Cherries

My husband and I both have cherry tattoos on our wedding ring fingers. It is quite a piece of art on my husband's calloused, chapped sausage fingers. It draws a lot of attention to have something so dainty on his masculine hands, so this is the story of the cherries. The story of us.

My husband and I met when I was 16. We had met through friends and often saw each other at social gatherings of those friends. When I was 19, home for the summer from my freshman year of college, we went on our first date, which was to a car show. I had ridden in his vehicles over the years with friends, many of those vehicles were Jeeps that he had rebuilt. On that first date, he explained the name he picked out for his car club, The Cherry Picker's Car Club. He didn't have any members to this car club, but he had a name.

The Cherry Picker's Car Club is a play on words. A cherry picker is what is used to pull a motor out of a vehicle, but it also means that you can pick out a “cherry” of a car. The “cherry” being the best of the best. Wandering around the car show on that hot August day, I picked out the “cherry”, which was a 1951 Mercury with a custom grill.

After that first car show, we were married 15 months later. My husband clarified his Cherry Picker's Car Club membership requirement, which was that we would make all the members. Our children would drive their namesake vehicles in our car club.

The tattoos came throughout our first two years of marriage, but for our tenth anniversary we extended the tattoos to include the cherry blossom. We found “cherries” in each other, but the blossom represents years together. The cherries came first, which is the harvest season when everything is plentiful, but the blossom represents the new life after all the cherries have died through the winter. It represents the seasons we have been through together, and the season we are in now.

All the symbolism throughout the years is really quite something. We have collected cars for over a decade; we have used cars to name our children; we have used cars as signs, which is how we bought our farm; we used cars to find each other. The cherries are quite appropriate, even when we are old and have the most wrinkly hands.

Loading Pigs

I grew up watching pigs being loaded onto trailers. Once they were on the trailer, I knew they wouldn't be coming back. My parents explained that they were going to be meat, which is how I explain it to my kids with our own pigs. When we loaded pigs last week, it was quite a significant day for us.

Once my husband had all the gates in place, the first thing I did was to make a trail of kitchen scraps for the pigs. Much like Hansel and Gretel following the breadcrumbs, I was trying to lead the pigs into the trailer. I can usually get a couple of pigs loaded just by their own gluttonous nature, they are pigs afterall.

When I saw our eight pigs look into the trailer, I realized that they were contemplating taking the step up into the trailer because they wanted the carrot peel treats, but they were too fat to make the effort. Similar to a person that just had knee replacement surgery looking at a flight of stairs would contemplate taking the elevator to the second floor. My husband used a car jack to lift the front of the trailer, so the back would be lower and entice the pigs further.

(Video is 3x faster than real time.)

Half of them loaded up nicely when we showed them which way we wanted them to go with the red plastic hog panels. The other half decided to cause mischief when our backs were turned. One troublemaker used his brawny nose to lift the gate leading back into their pen in the opposite direction of the trailer. We hadn't secured both ends of the gate, which we quickly rectified.

We went slower with the last four just because they were more agitated, and we really didn't have reinforcements if they got through one of our loosely secured fence panels. The last four loaded one by one just to get back to their mob.

The three hour drive to the locker was uneventful, but when we got there it was brutal. We watched other farmers unload their animals, which didn't make me happy. These animals have less than 12 hours to live, and their owners are pissed they won't get off the trailer. I feel guilty when our pigs walk off the trailer into the holding pens because I'm leading them to their death. They can smell the blood. I feel guilty if they don't put up a fight. Many people scoff at me when I say that because the common attitude is to not think twice about it. How can you be a farmer and feel bad about it? Well, we've had these animals for six months; my kids give them treats everyday; my husband gives them their wake-up call every morning; how could someone not feel something for these animals? We know they aren't pets, but they still need to be taken care of.

When my sons saw the empty pens when they came home from school, they asked if today the pigs went to the butcher. I said yes, that today was the day. There were no tears but sad eyes, I think I would have preferred the tears.

New Year's Eve

Our family has many Christmas and birthday traditions, but by the time that New Year's Eve rolls around we are exhausted from all the merriment. This year we found our tradition that we will continue through the years. We celebrated the end of 2018 with my friend, Serena, who cleverly introduced us to it. Everyone had so much fun and all the children were asleep by 8:15pm.

Serena came up with activities to do each hour leading up to midnight, which was actually 8pm. Since our kids are young enough, they can't tell time.

At 7pm pretend time and 3pm actual time, the kids opened up a card that read “Mad libs and guessing jar.” In the bag, there was a mad libs story and a jar filled with M&Ms. We took turns guessing how many peanut M&Ms could fill the jar, and picked words to the mad libs story.

At 8pm pretend time and 4pm actual time, it was time for a dress-up photo shoot. Serena had collected New Year's items for the kids to be silly with while we had our cameras snapping away.

At 9pm pretend time and 5pm actual time, we enjoyed supper, which was fondue. We dipped celery, carrots, apples, olives, peppers, tomatoes, crackers, bread, and sausage until we were stuffed.

At 10pm pretend time and 6pm actual time, glow sticks were cracked, lights were shut off, and music was turned up for an epic dance party. The kids spent the entire hour wearing themselves out while we took turns DJing, enjoying music from the 90's.

At 11pm pretend time and 7pm actual time, we introduced the kids to Pop Rocks. The plastic champagne flutes were filled with Sprite and Pop Rocks for toasting in the New Year.

At midnight pretend time and 8pm actual time, an excited countdown led to a balloon drop and confetti poppers spraying tissue paper everywhere.

Ten minutes after screaming happy new year, the cherubs turned zombies were snuggled in their beds and kissed goodnight.

The adults did a quick vacuum and tidying, while we congratulated Serena on an awesome execution of New Year's Eve. The tradition has now been set. Happy New Year! We can't wait for all the exciting adventures in 2019.