By jove, I've been Googled!

Ok I’ll admit it. I’m totally at a loss for what to write this week. I can’t write about my farm cats and how I healed them with a combination of vet-prescribed conventional medicines and friend-prescribed homeopathic cures or I will get hate mail from the people who don’t support the farm-cat practice. (The cats are doing quite well, thanks for asking. Bright eyed and bushy tailed again.)
I can’t write about the horses because they have been naughty and don’t deserve a story about them this week. They have taken to tossing buckets full of water at me - much like a child who throws his pacifier out of the playpen hoping you will pick it up, only to throw it out again – except these water buckets can injure if they make contact with your head. The horses have also been big bullies in the barnyard, chasing the calves away from the water supply and neighing at the cows to hand over the hay.
I can’t write about Donkey again this week or he will get a big head and think he’s a star.
So, as I sit at the computer with writers’ block, I decide to take part in one of my favourite free time activities, and troll other farmwife blogs. I entered “farmwife” in the Yahoo! Search engine and this is what came up:
“Livin’ High on the Prairie – Farm life at a mile high” is the blog of an anonymous (at least I haven’t found her name yet) farmwife who lives up in the mountains. She just blogs about day-to-day life, as I do, but I think her writing ritual somehow keeps her feeling connected to the outside world, as she lives in the middle of nowhere. She raises goats (I didn’t know the mother goat was called a doe) and seems to have a very busy birthing season, just as we do with the lambs.
Also on the Yahoo Search page is “Memoirs of a Farmwife”. She is from Southern Illinois and “loves the Lord”. This is a common declaration among the Farmwife blogs, I am discovering. I think having to depend on the weather and so many other uncontrollable factors for your livelihood tends to make you rely on a higher power. I admire these women who farm fulltime. It’s an art and a gift.
Melissa Hart – The Knolltop Farmwife has posted the tagline: “doing what I always dreamed of and getting more than I bargained for!” Ain’t that the truth. Actually, I never dreamed of being a farmwife (I dreamed of living in a log cabin in the woods with a bearded mountain man and writing romance novels while he chopped wood for my fire…). Ms. Hart also declares that the true definition of a farmwife is a woman who can mend a pair of pants and the fence that ripped them. Hmm. I have some work to do on both parts there.
After spending an hour perusing these sites, I must agree with some of my readers who have said that they prefer the actual farm-related tales (stories of lambs and cows and donkeys – oh my!) than the updates on my children and married life. However I do believe there is an exception to every rule – if the Farmer is a true character (and he is), then he falls into the category of things that people want to read about. He’s interesting. And unusual. And please keep in mind – the Farmer is a character loosely based on my real husband. I have to add that disclaimer there or I won’t be allowed to write about him anymore.
There is a “Brainy Farmwife” on Facebook. She claims to be a good cook, and she is smart. Too much competition there. I prefer to read about floundering, frazzled farmwives. We have more in common.
Eyewitness to History.com features a story from a farmwife circa 1900. In one photo, she is milking Bessie the old-fashioned way. Wearing a bonnet and floor-length skirt. After milking the cow, she fed the children, corralled a bunch of runaway hogs and repaired the fence. I was exhausted just reading about her life. There is a reason I was born in this century and not that one. The Lord (there He is again) only gives you what you can handle. I heard that somewhere. I guess that means if He gives you a lot to handle, He perceives you to be one of the strong ones. Food for thought.
If reading about Farmwife life is an escape for you, or a visitation to your own past, I encourage you to try entering “Farmwife” on your Internet search engine and see what pops up. We are an interesting breed.
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