Hubby was just talking to the kiddo about her day at "farm school" (the summer program she is attending is held on a working farm) and they got on the subject of what kind of feet various animals have: hooves, paws, claws etc.
While they talked on, I suddenly had a flashback, out of nowhere. Something I hadn't thought about in probably 20 years. It was completely unsettling to recall and therefore, of course, I must share it with you.
Growing up, I was in the 4-H sheep club for almost 12 years. Our club leaders (the adults) were all sheep farmers, as you'd expect. This one lady, who was older than Methusulah and seriously old school in her ways (like Pioneer Woman or Little House on the Prairie old school), was a leader for a while. One time at our monthly meeting, we were discussing the proper ways to trim sheep hooves - it's trickier than you might think. There were lots of questions and more than a few of us confessed that we didn't do the hoof trimming ourselves, but rather let our parents or other adults do it. (I was one of that number.) She was appalled to learn that we weren't all competent hoof trimmers and proceeded to lecture us about how these were our animals and we needed to take care of all their needs, on and on she went. The next month she turned up with these large, black, Hefty lawn-n-leaf garbage bags. She dropped the bags on the floor of the living room in which we were gathered (meetings rotated to a different member's house each month) with an ominous THUD. The meeting got underway as usual, and when it got to the "anyone have any other old business?" question, she spoke up. She explained that following the previous meeting's discovery that we were all hoof trimming slouches, she wanted us to practice. She proceeded to reach down and untie the first bag, then she stuck her hand inside and pulled out a sheep's leg.
A sheep's leg. A frozen sheep's leg. She had FOUR bags full of them. All different breeds - some were longer and black (like the Suffolks we raised), others smaller and white (Dorsets or Cheviots, most likely). As we gaped in silent horror, she began passing the legs out around the room. Next, she produced a few pairs of hoof shears and waited for us to get to work. We each had to trim hooves until we'd done it to her satisfaction.
Yes, picture that for a moment, if you will - a room full of children holding squeamishly onto rapidly thawing sheep's legs. More than a few of us were grossed out, and some kids refused to touch the legs. (I cowboyed up and took on the challenge, myself. I was such a goody-goody and so wanted to ace everything that I wasn't about to let a little thing like a dead animal's severed leg get in the way of earning top marks from the club leaders...) I can only imagine what the host member's parents thought of this sight - pieces of hoof flying everywhere around their living room, the smell of thawing legs, the sight of a circle of children holding said legs...........
(Incidentally, she'd gotten the legs from the local slaughterhouse. There weren't suddenly a bunch of quadruple amputee sheep flocks in the area. She'd called the slaughterhouse and asked him to save her the legs from the Easter lambs and mutton.)
*shudder*
I kind of wish I hadn't recalled that particular memory. I think that was, hands down, the most disgusting thing I ever had to do at a 4-H meeting. I did manage to trim a hoof satisfactorily by my second leg, at least, though I don't recall ever trimming a hoof on a live sheep in all my years of sheep farming. Dad and the shearer usually took care of that when the sheep were being sheared. Thank goodness.
Aren't you glad I shared that memory with you?
Showing posts with label farm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label farm. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Skeeter, the original Kung-Fu Fightin' goat
So, it seems like my blog (complete with new, purty, gussied up look) is going to be here for a while. With this being the case, I cannot in good conscience continue to blithely blog on about this or that without sharing something with those of you who may not already be aware. This is one, simple fact: goats are evil. (Note to my fellow Beat Cats - you've read this before, I know.)
I've told you how I grew up on a working sheep farm. Well, we didn't just have sheep. We had dogs, cats, various rodents (guinea pigs, gerbils) and.......an evil goat. That goat, Skeeter, was pawned off on my family one year by some people from our church who owned her, along with a few sheep, and were moving so they had to get rid of their farm-y animals. (Side note: the weird thing was that they didn't live on a farm; they lived in a regular, old residential tract with just a slightly-larger-than-normal back yard, and they had one of those shed thingies you can buy at Home Depot or Lowes out in the back with these 5 or 6 animals. I always thought that was really weird as a kid. Still do now as an adult, actually - I can't imagine one of my neighbors with a sheep or goat, much less 5 or 6 of them, in their back yard!) What they neglected to tell us was that (a) Skeeter was eeeeevil and (b) that she was knocked up at the time. About two months later, we're driving down the driveway on our way to church on Easter Sunday when we see Skeeter standing in the barnyard, acting strange. "Hop out and see what's wrong with the goat" says Dad, so I do. Hmmmm, the problem seems to be the smaller goat coming out of her hindquarters, methinks....... A couple of hours later, Skeeter had twins, who were adorable and frisky and whatnot. Once they were old enough to be weaned, we sold them to other farms. Skeeter, nobody wanted and I think my parents didn't really want to get rid of her, anyway. Little did they know.....
Here is the first point at which we kids realized that Skeeter was evil. You see, after she gave birth to and then weaned the twins, Skeeter continued to give milk for the REST OF HER UNNATURAL LIFE. She never, EVER dried up. She confounded the vets, the ag specialists at the cooperative extension, the 4-H goat club experts. We tried EVERYTHING to get her to dry up as she should, but it never happened. So, every day for the rest of her life (which was YEARS), my sisters or I would have to milk that damn goat twice a day. We had a milking stand with a catch for her head so she couldn't get away. We'd have to first convince her to hop up onto the stand (usually with grain or some other treat), then we'd secure her head in the holder and that's when the fun began in earnest. We'd be sitting next to her back legs, milking away, and juuuuust when the bucket would be getting full, she'd kick it over, unless we serenaded her while we milked. (She'd kick us, too, by the by. She was an equal opportunity kicker.) We couldn't serenade her with just any old song, either. Oh no, The Reflex or Only the Good Die Young weren't on her playlist. We had to sing "I've Been Working on the Railroad" the entire time we were milking her, or she'd kick us and upturn the milk bucket. Ever been covered in fresh, body-temp goat milk? In the summer, when there are loads of flies buzzing about? Not fun. (Our sheep dog at the time, a Komondor named Tasha, was the one farm denizen who didn't mind Skeeter's ridiculous milk production, as she got to drink fresh goat milk every day.)
Skeeter also would let herself out of the barn whenever she darn well felt like it, as she could open doors - any door, locked or not. (Never said she wasn't smart, just that she was evil.) She'd wander off into the neighboring farm's fields to cause some damage to their current crops (they rotated corn and alfalfa, either of them being a treat to Skeeter) or worse, she'd head down the driveway to the road and block traffic. (We always hoped someone would take her out in one of these games of goat v. car chicken, but no one ever did.) Too often, we'd get a phone call from the local cops to come get our goat off of the street - we wouldn't have realized she'd gone for a stroll. There she'd be, with a line of cars honking at her and she'd be bleating and spitting back at them. That isn't to say she'd COME with us, at least not willingly. You ever try to drag an uncooperative, 160 pound goat somewhere she doesn't want to go? In front of an audience of pissed off, running late motorists? Yeah, it is as much fun as it sounds. (Incidentally, one thing those years with Skeeter were good for was practice in moving a recalcitrant preschooler. At least when the kiddo doesn't want to go somewhere and needs to be moved along, she weighs under 40 pounds, doesn't have pointy, manure-y hooves and rarely spits or bites.)
Skeeter's evil didn't stop with her wandering. One of her primary Evil Skills was the way she'd rear up on her back legs in a "kung-fu" sort of stance, spitting and bleating, and attack us if she felt like it. Like when you were trying to change the water buckets or sweep the barnyard or just exist within her presence when she didn't want company. Yes, attacked by a kung-fu goat. She'd drive us out of the barn/barnyard and once she was successful, I swear to you she'd look pleased with herself. One time when she let herself out into the driveway as I was trying to get to school for play practice, I inched forward to the point that I was practically touching her with the front of my car. That damn goat CLIMBED UP ONTO MY HOOD and dented it with a kung-fu style, double-foot stomp. Dented Bessie, my beloved Oldsmobile Delta 88. Her evil knew no bounds. She just had a bad, bad attitude. She seemed at best contemptuous of humans, and at worst as though she was acting on orders from the Goat Home Planet to terminate human existence, or at least annoy the heck out of it. I can still hear her bleating and spitting. Goat spit, ick. Goats do not have a super-long life span, but Skeeter did. She wasn't young when we inherited her, and she lived for well over a decade after she came to live with us. I was in college when she finally kicked the bucket. As the years went on, she just got more swaybacked and potbellied and hollow-cheeked - she was the goat equivalent of the Cryptkeeper in her later life. I think she just lived that long out of spite, I swear. So, like I said, goats = evil, and Skeeter = evillest of them ALL. I mean, just take a look at her - don't you see the devilish gleam in her beady eyes?
Thus ends my PSA for the day. I feel better now that the world knows about Skeeter and her ilk.
I've told you how I grew up on a working sheep farm. Well, we didn't just have sheep. We had dogs, cats, various rodents (guinea pigs, gerbils) and.......an evil goat. That goat, Skeeter, was pawned off on my family one year by some people from our church who owned her, along with a few sheep, and were moving so they had to get rid of their farm-y animals. (Side note: the weird thing was that they didn't live on a farm; they lived in a regular, old residential tract with just a slightly-larger-than-normal back yard, and they had one of those shed thingies you can buy at Home Depot or Lowes out in the back with these 5 or 6 animals. I always thought that was really weird as a kid. Still do now as an adult, actually - I can't imagine one of my neighbors with a sheep or goat, much less 5 or 6 of them, in their back yard!) What they neglected to tell us was that (a) Skeeter was eeeeevil and (b) that she was knocked up at the time. About two months later, we're driving down the driveway on our way to church on Easter Sunday when we see Skeeter standing in the barnyard, acting strange. "Hop out and see what's wrong with the goat" says Dad, so I do. Hmmmm, the problem seems to be the smaller goat coming out of her hindquarters, methinks....... A couple of hours later, Skeeter had twins, who were adorable and frisky and whatnot. Once they were old enough to be weaned, we sold them to other farms. Skeeter, nobody wanted and I think my parents didn't really want to get rid of her, anyway. Little did they know.....
Here is the first point at which we kids realized that Skeeter was evil. You see, after she gave birth to and then weaned the twins, Skeeter continued to give milk for the REST OF HER UNNATURAL LIFE. She never, EVER dried up. She confounded the vets, the ag specialists at the cooperative extension, the 4-H goat club experts. We tried EVERYTHING to get her to dry up as she should, but it never happened. So, every day for the rest of her life (which was YEARS), my sisters or I would have to milk that damn goat twice a day. We had a milking stand with a catch for her head so she couldn't get away. We'd have to first convince her to hop up onto the stand (usually with grain or some other treat), then we'd secure her head in the holder and that's when the fun began in earnest. We'd be sitting next to her back legs, milking away, and juuuuust when the bucket would be getting full, she'd kick it over, unless we serenaded her while we milked. (She'd kick us, too, by the by. She was an equal opportunity kicker.) We couldn't serenade her with just any old song, either. Oh no, The Reflex or Only the Good Die Young weren't on her playlist. We had to sing "I've Been Working on the Railroad" the entire time we were milking her, or she'd kick us and upturn the milk bucket. Ever been covered in fresh, body-temp goat milk? In the summer, when there are loads of flies buzzing about? Not fun. (Our sheep dog at the time, a Komondor named Tasha, was the one farm denizen who didn't mind Skeeter's ridiculous milk production, as she got to drink fresh goat milk every day.)
Skeeter also would let herself out of the barn whenever she darn well felt like it, as she could open doors - any door, locked or not. (Never said she wasn't smart, just that she was evil.) She'd wander off into the neighboring farm's fields to cause some damage to their current crops (they rotated corn and alfalfa, either of them being a treat to Skeeter) or worse, she'd head down the driveway to the road and block traffic. (We always hoped someone would take her out in one of these games of goat v. car chicken, but no one ever did.) Too often, we'd get a phone call from the local cops to come get our goat off of the street - we wouldn't have realized she'd gone for a stroll. There she'd be, with a line of cars honking at her and she'd be bleating and spitting back at them. That isn't to say she'd COME with us, at least not willingly. You ever try to drag an uncooperative, 160 pound goat somewhere she doesn't want to go? In front of an audience of pissed off, running late motorists? Yeah, it is as much fun as it sounds. (Incidentally, one thing those years with Skeeter were good for was practice in moving a recalcitrant preschooler. At least when the kiddo doesn't want to go somewhere and needs to be moved along, she weighs under 40 pounds, doesn't have pointy, manure-y hooves and rarely spits or bites.)
Skeeter's evil didn't stop with her wandering. One of her primary Evil Skills was the way she'd rear up on her back legs in a "kung-fu" sort of stance, spitting and bleating, and attack us if she felt like it. Like when you were trying to change the water buckets or sweep the barnyard or just exist within her presence when she didn't want company. Yes, attacked by a kung-fu goat. She'd drive us out of the barn/barnyard and once she was successful, I swear to you she'd look pleased with herself. One time when she let herself out into the driveway as I was trying to get to school for play practice, I inched forward to the point that I was practically touching her with the front of my car. That damn goat CLIMBED UP ONTO MY HOOD and dented it with a kung-fu style, double-foot stomp. Dented Bessie, my beloved Oldsmobile Delta 88. Her evil knew no bounds. She just had a bad, bad attitude. She seemed at best contemptuous of humans, and at worst as though she was acting on orders from the Goat Home Planet to terminate human existence, or at least annoy the heck out of it. I can still hear her bleating and spitting. Goat spit, ick. Goats do not have a super-long life span, but Skeeter did. She wasn't young when we inherited her, and she lived for well over a decade after she came to live with us. I was in college when she finally kicked the bucket. As the years went on, she just got more swaybacked and potbellied and hollow-cheeked - she was the goat equivalent of the Cryptkeeper in her later life. I think she just lived that long out of spite, I swear. So, like I said, goats = evil, and Skeeter = evillest of them ALL. I mean, just take a look at her - don't you see the devilish gleam in her beady eyes?
Thus ends my PSA for the day. I feel better now that the world knows about Skeeter and her ilk.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Fair fun
Despite some rottenish weather today (steady rain all morning that became spottier but still wet this afternoon), the kiddo and I kept our date to join some friends at the county fair. Now, I am a fair girl from way back. Love me some fair/carnival type action, oh yeah. Growing up on a farm, fair season was a Big Deal every summer. We'd take our sheep to show (both through 4-H and in "open" shows) at three or four fairs most summers. We happened to belong to the 4-H Sheep Club of the same county that hosted the NJ State Fair, which meant that we didn't have a separate county fair, just our county shows held earlier in the week of the State Fair each year.
During State Fair week, we pretty much lived at the fairgrounds. (I say "week" but it actually ran ten days long, and we were there for each of those ten days.) It really was a fantastic experience, at least in my "we know I was never, ever cool anyhow" opinion. We'd arrive at the fairgrounds with the first light, well before the fair opened to the general public. We'd work in the barns from morning 'til late in the night, busting ours back showing our animals all day, then wandering the midway in the evenings after the day's shows were done. Our background noise went from just the sounds of the animals waking up to the roar of the cars on the speedway in the middle of the fairgrounds all day to the concerts in the grandstand in the evenings. (The year the Charlie Daniels band played a couple of shows, my dad went nuts. We heard The Devil Went Down to Georgia several times, live, that day...) We got to know the vendors of our favorite foods (to this day, the Korean BBQ stand, the stand that sold french fries and pierogies and the lemonade/Italian ice stand are near and dear to my heart) and they'd let us cut the lines and even give us discounts or freebies every now and again. The best night of all was the night that any 4-Her could ride any ride on the midway for free. We'd go crazy that night, stuffing ourselves on funnel cake and popcorn before riding all the rides, over and over again. I'm proud to say that I was never one of the kids who barfed on 4-H night, riding the rides. I'm less proud to say that unfortunately, I was seated near kids who did a couple of times. Good thing being at the fair meant always having a change of clothes, as well as access to showers in the one restroom facility...
Besides our sheep shows - county, state and open, showmanship and market lamb, there were extra competitions too, my favorites being the Round Robin, the state Square Dancing competition, and a little something called Shepherd's Lead. Round Robin was where members of the sheep, dairy, goat and pig clubs got together and traded animals to handle in a show, with each club showing the other three animals after giving a brief demonstration on how to show their own. (Pigs were by far the hardest to manage if one wasn't experienced with the ins and outs.) I enthusiastically participated in our club's square dancing subgroup - we were called the Woolly Squares. We'd practice to a record with the calls on it out in various club member's driveways or back yards each week all summer. I always danced "as a boy" as did some of the other girls, because actual boy 4-Hers were hard to come by and ones that would square dance voluntarily, rarer still. That meant I could wear jeans and a western-style, button-down shirt - no ginormous skirt and crinoline for me, whew. One year, our set actually won the State Grand Championship, which was amazing considering how comparatively little we practiced - there were actual 4-H clubs entirely devoted to square dancing, mind you - and how lame we were. As a matter of fact, while we were not the most technically proficient or perfect that night, something the judges acknowledged, they said we had the most spirit and that made up for a lot, just because we were having fun. (And let me tell you, if you think that talking openly in your snooty, private high school in a posh part of New Jersey about square dancing competitively on your summer vacation gets you cool points, well, showing off the multi-colored, giant rosette you won as part of the championship team? That much more exponentially cooler!) Shepherd's Lead was open to sheep club members from around the state. It was, I kid you not, a combination fashion show and showmanship competition. (Showmanship is how well you handle your animal, how well the animal is trained to work with you, and how well they have been groomed - or fitted - for the competition.) Not just any old "fashion show with a sheep," mind you, but one in which you were to wear wool. In late August. You got extra credit for making your own outfit, which I did once only. It was a lovely mauve wool vest and A-line skirt, which I wore over a shiny, cream polyester blouse with really puffy sleeves. Stylin'! So, you'd get all bedecked from head to toe in wool, gussy up your sheep, and then walk the showring in your ensemble, after which you walked up to the table and had an interview/Q&A with the judges. There were prizes, and dagnabit, I never won one. Not even the year I made my own outfit. There was no Miss Congeniality for Shepherd's Lead. Humph.
So, yeah, fairs make me nostalgic. The kiddo and I have gone to the NY State Fair for the past couple of years, and we've been to the county fair before as well. I was probably as excited, if not more excited, than she was to go today. We did all the fair-y things - walked through the animal barns (lingering, as I'm prone to do, over the sheep pens) where even the smell of animals and hay was making me a wee bit misty-eyed, checking out all the cool exhibits in the main halls (the hydroponics in space exhibit was pretty cool, and the kids got to plant hydroponic sunflowers to bring home), watching the free entertainment - this year it was a show with miniature horses "wearing masks with special, big feathers!" as the kiddo told Hubby this evening at dinner, and of course eating way too much food. This year, the big indulgences for us mommies were salt potatoes and Artichokes French. These are both regional specialties, neither of which I ever ate in my childhood fair-going days. (Like I said, back then it was all about the pierogies and Korean BBQ beef on a stick.) The kids went more traditional with hot dogs and cotton candy. I drank one of the ridiculously overpriced yet somehow irresistible fresh-squeezed lemonades, too.
Sadly, the rides on the midway were ridiculously expensive - the cheapest of the kiddie rides was still $3 a kid per ride. (Even the big slide - $3 to slide down in a burlap sack once? Oy!) That's a long way from my childhood, and put a damper on the kids' fun since they couldn't ride endless rides the way they'd dreamed. Other than that, though, and the mud from all the rain, it was a great day and has left me looking forward to next month's annual trek to the Great New York State Fair!
During State Fair week, we pretty much lived at the fairgrounds. (I say "week" but it actually ran ten days long, and we were there for each of those ten days.) It really was a fantastic experience, at least in my "we know I was never, ever cool anyhow" opinion. We'd arrive at the fairgrounds with the first light, well before the fair opened to the general public. We'd work in the barns from morning 'til late in the night, busting ours back showing our animals all day, then wandering the midway in the evenings after the day's shows were done. Our background noise went from just the sounds of the animals waking up to the roar of the cars on the speedway in the middle of the fairgrounds all day to the concerts in the grandstand in the evenings. (The year the Charlie Daniels band played a couple of shows, my dad went nuts. We heard The Devil Went Down to Georgia several times, live, that day...) We got to know the vendors of our favorite foods (to this day, the Korean BBQ stand, the stand that sold french fries and pierogies and the lemonade/Italian ice stand are near and dear to my heart) and they'd let us cut the lines and even give us discounts or freebies every now and again. The best night of all was the night that any 4-Her could ride any ride on the midway for free. We'd go crazy that night, stuffing ourselves on funnel cake and popcorn before riding all the rides, over and over again. I'm proud to say that I was never one of the kids who barfed on 4-H night, riding the rides. I'm less proud to say that unfortunately, I was seated near kids who did a couple of times. Good thing being at the fair meant always having a change of clothes, as well as access to showers in the one restroom facility...
Besides our sheep shows - county, state and open, showmanship and market lamb, there were extra competitions too, my favorites being the Round Robin, the state Square Dancing competition, and a little something called Shepherd's Lead. Round Robin was where members of the sheep, dairy, goat and pig clubs got together and traded animals to handle in a show, with each club showing the other three animals after giving a brief demonstration on how to show their own. (Pigs were by far the hardest to manage if one wasn't experienced with the ins and outs.) I enthusiastically participated in our club's square dancing subgroup - we were called the Woolly Squares. We'd practice to a record with the calls on it out in various club member's driveways or back yards each week all summer. I always danced "as a boy" as did some of the other girls, because actual boy 4-Hers were hard to come by and ones that would square dance voluntarily, rarer still. That meant I could wear jeans and a western-style, button-down shirt - no ginormous skirt and crinoline for me, whew. One year, our set actually won the State Grand Championship, which was amazing considering how comparatively little we practiced - there were actual 4-H clubs entirely devoted to square dancing, mind you - and how lame we were. As a matter of fact, while we were not the most technically proficient or perfect that night, something the judges acknowledged, they said we had the most spirit and that made up for a lot, just because we were having fun. (And let me tell you, if you think that talking openly in your snooty, private high school in a posh part of New Jersey about square dancing competitively on your summer vacation gets you cool points, well, showing off the multi-colored, giant rosette you won as part of the championship team? That much more exponentially cooler!) Shepherd's Lead was open to sheep club members from around the state. It was, I kid you not, a combination fashion show and showmanship competition. (Showmanship is how well you handle your animal, how well the animal is trained to work with you, and how well they have been groomed - or fitted - for the competition.) Not just any old "fashion show with a sheep," mind you, but one in which you were to wear wool. In late August. You got extra credit for making your own outfit, which I did once only. It was a lovely mauve wool vest and A-line skirt, which I wore over a shiny, cream polyester blouse with really puffy sleeves. Stylin'! So, you'd get all bedecked from head to toe in wool, gussy up your sheep, and then walk the showring in your ensemble, after which you walked up to the table and had an interview/Q&A with the judges. There were prizes, and dagnabit, I never won one. Not even the year I made my own outfit. There was no Miss Congeniality for Shepherd's Lead. Humph.
So, yeah, fairs make me nostalgic. The kiddo and I have gone to the NY State Fair for the past couple of years, and we've been to the county fair before as well. I was probably as excited, if not more excited, than she was to go today. We did all the fair-y things - walked through the animal barns (lingering, as I'm prone to do, over the sheep pens) where even the smell of animals and hay was making me a wee bit misty-eyed, checking out all the cool exhibits in the main halls (the hydroponics in space exhibit was pretty cool, and the kids got to plant hydroponic sunflowers to bring home), watching the free entertainment - this year it was a show with miniature horses "wearing masks with special, big feathers!" as the kiddo told Hubby this evening at dinner, and of course eating way too much food. This year, the big indulgences for us mommies were salt potatoes and Artichokes French. These are both regional specialties, neither of which I ever ate in my childhood fair-going days. (Like I said, back then it was all about the pierogies and Korean BBQ beef on a stick.) The kids went more traditional with hot dogs and cotton candy. I drank one of the ridiculously overpriced yet somehow irresistible fresh-squeezed lemonades, too.
Sadly, the rides on the midway were ridiculously expensive - the cheapest of the kiddie rides was still $3 a kid per ride. (Even the big slide - $3 to slide down in a burlap sack once? Oy!) That's a long way from my childhood, and put a damper on the kids' fun since they couldn't ride endless rides the way they'd dreamed. Other than that, though, and the mud from all the rain, it was a great day and has left me looking forward to next month's annual trek to the Great New York State Fair!
Locavorish
So, there's a big upswell in the locavore movement these days. It got me to thinking that I've been a sorta-kinda locavore for most of my life. Not intentionally or consciously from a "cause" standpoint, but just from life. I mean, I was seven when my parents bought the farm (um, that'd be literally, they really bought a farm, not figuratively as in "kicked the bucket") and we ate what we grew from that point on - vegetables from the gardens, fruit from the trees (including the BEST plums EVER until the plum tree went barren, *sob*) and lamb from the barns. Lots and lots of lamb. Lamburgers, lambloaf, spaghetti and lambballs. Mom used to claim that we couldn't tell the difference between ground lamb and hamburger, but sorry, none of us ever believed that! (Let me say that I have eaten lamb exactly once in the 20 years since I graduated high school and moved away from home. Lamb isn't exactly on the menu at college cafeterias, and I have never, ever of my own volition bought, cooked, or ordered lamb in a restaurant.) My mom canned and froze things - what items we didn't grow we'd go pick our own or buy from neighboring farms, like corn and peaches - and we used to trade a lamb for a pig, so we'd get fresh meat that way too (including the Best. Bacon. EVER. Mmmm, bacon.) We also would go crabbing and fishing down the shore in the summers, and one year we were really way too successful when the bluefish are running - it took over a year to kill that bluefish supply downstairs in the basement freezer. (Like lamb, I have never and will never eat bluefish again. Unless, you know, George Clooney invited me over for dinner and served lamb and bluefish stew. Then, I might eat it.) I mean, we weren't like Little House on the Prairie with Mom churning butter and making her own Frosted Flakes for us for breakfast or anything. We shopped at the grocery store but we did eat as much local food as we could. (We did have an old-fashioned, churn-it-'til-your-arms-fell-off ice cream maker. Dad's favorite recipe for it used strawberries and oranges. It was...........interesting.)
So, flash forward a coupla decades, and I'm locavorish again. We have, as I've posted about previously, a food garden in our little, suburban back yard, as well as a berry patch. (The raspberries and blueberries are just coming in to ripeness, though I'm bummed that the blackberries I got from a fellow Freecycler have not done well with the transplanting - I don't think I'm going to get many berries off them this year. Darn.) I really love going out into the back yard and picking the food for dinner there, like last night when Hubby said "oh, we're out of lettuce" so I popped outside and brought in a freshly-picked head of Romaine that tasted deeeelicious on our bacon cheeseburgers. Oh, and that bacon and hamburger? I buy from a local butcher (almost the Best. Bacon. EVER but not quite what I recall from childhood, but still a thousand, million, zillion times better than what one can buy packaged at the supermarket). I buy all our cold cuts, cheeses and most of our other meats from the butcher. (I get chicken mainly frozen in large quantities from the warehouse club store, as well as the chicken "dinosaurs" that the kiddo prefers. She basically only will eat chicken in some sort of breaded, animal-shaped nugget form. Sigh.) During our area's growing season, I frequent the farm stands within a 5 minute drive from our house, and there I buy our fruits and veggies to supplement my itty-bitty (4 ft x 8 ft) garden. The kiddo and I also do pick-yer-own all summer/fall long - everything from apples to berries to peaches, all right around the corner from our house, fresh, cheap and delish! (Oh, and we have our own, newfangled ice cream maker too - just plug it in and your arms will thank you! We tend to make ice cream following Ben and Jerry's recipe book. Mmmm, Ben and Jerry's!)
So, without consciously trying to be a locavore, I really sort of am to a good degree. I like knowing where our food is coming from (especially when I'm picking it myself), I like knowing the pesticides that were - or weren't! - used on my food, I think fresh food tastes better and I really like that it tends to be significantly cheaper. I also feel good about supporting local farmers, having been a local farm family myself back in the day. What about you? Do you try to eat locally? If so, why? Convenience? Cost? Cause? Health/nutrition? Other reasons?
So, flash forward a coupla decades, and I'm locavorish again. We have, as I've posted about previously, a food garden in our little, suburban back yard, as well as a berry patch. (The raspberries and blueberries are just coming in to ripeness, though I'm bummed that the blackberries I got from a fellow Freecycler have not done well with the transplanting - I don't think I'm going to get many berries off them this year. Darn.) I really love going out into the back yard and picking the food for dinner there, like last night when Hubby said "oh, we're out of lettuce" so I popped outside and brought in a freshly-picked head of Romaine that tasted deeeelicious on our bacon cheeseburgers. Oh, and that bacon and hamburger? I buy from a local butcher (almost the Best. Bacon. EVER but not quite what I recall from childhood, but still a thousand, million, zillion times better than what one can buy packaged at the supermarket). I buy all our cold cuts, cheeses and most of our other meats from the butcher. (I get chicken mainly frozen in large quantities from the warehouse club store, as well as the chicken "dinosaurs" that the kiddo prefers. She basically only will eat chicken in some sort of breaded, animal-shaped nugget form. Sigh.) During our area's growing season, I frequent the farm stands within a 5 minute drive from our house, and there I buy our fruits and veggies to supplement my itty-bitty (4 ft x 8 ft) garden. The kiddo and I also do pick-yer-own all summer/fall long - everything from apples to berries to peaches, all right around the corner from our house, fresh, cheap and delish! (Oh, and we have our own, newfangled ice cream maker too - just plug it in and your arms will thank you! We tend to make ice cream following Ben and Jerry's recipe book. Mmmm, Ben and Jerry's!)
So, without consciously trying to be a locavore, I really sort of am to a good degree. I like knowing where our food is coming from (especially when I'm picking it myself), I like knowing the pesticides that were - or weren't! - used on my food, I think fresh food tastes better and I really like that it tends to be significantly cheaper. I also feel good about supporting local farmers, having been a local farm family myself back in the day. What about you? Do you try to eat locally? If so, why? Convenience? Cost? Cause? Health/nutrition? Other reasons?
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Six random things
Whee, another meme - this one from my dear friend Coco's blog...
Six Random Things About ME!
1. I can wiggle my ears. (This may not sound like much, but it has already garnered me Coolest Aunt Ever status in the eyes of my four-year-old nephew, who was quite disgusted to learn that his own mother can't do this. "But Aunt Heather can, Mom!" Hee!)
2. My feet are two different sizes, both unfortunately large. My left foot is a 10, my right foot is a 9. I generally buy size 10s and then deal with always having one shoe being a size too large. I recently read Helen Mirren's new memoir and she mentions in it that she too has two different sized feet, and mentions the first time she ever had shoes that fit both her feet, which happened after getting two different pairs - this was the year she won all the awards for playing Queen Elizabeth, so apparently I just need to get nominated for an Oscar (or at least a Golden Globe) and then I'll be able to have two matching-yet-different-size shoes brought to me, along with fabulous, couture gowns. At the very least, it is something that Dame Helen and I have in common, so that's kinda kewl.
3. I eat my food one thing at a time. Always have, ever since I was a child. I also have issues (aka another one of my things) with foods touching. I don't have a conscious pattern or plan to the order in which I eat my food, but after trying to figure out what my subconscious pattern is, I've found I generally eat the meat item last and I usually start with the vegetables, unless there's salad and then I eat that first. I must say one of the things I enjoyed when I lived in Italy (student exchange the summer before my junior year of high school) was the fact that meals were served one thing (course) at a time, even at home for plain, old, non-company, informal meals. Also, I rotate my plate so the food that I'm eating is closest to me. Yes, buffets and holidays are rather nightmarish, and yes, I'm the butt of many jokes (my uncle never fails to ask me if I want one of those plates with the dividers at Christmas dinner) because of it, but I just can't help it!!
4. I was on Jeopardy once. (March 11, 2003 to be exact.) I came in second thanks to a killer Final Jeopardy question, but Hubby was proud of me for "not betting like a girl" on the Daily Double or FJ and I don't think I embarassed myself too badly at any point. (Of the questions I answered, I only got two wrong. Not too shabby.) Even though I didn't win (cue Weird Al here), we still threw a huge viewing party - over 100 friends came, ate pizza and cake (that featured the picture below on it - no one would eat my face HEE!) and watched my 22 minutes of semi-fame. So much fun!!
5. I cannot for the life of me dance. I have zero dancing ability. I cannot, even with lessons, adequately or accurately perform any real dance steps. This was more of an issue back in school, when I longed for a career in musical theatre but dreaded (and failed miserably) each and every dance required of my part in the various school shows. The worst of the school show dances was senior year when I had to jitterbug... I still feel the need to apologize to the unlucky boys who had to suffer through being my partner back then. Nowadays, my public dancing opportunities are much more limited, and it's a good thing, too. The Electric Slide? I'll invariably wind up facing the wrong direction. Forget anything more complicated than that. I did briefly master the Macarena (the year it came out and was all the rage, several of our friends had weddings, so I had the opportunity to see it, if not do it, on a pretty regular basis) but even that has left me. Just about the only dance I can do is the Hokey Pokey - I even manage to screw up the Chicken Dance. Yes, I am that stereotypical Rhythmically Challenged White Person. I'm not quite as bad as Elaine Benis, however...
6. I know how to dock tails and perform castrations, and I've done both many times in my life. (To lambs, folks, let's not let imaginations run wild here...) I actually know multiple methods for properly castrating and docking tails. When I was in fourth grade, we had a public speaking assignment for which we were to do a five minute presentation on a topic that would be "different, interesting and educational" for our classmates. When I mentioned this assignment at dinner that night, my father (he of the perennial jokester personality) suggested I do docking and castration, pointing out it wasn't something anyone else in my class was likely to know much about. (True enough - the only other kid in my class who lived on a farm was a boy named Dale, and his family just kept chickens - no docking or castration required there.) Unfortunately for my future chances at popularity, I took Dad seriously and duly created my five minute presentation on just that subject, complete with illustrated diagrams drawn carefully on large sheets of OakTag, and memorized my speech. The morning of the presentation, I asked my mother if I could take our elastrator to school as a prop. It was then my parents realized what my topic was, and this was not the most opportune time to learn Dad had been kidding. It was too late to change subjects at this point, and I was darn proud of the effort I'd put into it and insisted I wasn't redoing anything. So, I sealed my fate as Weirdo Nerd Girl by confidently and loudly describing the various methods of docking and castration, with color diagrams and props. No one had a single question for me (I'm sure if we'd been in junior or senior high, they would've come up with something), but the teacher, who had left the room and returned with a few other teachers specifically to watch my presentation, could barely stifle her laughter. She was crying from the effort of not laughing. Thank goodness this was before the digital video, camera phone and YouTube era. I did, later that year, do the same presentation to fulfill an annual requirement for my 4-H club, and no one - not a child or adult - found my topic the least bit funny then. It seriously was several years later before I realized the true extent of what I'd done that day. Obliviousness and innocence saved me on that actual day in 4th grade, but retroactively, I was horrified!
Six Random Things About ME!
1. I can wiggle my ears. (This may not sound like much, but it has already garnered me Coolest Aunt Ever status in the eyes of my four-year-old nephew, who was quite disgusted to learn that his own mother can't do this. "But Aunt Heather can, Mom!" Hee!)
2. My feet are two different sizes, both unfortunately large. My left foot is a 10, my right foot is a 9. I generally buy size 10s and then deal with always having one shoe being a size too large. I recently read Helen Mirren's new memoir and she mentions in it that she too has two different sized feet, and mentions the first time she ever had shoes that fit both her feet, which happened after getting two different pairs - this was the year she won all the awards for playing Queen Elizabeth, so apparently I just need to get nominated for an Oscar (or at least a Golden Globe) and then I'll be able to have two matching-yet-different-size shoes brought to me, along with fabulous, couture gowns. At the very least, it is something that Dame Helen and I have in common, so that's kinda kewl.
3. I eat my food one thing at a time. Always have, ever since I was a child. I also have issues (aka another one of my things) with foods touching. I don't have a conscious pattern or plan to the order in which I eat my food, but after trying to figure out what my subconscious pattern is, I've found I generally eat the meat item last and I usually start with the vegetables, unless there's salad and then I eat that first. I must say one of the things I enjoyed when I lived in Italy (student exchange the summer before my junior year of high school) was the fact that meals were served one thing (course) at a time, even at home for plain, old, non-company, informal meals. Also, I rotate my plate so the food that I'm eating is closest to me. Yes, buffets and holidays are rather nightmarish, and yes, I'm the butt of many jokes (my uncle never fails to ask me if I want one of those plates with the dividers at Christmas dinner) because of it, but I just can't help it!!
4. I was on Jeopardy once. (March 11, 2003 to be exact.) I came in second thanks to a killer Final Jeopardy question, but Hubby was proud of me for "not betting like a girl" on the Daily Double or FJ and I don't think I embarassed myself too badly at any point. (Of the questions I answered, I only got two wrong. Not too shabby.) Even though I didn't win (cue Weird Al here), we still threw a huge viewing party - over 100 friends came, ate pizza and cake (that featured the picture below on it - no one would eat my face HEE!) and watched my 22 minutes of semi-fame. So much fun!!
5. I cannot for the life of me dance. I have zero dancing ability. I cannot, even with lessons, adequately or accurately perform any real dance steps. This was more of an issue back in school, when I longed for a career in musical theatre but dreaded (and failed miserably) each and every dance required of my part in the various school shows. The worst of the school show dances was senior year when I had to jitterbug... I still feel the need to apologize to the unlucky boys who had to suffer through being my partner back then. Nowadays, my public dancing opportunities are much more limited, and it's a good thing, too. The Electric Slide? I'll invariably wind up facing the wrong direction. Forget anything more complicated than that. I did briefly master the Macarena (the year it came out and was all the rage, several of our friends had weddings, so I had the opportunity to see it, if not do it, on a pretty regular basis) but even that has left me. Just about the only dance I can do is the Hokey Pokey - I even manage to screw up the Chicken Dance. Yes, I am that stereotypical Rhythmically Challenged White Person. I'm not quite as bad as Elaine Benis, however...6. I know how to dock tails and perform castrations, and I've done both many times in my life. (To lambs, folks, let's not let imaginations run wild here...) I actually know multiple methods for properly castrating and docking tails. When I was in fourth grade, we had a public speaking assignment for which we were to do a five minute presentation on a topic that would be "different, interesting and educational" for our classmates. When I mentioned this assignment at dinner that night, my father (he of the perennial jokester personality) suggested I do docking and castration, pointing out it wasn't something anyone else in my class was likely to know much about. (True enough - the only other kid in my class who lived on a farm was a boy named Dale, and his family just kept chickens - no docking or castration required there.) Unfortunately for my future chances at popularity, I took Dad seriously and duly created my five minute presentation on just that subject, complete with illustrated diagrams drawn carefully on large sheets of OakTag, and memorized my speech. The morning of the presentation, I asked my mother if I could take our elastrator to school as a prop. It was then my parents realized what my topic was, and this was not the most opportune time to learn Dad had been kidding. It was too late to change subjects at this point, and I was darn proud of the effort I'd put into it and insisted I wasn't redoing anything. So, I sealed my fate as Weirdo Nerd Girl by confidently and loudly describing the various methods of docking and castration, with color diagrams and props. No one had a single question for me (I'm sure if we'd been in junior or senior high, they would've come up with something), but the teacher, who had left the room and returned with a few other teachers specifically to watch my presentation, could barely stifle her laughter. She was crying from the effort of not laughing. Thank goodness this was before the digital video, camera phone and YouTube era. I did, later that year, do the same presentation to fulfill an annual requirement for my 4-H club, and no one - not a child or adult - found my topic the least bit funny then. It seriously was several years later before I realized the true extent of what I'd done that day. Obliviousness and innocence saved me on that actual day in 4th grade, but retroactively, I was horrified!
So there you go. Six random things about me. Feel free to join in the fun, either in the comments section here or on your own blog, and please link back if you do!
(Oh and in non-random things about me related news, the kiddo is doing much better. No more vomiting, no more fever, enough antibiotic in her that school looks like a probability for tomorrow.)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Five Scents Challenge
My good friend Andy issued this challenge on her blog, so here goes my first official blog meme!
You are walking down the street when you get a whiff of something. It's a nice smell, but you can't immediately figure out what it is. You close your eyes and inhale deeply. All of a sudden you are overcome with a feeling of happiness and a sense of contentedness washes over you. The scent conjures up a wonderful memory that you haven't thought of in years. And that sense of inner peace stays with you throughout the day, and each time you close your eyes and think about it you can "smell" the scent again.
Here are my five scents:
Play-Doh. Man, one whiff of a just-opened can of fresh Play-Doh and I'm a kid all over again.
While not quite Andy's "horse manure" specifically, the smell of a barn on a working farm. That mixture of hay, straw, the sweetness of the grain, the undertone of fertilizers and lime and yes, a note or two of manure... We visited a local farm with the kiddo over the weekend, and as we approached the first barn, I caught a whiff of the smell and while others wrinkled their noses, I breathed in deeply because it took me right back to growing up on the farm. (Yes, I'm blocking out the memories of pitching manure, lugging water buckets and being up in the wee hours of a frozen winter's morning during lambing season...)
Certain brands of sunscreen. One sniff of them and I'm down the shore with my family on summer vacation. It isn't mere coincidence that the sunscreen brand I buy most often to use on the kiddo has the "right" smell.
This one might sound weird, but the smell of a New York City sidewalk in winter. I'm not talking eau de bum or anything, but more the smell of a hot chestnuts vendor's cart and hot chocolate mixed with yes, some exhaust fumes and also of snow in the air. It reminds me of going into the city with my family at Christmastime to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and go skating at Rockefeller Center.
That almost undefinable new baby smell. It's the smell that can be mostly forgotten, then you find yourself holding a new baby and bang, there it is again. I rediscovered this one last week when I was holding three week old baby Josie... How does one quantify that smell? A mix of baby soap, possibly powder, maybe a dash of Desitin... it is just that smell that says "new baby" (minus the spit up and poop, of course). I'm sure that there is something primal to it because when I smell it, I am overwhelmed by the urge to care for and snuggle up to the baby providing the scent!
Okay, there are my five. Care to share yours? Please do either in the comments section or on your own blog - please link back so we know where to read your answers!
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Spring Break, preschool-style
Today is the last day of the kiddo's Spring Break (all the area schools have the same week off for break, I do believe). Our week off started out with the kiddo suffering from the stomach bug that has been going around, so not exactly the best start, what with the barfing and all. However, by midweek she was back in form and we could take advantage of the ridiculously gorgeous weather we've been having. (Seriously, highs in the 70s to upper 80s is unheard of 'round here - the year before last we were still having SNOW this same week!) We hit the playground at our favorite park a few times, did the zoo with some friends, visited our favorite local farm (where the week old lambs were giving me major flashbacks), played in the yard, did some actual yardwork - Hubby and the kiddo even got all the deck furniture scrubbed down and set up, so we had lunch outside yesterday afternoon - and capped off the week with our first trip to the gardening store, where we purchased many seeds, all from the kiddo's carefully written and illustrated list. This afternoon, we started many, many seeds... sunflowers, pumpkins, watermelons, cukes, green beans, sugar snap peas, corn, romaine lettuce and spinach. With any luck, this warm weather will hold and we'll have seedlings ready to go into the ground in a month to six weeks... The kiddo also spent a day at her best friends' house while I drove down to Meadville, PA, and spent the day with one of my oldest friends (as in longest-time - we've been friends since freshman year of high school, so 23 years and counting!) and her brand-spankin'-new baby girl, who was born 5 weeks early just like the kiddo was back in the day. It was strange to be holding such a peanut of a babe and to think that there was a time when the kiddo herself was even smaller than that! Baby Josie is cute as a button and I had a great time getting my newborn baby fix in and visiting with my friend and her husband.
Tomorrow morning, we return to business as usual. The kiddo is back to school and I'm heading back to the gym, which hopefully won't be too crowded now that break week is over and the weather is nice. We have been getting up pretty much at our usual time over the past week, so there shouldn't be any grumpy kids or moms here in the morning, but we will have to get out of our jammies a bit earlier than we have been!
Oh, and on the birthday party front, thanks for the suggestions! I discovered last week that we *do* know some people who live in the same town as the park we love and who are willing to make the reservation for us, so that will save us some serious cash. That puts the "renting a park pavilion" plan at the top of the current list, but the downside there is that if it rains, we're kinda screwed. So far, there's only been one rainy birthday so I'm a bit afraid we'll be tempting fate by scheduling a mostly-outdoors party. Stay tuned for further developments.......
Tomorrow morning, we return to business as usual. The kiddo is back to school and I'm heading back to the gym, which hopefully won't be too crowded now that break week is over and the weather is nice. We have been getting up pretty much at our usual time over the past week, so there shouldn't be any grumpy kids or moms here in the morning, but we will have to get out of our jammies a bit earlier than we have been!
Oh, and on the birthday party front, thanks for the suggestions! I discovered last week that we *do* know some people who live in the same town as the park we love and who are willing to make the reservation for us, so that will save us some serious cash. That puts the "renting a park pavilion" plan at the top of the current list, but the downside there is that if it rains, we're kinda screwed. So far, there's only been one rainy birthday so I'm a bit afraid we'll be tempting fate by scheduling a mostly-outdoors party. Stay tuned for further developments.......
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
April Fools' Day
My dad is a master jokester. Seriously, I could go on for pages about the various jokes and pranks he pulled. One that comes to mind every April 1st, however, is the one I'm going to relate now. It was the best April Fools' joke I've ever had pulled on me personally, and one of the best I've ever heard of anywhere else.
It was the year that I was 13 years old. Dad hadn't tried anything yet all day, which was unusual because he was typically good for at least a mini-prank before we left for school. By evening, we'd mostly forgotten about April Fools' and were going through the motions of a quite mundane day. Mom and Dad decided that we'd get pizza for dinner, which was a huge treat back then. Any take-out food was rare in our house, and certainly something to be celebrated. Mom called in the order to our local pizzeria (which we supplied with tomatoes for a few summers when Mom and Dad's gardening got way out of hand and we had an entire, large plot dedicated to tomatoes and cucumbers) and after the 20 minutes were up, Dad headed out to get the 'za. As he pulled back up our very long driveway, he was honking the horn of the truck. This wasn't an entirely unusual occurrence, as we had all manner of cats and dogs as well as a goat that used to let herself out of the barn whenever she darn well pleased, and various combinations of these critters would often hang out in the middle of the driveway, blocking traffic from going any further. (I once, in later years, came with an inch of pancaking that dang goat as we played Chicken with her goaty, swaybacked, saggy body and my beloved Oldsmobile Delta 88. I kept creeping forward, inch by inch, as she stood firm, bleating and spitting at my car. Oh, Skeeter...) The honking did serve to draw our attention to the kitchen door, though, so my sisters, mother and I were all gathered in the kitchen as Dad came in bearing three pizza boxes aloft.
Now, the fact that he had THREE pizza boxes should've tipped us off, as we normally only ever ordered one or at the most two pies. Maybe my mom realized something was up, but before any of us had time to process anything, BAMMO! Dad tripped on the doorstep and landed smack dab on his face and on the pizza boxes, now instantly crushed beneath his chest. There was one eternal second of horrified silence, then the wail went up: "OUR PIZZAAAAAAAAA!" Our faces fell as low as Dad, prone on the floor, pizza boxes squished flat as could be. I think my mom may've asked whether he was okay, but for us girls, it was all about the food. That made the moment even sweeter for Dad, as he groaned and slooooowly got up, shaking his head and saying "well, I guess there won't be any pizza for dinner tonight after all." I believe at least one of us kids was in tears at this point, and we were all equally devastated at the thought of no delicious, cheesy pizza - any alternative menu just couldn't be as tasty and might well include *shudder* lamb, as we had a freezer full of previous barn occupants ever at the ready. We begged him to check and see if there was any slice left that could be salvaged, when he sprang it on us - "APRIL FOOLS'!!!!!!" He opened the boxes to show us that they were empty, while the real pizza was waiting out in the truck. He'd convinced Phil, the pizzeria owner, to give him a few empty boxes so he could prank us, and oh yeah, he got us good that year.
The kiddo is a little on the young side for April Fooling, but that isn't going to stop me from trying to come up with something we can do to Daddy when he gets home from work tonight. I have a few ideas, all of which I think would make Grandpa proud. Shhhh, don't tell him we're plotting, and happy April Fools' Day!
It was the year that I was 13 years old. Dad hadn't tried anything yet all day, which was unusual because he was typically good for at least a mini-prank before we left for school. By evening, we'd mostly forgotten about April Fools' and were going through the motions of a quite mundane day. Mom and Dad decided that we'd get pizza for dinner, which was a huge treat back then. Any take-out food was rare in our house, and certainly something to be celebrated. Mom called in the order to our local pizzeria (which we supplied with tomatoes for a few summers when Mom and Dad's gardening got way out of hand and we had an entire, large plot dedicated to tomatoes and cucumbers) and after the 20 minutes were up, Dad headed out to get the 'za. As he pulled back up our very long driveway, he was honking the horn of the truck. This wasn't an entirely unusual occurrence, as we had all manner of cats and dogs as well as a goat that used to let herself out of the barn whenever she darn well pleased, and various combinations of these critters would often hang out in the middle of the driveway, blocking traffic from going any further. (I once, in later years, came with an inch of pancaking that dang goat as we played Chicken with her goaty, swaybacked, saggy body and my beloved Oldsmobile Delta 88. I kept creeping forward, inch by inch, as she stood firm, bleating and spitting at my car. Oh, Skeeter...) The honking did serve to draw our attention to the kitchen door, though, so my sisters, mother and I were all gathered in the kitchen as Dad came in bearing three pizza boxes aloft.
Now, the fact that he had THREE pizza boxes should've tipped us off, as we normally only ever ordered one or at the most two pies. Maybe my mom realized something was up, but before any of us had time to process anything, BAMMO! Dad tripped on the doorstep and landed smack dab on his face and on the pizza boxes, now instantly crushed beneath his chest. There was one eternal second of horrified silence, then the wail went up: "OUR PIZZAAAAAAAAA!" Our faces fell as low as Dad, prone on the floor, pizza boxes squished flat as could be. I think my mom may've asked whether he was okay, but for us girls, it was all about the food. That made the moment even sweeter for Dad, as he groaned and slooooowly got up, shaking his head and saying "well, I guess there won't be any pizza for dinner tonight after all." I believe at least one of us kids was in tears at this point, and we were all equally devastated at the thought of no delicious, cheesy pizza - any alternative menu just couldn't be as tasty and might well include *shudder* lamb, as we had a freezer full of previous barn occupants ever at the ready. We begged him to check and see if there was any slice left that could be salvaged, when he sprang it on us - "APRIL FOOLS'!!!!!!" He opened the boxes to show us that they were empty, while the real pizza was waiting out in the truck. He'd convinced Phil, the pizzeria owner, to give him a few empty boxes so he could prank us, and oh yeah, he got us good that year.
The kiddo is a little on the young side for April Fooling, but that isn't going to stop me from trying to come up with something we can do to Daddy when he gets home from work tonight. I have a few ideas, all of which I think would make Grandpa proud. Shhhh, don't tell him we're plotting, and happy April Fools' Day!
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