It’s been a while…

Just shy of 2-years ago I wrote my last post on this blog. Ya know, I wanted to sit down and write a post hundreds of times. I’d have a great idea for a post and even jot down notes on whatever paper I had nearby, then as life does, it got in the way. I always had Mother duties, wife duties, house duties, farm duties, teacher duties, dance team coach duties, and the list goes on… and on. By the time I had time to write, I was too exhausted to even attempt it. I didn’t want to force it. My writing is never very good when I’m not in a good place when I’m writing.

Although I was absent here, I was quite present on our social media sites. Check out Frenchie’s Farmstead on Facebook and Instagram and all of the dots will be connected from the past 2-years. I really want to encourage you to take a scroll through these pages. We have loved sharing our farmstead with all of you!

March 2020-April 2021, the year of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, wreaked havoc on our little family, but not in any way related to the pandemic. The highlights (lowlights we’re being literal) were: —these got a bit long— we’ll call it therapy for this momma 🙂

1. Upon our return home from the most amazing Arkansas lake vacation, we had a very scary medical situation with my 10-year-old that involved an ambulance ride to a local hospital, followed by a transport ambulance ride to a children’s hospital when his condition worsened, a 15-day hospital stay, team after team of very confused (but very, very highly qualified) teams of doctors, blood transfusions, frustration, tears, and lots and lots of fear. HOWEVER, all ended much better than I could have ever hoped for (1 procedure and 1 surgery later). He’s back to 100% and will never experience the issue ever again. Talk about a relief! But I’ll tell you what, the anxiety and fear walking into that hospital and up to the nurses taking temperatures, holding my breath, until they said “Normal temp, here’s your sticker, have a good day.” The immense amount of fear that I would have “a temperature” and they would not let me be with my baby. In that moment, I couldn’t think of anything worse than not being by his side. So, I guess in a way, this situation was exacerbated by COVID-19. The things that helped us through this the most were our community (especially my school faculty family and our baseball family) and both of our families coming together and helping us out with care packages, gift cards, and entertaining our other two boys to make that time as normal as possible (they were not allowed to visit their brother at all which was very hard on them).
2. My husband, as you know is a firefighter/mowing business owner/farmer/homesteader, did something very severe to his back. I’m talking about a man who almost never takes even ibuprophen, was begging me to take him to the ER. Sweat beading up across his forehead and streaming down his temples as he winced just to speak. I’ve never seen him in so much pain. Cutting through lots of the frustrating moments along the way, he had herniated a disc and a piece of that disc had broken off and lodged itself in his spine and was pressing on the nerves (thus the cause of the uncontrollable pain). We met with the best neurosurgeon in town, she approached the situation with a least invasive approach first. Jake took 2 months off of work then went to desk job light duty after that (which was absolutely NOT where he wanted to be). Hunter and I picked up the slack with the mowing business on the weekends until he could find someone to mow for him for the remainder of the fall. All the boys and I picked up the slack on the farm as well. I’m not going to sugar coat it, it was really, really hard. Diiiiiiiiid I mention that I was teaching (teaching during COVID which was a nightmare in itself that I hope I never have to relive) simultaneously as all of this is going on. Along with this diagnosis, was the reality that he may never climb on the back of a firetruck to fight fire again. This was not easy to swallow for either one of us. But, he stayed strong, even when I fell apart. He’s my rock! Anyway, 6-weeks of meds and physical therapy went by bringing us to Christmastime. In mid-December, his neurosurgeon decided that he was not progressing the way she had hoped and that surgery would be necessary if he ever wanted to climb on a truck and fight fire again. So in mid-January he had his first surgery… and like we needed anything else… he developed a spinal fluid leak, I say developed because he was perfectly fine when he left the hospital. He was recovering well for a week before the spinal headaches started and worsened very quickly. After 3-weeks of bedrest and tests and more bedrest, he went back in for another surgery to patch the leaks. Oddly enough, we would later find out, this was the BEST possible situation. When his surgeon when back in the second time to patch the leaks, she found a LOT of old damage, calcification and scar tissue (he herniated a few discs in his back when he was a teenager) that was not visible on any of the scans they did. She was able to clean up, trim up, and fix all of that damage as well so it would not be bothersome either. However, recovery started over and would take longer as she did a bunch more work this time. Fast-forward to today… Frenchie (Jake) says “I feel better than I did when I was in my 20’s!”
3. Not sure any of you recall…. but during February (while he was completely laid up) we had extremely low temperatures with wind-chills in the -20’s and -30’s. We had to throw hay to all of our animals as they could not eat through the snow and ice. We put tank heaters in our both of our stock tanks here on the farm, but not even those could combat those temperatures. Not to mention that one went out and no one had them in-store or online that could get it to us fast enough. Hunter (my 13-year-old) and I would take turns using an axe and sledge hammer to break the 6 inches of ice that would build up each night. Until he got cold and I’d make him go inside. He’d have stood with me as long as it took, no matter how cold he was. He is a pretty amazing kid. Anyway, as the axe would slide out of the water, the water on the end would be frozen even before I got it out of the water. The droplets of water would freeze on my coveralls as soon as they landed looking like tiny bits of hail attached to my legs. Then… we called in the help of my father-in-law when we could no longer handle things just the two of us. He was a lifesaver! In fact if it weren’t for both of our families, we’d have never made it through as well as we did. As the temperatures continued to drop and remain low for DAYS… soon there was more ice in the tanks than water… with no hint that the weather was going to break. The outside spigots all froze and so we had to use a torch to warm them to the point that water would flow, but the hoses froze so fast after water stopped flowing that they were stiff and heavy to carry and had to be kept inside. The only hose that would flow water without freezing instantly was 10 feet too short to reach the tanks… so we filled 3 and 5-gallon buckets and carried them the 10-feet to the tanks. Dumping bucket after bucket after bucket. During this time, believe it or not I’d actually work up a sweat or at least that’s what it felt like because ice crystals formed on my eyelashes and the wisps of my hair that had worked their way out of my hat… froze. This was the coldest winter I’ve ever experienced and I was out in it…. a lot. Anyone who knows me, knows how much I hate being cold. But there wasn’t any other way… if I didn’t do it, the animals would die. So I did what I had to do. I’ve never felt stronger than I did when I looked back and see that I did that! Don’t get me wrong, in the moment there were lots of curse words and swearing to move back to HAWAII! But, I really did all of those things. My stiletto-wearing, 5’1″, city girl turned farmer self, DID THAT! Annnnnd I didn’t die! Although a few times, I didn’t know how I was going to do it another day. But, with Jake supporting me and the help of our families, we did it…. every day!
4. Upon our return from a lovely spring break trip to San Antonio to visit our dear friends the Kirbys, the morning we started our drive home I noticed that my stomach hurt. I chocked it up to eating anything and everything on vacation as I most certainly did! I mean the food was AMAZING! Anyway, my stomach continued to hurt and worsened and as we arrived home, I was unable to walk well and just wanted to go to bed, so I did. I had a routine physical appointment with my doctor the next day at noon anyway, so I figured I’d just ask her… or puke… and then hopefully feel better. Well I stayed in bed until my appointment and then as I asked her about it first thing at my appointment, she called over and sent me straight over to the hospital… I had appendicitis! I laughed when she told me I’d need surgery… laughed because, at this point, this was the fourth large incident in 9-months and when combined with all the small ones the shit storm that was the past year was now comical! I mean you can’t make this shit up! I recovered quickly and it was spring break so I didn’t have to take time of work so if you need a silver lining… there it is!

When all is said and done, I have grown so much this last year. I am not the same person that I was before March 2020 and it really has NOTHING to do with the pandemic. I’m different. I’m still settling into the new outlook I have. I sit here at 12:45am, typing this post, tears streaming down my face because I’m still really emotional about the events from this year, and it just feels so good to be writing again!!

Through all of this, I have discovered that life is a lot like the wind out here on our Kansas farmstead. Sometimes it will be frigid and unbearable, sometimes it’ll knock you straight on your ass with no notice, other times it’ll be an unexpected refreshing cool on a 103-degree day, or it will thrust the intoxicating scent of wildflowers in your nose forcing you to take a deep breath and find the beauty in everyday ordinary things. Every wind serves a purpose, to shape your life into what it will be. And if you’ve ever lived in the mid-west you know, if you don’t like the weather, wait 30-minutes and it’ll change on ya so just be patient and breath it in!

*I promise I will try to keep them shorter after this lol! AND to write more often… we have some exciting things happening here so I’ll need to keep you all updated 🙂