Talkin' 'Bout the Next Generation: Up at the Farm

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Up at the Farm

We celebrated Grandma Bea's 83rd birthday at Chris's aunt and uncle's farm in Becker, MN. I was excited to spend the day on the farm, because the last time I was there Chris's cousin's lab had recently had a litter of 11 puppies and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The puppies have since found new homes, but the farm is still full of other animals. And then I remembered that a farm full of animals and Soren could be disaster.

I called my brother-in-law who had gotten a head start on the hour-plus trip up to Becker and asked him if there were any animals roaming around and if he could corral them.

Andy had just parked his car on the lawn between the houses, the hog barn and the pastures and had stepped out.

"Well," he said, surveying the scene, "I see a dog, oh my gosh, lots of cats. Yes, there are cats. Oh, and there's a pig running around. And some ducks."

When he said there was a pig running around, I had assumed he meant he could see a pig in the pasture behind a fence. Sure enough, the first animal I saw when I stepped out of our car was a 300-pound hog lumbering towards me. No sooner had Chris's aunt shooed the hog behind the safety of a fenced enclosure when we their one-year-old yellow Lab, Casey, greeted us with slobbery kisses.

There were indeed lots of cats. His aunt estimates they have more than 30 barn cats, but there are really too many to keep track of. There were three litters of six-to-eight-week old kittens and I had to watch where I walked because I was afraid I'd step on one. Even though I'm not a cat person, I loved cradling the tiny little kittens nestled in the cup of my hands and watching the usually wild Casey tenderly nuzzle them.

Soren did not care for the animal kingdom that surrounded him, but he was fine as long as someone was holding him or we were in the house, which is where we ended up spending a lot of the time because it drizzled most of the day.