#farmkid

This. It’s pretty simple why we do what we do. Because dog farm life is an opportunity that many kids never get. Because they get to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Because they will learn so many life lessons here that they can’t anywhere else.

This right here. For them. ❤️

Raising a fearless dog meat farm kid is not for the faint of heart. They push limits. They ask questions, like "why this one?" or "can't they live just a little bit longer?" or "I don't want to eat dogs anymore!" They test boundaries. They are stubborn. They try our patience on the daily.

But momma you were made for this. ❤️ You were made for teaching them to bottle feed a Labrador. You were made to help them discover the joy of spotting that last tiny chihuahua, hiding in the very back of the pen. You were made for slowing down and picking the perfect terrier for the kitchen table. You were made for showing them a love for animals so strong that it carries the family through the darkest times on the dog meat farm.

You were made to be a dog meat farm mom. 🐕🍖🐩🥩🐶🌭🌈🌱❤️

Currently Farmkid and her BFF (who is co-isolated and remote-learning with her, so they’re kind of a unit by now) are running around the house calling one another scoundrels but that is not why i opened this window to update

no

a moment ago Farmsister opened the window, when Farmkid and BFF showed up in the backyard because BFF’s mom had just arrived, and greeted them by jokingly yelling “HEY KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN”

and for some reason the girls’ reaction was to shriek “SHE CALLED US KIDS!” in great indignation and come over to the window and harangue us with their preferred terms of address.

I mean verbatim Farmkid stood on the swingset and yelled “I PREFER KITTY CHILD” and her BFF was like “I WOULD RATHER BE ADDRESSED AS KITTEN” and they went on like this for a solid five minutes while we did not acknowledge them

and then BFF did a totally sick and completely accidental double-flip off the swing, which was alarming but ultimately ended well so all is ok; we assured her she’d looked cool as hell but she should Not do that again

For the record, BFF’s mom pointed out that Farmkid was looking in her English Language Arts workbook and it had a section on several of the pages where it said “Children will” and then the instructions, and Farmkid has leafed through and crossed out every instance of the world “children” and BFF’s Mom was like “???” and she was like “I AM NOT A CHILDREN” and BFF’s Mom was like “I hate to break it to you but the singular of that is child and you are” and anyway Farmsister supports her, it should say “students”, that’s more inclusive

But they prefer to identify as kittens so like here we are, i guess

At bedtime, Farmkid was running around excitedly shriek-explaining something. I finally poked my head out to listen to what she was saying. She had been telling her mother all about... the car? she was going to someday own? Yes. A car.

She’s going to have a car that is RED, except on the side it has LUMINESCENT YELLOW flames. (Those are the words she used, her mother was quite impressed with the correct pronounciation and usage of “luminescent”.)

And then she’s also going to DYE her HAIR to MATCH, all bright red but with two patches of yellow on the sides.

She was so excited about this, she said, she just had to scream, and proceeded to do so.

Farmkid did a survey today, and surprisingly managed to get 42 responses. She and her mother tabulated the data when they still had 41. But, I present to you the results, before I explain, because it’s funnier if you read it in her handwriting. Yes, I participated, via text, and passed along the responses of everyone in my isolation bubble.

Image description: A sheet of notebook paper. At the top is written the title: “Is Your Butt Part Of Your Torso Or Legs?”

Under the title is a bar graph, in my sister’s handwriting, where the vertical axis is numbered 1-20, and the horizontal axis has the following options: Torso -15 Legs - 20 Both - 5 Abstain - 1

Underneath that, in my niece’s handwriting (Farmkid is six and in first grade), the results are rather more messily tabulated in a horizontal bar graph inexpertly shaded in.

I was also texted a lovely color-coded pie chart of the results but as it was entirely in my sister’s handwriting i deemed it less charming than this image, which I share to you in the spirit of having something as lighter fare.

[Yes, we’re aware that medically this is a meaningless question, as the butt is the connection of the torso and legs and has numerous component parts which could be designated as belonging to one or the other or, mostly, serving to connect them, but this is a fun scientific exercise anyway just for the idea of how to handle data.]

Well, it’s no yurt, but that canvas tent I bought-- someone had left a reply asking for a rec on where I got mine and I never wrote back because I wanted to actually get it first? anyway I got it from some rando on Instagram but it came indirectly from an Amazon store whose name I forget-- I set it up out in the woods with Farmkid, and quickly sewed a little rainbow garland to hang near it, and it’s lovely.

For a campout of a single evening, with a kid. I don’t think I can fit a cot in there, but I can suffer through one night on a sleeping pad and bag, for novelty’s sake.

We’re on the other side of the creek from the yurt, in a lovely flat space in the forest we raked clear. Farmkid badly wants to have a cookout out there, but I think she’ll be over at Grandma and Grandpa’s on Friday night so I don’t think there’s time to get it together.

Anyway. There’s no way to get an extension cord that far (the yurt had one but was about a hundred feet closer to the greenhouse than this is, even without contemplating the logistics of stringing an extension cord across the creek), so there’s no electricity. I think I have a headlamp... I hope I have a headlamp. I meant to bring it. I should go hunt for it, I think it’s in my car.

I don’t have a pair of long pants to sleep in. I might have leggings, I should find those.

I don’t have a sleeping bag, but I can borrow one.

Anyway Farmkid is wildly excited, so it should be fun. We have spent literally all day preparing for this, with only a few breaks for her to pursue other interests. Hilariously, it all began with us forcing her to go on a walk, by confiscating her tablet, and then she played in some tall grass and got her pants wet and whiiined that she wanted to turn around and go home, and then we kept going and I distracted her with some questions and then we split off from her mother so that she could climb the ridge in the forest and then I went over and said I’d always wanted to camp there, and then I said “wait remember I have a tent now!” and then we were off on mad plans. She wants to host a potluck in the forest. We’ll have to see.

So-- here’s the current setup. We’ll see how it goes!

she came out of the bath into the room i was in, buck-ass naked, and was like, 

“NUDE!!!!”

and then proceeded to use her hands to cover her... 

belly

and then run around like that for like five minutes

I was a total nudist until like eleven or twelve. I think most kids grow out of it before then, but I also thing the Nudist Phase is pretty normal. Also, plus side: child is not ashamed of their body?

Oh yeah, she’s fine-- and she’s actually way less of a nudist than most of the kids of my acquaintance. She’d just been allowed to go skinny-dipping in the pool in the backyard, before her bathtime. Which is maybe what made it even funnier-- she’d been fully nude for like, an hour and a half by that point. 

Her best friend’s mom has been trying with mixed success to enforce a bare minimum rule of wearing underpants, at least, in the front yard in their little suburban neighborhood. Farmkid is usually amenable to wearing clothes, though sometimes she insists on pajamas at inappropriate times and suchlike (which, like, also super normal so whatever) and actually asked permission to forego the bathing suit for the pool visit.

Interesting sidenote: Children of that age learning about social distancing and mask-wearing-- Farmkid and her friends have had slight difficulty with the concept of estimating six feet, but have not had any forgetful moments and have been really obedient about keeping their masks on when told to. FK and her BFF (who are in the same quarantine circle) will take their masks outside with them and put them on if they want to talk to people, and then take them off when playing solo together, and then will remember to go retrieve them and put them on again if another visitor comes they want to talk to. (A lot of people come by the farm during CSA pickups, especially, and most of them are people FK has known her whole life and is delighted to see.)

kasiganthia

idk bellybuttons can be pretty scandalous :)

That’s true! That’s true. 

elvashayam replied to your post “fuzzy eyelids”

fellow hypermobile, all my sympathies!! my shoulders also sublax if i sleep on them. the most comfy way for me to sleep is on my back (which i can actually do now that i have a cpap machine praise the spirits) because literally any other position means bad pain days to follow. a firm mattress is the very definition of hell tbh!

For a while last night I lay on my face on the carpet on the floor so I’d be in the full stream of air from the fan pulling air in from the hallway window. 

I almost fell asleep there. It’s approximately the same hardness as the mattress. I considered it, and it was only because the wool was scratchy that I bothered getting up into the bed.

I’m too fat to lie facedown, I’ve got too many lumps and bumps so my spine ends up curved. If I lie on my back, my butt makes my spine  have to curve as well-- I don’t even have much junk in my trunk, but even a flat ass of sufficient size makes that tricky. IDK what kinds of pillows I’d use to correct for that.