Blessings in Disguise
We always have lots to be thankful for at the farm. But, sometimes blessings come in disguise.
In the last couple of weeks we've experienced a few hidden blessings.
The carrot harvest was one of those. The crop was wonderful – lots of large, uniform-sized carrots with rich, sweet flavor. There were lots of greens, too. Instead of leaving them on the field to be worked into the soil, Igor, the computer programmer guy, decided that the beef cows and calves might enjoy them.
He dumped a "ton" of the carrot greens to the beef cattle. The cows ate some, but had enough sense not to eat too much. Not so the calves. Two of them ate more than their systems could handle and died from an overdose of natural occurring nitrates, which was sad for everyone. Who knew cattle shouldn't eat carrot tops?
Checking on our abundant onion harvest, Martin found that the cooking onions and Walla Wallas, looking similar, had been mixed together in bags and taken to storage. This was Igor's mistake, too.
"Did the onions look dry enough?" asks Martin.
"We thought so," was the reply.
"Well, they need to look perfectly dry and then, you wait two more weeks. You didn't wait long enough. AND you mixed two different kinds. The Walla Wallas will start to spoil by the New Year and damage the others, which should keep till next fall. Dump all the bags and sort them properly," an exasperated Martin insisted.
Meanwhile, James was preparing the air compressor to rent to a friend for blowing out sprinkler systems. It coughed, sputtered, and blew the pressure relief valves.
"What's going on?! It was working fine when we rented it to the other people. What's happening?" James and Martin both exclaim anxiously.
After an hour and a half of examining the unit, they found the problem. The previous users had tampered with the pressure gauge, which they had no business doing. Everything was returned to normal, and the unit was ready to go, but it was a frustrating situation.
And there's more.
"What's going on?! Whose dogs are those? They're chasing our hens and roosters!"
Two big brown dogs were running after the free range chickens in the yard and almost killed one of our colorful roosters. He escaped. But, the dogs didn't escape Martin's indignation.
After a number of phone calls to various neighbors, the owners were finally found and told in no uncertain terms that they needed to keep their dogs from running around the countryside. It could be very costly for them if the dogs were to rampage through our farm in the summer. We have vulnerable lambs, broilers, turkeys, and laying hens out on pasture.
While Martin was explaining some of this to us on the phone, he quickly exclaimed he needed to go and tend to another situation.
Getting back to us, sounding frustrated, he said James had started seeding fall rye in an area where the garlic was going to be planted. You don't want to have to weed fall rye from the garlic next spring.
On top of all this, after having beautifully calm fall days, a crazy wild Chinook wind blew in and was disturbing everyone, especially Martin who had a severe migraine from it. It's hard to think clearly when one of those winds blows through, and thinking was needed to deal with these various issues.
Keep in mind that all these situations didn't happen on the same day, just within a few days to get everyone's attention and to ask what's going on.
It's one thing to be happy about all the visible blessings, but what are the ones in disguise doing for us? There's a purpose for those, as well. They are the blessings that change us for the better if we receive them with thanksgiving.
