Leslie Conway
So we bought a farm. After a year and a half of searching for the perfect piece of property with the perfect home on it, in the perfect location, we bought a farm. For those of you who have not met me personally, this may sound just fine. But for those who know me well? My response to you when you stare at me quizzically, is, “I know, right? What about me screams farmer?” Fifty-five acres of WTF?
I like mani/pedis and prefer fake nails. I’ve got fake colored hair, and will never say never when it comes to plastic surgery. Fake is fine, I mean, who knows, right? I like to keep my options open. I like clothes. A lot. I prefer boutiques, not the Carhart section of the local department store.
I don’t muck, mow, weed or slop. I don’t pick, plant or hoe. I don’t camp, I don’t particularly like wildlife, and if my own dogs could talk, they’d probably tell you that they barely eek out a couple of pats a day and have to remind me to feed them. Truth be told, they are really the only animals I’m willing to nurture, feed or rescue.
I don’t like long walks in the woods, lazing the day away on a hammock, (too many bugs) or birdwatching. I hate barns, find nothing cute about field mice and I don’t ride tractors. So what the hell?
My husband does all of the above and loves it. He wants horses and cattle, and chickens. He loves slop. He likes boots, as do I, but not anywhere near the same kind. Flies and manure and hay and the combination of all that smell doesn’t send him running for a spa day. Why, why,why??? Who needs anything else in his life that poops?
Horses and cattle smell, they are dumb, they can kill me with one little kick. Plus, they will make those dogs of mine bark, and bark, and bark, and bark. I don’t care what you say, the dogs won’t get used to them; that’s what we said about the deer in the yard. Same deer, everyday, same spot and they bark as if they’d never seen a deer before. And I can’t even imagine what they’ll do to the free range chickens…
He envisions grandkids here, and riding ATV’s and cross-country skiing and tooling around the fields on horses and something called a Polaris. I envision multiple trips to the local ER and bankruptcy court. We need to buy manure spreaders and some dragger thingy that I don’t remember the name for or what it does. We need a real farmer (I don’t care what my husband says, wearing Wranglers and Carhart overalls isn’t enough to make you a real one) to hay the fields. I don’t want to buy tractors, or Polaris’ (whatever they are for) or log splitters or even weed whackers. I want to buy vacations and river cruises and dinners out and shows in NYC. But, OMG, the weeds! There’s a quarter mile of driveway that needs weeding. There are trees that need pruning and no one, I repeat NO ONE related to me is getting their hands on a chainsaw. And I don’t do weeds. Poison ivy, and bugs, and spiders and ticks, oh my.
But here we are. And, I’ll admit, it is PEACEFUL, and very pretty and maybe I’ll get binoculars and start watching the birds. Perhaps I’ll consider a nap on the hammock and stop thinking about all the insects and the lyme disease just waiting to get me. I don’t imagine there will be a day that I think the field mice are cute, but the hawks searching for them in the fields are pretty amazing. That’s it, I’ll become an ornithologist. That’s a birdwatcher, right?
In the meantime, just call me Ava Gabor from “Green Acres.” You’ll never get a pitchfork in my hands, unless I need to put one in that farmer husband of mine…JK, no really…