Going on vacation is always a challenge. There’s juggling schedules with time off work, kids out of school, arranging flights, piecing together people to pick up the mail, water the plants, etc. When you have a farm, vacation takes this already intensive planning process and magnifies it by a million or two. To be fair, I’ve never felt deprived that we don’t get to travel to far away destinations. We’ve worked hard to build a life that doesn’t make us feel we need a break. We enjoy every minute on our farm and leaving it isn’t usually something that I want to do. However, my son’s 21st birthday was coming up and the family wanted to celebrate it BIG.
As a farm owner, I was a little worried about the process of planning a vacation, but it all seemed to fall into place with little effort on my part. The family all got time off work, we found an amazing package deal to Iceland, and then one of my best friends offered to stay out at the farm, taking care of all the animals and watching over the place……in her words, “it’s going to be an adventure.” Let’s face it, finding someone willing to watch your dog is a Godsend; finding someone willing to watch your entire farm……it’s a miracle only rivaled by the second coming of Christ (no disrespect intended). We had our friend go through 3 practice runs to make sure she was comfortable with our routine and then off we went.
I have to give a serious shout out to my farm sitting friend. She’s a newbie to farm life and was basically looking for a chance to test drive the lifestyle. It takes a serious adventure addict + a thrill seeking personality to step into someone else’s farm with no experience and give it a whirl. Hats off Lisa!
When we returned to the farm, I found a lovely note from her that summed up her time on the farm.
Here are her words:
1) I will forever have the smell of chicken poop ingrained into my nostrils;
2) The big pig sneezed things on me. Later, I stopped by the store and had a super hot guy checking me out. Since this NEVER happens, I figured I either had pig snot hanging off me somewhere or pig snot is an aphrodisiac;
3) I think you guys should take more vacations. I am more than happy to farm sit.
I feel like a proud parent. More importantly, I accomplished some rather lofty goals, including:
a) creating a new farm addict;
b) assaulting and traumatizing her olfactory senses in true farm style; and
c) totally and completely corrupting her fashion style by getting her to accessorize with pig snot. (*It’s not a look everyone can pull off).
I’d also like to point out that I did all this when I wasn’t even in the country!! Sometimes my multi-tasking skills amaze even me. Oh, in case you were wondering, the trip to Iceland was amazing.
