Putting cows on the front page since 1885.
The rotary cutter in my hand stopped rolling along the square patch of fabric as I held it suspended in mid-air. What was I hearing? Was our neighbor scraping his lane? But the sound grew louder. The flapping and banging of metal intensified and I surmised that a flat tire (or something similar) wasn’t stopping a traveler on Piney Creek road. My quick move to open the window to peer into the dark evening was too late. Whoever was obliviously running a wheel to the rim was past our farm, but the sound was still here. The heifers stampeded out of their barn for the highest point of the meadow and Chloe started barking. In the cow stable, the cows bawled. The sound grew fainter for us but we could still hear the airless wheel being towed into Martinsburg, two miles away.
But that’s life along Piney Creek Road, mostly ordinary traffic, but sometimes surprising. Like the weather.... mostly ordinary but sometimes surprising. Our warm winter tucked tail and slunk away after losing a battle in the skies. Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed and rain pelted. The wind pushed our little frame hammock into the kale patch in my little garden and tossed over the little table and two chairs in my garden nook.
But the mud was still on the lane when I walked next door on Wednesday, Jan. 9, with our daughter and her children. Trevor, age 2, and Kameron, age 10 months, got a ride in the cart, along with other items for the “Comforter House.” It was fun to teach Dana, age 10, Kaitlyn, age 8, and Logan, age 6, how to make knots with yarn to make comforters. We managed to get three out of the frame before we trekked back home for pizza casserole. With their hungry bellies satisfied, the children got a break from kitchen duty and went right to playing with Lego building blocks.
But the next day, dipping temps actually froze our mud. By Friday, when we went to Tyson’s house to celebrate his sixth birthday, a dusting of snow looked pretty in the bright sun. As the last of the “triplet” grandsons to have a birthday, Tyson’s “long” wait was finally over. His mother went all out to make a pretty party in his favorite colors, balloons and all. With three kinds of pizza, cheese-stuffed bread sticks and a lettuce salad, we were almost too full to partake of the 3D truck birthday cake and the colorful jello mold. There was blue-green drink and fruit slush, too. The frozen yogurt-covered pineapple rings smiled with blueberry eyes and a slash of fruit roll up.
After dishes she helped everyone make their own flubber which entertained them for a while. A little kick ball time with me in the cold, sunny afternoon was next, until all the woodpeckers and nuthatches high in the bare oak trees caught our attention.
The birds that caught my husband’s attention on Saturday, Jan. 12, when he was hauling manure were slightly bigger. He counted 14 turkeys in the back field. That evening after dark, it began to snow. Somewhere between here and Texas, we wondered if our son and his friends met the snow, too. Because of his absence, I’m not sure where the youth singing was.
The snowy landscape was beautiful on Sunday on our way to Piney Creek church. It wasn’t enough to make my husband plow our lanes but enough for bikers to slip and slide on the road.
Because of the impromptu invitations I extended, there were eight of us at our dinner table at noon, sharing of my humble meal. My timed bake efforts were a bit too lengthy for the casseroles so they were somewhat dry. I added some boiling water to the roast beef and macaroni-cheese dish but I couldn’t take the too-much salt out of the chicken and rice. But hopefully no one went away hungry. We have much to thankful for, including the friendship of guests at our table.
My snowy walk after supper was solitary, however, as far as human companionship was concerned, but snowflakes were many. They came, borne on northern breezes, plastering me all over, and daring to whisper inside my collar as I stepped carefully over the hidden, frozen terrain.
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