My plan today was to write about our new little bull calf named Mikey. Mikey came to us in the usual round-a-bout way, a baby cow on the verge of death, but with a twist; this time the animal’s owner was being responsible. She’d decided to have Mikey and his parents humanely euthanized because she’d lost her ability to keep her cows. She loved them and was terrified if she gave them up they would eventually end up in someone's freezer. While we didn’t have the space to keep all three, we couldn’t say no to a baby, and so Mikey arrived and is settling in nicely with no slaughterhouse in his …
I have a confession to make. Just a little one . . . I caught up with the Kardashians last night. I know, I know, I shouldn’t have . . . I should have clicked on the Food Network and watched a rerun of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, but I keep reading that the K-clan ratings are through the roof, and I needed to understand why. Why? WHY??!! Also, I was having an episode of PVCs (heart palpitations.) My doctors tell me it’s not life-threatening, but it feels like my heart is throwing a party and has cranked the volume on the boom box to full throttle; I needed a diversion from the internal …
Being involved in animal rescue, I see the absolute best and worst of people. The worst of people, of course, are the Michael Vicks of the world who are capable of the lowest, most reprehensible forms of animal cruelty. The best of humanity are those who clean up the mess the Vicks leave behind, such as the patient and kind people of Best Friends Animal Society who took in so many of the dogs he abused. While my area of rescue is horses and farm animals, we deal with the same issues; animals arrive at our farm and hobble off their trailers beaten, starved and sick. I wonder how some people …
My brother loves Christmas. If you’ve ever driven down Litchfield Turnpike after Thanksgiving and stopped to ogle the brilliantly decorated little house that’s kitty-corner to Durley’s Pond, you know what I’m talking about. My brother, John Schurman, starts decorating in mid-November. His basement is filled with tables, lined up side by side, leaving just enough room to walk around the perimeter. The tables are covered with dozens of lit Christmas villages and thousands of other pieces . . . people strolling down streets lined with trees and old-fashioned streetlamps, children skating on …
The holidays are a bittersweet time. While we celebrate with those who are in our lives today, there are always thoughts of people who are long gone, and those melancholy memories can be overwhelming. Sunday was the anniversary of my father’s death, 27 years ago, while yesterday marked 37 years since my grandfather’s passing. Their anniversaries always bring a flood of holiday memories for me. Today is an entirely different anniversary . . . December 14 marks three months since I found a tooth in my truck, sitting right on the driver’s seat where I knew it hadn’t been just an hour earlier. …
I am one of the luckiest women in the world, and I know it. I live on a farm surrounded by rescued animals who love me, a husband who thinks I am a goddess (no, really, just ask him) children whom I adore (both my own and my "borrowed" kids,) and due to this year’s heavy rainfall, more glamour* than I know what to do with. Way more. As a child, however, things weren't so rosy. In fact, it was a terrifying childhood, and I spent way too much of it running from bullies and curled up in a ball, sobbing. I read thousands of books to escape, and I went back and forth between wanting to “show them …
Here on Locket’s Meadow Farm the annual drive to increase weight before the cold weather sets in has begun in earnest. Most of our animals are getting extra grain and hay, the older horses are getting a dose of oil poured on their dinner, and I am saying “yes!” to that second helping of pie (OK, so I seldom say “no” to a second helping of anything . . . lay off . . .) but we farmers understand that a little fat helps keep everyone warm and healthy throughout the winter, and I like to take full advantage of the holidays to pack on that extra ten pounds that will keep me from shivering while …
When I wrote my column about the Kardashian divorce and my inability to “keep up” with it due to CL&P’s dark hours (Candle, Light & Propane . . . Connecticut, Light & Plunder . . . insert your own revised acronym here . . .) I did not expect such a rabid reaction from readers. It was just a little column about how hard it was to keep up with TV when we had no power for two weeks of the past two months here in Connecticut. But people are far too angry with Kim K. Many of them believed her marriage was “for real,” including, sadly, her husband Kris Humphries. The Kardashian version of reality, …
Well, this is embarrassing. Very embarrassing. Despite my best efforts, I have not managed to keep up with the Kardashians lately and I had NO IDEA that Kim and her brand, spankin’ new husband, Kris Humphries, were getting divorced. And worst of all, I still haven’t seen their “fairy tale” wedding on E! I did glimpse a tabloid headline screaming about the imminent demise of their marriage while I was standing in line at Wal-Mart several weeks ago buying candles and batteries (I live within the vast CL&P empire and if there’s a prediction of precipitation we have no choice but to leap into “…
Here at the Bethwood Patch things tend to be a little different from other Patch sites. Our towns are just a little more rural than most places, and frankly, our priorities tend to be, well, somewhat eclectic. Or perhaps the word is “eccentric” (which I believe means “crazy” but with a little more money in the bank.) Patch holds regular training sessions, and at the last one I attended, we were asked what stories get the most attention on our sites. I sat in the back, listening to answers such as, “Our mayor is up against a tough opponent this fall and that coverage is getting a lot of hits…
I am nostalgic for the Halloween of my childhood, specifically the 1960s and 1970s. I was lucky enough to grow up in an era when the worse thing that could possibly happen to you when you were trick-or-treating was that someone would drop an apple in your pillowcase. We weren’t remotely afraid that someone would slip a razor blade into it to slice our mouth open (we were NOT going to eat that apple, anyways,) but we were annoyed that someone would give us a piece of fruit instead of a Snickers or Charleston Chew (which we would put right into the freezer so we could crack it into crispy, …
How do I destroy cell phones? Let me count the ways. I squash thee with trips into the night of water troughs, deep out of sight. To an end so harsh and cruel, No bag of white rice can prevail And cause the LCD to relight. I kill thee quickly, dashed from the height of a three-quarter ton pickup’s roof. Or flush thee with harsh abuse into septic deep beneath cow pasture. There is no cell phone I cannot lose Or send through the washer with my Jackknife, to appear dejected at the end of The rinse cycle, screen dimmed by Tide. Alas, to be my cell phone is a curse I would not wish on any piece …
Dear Reality Show Producer/Casting Director: I believe I speak for the entire planet when I say we have had enough of your brilliant ideas for reality shows. If I have to watch Kim Kardashian lose her $75,000 earrings one more time following her millionaire-professional-basketball-player-fiancée-now-spouse tossing her off a dock into the brilliant blue ocean while on vacation in Bora Bora, well, I might just go back to watching QVC, which I certainly can’t afford, although their diamond earrings are considerably less expensive than Kim’s, especially if you consider investing in their …
I was going to write this column about Comcast and how brutally difficult it has been to get our cable back up and running (we are on day 10 of watching old DVDs on my laptop. . . go ahead, feed me any line from Moonstruck or Field of Dreams and I’ll tell you the line that follows.) I was going to write about how my husband, David, ran out into the road yesterday to try and flag down a Comcast truck, but the driver sped up and blew past him; and about how David followed the same truck (which seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time cruising up and down our street) to a stop sign, jumped …
Few people prayed harder than I did for Irene to change her mind and go bother someone else. For a farm animal rescue to get ready for a potential natural disaster, plus work a more-than-full-time job with Patch, well . . . it was three days of planning, then three days of implementing. That vacation I've been wanting . . . well, I still be wanting it as it will take weeks to clean up. Here's the down and dirty (and sweaty and grubby) video of what it takes to keep the animals alive and happy.
Welcome, Irene. After a full day of prepping for this storm, the lady has not disappointed us. Having more than a hundred animals with a hurricane on the way has been "trying", to say the least, and while we spent the past three days getting ready for the onslaught, we have been more worried about the animals than ourselves . . . duh. Because so far the falling trees and branches have been kind to our barns and sheds. Our house, however, was one of the earlier victims: my husband, David, and I sat straight up in bed when the branch came off one of the 300-year old maples in front of our 200-…
Last night when the police car pulled into our driveway at 12:48 a.m., I was instantly alerted by our lookout squad. Gertrude, the boxer/pit bull, slid out from under our covers and growled at the bedroom door. Ragano, the shepherd/coyote(?) stood on the bed and cocked his ears. The burros and mules out in the barnyard began to sing at the tops of their lungs. At that moment, I didn’t yet know there was a state trooper in our driveway, but my gut feeling was that our steers were loose, and please don’t ask how I know these things . . . My husband, David, was oblivious, soundly sleeping, so I …
OK, I admit it – I have a jealous streak. For example, while I greatly admire people who can sing, I secretly despise them for having a talent that I so unmistakably, blatantly lack. Not that lack of talent ever stops me (with apologies to my Monday night riding group who has to listen to me belting out old rock and roll songs at the top of my lungs . . .) My jealousy pops up in strange (and often public) places. I remember when I first saw the cover of the book, Enslaved by Ducks, written by Bob Tarte. It’s a story about a man and his wife, Linda, whose lives have been taken over by their …
In retrospect, if someone tossed me out of my house and then went inside with a .22 pistol and started shooting, I might go on walkabout for a few days and rethink my living arrangements. But then, hindsight is 20-20, not .22-.22. At the time (last Friday morning) tossing our white peacock and peahens out into the yard while a friend went in and “took out” some of the family of rats that had taken up residence seemed like an easy solution. The peacock pen is sealed off to cats, making it prime real estate for rodents looking for three square meals a day, a clean bowl of water and the company…
In the end, it was my fault, as usual. I would like to blame the pig, but it wasn’t Petunia’s fault that it was hot outside and she needed the fan plugged in to the base of the light bulb out in the mud room which meant I had to unscrew the bulb so it didn’t stay lit all day as they were both on the same switch. I could try to blame the cat for having peed on the towels in the corn house, but blaming cats is like trying to carry water in a Hula Hoop. I could blame my husband, but that’s too much like blaming a cat . . . it just won’t stick and in the end and I’m the one who looks bad, as …
