The farm life of a single mother, by Melissa.

With most of our belongings in storage, we headed to Escalante towing a gigantic snow mobile trailer full of stuff. Wait, what? How is it possible that we have so much stuff?? We have things spread all over town in every storage space we can commandeer. Yet still, I ended up pulling up to the farm house with my in-law's trailer full of stuff. Luckily the trailer also came with in-laws to help me unload it, then I spent the next few weeks settling in to the new crib with some help from my folks while Travis was on the water.

We had already come down a few weeks before to get a few things in order. We plowed and tilled the garden space after I went crazy on the entire weed patch with a blowtorch (which felt quite powerful, but left me very smokey by the end of the project). Grandma and the girls helped me prepare the bed for planting and Travis found us a truck full of turkey $h!t to give us those extra nutrients and flavors. Then we planted plants and seeds. All that remained was a sprinkler, a timer, and some prayers. Weeks later we showed up to a lot of weeds. When the weeds were cleared, a garden appeared!! I must have a little bit of Grandma June making my thumb greenish.

I quickly found growing food to be a lot of fun, but growing weeds...not so much. At first the girls found it to be an exciting adventure to go help mom pick weeds, but that faded quickly as you can expect. My mom gave me some good advice to weed one row a day, which worked really well...for about a week. Towards the end, I decided that the weeds just gave the place character. I could still get to the food and things were still growing.

Next year I will learn how to use everything from the garden. I spent most of harvest time threatening people to come and pick stuff. The old ladies across the street were easily convinced that if they would just cooperate and eat my veggies, then we wouldn't have any trouble. Now if Grandma June could only help me can and preserve everything next time...

We quickly grew accustomed to small town living on a farm. We got chickens, which the girls named Snowflake, Oreo, Rosie, Bandit, and Mangy, and the girls proved to be pretty amazing chicken catchers. They would let the chickens out then spend the next half hour chasing them through the pasture and around in the barn until they caught them all. Repeat. I am not sure what Clover's technique was, but she would be out in the coop for a long time and more than a few times I would find her with a chicken just laying in her lap. Each time I would check to see if the chicken was alive because this was not normal behavior. When asked what she was doing she would give cryptic clues like, “ I wasn't holding the chicken by it's tail, mama” and “chickens like to be upside down.” Still, the chickens stuck around and seemed happy to have the girls hang with them and maul them.

The cows are another story. Travis has determined that cows are the dumbest animal to walk the earth, but I thought the cows were entertaining. We had two mostly grown calves that were very curious and playful. Someone in town owned them and we let them graze in our field. If you were in the pasture, they had to be in your business. I spent 15 minutes thoroughly entertained by the interaction between my dad and the cows. He was trying to burn some branches and the cows would not leave him alone. They took his newspaper out of his hand and ate it, then tried for his hat. After a while my dad gave up and sat in a chair he had brought out, only to have the cows surround him with their faces right in his.

Pioneer Day Parade

Tour of Utah

Lola pedals on her own!

We had a lot of fun living the small town life. We met some great friends who welcomed us right into the community and we had some great adventures: swimming in the reservoir, hiking in the desert, playing at calf creek, and living the dream in one of the best little towns ever. I am hoping it will work out to go back again next summer. We were just getting settled in when our time ended, plus I don't want to have to move all that stuff again!!