Metro airports were shut down pretty much all day, and I'd be surprised if more than a handful of planes got in or out of the region. There is a television monitor in the hotel lobby, showing flight arrival and departure information at BWI; every time I walked past it, every single flight was marked as "cancelled."

I spent all of Saturday holed up in that hotel near the airport with hundreds of other stranded travelers, watching snow fall. And fall. And fall. Being the consummate introvert, I didn't mind the opportunity to crawl into a "cave" with a detective novel and hibernate for a day. I wish I'd brought another change of clothes, and I wish I had my boots here with me, but I'm grateful that I reached my hotel late Friday night before the worst of the snow fell - and that I was able to extend my stay for an extra night. And while the food here is overpriced, and the restaurant is understaffed, everyone has remained cheerful. There seems to be a spirit of "we're all in it together, and there's nothing we can do to change things, so let's make the best of this situation" with both the hotel guests and staff. For my part, I told the housekeeper that I didn't need any service for my room (other than a few extra packets of coffee for my coffeemaker); I figured she had plenty to do already, given that much of the staff probably couldn't have made it in to work.

The television had lots of footage of children playing joyfully in all this white stuff, and I'm sure the Yeoman Farm Children would've been doing the same if we lived here. They tell me we only got an inch or two back home, which is hardly enough to do anything with. I'm very grateful that Mrs Yeoman Farmer, and the YFCs, have been such good sports about my being stuck here; they've had to pick up the slack with caring for the animals, cooking, and mixing up formula for Yeoman Farm Baby. Southwest Airlines put me on a flight out of here this afternoon, and it's showing "on time" status so far. Given that the sun is shining brightly, and the snow has completely stopped falling, I'm optimistic about getting home tonight.

The local TV station also had a continuous scroll of business and school closures. One thing that was interesting: the number of individual Protestant churches that were announcing the cancellation of all Sunday services. There were only a couple of individual Catholic churches that announced cancellations, and those seemed to be just for Saturday evening Masses, but the TV scroll did include an important general announcement: The Archdiocese is reminding Catholics that church law excuses them from their obligation to attend Sunday Mass if it's unsafe to travel because of the weather.

Note, however, that most Masses in the area will not actually be cancelled. You can bet that attendance will be way down, but the priests will be there and will be offering the Holy Sacrifice. As I thought about it, I realized one obvious reason: most Catholic priests live on the same property where their church building is located. Most Protestant ministers do not. I still remember an amusing incident from the early 1990s, when a similar blizzard hit Michigan; I called a local Catholic church, which was staffed by a community of Franciscans, and an older friar answered the phone. I asked if they were still going to have Mass, and he gave a hearty laugh. Then, in a wonderful southern drawl he replied, "We sure are. You see, we're all in here. The question is: can you get here?" I laughed with him, because the answer was such an obvious No.

But as I thought more about it, I realized that there was an even more important reason why Mass will still be offered in most places today: because, ultimately, it doesn't really matter how many people are in attendance. Yes, it is important for us to attend Mass when we are physically able, but it isn't necessary to have a congregation present for the Mass to "do its thing." In Protestant services, by contrast, the focus is largely on the congregation and the fellowship of the community; if only a couple members of your congregation will be able to come, it doesn't make much sense to have a service. But the Catholic Mass is totally different: it is a true sacrifice, and as such provides countless graces for the whole church, completely separate from the merits of the celebrant or the size of the congregation. When we cannot be physically present at Mass, we can unite ourselves spiritually with it and join in those graces.

A chapter in St Josemaria Escriva's book, Christ is Passing By, has an excellent discussion of the Eucharist, which develops these thoughts in more depth. This particular morning, when the twenty inches of snow outside meant there was no way I would be able to attend Mass myself, I haven't been able to stop thinking about one particular paragraph from that homily of St Josemaria (in point 89, of the chapter linked to above):

Through the communion of the saints, all Christians receive grace from every Mass that is celebrated, regardless of whether there is an attendance of thousands of persons, or whether it is only a boy with his mind on other things who is there to serve. In either case, heaven and earth join with the angels of the Lord to sing: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus...

If you are among those who can't physically attend Mass today, I hope these considerations from St Josemaria are as spiritually fruitful as they have been for me. As a nun from the parish I grew up in used to say, on days when she had to lead a communion service because there was no priest available to celebrate Mass, "put yourself on a patten," spiritually uniting yourself to a Mass that is being celebrated right now, somewhere else in the world.

Why Do This?

A reader from Southern California (actually not far from where our family lived, pre-farm) who wishes he could be doing what we're doing, Kevin Aldrich, writes with some important thoughts and observations:


It would seem that the reason to have a family farm is not so much to grow your own food or have a viable business as to have a means of raising your kids well. They are more “in touch” with real life and work with their hands, not just with their heads and technology.

Here’s a kind of a idea for raising kids—not that I’ve done it for any of mine—but a child’s development could kind of follow the history of the development of humanity. It seems like we are more and more cut off from the life that most people have led through most of human history. Not that we want any of the negatives, like mortality rates before modern medicine, or famines before the Green Revolution, or battles followed by rape and pillage.

Rather, it seems like kids would have a huge advantage if their youths were filled with activities like storytelling, memorization, growing your own food, dealing with animals, running, fighting, using weapons, building fires and doing without electricity, dealing with heat and cold and darkness, writing with pencils instead of keyboards, penmanship, building and fixing things, reading instead of watching, talking instead of texting. Have you seen Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E? People are fat and chair-bound and taken care of by robots. It really is the future.

I guess I think about this because I live on the edge of the center of modern, artificial living...


It really is remarkable how different the Yeoman Farm Children are from other kids their age. They get up each morning, go outside, and are responsible for milking two goats. They take the goats out to pasture. In the evenings, they do it all again (in reverse), and hunt all over the barn gathering eggs, and make sure the various animals have the food they need. They are present when lambs and goat kids are born, alert us to any problems those animals may have, work to ensure the health of all those animals ... and help load mature animals into the truck when it's time to go to the butcher. They know how to cultivate soil, how to plant seeds, how to tell the difference between a weed and a "good" seedling, which tomatoes and peppers are ripe, how to handle fresh produce (and eggs) without damaging or breaking anything. And because their severe food allergies make meal preparation such a big production (in the time it takes most kids to finish off a bowl of Fruit Loops, we're still grinding grain for hot cream-of-rice cereal), they have learned to take the lead in cooking breakfasts and lunches from scratch.

They do not have iPods or cell phones or Facebook pages, do not "text" their friends, have never surfed beyond the EWTN Kids website, and their television viewing is limited and always supervised (and made up of sports, politics, religious, and History Channel type stuff). They read a lot of books, particularly historical fiction. They know how to type, and how to use computers, but do most of their work with pen and paper. They know firearms are not toys, but rather powerful tools which must be respected and handled safely and responsibly.

When we first moved to the country, one of our primary motivations was getting control of our food supply. But the longer we've been doing this, and the more we've observed the way our kids have thrived, our motivation for continuing to farm has increasingly become the whole lifestyle and culture in which our family is immersed here, and the sorts of well-rounded young adults into which the YFCs are growing. It's hard to imagine anything that could've been better for them. Or for us.

Wanted. Very Much Wanted

Our family continues to prepare for the adoption of Yeoman Farm Baby; all has continued to go well with his gestation, and our family's excitement in anticipation of his due date is growing daily.

Naturally, we have been spreading the word among friends and colleagues. In this regard, I recently had an interesting experience --- one that Mrs Yeoman Farmer and I both believe should be shared.

I was attending a conference last week with about 25 other Catholic men. In the course of introductions and various conversations, I mentioned that we were preparing to adopt a baby who will be born soon. Everyone responded to this with great joy and congratulations, and many obviously wanted to know more of the details. To this end, one older gentleman asked, "So, did you find a mother who's having a baby she doesn't want?"

Careful readers will note that this question actually had two parts. The second part caught me off guard, so I initially focused my reply on the first part. No, I explained, we didn't find her. She found us. Or, rather, a mutual friend/acquaintance connected her with us. The way everything played out, all of us were utterly convinced that divine providence was behind these events.

The gentleman nodded. And then I turned my attention to the second part of his question: is this a baby that she doesn't want? To expand on the answer I gave him: NO! In fact, the birth mother very much wants this baby. She loves him with all her heart, as almost all mothers naturally do. She would lay down in front of a train for this baby. She very much wants to raise this baby herself, and to give him all of her love --- but, at the same time, she knows she is not in a position to supply what he needs. She loves him so much, she is sacrificing her own desires ("wants") for the greater good of her child.

I should emphasize that in giving this reply to my questionner, my tone was not at all one of correction; it was rather one of explanation and of sharing insights that we ourselves had been learning in the process.

It is hard to imagine a more complete, or a more selfless, love than what we have observed from our birth mother. She is a mother who very much wants to keep her child, but loves him too much to actually do so. And when our son is old enough to understand, we intend to tell him precisely that.

This is our happy Yeoman Farm Baby, as of a few days ago:




We can hardly wait to meet this very wanted baby and welcome him into our family.

We Could Make a Fortune

...if we could build a guest house and find some folks willing to spend $300 per night for a "haycation." And I'm sure the kids would greatly appreciate getting some help milking the goats.

As the NY Times reports:

In a world where small farmers need to diversify to keep their fields afloat and city dwellers are more desperate than ever to learn where their food comes from, a “haycation” for about the price of a nice hotel room in Manhattan didn’t seem like such a far-fetched idea.

For my family, the appeal was a fancy floored tent with a flush toilet and running water. On the Web site, it looked bigger than a junior one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side.

I’m no stranger to this kind of thing. My mother grew up on a Wisconsin dairy farm. I was once so tough, I hiked for days across Alaskan tundra. But I have gone soft from all this city living. And my partner makes a point of telling me regularly that her people don’t camp.

On the other hand, we have a toddler who had never seen a live chicken. And I was desperate to get out of the city and eat vegetables still warm from the sun. So what if I had to do chores? How tough could a $300-a-night farm stay be?

This is essentially how we talked ourselves into spending a long weekend at Stony Creek Farm in Delaware County, N.Y., a part of the Catskills so rough that most everyone who grew up there describes it as “two stones to every dirt.”

Go read the whole thing. It's fun. It might inspire your next vacation. And for all our out-of-town friends and family who came to visit overnight and got to help out with chores for free this summer: Do you feel lucky or what?

I Want My MTV!

It's a little odd admitting this, but...I found something to like on MTV in recent weeks. MercatorNet has published my article about it, which can be found here.

Driving the Yeomans

Mrs Yeoman Farmer and I were on our way home to Northern Virginia from the Tridentine High Mass at Old St. Mary's in Washington, DC. It was the fall of 1996, and the future Homeschooled Farm Boy (then a baby) was napping in his car seat as we cruised through the District of Columbia on Interstate 395. I'd just pulled onto the freeway, and traffic was fairly heavy for a Sunday evening; I'd spent so much time wrenching my head around looking for an opening in traffic at the end of the on-ramp, I hadn't noticed any speed limit signs. But this was a freeway, so I figured the speed limit would be at least 55 MPH --- and that's about what the other cars were moving at. So I settled in, and did my best to stay with the pack.

A moment or two later, we came around a bend and I spotted a police car on the right shoulder. Glancing at the speedometer, I confirmed I was still going 55, so didn't bother getting nervous or slowing down. Until, that is, I looked in the rear view mirror and saw him pulling onto the roadway with his lights flashing. The next thing I knew, he was right behind me and chirping his siren. I began looking for a safe place to pull over, and soon both of our cars were on the right shoulder.

The officer, who happened to be black, approached my window and asked if I knew why I'd been stopped; I replied that I honestly had no idea. He informed me that I'd been driving 56 in a 45 MPH zone, and that he'd like my license and registration and proof of insurance.

"Forty-five?" I asked, incredulous, as I dug around for the documentation. "I honestly thought it was 55, because it was a freeway. That's why I didn't slow down when I saw you."

"Well, it was posted at 45," he said, taking my documents and retreating to his patrol car.

As the officer did who-knows-what, I fumed aloud to MYF about how ridiculous the whole thing was. I was going 55 on a freeway and wasn't passing anybody! And he pulls me over! She agreed, but there wasn't much else she could say. HFB was waking up and fussing, and she soon had her hands full getting him calmed back down.

The cop eventually returned from his patrol car with my documents --- and a ticket for some amount of money that was about to disrupt our fragile, tight-as-a-drum finances, especially once my insurance rates jumped as a result. I was irritated, but had enough presence of mind to suppress my irritation, take a deep breath, and wait until he'd left before saying anything negative. Even then, I simply muttered something to my wife about probably having been stopped because we had Virginia license plates. MYF made a comment about how unfair the whole thing was, and we were soon back in traffic making our way home. And, yes, I noticed that the first speed limit sign we passed read "45 MPH." I kept the car in the right lane, the speedometer needle at 45, and fumed in silence as we drove.

The story does have a happy ending: I mailed in the ticket with a written explanation/appeal, but no payment. We moved across the country a few weeks later, and I managed to keep my mail correspondence with the DC Metro Police going long enough for my ticket to get totally lost in the District's bureaucracy. We never paid the fine, and the ticket was never reported to our insurance company.

The incident eventually faded from my mind, and I didn't think about it for years --- until last week's story about Professor Henry Gates' run-in with the Cambridge (MA) police. When officers showed up at his house investigating a reported break-in, all he had to do was give a calm explanation as to why he and his limo driver had had to force the front door open, and produce picture identification with his home address. Instead, he followed the officers outside and began ranting to the whole neighborhood about "this is what happens to black men in America."

Actually, I thought, this is what happens when you have a chip on your shoulder, lose your temper, and taunt the police.

From everything we've read and seen about the incident, it seems clear to both MYF and myself that the individual with the "racial narrative" in his head was the Harvard professor; Officer Crowley seems to have conducted himself with the utmost professionalism. Our only complaint about the arrest is that the Cambridge police dismissed the disorderly conduct charges.

Let's return to 1996, and the shoulder of I-395. As upset as I was about a perceived injustice, the fact remains that the officer had a good reason for pulling me over. I didn't agree, and was understandably angry about the traffic stop, but had the self-control to remain calm and wait for my opportunity to "tell it to the judge" and let the system work. But let's suppose that instead, I'd had the same sort of "racial narrative" in my head that Professor Gates evidently carries around with him. I most likely would have jumped from my car and accused the D.C. cop of having pulled me over because I was a white guy with out-of-state plates in a heavily black city --- and that he was giving me a ticket only because he was angry that I'd married a black woman. That he was probably trying to prove he had some power over me.

Those of you who know me know that I don't see the world through the prism I just described. But had I said and done those things, and had I refused the officer's instructions to return to my vehicle, the cop would've been completely within his rights to have arrested me for disorderly conduct. And my wife would've been completely within her rights to have not spoken with me for the next six weeks.

That seems clear enough to us. What MYF and I find particularly troubling about the Gates story is the sharp divide in the way most blacks and whites have reacted to the basic details of the case --- and in the way black and white perceptions of and assumptions about the police diverge so sharply. As a recent Rasmussen poll finds:

Seventy-three percent (73%) of African-American voters believe that most blacks receive unfair treatment from the police. Just 21% of white voters share that view. Thirty-two percent (32%) of black voters say that most policemen are racist, but 52% disagree. Among white voters, just seven percent (7%) believe that most policemen are racist and 71% say they are not.

I'm not so naive as to pretend that race doesn't play a role in police work. As recently as this year, my father-in-law was visiting my brother-in-law's family in a large East Coast city with a history of ethnic tension. On two separate occasions, while out for a walk on the streets of his son's upper-middle-class, heavily white neighborhood, my father-in-law was stopped and questioned by the local police about what he was doing. My father-in-law knew perfectly well that he was being questioned because he was black, and therefore looked out of place in that neighborhood. But he was friendly and cooperative, answered the officers' questions politely, and came away reporting that he'd had "a really nice conversation" with one of the cops. He didn't point fingers, didn't make accusations about how "black men in America" are treated, and didn't raise his voice. He treated the officer with respect, and was treated with respect in return.

Treating people with respect, and not constantly looking at the world through the prism of race, are pretty simple lessons, really, and ones that MYF and I have been teaching our kids. Too bad the President of the United States passed up an opportunity to be truly "post racial" and to have made this same point when asked about the incident in his recent press conference.

As for MYF, this is what she told me:

"I am incensed at Gates' behavior toward the police, I'm infuriated by the President's and the professor's race-baiting, and I'm embarrassed that both of them are giving blacks a bad name."

And there is nothing more I can add to that.

What is Home?

My apologies for the slow posting of late; I've returned to Michigan after several days visiting Seattle, where I grew up, for the first time in nearly two years. It was a wonderful trip; altogether too short, but when you have a farm...getting away for even a few days in the middle of summer is asking a lot. I went alone, and am grateful that Mrs Yeoman Farmer and the Yeoman Farm Children (particularly the older two) were able to carry the burden in my absence.

The purpose of my trip was to ride the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic on July 11th, and I will be putting up a separate post describing that adventure. It's an event I've done many times in the past, but not since 1996. Being able to get in shape again, and manage all the logistics of getting myself and my bicycle to Seattle (and then to Portland) once more, fulfilled a dream that had been simmering in my mind for several years. As I pedaled along Lake Washington Blvd on Saturday morning, with the rising sun framing the Cascade range in purple, and Mt. Rainier standing with all its immensitude in the crystal clear summer daybreak, my heart overflowed with joy. I'm really here. I'm really doing it. This is truly happening. Everything in the world is exactly right.

It occurred to me that this could be a rough working definition of "home": not simply the place where a person happens to be living at the moment, but the place in the world where everything seems right. The place where a person senses he belongs, and the place from which a person feels exiled when he is not able to be there. Circumstances and grave obligations may force a long --- even permanent --- exile. But it takes much more than relocation to change one's sense of "home."

I had several days, largely to myself, to reflect on these and other thoughts. In a sense, the trip was not unlike a retreat. I spent last Wednesday getting to Seattle and retrieving my bike from the mechanic to whom I'd shipped it. Then, apart from reconnecting with an old friend for dinner one night, and the big event on Saturday, and spending Sunday afternoon with relatives, I had few scheduled obligations for the rest of the trip. I was able to spend much of Thursday and Friday simply riding all over...and thinking, and praying, and reflecting. I rode the Burke-Gilman trail to the small town where I grew up, pedaled past our family's first house, and rolled around town.

The community swimming pool was still there. So was the football field. And the Ranch Drive-In. But there were also uncomfortable changes: the local library --- my favorite spot as a young child --- was now a cold municipal office building; the books had been relocated into a larger and more modern structure nearby. One of the grand old school administration buildings had been razed and was now a parking lot. Other buildings had disappeared. There were new buildings I didn't recognize. And so on. And so forth.

And I couldn't help asking myself: Is this where everything seems right? Because it's funny how, the longer you don't live somewhere, the more it lives in memory ... even if the reality has become quite different.

In that town, and all over Seattle, I did see plenty of other places and things that were familiar and comfortable, and were reassuring in their seeming permanence. But despite the joy of being in Seattle, it was hard to avoid a simultaneous sense of melancholy...because nothing in Seattle is truly "mine" any longer. I couldn't stay. I couldn't be attached to it. As much as I may feel a sense of belonging in that city, I don't truly belong there now. And it was these two competing senses about "belonging," pulling in opposite directions, that triggered the melancholy.

Because no matter what I might feel, the inescapable reality remains: I chose to leave and go to college in Chicago. I chose to take a job in Detroit after college. I chose to attend graduate school in California. And, above all, I chose to marry a woman who grew up in Michigan, with deep roots in that part of the country, who very much dislikes the part of the country in which I grew up. One of the better definitions of "adulthood" that I've come across goes something like this: doing the things we ought to do and need to do, and not necessarily the things we want to do. And in our family's case, there is no doubt about what we ought to be doing, and need to be doing: living in rural Michigan, near the town in which MYF grew up and has so many friends and so much family. And I have no doubt that "adulthood" was calling me to do all the other things (education, career) that took me farther and farther away from Seattle, one step at a time. Funny how easy it was to take each of those steps, without reflecting on the larger picture of how much distance each of them was putting between me and the city I loved so much. And yet even if I had seen the whole picture, with all its consequences, I wouldn't go back and change any of those steps.

I will no doubt be living in Michigan for many years, and I have few illusions that the passage of time will make it seem any more like "home" than Seattle always will. I will always be, in some sense, an exile here. But you know what? That's okay. And the more I pedaled around the region where I grew up, and the more I thought about it, the more okay with everything I became. My family is infinitely more important to me than getting to live in any particular place...and at the end of the day, I'm much happier living with my family in a place that is so completely right for them than I ever could be if they were compelled to live in a place that was "right" for me but completely wrong for everyone else. Because it's ultimately not being in any particular place that makes us happy...it's being with the people we love, and above all it's living our lives in the way God wants. And I have absolutely zero doubts that that this little farm in this little town in this Rust Belt state is exactly where God wants me --- and my family --- to be.

Yeoman Farm Baby --- Incoming!

In a recent post, I asked for your prayers regarding a big development that was underfoot. Mrs Yeoman Farmer and I are deeply grateful for all of those prayers...because they have been bearing tremendous fruit. Specifically, this kind of fruit:


No, MYF is not pregnant. We wish another pregnancy was possible, but God has made it clear that he has chosen a different way he'd like our family to grow. Some time back, we were contacted by a friend who wanted to know if we had ever considered adoption. We said that we had in fact thought and prayed about it a lot, and were open to it, but that we had not begun actively pursuing it. She then explained that she knew of a young woman who was at a loss as to what she should do about an unexpected pregnancy. Although privacy reasons prevent my elaborating on the details, the young woman and we both decided that her baby would be a perfect match for our family.

The baby is not due until late in the fall, so we have some time, but the upcoming months will still be a hectic whirlwind of agency interviews, legal proceedings, and a home study. We are discovering that even with a private arrangement such as this one, a great deal of government oversight (through an adoption agency) is still required.

But that is all fine with us. Our whole family is so excited about this new little member, all the legal and agency hurdles in the world seem like nothing. This new little baby is truly a pearl of great price, for whom we are prepared to sacrifice all we have.

The birth mother, and we, are completely committed to the adoption. However, given the number of complications that can arise in both a pregnancy and a legal process, both of our families would greatly appreciate all the prayers you are able to offer up on our behalf.

Back from the Wilderness

We're back from the virtual wilderness; AT&T finally got our DSL service re-established on Friday, a couple of days after originally promised. We are now a cell phone-only family for voice communications, and so far it has worked out well enough.

The week without DSL (or even dial-up, as we had no landline) was difficult, and I was going through serious withdrawal at times. Unfortunately, the closest WiFi hotspot is quite some distance from our house (at the local bakery/cafe, the staff didn't even know what "WiFi" is); I ended up driving in just once a day to check and respond to critical emails. Unfortunately, my laptop chose this week to begin its death spiral. It's now 7 or 8 years old, but I use it so infrequently (and for such basic tasks) that I haven't bothered upgrading it. Just this week, when I took it into town to check critical emails, it began doing something truly bizarre: it was like the keyboard was frequently stuck on a particular key, and would type that character repeatedly no matter what application I had open. It didn't do this all the time, and it wasn't always the same keyboard character, but I seldom had more than about a minute between episodes. Even plugging in an auxiliary keyboard didn't solve the problem. It seems like something is going seriously wrong with the wiring in the laptop's built-in keyboard. Bottom line: I had to respond quickly to emails, and had no time for posting to the blog.

I hope to rectify that soon, once we catch our collective breath. My folks are in from Arizona for the next couple of days, and we've been enjoying spending time with them. It's been particularly fun seeing my parents get to know Mrs Yeoman Farmer's father better; we had a grand time at his place yesterday, and my father is out golfing with him right now. (And the three of us played in a K of C charity golf scramble on Saturday morning.)

Last weekend, we had a wonderful time hosting one of MYF's law school friends and her family; they are Chicago-area homeschoolers with kids corresponding very closely in age to ours, and all the children had an absolute blast running around the farm playing and doing chores. The friend's parents also came; her father grew up on a large farm in Mainland China, before the communists seized power and the village's landholders all fled to Taiwan. He later attended college and graduate school in the USA and settled in this country, but never lost his love for the land. He was fascinated by all aspects of our property, and we thoroughly enjoyed comparing notes about "yeoman farming" practices in 1940s-era China versus 2009 Michigan.

Finally, there is a big development under foot that has been keeping us preoccupied for the last couple of weeks. I'm not sure it's prudent to say much more about that development at present, other than to ask all of you to pray that everything surrounding it go as smoothly as possible. I should be able to supply more details before long; in the meantime, your prayers are very much appreciated.

Imagine That

There is a wonderful new television spot, "Kinship," out from the folks at CatholicVote. It's excellent.

And I'm particularly appreciative of this video, because The Yeoman Farmer's name and likeness could also be counted among those featured in it.

It's not centering very well on my blog page, so double-click the image below to watch in a new window.

Good Out of Evil

Mrs Yeoman Farmer came across the following story the other day and asked me to share it:

NAIROBI (Reuters) – A Kenyan man bit a python who wrapped him in its coils and hauled him up a tree in a struggle that lasted hours, local media said Wednesday.

Farm manager Ben Nyaumbe was working at the weekend when the serpent, apparently hunting for livestock, struck in the Malindi area of Kenya's Indian Ocean coast.

"I stepped on a spongy thing on the ground and suddenly my leg was entangled with the body of a huge python," he told the Daily Nation newspaper.

When the snake coiled itself round his upper body, Nyaumbe resorted to desperate measures: "I had to bite it."

The python dragged him up a tree, but when it eased its grip, Nyaumbe said he was able to take a mobile phone out of his pocket and phone for help.

When his supervisor came with a policeman, Nyaumbe smothered the snake's head with his shirt, while the rescuers tied it with a rope and pulled.

"We both came down, landing with a thud," said Nyaumbe, who survived with damaged lips and bruising.

The snake escaped from the three sacks it was bundled into.

MYF's comment: "Thank God my ancestors came here on boats 300 years ago, so my kids and I don't have to live some place where giant snakes drag people into trees!"

When I finished laughing, she added: "I'm serious! You can quote me on that. Put it in your blog!"

Slavery, particularly the way it was practiced in the Americas, was a horrendous affront to human dignity; MYF and I would be the last people in the world to wish it on anyone. But it's interesting the way such tremendous good can be drawn even from such a tremendous evil. Beyond freedom from giant serpents, MYF and other descendants of African slaves enjoy liberties and opportunities that are unthinkable on the African continent today --- and we are deeply grateful for that.

With everything in the news these days, it's easy to forget how blessed we are to live in this country --- no matter how our ancestors got here. Sometimes it takes a truly odd news story ("man bites snake") to remind us of that. And to remind us of all the ways in which God can draw good out of the evil that men commit.

I fully expect that, ten years from now, we will all be marveling at the unexpected goods that emerge from these present social and economic difficulties.

Piglet The Goat Kid

I have given up trying to figure out the names that our children come up with for various animals on our farm. As long as it's a certainty that the animal in question will eventually be going off to the butcher, I don't mind too much. (The two most recent goat kids we had butchered were named "Naughty" and "Less Naughty," respectively...and our children now seem to be recycling those names for the latest twin male goat kids.)

Which brings us to Piglet. Who, despite the name, is a goat kid.

Last Wednesday, Queen Anne's Lace delivered a pair of beautiful kids. After just a couple of days, however, the male kid was developing problems. He was struggling to get up and nurse, and had a raspy noise in his lungs. Homeschooled Farm Girl immediately realized something was wrong, and reported the problem to Mrs Yeoman Famer.

This proved to be a very good move. Had she come to me, I would have told her "It's just the male kid. We'll only be butchering him anyway, and his meat isn't worth the veterinary bills. And besides, at just two days old, he doesn't have the reserves to survive whatever he's sick with. Which is probably pneumonia."

MYF also diagnosed pneumonia...but took a different approach. She simply announced that she was taking the kid to the vet clinic in the next town over. Period. I ran through my objections, to which she listened politely...and then insisted that we should do everything in our power to save this kid. Because in her opinion, we'd discovered his pneumonia early enough to do something about it.

I grudgingly agreed, and got back to work. MYF sped off to the vet, and after spending some time in the waiting room (enduring odd/curious looks from all the people who had brought more conventional pets), the vet confirmed our diagnosis of pneumonia. Most likely, the kid aspirated some milk while nursing --- essentially "sucked it down the wrong pipe," getting moisture in his lungs. In the chilly barn, it didn't take long to develop into pneumonia. He gave the kid a shot of antibiotic, and then gave MYF several more syringes of antibiotic to inject over the next days. He suggested we keep the kid in our warm house, and bottle feed him until (1) he was stronger and (2) the barn warmed up a bit.

So, since Friday afternoon, we've had a goat kid living in an old laundry basket in our family room. How our children thought up the name, "Piglet," I'll never know...but it's not something I have any desire to argue about. The wood stove keeps that whole room very comfortable, and Piglet has been thriving. Homeschooled Farm Girl has been a big help in milking Queen Anne's Lace, and in taking the kid out to her in the warmer parts of the day to nurse directly. Fortunately, Queen Anne's Lace has not rejected or forgotten him; she bleats urgently as soon as she sees him, sniffs his backside approvingly as he nurses, and bleats plaintively when we take him back out of the barn.

Needless to say, the laundry basket is pretty tight quarters for a growing goat kid. With MYF's permission, our children let him out a couple of times this weekend (right after he'd relieved himself), and let him romp around the downstairs of our house. Everyone thought this was great fun, though MYF was of course concerned he might try to piddle on the carpet. "Maybe," I joked, "we can train him to a litter box and keep him in the house."

"Yeah!" the children cheered.

"Can't you just see it?" MYF replied. "Him trotting up and down the stairs. Kicking his legs up on the walls, like the other goats do in the barn. Probably smashing windows. And making the whole house smell like goat."

We all had a good laugh...and hope he'll be well enough to move back to the barn in the next couple of days.

And, yes, I have eaten my full serving of crow. I'm glad MYF took him to the vet, and have told her so. It's a tough balance, having livestock. There is a definite "utilitarian" component to farm animals, and it's much more pronounced than it is for pets. We simply cannot justify squandering resources on an animal that isn't "worth it." But there is also a humanitarian component to raising livestock on a small organic farm. In a sense, God has given us temporary custody of these animals...and we have a responsibility to exercise good stewardship with them. That means having a heart, and sometimes making personal sacrifices on behalf of an animal's welfare --- even one which, at the end of the day, might be of borderline monetary value.

In this case, I think we struck a good balance. Piglet's vet bill was $55, and it will eventually cost $40 to butcher him. That will make his meat more than twice as expensive as the meat from a kid with no medical issues. But given the quality of what we'll be getting, I think it's still a bargain compared to buying meat at the supermarket.

Late Night...With Queen Anne's Lace

We have three dairy goat does: Queen Anne's Lace (our original doe, bred and drying up but not currently being milked) and her two daughters, both of whom recently had twin kids. Those two daughters, Button and Marigold, get a ration of supplemental grain in the morning and evening; this helps them keep their milk production up, ensuring their hungry kids get as much as they need.

In the mornings, I scoop that grain into a pan and set it in an empty stall in the barn. At the sound of the grain hitting the pan, Button and Marigold eagerly stand on the gate and look to see what's taking me so long. Scooter the Border Collie also knows the routine, and plants himself just outside their gate. Once I open the gate, Scooter's position blocks the goats from going anywhere but toward the empty stall with the grain. (Not like they need any help from Scooter --- both goats make a beeline for that grain even when he's not with me.)

I then re-latch the gate, and get hay for the sheep while the goats eat their grain. By the time I return from the sheep pen, the two goats are finished and ready to be let back in to the main goat area. Once they're back in, I secure the gate behind them.

Homeschooled Farm Girl takes care of this chore in the evenings, and it usually goes off without a hitch...except when it doesn't. Last night, she apparently didn't get the gate secured all the way. While we were inside eating dinner, and then spending a little time watching something on the History Channel, the goats managed to get their gate open and disperse themselves all over the barn. Queen Anne's Lace (QAL), being the largest, oldest, and smartest doe, knew that a couple of swift head-butts to the grain can would manage to tip it over --- and she wasted no time settling in for a feast.

Homeschooled Farm Boy didn't discover this disaster until he stopped by the barn to turn the lights off for the night. With Scooter's help, he managed to get all the goats back in their pen...but he was concerned about the amount of grain that QAL had ingested. If a goat eats too much grain all at once, they can develop a terrible (even fatal) case of bloat. He had me come out and take a look at her, but not much time had elapsed yet. QAL still looked fine. But as Mrs Yeoman Farmer was concerned she might still develop bloat, I agreed to check back a little later.

Back out in the barn at 11pm, it was unmistakable: we had a terribly bloated goat. Remember those old Alka-Seltzer commercials, where the person blows up like a balloon and moans, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing"? That was the look that QAL was giving me.

MYF swung into action, getting out one of her natural goat care books and reviewing the instructions for dealing with bloat. We put a half cup of olive oil into a jar, got out a new 30cc syringe (with no needle), and together headed to the barn. Somehow, with MYF straddling QAL to hold her in place (and shoo away all the other goats, who were terribly curious and wanting to get in on the action), I managed to drench all of the olive oil down the goat's throat. Then came the really fun part: trying to get QAL to run around outside, and heavily massaging her bloated belly every time she stopped. Given her bloated state, running around seemed the last thing on her mind --- and goats can be very stubborn when they make up their minds about something. Even Scooter wasn't much help in getting her to move.

We managed to get QAL to belch a few times, but weren't making too much progress. MYF sent me in the house for another half cup of olive oil, which we again drenched down the goat's throat. More belly massage. More trying to get her to run.

At least it was a really nice night to be out --- clear sky, huge canopy of stars, and comfortably warm (hey, after the winter we had, 50F feels sweltering). As we worked with the goat, alternating between running and massaging and listening for belching, MYF and I found ourselves having a fun time joking and chatting and getting caught up on what's been going on.

Finally, at midnight, we figured we'd gotten all the gas out of QAL that we were going to get out. We returned her and Scooter to the barn, double-checked that the goat gate was secure, turned out the lights, and called it a night. Back at the house, I fell into bed and went right to sleep.

This morning, before doing anything else, I headed straight to the barn to check on QAL. She looked a bit tired, and still a little on the large side, but no longer bloated. Her udder and teats looked fairly full of milk; that could be an effect of the grain, and I'm hoping it doesn't mean she's about to deliver her kids. But I may have our children put her in the stanchion and see if they can milk her out today.

There's never a dull moment on a farm. Even when you might really, really want one. Like at 11pm on St Patrick's Day.

But we still wouldn't trade this life for anything.

But Are They Socialized?

No, this isn't a post about the massive debt bill that Congress passed on Friday the Thirteenth. It's about the number one question that homeschooled parents tend to be asked. Nine times out of ten, when we tell a non-homeschooler that we're homeschooling our kids, the questioner's initial reaction is to furrow his/her brow seriously and ask, "But are they able to meet and learn to interact with other children?" (The second question is usually some variant on "Are they able to play sports?")

We have a battery of responses we've developed to reply to such questions, and my readers doubtless can add many more of their own. I won't bore you with the whole list, but a few quick ones:

1. Spending 7 hours a day in the company of 25 other people, all of whom are approximately the same age as oneself, is an extremely unnatural form of socialization that does not prepare a person for the real world;


2. By contrast, our children are making friends with and learning to interact with children from other homeschooling families --- the ages of whom range from infants to high school;


3. We don't want our children "socialized" into the prevailing youth culture that thrives in and infects even the best Catholic schools;


4. Homeschooling allows our children to go places and do things (often involving interacting with other people) that are impossible for kids in institutionalized educational environments.

Today's events provide a good illustration of this. Our church was originally a Polish parish, and still has many older parishioners who are of that ethnicity. One tradition they have is the annual "Paczki Bake," held each year before Lent. Volunteers get together in the parish hall's big kitchen, and over the course of three days and organize the ingredients, bake about 800 dozen paczki, and take orders for them. It's a huge fundraiser for the parish, and draws a large crowd of volunteers. (And, incidentally, is a big tradition in many other Polish communities.)

This morning, everything got underway after Mass. It was remarkable how many cars were in the parking lot, and how many volunteers were streaming toward the parish hall. Mrs. Yeoman Farmer and Homeschooled Farm Girl joined them, and I drove home with the two yeoman farm boys. HFG had been looking forward to this day for quite some time, as it's not just a break from the regular school routine --- it's also a chance to do something "hands on," and to spend hours working and talking with the adults and other homeschooled kids of the parish. As she explained later, I got to do something that was fun, and I got to play some, too.

And no doubt she and MYF will be back down there again tomorrow for more.