Where it all started

I rode the bus to school.  So what, you say.  Well, so I got to see where many of my classmates lived.  As I recall my bus ride was 30 or 40 minutes long so I saw quite a bit of the countryside.  Two of the kids who rode my bus, I think they were twins, lived on a farm just up the road from my grandparents.  I remember thinking they were poor, or at least lived in a run-down house.  I wonder what I'd think if I saw that same house today.  The farm is no longer there.  It's been replaced by a country estate, or at least the house has been rebuilt and added on to.  I can't remember.  Anyway, I remember cows and chickens, at least one small pond and barns that were in disrepair.  Did I feel sorry for the twins?  Nope.  I envied them living on a farm with animals, messy and all. 

When I was a little girl my Uncle Rick took me to their farm and put me on the back of a black angus named Casper.  I may be making this all up but I think it really happened.  Then I may have been 6.  Now I'm 46 so who knows what's really true.  It doesn't really matter because I have a fond memory of a day like that and that's all that matters.  

A few of my neighboring friends had horses.  Now I've never been all that excited about horses but I did like riding theirs and I thought it was so cool that they had a farm animal and barns.  Yes, I've always loved barns - beautiful barns, run down barns, big and small barns. 

One more memory and I'll finish.  I remember the smell of cow manure on the wind coming from a farm a mile up the road from us.  I liked that smell.  I still like that smell.  I didn't really know why I liked it but I think it was the smell of "country air".  Which reminds me of a joke I won't tell.  The punchline is "I love the smell of your dairy air".

Ok, just one more.  When I was about 20 I was driving down the road and saw a sign that said, Baby Goats, $50.00.  How could I resist?  Who could?  I stopped, I looked, I bought.  The farmer castrated him then and there and I took him home.  I told my parents it was a gift to them for Easter.  They didn't go for it.  I took it to my boyfriends' parents and they let me keep it there for a few days until I broke my parents down.  We had William for 1 year and then I had to get rid of him because I was moving into town where goats weren't allowed.  Boy did I cry.  Years later a friend used to ask me to tell the story about getting rid of William because she thought it was funny how I cried when I told it.  I knew one day I would have a goat again.  I didn't know I'd have 9 or more but I did know I'd have at least one.

I have more to say but I hate long blog entries so I'll end now.   To be continued.................I think.