Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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Things I Forgot to Tell You Guys

  • Last week M Half and I got lost in the adjacent Pine forest. (It was fairly nightmarish and a full story is coming soon.) Then this past Monday we reentered said forest to unearth an old rusty bike and take some photos of the path of our original trek. Because we’re cool. That made twice that we made it through the Pine forest alive.
  • This past Saturday I hosted eight other Oklahoma bloggers at the farm. They made a huge, lasting impression on me and, big surprise, a blog post is coming soon. I have delayed it only because I wanted to do it right. These women are wonderful.
  • A few mornings ago Mia the gander joined Handsome and me for  Hot Tub Summit. What that means is that he actually got into the very warm water with us. I was a nervous wreck because I have never literally cooked a goose before and was unclear as to the required water temperature. I mean, for an egg it can be considerably cooler than for a chicken, so… Anyway, Mia is totally fine but the hot tub needed cleaning immediately thereafter.
  • My two daughters and my nephew are stair step ages, once upon a time ages 1, 2, & 3. Now they are 14, 15, & 16. Takes my breath away. Hope is swelling, though. Please continue to pray for these three incredible young people. Thanks. xoxo
  • My mother in law recently gave me four brand new apron patterns that are begging to be cut and served with luscious scrap fabrics. I occasionally sew and sell aprons and towels and such, so if you have a hankerin to add some textiles to your kitchen, drop me a line! 
  • Our chickens are laying regularly now, which is just plain thrilling. A Vietnamese woman who came to buy a sleeper sofa from us asked if I sell them. I said no but gave her a dozen because I had refused to barter more on the price of the sofa. This totally assuaged my faint guilt.
  • To my eternal shock and awe, our fruit trees are alive. Yay!
  • Handsome and I are shopping online tonight for furniture to go in our green room, where we watch t.v. and play games if friends are here etc. This is where a relationship shows its true colors, folks. To illustrate, here is what I think we need, in duplicate:
Regarding photo source here, 
Pinterest is leading me on a wild goose chase.
The best I can summon is designer Kelly Wearstler.
Or possibly Country Living.
  • Seventeen days until the beekeeping class! Woohoo! I get to bring one person with me. Raise your hand if you’re surprised Handsome isn’t that interested in going.
  • Tomorrow is my thirty-eighth birthday. Aside from being spoiled rotten by my husband, I just feel so happy. Life has reached this glowing, vibrant, wide-view chapter. The problems we have are in pretty solid perspective, we are blessed beyond what we deserve, and our hearts are brimming with hope. 
Talk to you Guys Tomorrow!
I Might Be the Luckiest Girl Ever.
xoxoxoxo

5 Senses Tour as Spring Warms Up

   In Oklahoma, we feel like Mother Nature has most likely abandoned winter, which was wonderfully manageable this year anyway. While I am in shock that the first week of March is already here, all the excitement of early spring keeps me from doing the normal where did time go?! dance of panic and self denigration. The fruit trees and saucer magnolias are quietly budding; the daffodils are providing strong shots of neon yellow in every hidden corner; and the chickens and four leggeds are steeped in romance, if ya know what I mean. Wink-wink!
   Today is Tuesday. I have a long list of chores to finish and an even longer list of blog posts I’ve been intending to write, but only the standard number of hours in the day. So in the mean time here’s a little Five Senses Tour.
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Hearing: Wind. Strong, familiar, almost violent wind whipping us silly from every single direction, several times a minute. This is in stark contrast to the calm, idyllic days we’ve been noticing lately, but now noticing the wind isn’t a complaint. We’re really used to it. It’s how we all know we’re home. Today the wind is so strong that even the guineas have found shelter and are keeping quiet. No television, no music, no people talking here at the farm, just the clackety clack of my keyboard, the hum of the CPU, and the incredible, four corners of the globe Oklahoma wind. Wait, I also hear Mia honking for love.
How cute is this?? #OkieLove
Seeing: I am anxious to finish the book Game Change ahead of the HBO movie which airs this weekend. Also seeing all the quiet, sneaky details of early springtime all around us.
Smelling: Coconut candle given to me by Rose, clean hair, the end of my last cup of coffee, and new perfume.
Tasting: *Imaginary* fresh local honey! Yesterday I received the very happy news that we are signed up for a beekeeping class later this month! More on this when it’s not Five Senses Day, but for now, pretend with me that you have just collected honey manufactured by your own fuzzy little bees, unprocessed, raw, perfect, molten-lava honey. Bliss…
Feeling: Running and exercising in new tennis shoes rather than bare feet. Umm, yes. Weird-feeling. But I think this is a good move. Also feeling the belly button suspense that precedes a heavy storm.
Thinking: About the choices we have between hope and despair. About the power of Love and trusting Him. Romans 8:28; I Corinthians 1:23-24
Planning: To rearrange the downstairs furniture in order to welcome a new couch tonight. Also planning to clean up this cool old bicycle that M Half and I extricated from the Pine forest yesterday.
Praying: For Jocelyn and Jessica. That they continue to thrive, that they feel our love, that the gap between us closes in the right ways, at the right time.  For my sister Angela and her children. For my husband’s sister Tyrene and her family.

This was the first glimpse of a special sunset we caught over the weekend.

Yes, I know that is more than five senses. 
But it’s still far less than what 
we are able to perceive when quieted.

Live fully today.
xoxoxo

5 senses tour

Reviewing My New Manifesto

   Well, it happened again. I finished a book and am awash in mixed feelings. It reminds me of the last day of a school year when you loved your teacher so much, so deeply, that you can barely stand to say goodbye, yet the teaching is done and summer awaits. Tonight I am equal parts numb from the vigorous grooming and tingling with motivation to put this new knowledge into action.
   Studying Barbara Kingsolver’s memoir of her family’s twelve-month foray into strict locavorism has been a spiritual experience for me. No kidding. She offers us in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a literary gumbo of earth science, animal husbandry, human cultural history, religion & morality (yep, I think those are different), politics, economics, and philosophy. With a hefty dash of humor. I read it on multiple high recommendations from trusted people, and now I suppose I’m offering my own:
   Buy this book. It is an inexpensive purchase (I spent less that seven bucks on my hardback copy, albeit second hand). Don’t check it out, because I predict you’ll be marking and dog-earing and highlighting yours a lot. I sure did. One way or another, if you love food, read this wonderful book. 
   If you have the gardening sickness or a penchant for raising your own edible animals, study these pages. I found them to be endlessly inspirational this week between monotonous chores. When I thought that the wheel-barrowing of dried manure would never end and the glorious day to plant my broccoli starts would never come, much less the clipping of fragrant basil, I just sat down with a glass of water and soaked up half a chapter of the book. And my bones found the energy they needed for a few more circuits of shoveling and  bed filling. Her words helped me to visualize my summer garden.
   Even if the mission of eating locally is not that appealing to you, it’s an incredible family story and raises a plethora of tantalizing debate topics for your smarmy dinner parties. 
   And yes, I know what a plethora is.
   There are so many things I could tell you about this book. Let me just try to tempt you a little rather than  rewrite her masterpiece:
Some of the Juicy Topics That Beg Further Discussion:
  • Environmental overdraft
  • Demand side management
  • Illusion of top soil
  • Realignment with the food chain
  • Food Culture, or lack thereof
  • Knowing the provenance of your food
  • Self sufficiency as an act of patriotism, pointing back to Thomas Jefferson
  • Amish values and the beauty of boundaries
  • Agricultural agnostic
  • Xantolo
  • Culture being the property of a species, not just of the wealthy
  • Growing pizza
  • Life as a zero-sum equation (time management comment)
  • The draw to garden again and again and again, despite hardship
  • Economics of growing it yourself and the intrinsic rewards that overshadow this
  • The differences between harvesting and killing
  • The religion of time saving
  • Food Security
…And so much more. I need to find a few other people who have read this book in order to bounce some things around. Julia assures me that contacting the author would not be stalker-ish, but I have my doubts. 

How about a few quotes that glowed most brightly to my eyes?
“A lifetime is what I’m after.” Me too. Enough with the instant gratification business. We’re missing so much by rushing.
“From the ground up, everything about nourishment steadies my soul.” She spoke at length here about everything from soil preparation to harvesting and cooking from scratch for your family and friends.
“I decided my poultry patient could use a mental health day.” Amen, sister! This was from a particularly excellent chapter about heirloom turkey reproduction.
“Perfect is not the currency of farming.” Perfect is much less beautiful anyway.
“Cooking is 80% confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.” This made me cry. My girls started cooking when they could barely stand steady on a chair at the kitchen counter, and a half aprons looked like ball gowns on their beautiful, skinny little bodies.
“One of the best things gardens can teach students is respect: for themselves, for others, and the environment.” How exciting, by the way, that school systems around the country are adopting curricula that get their students dirty and happy! 
“Some things you learn by having to work around the word no.” Brilliant.
“For one thing, hogs are intelligent enough to become unharvestable.” Perhaps you have noticed a conspicuous absence of hogs at the Lazy W.
and finally…
“Nothing is more therapeutic than to walk up there 
and disappear into the yellow-green smell of the tomato rows 
for an hour to address the concerns of quieter, 
more manageable colleagues. Holding the soft, viny limbs 
as tender as babies’ wrists, I train them to their trellises, 
tidy the mulch at their feet, inhale the oxygen of their thanks.”

   Are you sighing along with me? And I promise you that Kingsolver retains her sense of wonder and poetry in every single chapter. I have never read so many cold, hard facts written this lyrically.
   Speaking of chapters, there are twenty. The story begins with some background about the family’s motivation for this journey and ends just after their year of locavorism concludes. Every chapter is an adventure, and the author shares the papery stage with her husband and teenage daughter. 

   I have to admit a smidge of relief to understand that they viewed the year long experience as a singular one, but still one that would precipitate change in their lives. I personally am just not energetic or reliable enough to be a fanatical about anything, so it grooves me to approach the ideas herein gently, with slowness and a bit of caution. In other words, the Lazy W will be supplementing our groceries more heavily this year than ever before, but I do not predict we will place a buying freeze on all things non local or inorganic.
   
   Have you read this book? Do you want to chat it up with me? Do you want to borrow my copy? Do you need some manure for your compost heap? We have plenty, so bring your shovels.
We Have a Paradise at our Disposal.
xoxoxo


Mama's Losin' It
   

I Wanna be a Prepper

   Not a Preppie, though navy blue and kelly green do make a smashing classic color combo. And HEAVEN HELP ME if a cute guy saunters by wearing his collar popped up…
   No, I think I want to be a Prepper. As in Doomsday. As in the end of the world as we know it. Have you seen this new show on natgeotv? It is our latest viewing obsession around here, ranking far above Hoarders, Animal Hoarders, and even Kitchen Nightmares. It’s that good.
   The premise, in case you don’t know, is that otherwise normal, average, functioning members of our society are convinced that the world as we know it is on the verge of collapse, for vastly different but equally devastating reasons, and they feel compelled to get ready. They accumulate food, water, firearms and ammunition, you name it. They have a whole vernacular to themselves, too, including bug-out. This seems to refer to a sudden departure. Oh, and *something* is always about to hit the fan. That’s how you know the worst has happened. It’s all about the fan. 
   Now, listen, I might get a little lippy in the privacy of my own home, gently chiding these worry warts and their extreme providing measures and questionable projections about the future of our society. I might even encourage others, in the relative privacy of Facebook, to join me in the chiding. But the truth is becoming more and more apparent, that something deep inside of me is responding to this, and not only in the chiding kind of way.
   I want to stockpile things. I want to be crammed to the gills with neatly packaged, last-forever, ready-for-anything kind of supplies. I want to have enough stuff to last us and our favorite people for several years, if only because I do love a good party.
   I want to learn how to shoot my little rifle.
   But seriously, watching a few of these television episodes in tandem with reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, wherein I am inspired to become more self sufficient and independent of the “grid,” what other  gut reaction could I possibly have?
   Becoming a Prepper will, for starters, mean establishing a space on the farm for long term storage of foods and dry goods. But we are going to do it CUTE. None of this white plastic bins stacked against the window business. We will be prepping with perhaps rough hewn pine shelving, mason jars filled with canned produce straight from our garden and topped with scraps of vintage cotton, and ridiculously tall, thick beeswax candles. And burlap. So much beautiful, tightly gathered burlap for covering up the necessary congestion of Prepping.
   In fact, to get the creative juices flowing, how ’bout we just start a Pinterest board dedicated to the Prepping arts, making sure to be both practical and attractive? Some blogger one of these days coined the term, beautility. Things can be both useful and lovely. Both beautiful and utilitarian. That’s how we’ll do better than just survive; we’ll transcend whatever disaster eventually happens by cultivating joy and beauty in addition to feeding and guarding each other.
   I really don’t want to manage this board alone! If you are interested and leave a clever enough comment, you can be an administrator on my Prepping Pinterest board too. I mean, one of the tenets of Prepping is teamwork. Community. We need to learn to lean on each other you guys!!!
   Join me. I’m a Prepper, she’s a Prepper. He’s a Prepper. Wouldn’t you like to be a Prepper too?*
Preparedness is Adorable
xoxoxo
(*thanks Brian!!!)

Obla-di-Obla-dah!

   Thanks to a writing prompt from Momma Kat, a slightly frustrated craving to see exactly how the heck I have been spending all of this abundant time and energy, and fully charged camera batteries,yesterday I decided it was time for another day-in-the-life entry. This is how Monday went for me. Prepare to be thrilled bored.

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6:15 a.m. Good morning! Coffee for me, coffee, breakfast and lunch made for Handsome, checking progress of my windowsill bean sprouts, chat, chat, chat, kiss, kiss, kiss, promise to mend a shirt, listen to the woodpeckers, cardinals, horses, and Oklahoma breezes… Dark, moody morning. Cannot even tell where the sun is, it’s so cloudy. 
These soaking lentils have finally grown tails! 
   I love that feeling of suspense before weather arrives. Wonder if I should write early this morning or move on to work first. Then I hear all at once a goose, a chicken, and the buffalo, begging for breakfast, so my choice is made for me. Work first.
7:35 a.m. Consciously choosing to pray for the girls today rather than just hope and worry. This may be easy for you, but it takes a lot of energy for me lately. It is hard, until that moment when it finally happens. Then love and relief  wash through me. 
These are wild budding branches collected during a fated hiking trip last weekend.
7:44 a.m. I release the birds, start laundry, strip sheets off of the bed, empty the fridge of leftovers to fill the chicken bowl, give Pacino some TLC, tidy up the downstairs, etc. Think to myself, Wow, two exhausted people can really do some damage to a clean house! And then I am instantly happy we were able to relax so deeply this past weekend.
Good morning Mia! 
Good morning all the other birds!

Good morning Daphne!
Behold the reason why I don’t take pictures of things while I am doing them.
Thankfully Chunk-Hi is cool with a little fluff scuffing 
to let his breakfast fall to the ground.
Our egg count has been suspiciously low this week, and I think I know why…
the hens think it is Easter and are hiding their eggs everywhere again!
Public Service Announcement, with help from the very attentive Mia:
Always, always always hang your rake out of your walkway.
Away, always, always. Not doing this is a painful, expensive mistake you guys.
8:35 a.m.  The animals are all happy for a few hours, so I attack the kitchen which was damaged by Hurricane Weekend. Scrub fridge, rotate laundry, etc.

8:52 a.m.  Discovered hay in my bra. 
9:20 a.m.  Breakfast looks good, but the milk had turned blinky. This is important news, believe it or not. The potability of milk is a real hot button topic on our home. I think milk is almost always good and fit for human consumption; my guy begs to differ. In a big way. So anytime I discover milk I won’t drink, I am pretty much obligated to announce it. This milk was baaaaad. More on that drama later tonight.
9:35 a.m. Upstairs to iron shirts for the week, add clean sheets to our bed, clean bathroom, etc, etc. 
10:50 a.m. Caught up on work for a while, I decide to have a little lunch and write. Which really means I am reading. Which means I get in the mood to write again, so I do, resulting in the hay story and some other stuff. 
1:00 p.m. Continue the laundry rodeo, check on animals, gear myself up for some scooping work.
This is horse manure and Oklahoma red dirt. 
This proved to be too heavy for one load.
It almost popped the front tire of my wheelbarrow.
This is Dusty, the girls’ horse.
He is such a sweetie, and he was
beyond-words curious about the manure removal.
Love you Dusty!
Love you Joc & Jess!
1:30 p.m. Noticing the future site of my herb garden is looking pretty spiffy, thanks to the chickens’ hard work! I take a much needed water break and head back to the raised beds.
Dreaming of a curved line of monkey grass, herbs galore, and blooming cannas…
The day lilies are convinced that spring has sprung!
The guineas had convened at one of our raised beds.
They were debating the republican Presidential bids, 
the deregulation of phone companies, and 
whether to relocate their nighttime perch based on the storm predictions.
They never once solicited my thoughts on any of these topics.
2:25 Final laundry details, cuddle with Mia, three more loads of soggy ashes from the fire pit to the garden, and a little more day dreaming and praying for the girls.
3:12 p.m. Sweep floors again (because of the hay), put away clean dishes, etc.
3:24 p.m. Extra hard cardio exercise and some stretching, toning, etc, felt GREAT after a sedentary weekend! Showered, relaxed a bit before Handsome made it home, brewed some fresh sweet tea.
5:40 p.m. Welcome home!! So good to kiss his face, listening to a few hilarious stories from the office, then greeting a family at the driveway who has come to look at an item we have for sale on Craigslist. They are a husband, a wife, and two young girls. The wife and children have taken a shine to the animals and are full of questions and willingness to feed treats, and Mia has chosen one of the little girls as his own. He climbs her, kisses her, and messes up her feathers with his muddy beak. It is magical. As they are about to leave, the family’s Ford truck keys are discovered inside their locked Ford truck. So we all watch the sun set as the husbands fiddle with that problem. At some point the mom good-naturedly blames Mia, thinking he must have delayed their departure on purpose to enjoy extra cuddles. We all agree. They eventually get it unlocked and drive away, smiling and waving. To Mia and the horses and buffalo, not to us. This happens a lot.
6:30-ish Handsome and I race back to the house from closing our front gate, I try not to wet my pants because he is chasing me screaming, and we lock up the birds for the night. Then we retreat inside for dinner, a little television, and zipping up the kitchen one last time.
8:14 p.m. Remember the blinky milk? Well, my guy, unwilling to let this go, shrouds his lactose victory in a veil of chivalry and offers to take me to the store to replace the rotten grocery item. I reluctantly agree, because this means I have admitted defeat. But seriously I might want cheerios again tomorrow, so I find a sweater and we drive to Braum’s. Where I buy a lot more than a gallon of milk. That’ll teach him!
He more or less forbids me from showing his face. 
So this is his muscular shoulder, on which I am known 
to cuddle, cry, lean, and sleep.
   Shopping at Braum’s was an event unto itself. We switched register lines three times. The nice woman who finally took our plastic money wanted lots of explanations about why we switched lines, which was difficult to provide since we had just come to terms with it ourselves. And there might have been both zombies and hidden cameras in that store. It was an odd shopping excursion. But seriously…
I firmly believe that Braum’s dairy products are superior to all others. 
And not just because I worked there in high school. 
That is my second public service announcement from yesterday.
Somewhere around 10 p.m. Handsome had drifted off to a half sleep on the couch, so I grinded up some Costa Rica coffee beans for the morning (thanks M!!) and we headed upstairs…
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   Overall it was a really productive, happy day, hemmed up with love and prayer. Feeling very blessed and hopeful. Mostly because of the fresh milk in the fridge.
Redeem your Time & be Happy
xoxoxo

Mama's Losin' It