Entering the Christmas Season

Christmas started the weekend after Thanksgiving. (Well, I had draped lights above the windows in mid-November, ... and started occasionally turning on Christmas music, but it started in full the day after Thanksgiving.) 

We put up Christmas decorations and went with most of the kids to some downtown-Logan Christmas events. (Chalk coloring, a little Christmassy famers-type market, Charlie Brown Christmas at the old theater, etc.) Ice-skaters were happily circling around the outdoor rink, a band was playing and singing Christmas songs, and about every fifth car driving along main street seemed to have a Christmas tree tied to their roof or hanging out of the bed of their truck. And I made everyone stop quickly for a group photo:

Only afterwards did I realize the sign we were happily and excitedly posing under. Haha.

We also had Anders' and Mette's first piano recital at the old Mendon Station. Lots of Christmas songs. (Somehow we've been out of music lessons for several years. Well, that's not totally true. Penny has had some voice and guitar lessons. But covid hit as our older kids were sort of outgrowing lessons anyway. And then we just got busy, and there were lots of needy tiny people demanding most of my focus, and then we moved and didn't know who or where the good teachers were anymore, ... and suddenly it had been four years. But! Summer is learning violin in orchestra now and we've stuck Mette and Anders in piano with a sweet lady in Mendon. And, while it's a bit of a pain to enforce practicing, it's nice to see [hear] kids developing musical talents again!)

Last night was our ward Christmas party. A nativity in the barn of a couple in the ward. My teenagers had been to the barn for nearly all of the last three or four youth activities--spreading straw across the floor, setting up, practicing their parts, etc. (Poor Jesse needing his inhaler and Benadryl every time!)  They assured me, when I wondered how the entire ward could fit in a barn, that that would not be an issue. And they were right! It was enormous! With hay bales set up everywhere for seating. (That alone would have been a huge task!) There was stage-style lighting, and heat, and a stable, and, of course, a camel!) A Christmas party in the Tolman's barn is a memorable thing indeed. It makes me a little sad that we will be in a different ward next year!

Mary arriving on her donkey.

Mette and Hans were across from us sitting up there somewhere where they'd clambered to join friends.

Penny in the angel choir. (Third from the left on the top row.) (I didn't know any of those girls last year! Now, thanks to girls' camp, I know every last one of them by name.)

Anders as a shepherd. (The one at the back.)

The camel!

(Note. You've rarely heard anything louder than a braying donkey in a closed barn. Haha.)

Moving on.

It took us longer than usual to get a tree, but we loaded up this morning and drove to a local tree lot. It's actually in the backyard of someone's home. It looks like the cheeriest family business you could possibly have. Trees being set up on metal stands all over the back, evergreen garlands and wreaths sold by the foot, smaller trees stuck in red buckets full of rocks, the occasional sound of a chainsaw cutting the base off of a tree, and the smell of pine everywhere. (Other trees don't have much by way of smell. Why are evergreens so wonderful? I almost had to dash back into the rows of trees just to breathe it all in one more time before we left.)

I miss getting an enormous tree like we would every other year at the Pleasant View house. (We can barely fit a tree at all in the rental.) But we will have huge ones again at the new house (maybe maybe next Christmas even ... fingers crossed), and, in the meantime, it's kind of nice to not have the lights and red beads be quite such a task! (I really need to get one of the other kids to take over that job!) Here it is--lighted up and ready for the kids to decorate just as soon as the boys get back from pounding in our official address street sign at the farm! (Another requirement before you can build. There's no house, but still, ... fun to have an official address. I suppose I could even order a package to be delivered to the farm. They could just ... drop it off by the metal signpost.)

I like that our tree ends up a hodgepodge of Mike's childhood, mine and our kids'. The red beads were the ones my mom used every year on our childhood Christmas trees. And we have little bows, red balls and knit (crocheted??) Santas, snowmen and carolers from Mike's childhood tree decorations. And of course we now have a host of ornaments we've picked up here and there and that our kids have made over the years. Fun and happy to look at a tree and feel so nostalgic.

The girls have just turned on David Tolk's Good King Wenceslas, and ... if I could just finish up the shopping (still quite a lot to do there!) and get Goldie's Christmas package mailed, it would feel like we could just read Christmas books and watch Christmas movies without a care in the world until the 25th. As it is ... there are still a fair number of cares. Ha. But good to be in the holiday season all the same!

A Herd of Two (And Oxen in the Mire)

Last Wednesday I got a text from Mike informing me of a steer butcher date scheduled for 1/8/2026. 

Later, when I shared this text with the kids, Abe commented, "1/8/26, a day of unending tears and sorrow, after which many children will likely refuse to eat their pot roast."

Haha! That is likely true, only, what was most interesting about Mike's text was that ... we had no steers!

Had being the key word, I guess, because by 6:30 that evening we did have our first herd of cattle!

Oh all right. Not a herd. 

Two. 

We had two little steers. (Which we all keep calling cows even though technically cows are girls.)

Within the next few days they managed to escape twice. (Once when the kids exuberant running and hollering to greet the new additions to the farm scared the steers so horribly that they bent and clamored frantically over a fence just to get away from our terrifying children. And once when we thought they might do all right in the big, fenced pasture [rather than in the smaller pen they were in] and they climbed through the barbed wire strands to wander to the nethermost corners of the farm.)

There is nothing that makes you feel more amateurish than driving over to check on your cattle only a few days after buying them ... only to find no cattle to speak of anywhere in sight!

It was a Sunday after church when we discovered them missing from the pasture. Eventually, after driving around and around and asking every neighbor we saw if they'd seen them, we spotted them in a low corner of the property. We went home to change out of our church clothes and returned to slowly herd them a great distance back to some stronger panels to keep them contained until they are either more used to the place ... or big enough that they can't squeeze through barbed wire!

In these distant shots you will see one or the other of us trying to guide the fellas back. It was a mixture of hemming them in from going the wrong direction while not getting so close that they panicked and ran all helter skelter anywhere they could get. Blocking them while keeping a non-threatening distance, guiding them while not scaring them into flight. 

We managed it quite well I thought. And I felt rather pleased to realize that for the first time in my life I had an ox in the mire (steer in the alfalfa field) that was ... quite literal!

It does feel like a rather momentous thing to have gone from hens and goats to cattle! We're not even joking around anymore. (Though I do still feel rather like we are pretending!)

The herding crew ready to go. (I was also part of the crew mind you.)

It was so funny when we went over to where the cows had wandered. All these horses came running (yes running) to the fence to watch. It sort of felt like they were saying, "Oh man. This is going to be good. I told you those steers were going to get it!"

Jesse stopping them from trying to cross the canal.

A tricky point when we had to get them through a gate. Mike being patient and unthreatening from behind as they waffled nervously back and forth.

Carrying some panels to a new location for the cows.

Penny not being afraid of farm work. (She says she's a city girl, but she can't really help it. The country is in her DNA.)

There's a metaphor in this smaller enclosure here seeming related to teenagers. So much freedom we were trying to give our steers in the big pasture ... if only they'd respect the few boundaries we set. Hmm.

Is it a pile of manure? Or just dirt? Does someone pile up manure? Will we someday? And if so, why? I just don't know. Yet.

Making a cozy bedding area for the stinker steers.

Fences Down and Roads Closed

We took down the rest of the barbed-wire fence along the front of the farm. We have a lot of road frontage! (About 1,100 feet! Which is nearly a quarter of a mile.) And we'd only taken down about a third of it.

This time Mike decided to give up on saving the barbed wire. Which made it go much much more quickly. It was still hauling barbed wire and pulling posts. That's no picnic (in case you were wondering). But cutting the barbed wire (rather than getting all the impossible clips and stays off of it and then rolling the entire strand) was so much faster!

Penny had a performance of her play that day, but Daisy was home for the weekend, so she and I switched off watching the little ones and helping Mike, Jesse and Anders with fencing (defencing?) at the farm. Sadly, that means I wasn't there at the same time as Daisy to take any pictures of her.

We took all the metal to a recycling place, and we gathered up all the metal stakes, but I didn't realize just how many wooden posts were left behind. Mike went back for those on another day, and it was hours (in wind and snow) of work piling wooden posts (and several 200 lb railroad ties) all onto a trailer. Poor man. But ... living his dream, so (shrug).

It's great that we got it all taken down because this very week they have finally started on the road shoulder we have to build out (the entire length of all that fencing) before the county will let us build.

How maddening that particular county requirement has been, how many calls and people we've talked to, how hard to find anyone who would get us a bid much less do the job, how shockingly much money it is costing us (that might have gone into building our home) is a tedious and discouraging story for another day. 

But! It doesn't change the excitement I feel about it finally getting out of the way! There's something oddly thrilling about trying to drive down a road only to find the entire thing closed ... because of you! (Mind you don't tell all the vehicles that have had to [and will continue to need to] detour for a week or so that it's because of us.)

You can see a couple of construction vehicles down there. I didn't even dare to drive along the road myself to see the progress (though I was incredibly tempted!). I'll need Mike with me so I don't feel like I have to answer to anyone. Still, for a thing that feels somewhat criminal for them to have made us do, it feels pretty exciting to see it happening!)