Christmas in August

Friday, while driving home, I noticed bright yellow splotches in the poplar trees along the highway. Even though it’s only mid-August, fall is arriving. Fall is my hands-down-favorite time of year. I wilt through August, slumber into September, then about the middle of the month, my whole system gets a reboot and I suddenly feel like I’m twenty again. I love the smells of autumn and the crispness in the air. But this time of year also brings with it the need to plan for the winter months

Despite the lack of a second cutting this year, we believe we have enough hay from the first cutting to last us. We will need to make some changes to the “seating arrangement” in the barns, to make sure that each horse has a warm, dry place to sleep and that the cows can be milked in hygiene and comfort. We also have a few minor repairs still to make to the barns and plumbing, a stable door to hang and some other barnkeeping activities.

The biggest event for us, though, will be the completion of the home dairy we have been working on. We have outfitted one room of the guesthouse with stainless steel sinks, a vinyl floor, a commercial cooler and other amenities to process the gallons of milk we are now getting from the girls. This has been long in coming. Our milk-producing activities will have a home and any guests that come to visit can help themselves to midnight dairy snacks in various stages of development.

Our house was built in the 1920s. At that time, apparently there was not much thought being given to kitchen space. At least, not here. I know people with hot tubs that can accommodate more people than our kitchen can. Making a sandwich requires moves that Martha Graham would have been proud of. And that’s on a good day. For the last month, the kitchen has been stuffed with milking equipment- surge tanks, hoses, storage cans, bags of dairy detergent and a claw that lies creepily submerged in the kitchen sink like a big metallic crab. And it doesn’t end with the kitchen. Our dining room table sports a cream separator, a basket full of cheese-making supplies, six back issues of Equus and a stack of mail we need to keep, but aren’t sure why. The floor is buried under boxes of filters, dairy wipes and stainless utensils. We know other people whose décor includes a gallon jug of teat dip, but we won’t name them. They know who they are and they understand about all of this. Probably no one else would.

Recently, Tom proposed hiring someone to help clean the house.Tom and I aren’t really the sort of people who would normally hire someone to clean our house. We are more likely to clean it up before the cleaning person gets here (okay, that would be me, but not Tom), and then offer them a cold drink when they arrive (that would be Tom). But this was a practical suggestion, generated in no small part by the aforementioned piles of dairy paraphernalia, but also by the two parrots who hurl seeds across the living room at each other, the three cheerfully shedding house dogs and the ridiculous pace we’ve kept up over the past month. But the sad truth is that we’d need to clear out all the dairy supplies before this house would be navigable to anyone else (except maybe the teat dip jug crowd). In fact, also need to clean it. So, we have temporarily abandoned the idea.

But we await, with keen anticipation, the completion of the home dairy.Somewhere in here is a nice house with a floor and furniture. While uncovering it will not generate quite the excitement of an archaeological dig, it will approximate the joy of Christmas. So we are preparing now, for the winter months, when our animals will be safely tucked away, the house will be clean, and both Tom and I can fit in the kitchen at the same time, possibly with a glass of eggnog. But only if there isn't a coffee cup sitting on the counter.