Cows

My neighbor, Ramone, has owned the property next to me since the early 60's. Ramone worked for the railroad and lived in town for many years, but he kept cattle out on his land and about twenty years ago he finally built a house out here. When he was in his 30's he built the fence around his pasture from trees he cut down along the river bank.
Over the years the fence has begun to sink and sag and fall and sway and break and crumble and, well, deteriorate.

Ramone has an interesting way of mending fences.

He uses whatever he has on hand. He has a lot of orange bailing twine on hand.

He also has boards and poles and odd scraps of metal and blocks of concrete and broken gates and a Volkswagen Van. All these things are crucial to his fence mending.


But, no matter how much orange bailing twine Ramone ties on the bits of wire that he calls a fence....



his cows manage to get out everyday. At least four cows are in my yard all day. It used to startle me to walk out and see these beasts grazing on my lawn.


But, now I just look at them and they look at me. I try to move them to areas where I'd like a little grass trimming done.


But, they don't listen me. So, eventually Preacher, my dog, and I walk them back into the pasture, over the orange bailing twine and around the Volkswagen Van and through the bits of wire and poles and concrete blocks. The cows look at me and I look at them and we say, "Okay, same time tomorrow? Yep, see ya tomorrow."

Beer Flats and Tomatoes

My darling neighbors, Ramone and Virginia, are both octogenarians. Ramone is starting to show his age, a few years ago he fell off his roof and hurt himself pretty badly, now he struggles to walk around. But, Virginia, she makes me look like a sloth stuck in a tar pit. That woman gets up at the crack of dawn, hangs out her laundry, goes for a walk and then she gets her day started.

For 25 years Virginia owned a liquor store in our downtown area. She ran the place herself until she got tired of fussing with the kids that would run in and steal a can of beer. She sold the business at the tender age of 73.

She keeps in contact with the new owners because she still owns the building. She's a landlord for crying out loud!

I was over talking to her and Ramone a couple of days ago as they sat on their side porch enjoying the warm sun. Our conversations usually tend to vacillate between what's growing in the garden, the kids and all the animals. I told Virginia that I had an abundance of large green tomatoes hanging in my garden. Then she asked me if I had any beer flats. Beer flats?

Yesterday, as I was lounging around in my pj's talking on the phone Virginia knocked on my door. I sprinted upstairs to put some clothes on and then ran outside trying to act like I had been up for hours, cleaned my house, cooked twelve meals and given birth. But, I don't think she was buying it.

In the back seat of her car she had beer flats to give to me. She had stopped by her old liquor store and asked for some on her way to quilting with the ladies. She told me to wrap my tomatoes in newspaper and lay them in the beer flats then store them in the basement. The tomatoes will ripen slowly and I should have fresh tomatoes all winter. I love Virginia, maybe someday I'll have a smidgen of her energy.

Now, all I need is some newspaper.

Neighborhood Competition

Ramone and Virginia are my neighbors. Ramone just celebrated his 88th birthday and Virginia is a young and vibrant 86 year old. Virginia amazes me. She gets up every morning and takes a walk with my dog, Preacher. Then she hangs her laundry out on the line. 

Since seeing her laundry swaying in the morning breeze it has been my soul's desire to get my laundry out before her. I don't know why, I just wanted to beat that old gal to the clothes line!
But, dang!  She gets up so stinkin' early and I uh, well, um, I don't.  But, a few mornings ago, I couldn't sleep and got tired of fighting the covers so I drug my bodaciousness out of bed and hung out the laundry.  When I looked over at Virginia's line it was empty.  YES!  Finally, I beat her.
When she did come out this is what she put out on the line.  Four things.  Which probably meant she didn't have any other laundry.  And I was just getting started.  An hour later she came out took down her meager load and I was left standing with another ginormous basket of wet clothes to hang out.  Load after load all day long.  My enthusiasm for defeating her dissipated quickly.
You know what else Virginia has?  A propane tank.  Not just a propane tank, but a propane tank painted like a cow.  And she has an old fashioned water pump there in the background.  She fills her bird bath with it.  How stinkin' cute is that?!
And this.  The kissing tractors.  I want kissing tractors!  Why don't I have kissing tractors?  Shouldn't every homestead have these love birds sitting out in a field?  Yes, I think so.  At least I get to look at them through my dining room window.

These are the people in my neighborhood...

So far, there are some pretty fun people around these parts.  A couple deserve a mention.

My favorite is "Carpool Lady". She's awesome!  This woman picks up my kids from school and delivers them straight to my door even though it's three miles out of her way.  I've offered several times to pick up the kids at her house, but she just smiles and says, "It's no big deal!"   She's fed my husband and son when I had to go to Wichita for a volleyball game, she's delivered my son to a volleyball game that I was line judging and she's had my son over to play multiple times.  Instead of thinking that this woman has a very kind heart, I worry that I've given her the impression that I'm needy, scattered and incapable of juggling my children's activities, which I'm willing to continue that impression since it's obviously working in my favor.  She has earned an official spot on my Christmas list. 

Many of you have met Ramone.  He's still just as precious as the first day we met him.  I love talking to him over the fence.  He's invited Clay to hunt on his property with this warning, "You can shoot anyting you wan, but if you shoot wanna my cows, dat's when we part ways nkay?"  Many times when I'm talking to him he'll gaze off into the field and say in a quick whisper, "Look over der!  You see any deers?"  So far, I've never seen the deer that's caught his eye.  He's also a wealth of knowledge on my house. He knows when the fireplace was taken out, when the heat pump was put in and the names of several of the previous owners.  Me and Ramone, wees gonna be good neighbors for a long, long time or alees until he croaks. 

Kaw Valley Farm Tour 2007

Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam....

No, forget that. They kinda creep me out..but they're mighty tasty!
We recently went on the Kaw Valley Tour of Farms. We started at the Lone Star Lake Bison Ranch. They had bison meat for sale and they brought the herd into the pens so we could get all nice and cozy with them.  That big bull up there with the ginormous head scares the bejiggles out of me.
I would not want to meet this gal in a pasture, she's got horns, a woman with horns, that's not good.
I have one little boy that likes choo-twains.  These people love choo-twains so much, they made a house out of them.  What looks like the Sante Fe railroad running through an open pasture is actually somebodies home.
Behind the trains sits a depot.  This spot was across the road from the bison ranch and was not on the tour, but I sure wish I could see inside the place.
Here's their driveway.  Railroad crossing starts with an R, can you spell it without any R's?
After the bison ranch, we all suddenly died and went to heaven.  Did you know there are llamas in heaven?
I loved this guy.  We took a tractor ride through heaven.  Look at his shirt.....
So true.  How many times have I said that to my garden only to let the plant grow until I've decided it's a weed?
Heaven has a secret garden with a pond.
And a garden store with tons of goodies.
Oh, and a little wooden bridge that reminds me of Three Billy Goats Gruff.  Trip trap trip trap.
Did I mention the antique green house with iron works?   Check out the chandelier, every person should have one of those in their green house, don'tcha think?
This is the view looking up at the top of the green house, am I an artist or what?
Cockadoodledoo!  This rooster could kick some serious iron butt.
No.  I do not want a rusty metal bison statue in my garden, but thanks anyway.
I'll take one of these though.  Does the barn come in red?
It pumps out flowers....I told you it was heaven.
The third farm we visited raises turkeys.  Gobble-gobble-gobble.  They all gobbled every  single time we laughed.  We laughed a lot.  They gobbled a lot.  It took about ten minutes for it to get tiresome.  But we kept laughing and they kept gobbling even we moved on to viewing the rest of the farm.
They have a herd of elk.  This baby ate out of our hand and sucked on my finger.  I wanted to take him home and train him to do tricks.  He was so dang cute!
There were rabbits and white turkeys and puppies and chickens, but guess what animals my kids played with?  Yep, the cats.  Like we don't have enough of them at home!
We'll be back next year. Thanks Kaw Valley farms!

Rrrrrramone

Here's Ramone, my new neighbor. I snuck this picture of him when we were at the house for the inspection. I quickly lifted my camera to my hip, took aim and shot. I think it's a pretty dadgum good photo, if I must say so myself.

Remember I told you he's as big as my thigh? See that fence post he's leaning on? Clay and I have no trouble peering over that with our entire heads. He's a tiny guy with a lot of gumption. I wonder what he'll be calling us? The huge white folk next door? That tall couple? The gall darn neigbors?

In the course of our seven minute conversation this is what I learned about Rrrrramone; he and his wife have raised 11 children. One is a drunken admiral, one is a chef, one is a lawyer and I don't know what the other eight do, but I'll probably find out. He's hard of hearing, has a heart problem, bad knees, aches and pains in his joints, diabetes and in general doesn't think he'll be around much longer. Hes' 87 years old. When we asked if we could buy one of his cows (meaning we wanted to buy it to take to the butcher), he said, "Well, where do ya think you're gonna pasture it?"

I can see him rolling his eyes and sighing deeply at us already. He has no idea what's in store for his remaining days with us as his neighbors. I just hope we don't drive him to an even earlier grave.

That's a capital I in Idiot!

Sooooo, while my neighbors are basking in the sun in Florida my children and I watched over their dog, cats, flock of chickens, a cow, a llama and a crippled goat. I admit that I love this task. I don't always participate in the entire week of caring for them, but the kids love the chores and I love the chores....I was meant to be on a farm in Kansas, with a hundred head of cattle and chickens running loose on my front yard, watching the wheat grow across the dirt road....oh, sorry got a little far away there for a second.

Anyway, I noticed early in the week that my neighbors had left the garage door open. One time they accidentally locked the dog in the garage for a couple days when they left town. We heard him whimpering and managed to open a window and pull him out, so I thought maybe this was a precautionary measure. They never leave that door open, it was really bugging me. Thursday, I finally decided to go see if the door in the garage was locked and then I would be satisfied that they meant to leave it open and if not I would be the kind and courteous neighbor to shut the garage door. As I walked through the garage I already felt I was crossing a line, but I just couldn't leave it alone. I reached for the handle of the door and it opened. A lovely female computer voice said, "Please stop! Please STOP!" and then the sirens started. I was caught! I shut the door, pressed the button for the garage door, hopped over the laser beam on the bottom of the threshold and dived into the bushes...no actually I climbed back over the fence and scurried home trying to look like I didn't do anything. I confessed to my husband what I did and made a few phone calls to my neighbor's relatives hoping they would know a code or something so I wouldn't have to make 'the call' to my neighbors to admit I'm a meddling woman that can't leave well enough alone. I did have to call them, and it all turned out okay. But in hindsight if I was so concerned about someone breaking in, why would I wait six days to do something about it, well the answer is because I'm an Idiot!

My neighbor called today and asked if I wanted some of her cow's meat. She said something like, "T-bone is being delivered tommorow and I need to get rid of Sirloin, do you want some?" T-bone and Sirloin were their cows. I had a personal relationship with T-Bone, he ate most of my garden clippings with great gusto all summer. I didn't know Sirloin, so I put him in my freezer.

Little L is starting to walk, he looks like a drunk monkey. Clay wants me to cut L's hair because he is sporting a bit of a mullet. I can't bring myself to put a blade to those soft silky curls. People are going to start calling him "Dude" soon.

S has his first piano lesson tomorrow. I don't know what to expect. My dream is that the kids will all pick an instrument and form a band so we can travel around and entertain the masses. I still wish I would have stuck with an instrument: trombone, flute, piano....I hated them all.