Dancing in the Rain

Hey all!  I know a story is long over due, but I don't have any extras filed, and I have been kind of lazy when it comes to writing.  I was looking for pic the other day and found these pics of a 2011 rain storm in Juniper. It didn't amount to a flash flood, but it was an impressive water show nonetheless.  I LOVE a good rain storm, my inner child wants to splash in the puddles and spin circles while looking to the sky as rain drops fall on my face.  If it comes with thunder and lightning, that is an added bonus.  Perks of a Juniper rainstorm include the view from the front porch, and the smell of sagebrush.  

I would love to see and share some of your favorite Juniper pics, and as always, would appreciate a story or two... long/short, doesn't matter.  Enjoy!

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass.  It's about learning to dance in the rain." --Vivian Greene

Blessed to be his Daughter

From Jerica:

About two winters ago, I decided I would help out on the dairy by learning how to milk the cows and help with the morning milking. At first I thought it was a great idea, because I would be helping my dad and thought he might have wanted the help. I got a week into it and I was starting to regret it but I stuck with it. When spring came around I would have to get up and chase the cows down the hill behind the house to get them into the barn. I will admit, I was probably the worst cow milker that dairy has ever seen, but it helped me appreciate what my dad (and every other dairyman) did for my family. I knew he sacrificed a lot for us, but by having the experience of milking the cows opened my eyes to what a strong, hard working man he is. I do love my dad for all that he has done for me and my family. His hard work did not go unnoticed. I have been truly blessed to be his daughter.

Forget the Glass Slippers... This Princess Wears Irrigating Boots!

One summer afternoon (the summer where I ripped the seat out of every pair of pants I owned), we had finished hauling hay fairly early in the day, there was a leak in the main line down at the flat that needed repaired.  For any of you who have not had the privilege of a seek-and-find the leak in the line mission, you have a generalized mud hole and somewhere beneath all this mud is one (hopefully) hole that has to be identified and repaired.  This clearly involves a lot of digging, and a lot of mud.  Dad and I dug down around a riser to what we hoped was the problem area, my left leg was down in our hole and my right leg was up out of the hole.  Did I mention the part about a lot of mud?  Yeah, so my right leg was gradually sinking into the mud as we worked in the hole.  We finished up in that spot (I honestly don’t know if we had found the source of the leak at this point) and as I went to walk away, I discovered my right leg was firmly planted in that thick mud.  As hard as I pulled, the only thing moving was my femur out of the hip joint.  I started to take my foot out of the boot thinking this would be my only escape.  Dad saw my solution and was like “No!  The mud will cave in around the boot and you won’t be able to get your foot back in or the boot out of the ground.”  After several more tries it was apparent that leaving the boot behind was the only option, besides, it already had a hole in it.  We finished our job and I walked back to the pick-up with one boot and waited for the courier to bring me a new pair of boots and pants (yup, ripped those ones out too… while hauling hay earlier in the day) and didn’t think much more about the lost boot.

Fast-forward a few years, I am now married, it is Christmas Eve and we have just finished singing carols around the tree and Dad tells us he wants to give us all a gift. 

Wait… WHAT?!?! 

We begged EVERY SINGLE Christmas Eve for the last 20 years to open a present on Christmas Eve and the answer was always “No.”  Who is this guy?  

It was a different kind of gift.

The one you never wear out.

The one you never outgrow.

The one that never goes out of style.

The one you never forget.

He went around the room and told each individual how much he loved us, and why he was proud of us.  When it was my turn, he mentioned how he appreciated my hard work and how much he had enjoyed and now missed working with me on the farm.  And how every time he walked by my boot sticking out of the ground as he worked, he got a little tear in his eye.

I had a lot more than a little tear in my eye at this point.

Fast forward a few more years.  The farm had decided to abandon one form of child abuse and upgrade from hand-lines to pivots.  As they dug out the risers one by one, they came to “our riser”, yup, the one with six inches of rubber boot sticking out of the ground next to it.  Dad told the guys he wanted that riser, they told him there was one already dug out he could have.  “Nope,” he needed “that riser.” 

Not sure how much later, a few weeks or a month-or-so later, I went to Juniper for a visit.  As I walked up the sidewalk, there in the flower bed was a riser, and my boot, buried, six inches showing above the ground.

I smiled.  I'm still my Dad's Princess.

“Did you see it?”  Mom asked as I got to the front door?

Apparently now that I had seen it, she believed that she would be able to take this “lawn ornament” out. 

Nope, this, like the memory of the day it was lost, was to be a permanent fixture.

I love you Dad!  Thank you does not begin to cover my debt to you.  You are my hero in every sense of the word.  Happy Father’s Day to you and all the other Juniper dads that taught me to work, that allowed me to make mistakes and taught me how to fix them.

Mom figured out how to make it work!

Side note about hand lines:

A few weeks ago I was taking care of a kid in the ED who told us he wanted to be a farmer when he grew up “Best job there is” he said.  The patient, his dad, the doctor and myself talked a little about farm life and the doc asked how they watered, “wheel lines or pivots”… wait… what about hand lines?  So they said how pivots were the only way to go and the doctor (who was apparently paid in milk shakes for his farm work as a child) asked “Do you know what you call hand lines?”  Everyone just looked at him waiting for the answer… “Motivation for higher education!”  Haha.  Looking back I always think of moving hand lines as a good memory, admittedly though, there was often a great deal of repentance required on my part before I could go to sleep those nights!

A Little Gas

Isn't it funny how when we do something embarrassing the first thing we do is check to see who saw rather than attend to our injuries?  Here is just such a story.  Thanks for sharing Jerica!

From Jerica:

Two winters ago Forrest, Brad, and I were out riding the snow machines in Rushton's field. This is the first time I had driven one so I was a little scared. After a while, we rode over to the end of the field closest to the garbage bins. There were three rows of drifts that had been plowed to help keep snow off the road. I was feeling brave so I decided to slowly go over two of the drifts. I turned around and waited for Brad to jump off it to go back onto the field. Then it was Forrest turn to jump then I would ride over (not jump). I went too close behind Forrest when he went and as I was going, the rooster tail of his jump caught me in the face which caused me to hit the gas a little ( by a little I mean a lot) and I ended up going over it at an angle instead of straight on. By doing that it had bucked me off. I was sure I was going to get run over but the left side of my body just, very hard, hit the side of the machine and I missed the tracks. I popped my head up and look over at the garbage bins and see Christine waiting for the school bus to pick up her kids. I bust up laughing because if I was in her position, I would be laughing hysterically. Forrest and Brad must have saw it happen cuz they came riding back over laughing their heads off.

Real Life Tonka Trucks

From Jerica:

Forrest, Doug, Brad, and I were riding our bikes down the road toward Rushton's farm. It was right after Forrest got his bike and it still had the training wheels on it. We were going around the corner by the tree just down the road from the dairy and when we got about half way between the corner and Rushton's farm a huge mine crawler thing came around Rushton's corner. It was taking up the whole road. Doug, Brad, and I all saw the thing coming but Forrest was nonchalantly riding his bike down the middle of the road. After much yelling, he saw it coming, hopped off his bike and ran him and his bike to the borrow pit. I never did know why he didn't just ride it to the side of the road. Not a very good story, but it's one I came up with.

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Thanks Jer!

Those things are massive!  I remember Dad telling me the only thing you go off the road for in a loaded hay truck is an airplane.  However, when we came across a semi hauling one of these giants, we managed to get our loaded truck off the road rather quickly!  I also remember Ross asking the crew in said truck if we could use their monster Tonka truck to haul the rest of our hay.  The fellows said they would be happy to haul our hay if we could load the truck... needless to say, we spent the rest of the summer hauling hay the usual way!  

Boys...

Life on the farm is certainly different than city life.  A prerequisite for being a farm kid is a healthy imagination--which leads to activities that may or may not be so healthy... or safe as Joe explains.

From Joe:

There is no logic reason, or limit to what boys can do when they get together. We can’t explain why it is so amusing to build a Catapult with a 2X4, a rock fulcrum, a stray farm cat, and a bail of hay being tossed off the top of the ten wheeler overshot. I can’t tell you why we are curious how much weight a cow eyeball can hold before it explodes, after it is extracted using precision surgical tools like old timer pocket knives and pliers.

We had a common thread of unity because these things made normally boring farm life exciting and new, and we were only limited by our creativity and the school of hard knocks, like not to pee on an oil fire, or blow up toilets with M80s. Yet there are some things which normal people out of respect for the dead would give any creature a proper burial, but to these boys, I won’t name them (Sam, Joe, Steve, Aaron.) When an animal dies not much is sacred, especially when it comes to mean old roosters which would peck your eyes out if given the opportunity.

On one joyous occasion one of the roosters deceased, (I swear it was an accident.) but no one buried this old miserable bird. Instead we suddenly found joy in using the rotting poultry as a genius tool of pranks as long as it was staying together. I think it went hidden in a bucket of grain once, and tied to a entry way to the grain shed, and I may have waited for Sam for some time to plant the rotting bird in his chest, I can’t quite remember the details, but Sam might. I forgot about what I did, and life went on.

Life went on and the chicken got even more rotten. Over the smell of manure and cows I could always smell it when I went to feed my cows. I would smell it, then I would find it. Work that summer was hard for young boys who had ADD, and an imagination, but the cows had to be fed. The stacks were always close to the mangers and Ross would not let us toss the bails off the side of the stack into the manager, we had to peel them off the front and carry them back between the manger and the stack.

To save time I would usually carry two bails back at a time, one bouncing off the front of my right leg, and another bouncing off of my back left leg, then I would shimmy between the stack and the manger to get to feed the cows.

One day I was doing my shimmy on the 3^rd manger and I got all the way to the cow trough and suddenly I could smell something. I had smelled it before. Like something had died and had set out in the sun for several days. The chicken. No sooner had I identified the smell, the mass of feathers, claws beak, and worm infested flesh came crashing down on my head. Sam had made a direct hit from on top of the hay stack. Mission accomplished.

I decided from that point to call a truce because I knew Sam was not scared to see my dead chicken and raise me one dead cow falling from the sky. I think I got over pretty fast considering it felt like that thing hit me at terminal velocity.

As I think back on those days there was nothing in my life I have experienced that has been as pure and as fun or as hard as those days growing up on the farm. People from there never forget where they come from. They work hard, pray hard, and play hard. Brothers, sisters and friends. We all go our different directions in life, yet when we come together after years we just sort of pick up where we left off, and that is priceless.