Not Your Typical Vacation

Who has time to sit down and write anymore?!  Not me.  My mornings begin just as the sun is coming up.  This is not by choice.  I actually wouldn't mind sleeping in a bit, but the puppies, who are now 3 months old, tell me, through their yipping and yapping, it's time to wake up.  I am the only one with ears to hear them apparently.  Everyone else sleeps through it all.  This starts the chickens clucking and then the older dog starts his wake up noises.  It's enough to drive a person crazy.  But, because I am the only one unable to sleep through it all, I have to get up.  I am praying all these dogs will sell soon!

We will be animal-less soon, we think.  We still have one cow, who will be leaving soon for the freezer.  Next, it's the chickens.  We love our chickens, but the eggs they lay are being eaten by the dreaded rats.  We're going to get rid of the chickens we think for a bit, get rid of the rat population, and then re-start maybe next spring.  We have one litter of kittens right now, leaving in a few weeks, and then hopefully the puppies any day.  After that, we're going to take an animal breather and focus on all the other things going on at the farm.

This past week was my husband's week off.  But, it was hardly a week off.  He started by heading out to meet my nearly 17 year old in Alberta.  He was there checking out a flight school as my son's career path has taken a complete switch-o-change-o and he's thinking "pilot" now.  It was a neat opportunity as it was the very school my mom and uncle attended when they were in boarding school/high school.  It now offers a missionary aviation program and that was what he was there to see.  During the flight camp he got to fly 5 times (with an instructor) and I think it is safe to say, he loved it.  Now, to decide if it is the school for him.  It is very pricey so we are not ruling out any options yet.

Upon returning, the weather was hot and dry and that makes for perfect haying weather.  So even though he would have liked to just relax, he jumped on a tractor and baled over 600 bales this past week in the killer heat.  In the middle of all that he found time to get 5 acres and nearly 6000 vines planted in our field.  Not your average vacation.

Fortunately we didn't have to plant the vines ourselves.  He hired that out, but we had to do all the watering of each individual plant.  That was a lot of work.  These first few days after getting them in are like the first few days of a newborn's life - super critical.  If they don't get the water they need, they won't make it.  So my husband would drive the tractor that was pulling a tank of water.  Then two of my kids would each hold a nozzle/hose and water each plant one by one.  This was very time consuming as they had to keep going back and forth to fill up the tank.

But it makes us very excited as we've been planning this for a long time and it is hard to believe it's actually happening.  It ups the value of our land instantly.  It's definitely an investment for the future, both for ourselves and our children.  Each year now we plan on putting in a few more acres, ultimately replacing most of the hay fields.  It certainly doesn't look like a vineyard yet, but each year they will grow higher and higher and by the 3rd year, we should be producing grapes.  Even though it seems like such a long time to wait for the benefits of planting a vineyard, we figure either way the time is going to pass, so we may as well invest our time and do something with our land.  We see how quickly time goes.

It was another great project to have our kids involved in.  Last night I told the kids how every plant they water isn't their dad's plant, but THEIR plants.  They are helping us for sure, but I wanted them to know they are not just helping my husband and I in our retirement, but they are helping their own retirement.  I certainly wasn't thinking about retirement at their age.  Yet, it will creep up on them, too, one day.

We'll see if I get to write more this summer or if it will remain tricky....for now...I write when I can.