The farm

Last week one of the ladies that I work with needed a ride home. She lives 20+ miles from Madison on a farm. She asked if I would give her a ride and, of coarse, I said yes.

I told her it would be fun because we could see her animals and the kids would enjoy it. She said "OH! We have 2 new baby lambs...but I'm not sure if they're still alive. Don't you think someone would have told me if they were dead?" To even appreciate that statement you would have to know this lady.

Some of you local people will know who this woman is. She's one of the nicest people I know. She and I instantly clicked. Thankfully Linda knows her and told me a bit of her background before I started working at the salon. Seven years ago this woman's husband was killed in a farming accident. Someone accidentally ran him over. This was her 2nd marriage, and his family, at his death, treated her like an outsider.

A year later, one of her children, her oldest daughter, was killed in a car accident. Can you even believe that? That's too much for one person. She said she went off the deep end - she drank too much and decided to raise sheep. Thankfully, family and friends cared for her other 4 children, because she was just mentally unable. Anyway, she's just a sweet and kind person and always fun to be around.

She was going to work until at least 5:30 on Friday, so I went and got the kids from Tracy's and told them about our trip to the farm. The kids were excited. They wanted to know what kind of animals would be at the 'barn'. Then, apparently, I made the mistake of saying 'we're going to run through McDonald's, go get our friend, and go to her house'. Natey freaked out and got tears in his eyes. "YOU SAID WE COULD GO TO HER FARM!!!" he said. Wow! Step back, Cowboy. "We are going to her farm" I said. I didn't realize that I'd said house when I SHOULD have said farm. My mistake. (You better believe I'm rolling my eyes.)

We had a fun time and I realized that my children are indeed city folk. They were scared of the dogs. They were scared of the sheep. They were scared of the calf. Ok, so the calf has a tongue a mile long and tried to lick them because he thought they were going to bottle feed him. Still, get over it city children. He's in a pen! They were scared of the donkey. But! They weren't scared of the chicks. Yeah, they weren't scared of those freaky little chicks that ran around the coop like they had a destination in mind. They freaked me the heck out.

Here are some pictures of the farm. By the way, Claire was very disappointed that they didn't have a pig. I'm sure she would have been terrified of it, but nonetheless she let my friend know of her disappointment. Oh right! There were horses too, but we didn't get out of the van to see them. Enjoy the farm!