Farming in the shade

If you had told me a year ago what we would face in 2013, I might not have believed you. Here are a few highlights and lowlights, in no particular order. The barn . It stills needs the inside finished off, but we got it up and closed in. The wind storm . We still have a few trees along the road, but three of the four ancient maples that shaded our house are gone. Family loss. We lost a dear brother in law to cancer, and have struggled with change in some family relationships. A flood . A spring filled with rain caused us to plant some crops late, and not plant others at all. The end of homeschooling . We finally graduated the last of our children, which left me wondering what I want to be when I grow up. A fire . We lost a skid steer (a.k.a. bobcat), but we didn't lose a barn, or any animals. A new camera. I'm not at all good with it, treating it like it's a slightly heavier point and shoot. Our daughter is into photography, but she has...

How quickly our day's plans changed. And yet, it could have been so much worse. The Farmer went out to do chores this morning, and immediately noticed the plume of black smoke from the vicinity of the compost facility. He ran. What he found was the beginning of this. He quickly surmised that a skid steer (a.k.a. bobcat) on fire with fuel in it was more than he could handle on his own. He ran back up to the house, while dialing 911. He called to me that the skid steer was on fire, and he was going to "get the truck". He is a part-time, on-call firefighter, and the station is a mile from our farm. Good odds. Yet look at how close that skid steer was to the edge of the barn. In the meantime, I alerted my dad about the fire by phone. He was able to move the tractor out of the barn, just in case the fire spread. I alerted my in-laws by banging on their door and yelling FIRE! I grabbed one of the house fire extinguishers, and asked them to bring more. The fire exti...