This House

So i realize that most of my recent posts revolve around the house we lost and our property.  Although we are settled into this rental house, it is just that...a house. We continue to travel back and forth between the two properties several times a day. Now that the sun has returned i am spending more and more time at the property.  i often leave here at around 10-11am. i work in the garden or take the dogs hiking, and then pick the kids up from  school at 2:30pm, then we come back to the property and stay until 5-6pm.  So although we are here at this house, our land/property is still home.

i usually refer to this place as 'the house' but i occasionally slip up when we are out and ask the kids if they are ready to go home. They are always quick to correct me, "you mean the 'house' ? It's not home."

We are here at this house for another month though, so we won't officially move 'home' until the kids are out of school for summer vacation. There has been so much change already this year, i didn't want to have to move them again during the school year. On June first, we will begin the next leg of our adventure in an RV while our new home is being built.

Although this place has never felt like home, i will be a little sad to say goodbye.  i thought for sure i would freeze to death in the house during the winter, but now that spring is here i am enjoying it more and finding it to be a peaceful place. There are flowering trees and flowers everywhere.  It is set way off of the road, which is dirt so there is no traffic.  There are no woods here, only cow fields and i can let the kids play outside unsupervised with very little worry.  

The Sweetland dairy  is in our backyard.  The folks that rent us this house also lease the land to the Dairy. The cows spend all day grazing on the lush green grassy fields and walk themselves to the barn when it's milking time. Earlier this spring there were 4 or 5 new calves born.  i could look out the window to watch the new calves chasing each other around the field.  Whenever i went out to try and get pictures of them, the babies would hide themselves behind the mama cow and peek out at me. They are too sweet.

The cows are such gentle creatures and we love to walk out and see them. They are just as curious about us, and a few of them will come close enough to let us pet them. i have come to enjoy walking out the front door and mooing at the cows and having them moo back in response. :)

Yesterday when we were outside playing in the yard, we noticed little piggies in the field behind the dairy barn.  We of course had to go see them. They had been put onto a  fenced patch of grassy field, and had turned up all of the ground with their noses rooting around for stuff. 

They were really funny to watch. Their little curled tails were wagging like puppies and they were running and rooting all over the area. This is just a temporary pen for them, and they will eventually be moved into one of the fields. 

We watched the piggies for a quite a while and laughed at their silliness.  Although we are only a few miles from our property, the scenery here is quite different.  Our home is surrounded by woods, but there is nothing but open space here. This house is surrounded by cow fields, and there are fields of horses across the road.  In the evening we sit out and watch the barn swallows, bluebirds and hummingbirds.  There is also a pair of red bellied woodpeckers that peck at the tree right outside the living room window. 

Earlier this week  i saw eastern meadowlarks for the first time popping up in the grassy fields and a few weeks before that i saw a large barn owl sitting in a tree in one of the cow fields.

i have really just started to take pictures of this house, or rather the land around it.  The cows, the birds, the flowers.   The things that connect us to this place. We will look back at these photos and remember this house as a safe place. As a place where we came to heal and grow. 

i hope that we look back on our pictures and remember the joy and beauty that we found here rather than the circumstances that brought us to this place. 

“For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” 

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King