Quitting my TV news career has come with many benefits but perhaps none as important as how it has affected my ability to parent. My relationship with the Producer would have consisted of about an hour in the morning (stressed about what I’d cover that day) and an hour at night (still stressed about what went wrong with my report that day). I’ve started “Hold On to Your Kids” by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté and I highly recommend it. They describe the era since World War II as one where peers have taken over the role of parenting, calling it “peer orientation”. They write, “Orientation, the drive to get one’s bearings and become acquainted with one’s surroundings, is a fundamental human instinct and need. Disorientation is one of the least bearable of all psychological experiences. Attachment and orientation are inextricably intertwined. Humans and other creatures automatically orient themselves by seeking cues from those to whom they are attached.” This has also got me thinking about my pressing question about why so many journalists prefer group think over curiosity. Are we adults also suffering from “peer orientation”?
We buy a roll of hay every other week not so much because the cows eat it all but because King Peter likes a nice fluffy bed that doubles as a look-out station. Of course he and Tod end up urinating and defecatimg on the hay which makes it less than ideal for the cows. We are working on putting up yet more fencing so the boys don’t have access to the cow hay but for now Pete is living large.
We have several refrigerators and freezers (as do most farmers), and for a while, the goat milk and eggs were in the same one. Recently however, I have turned the temperature down several degrees so it is barely above freezing so as to rapidly chill the milk and keep it very cold in order to extend its shelf life. However, as maintaining our fridge temperature is not a perfect science, we have had several moments of discovering frozen food and liquids in the fridge - never the milk - but for instance, celery juice. Then we discovered a frozen egg. I have since separated the eggs into a new refrigerator so they are no longer with the milk. We had fun peeling the frozen egg and examining it! Our dog, Zinnia, was very happy to help taste test. There is no life like the farm dog life! I did do a search and learned that it is safe to eat an egg that has frozen after thawing it, though not recommended if the egg has cracked.
Everyone who has chickens knows the struggle toward maintaining enough egg cartons, always asking friends to save theirs and bring them by. I was just thinking how I’d need some more when I drove by unknown trash on the side of the road. It looked like it might be egg cartons so I pulled over and sure enough - yes! 🙌 It was worth all the stares I got. Has this happened to you? What is something you needed and fortuitously found?
