People ask us all the time, what made us go into the bed and breakfast business. There is a practical reason of finding some use for the family home that would pay for it's upkeep and the farm. But there is also an opportunity to give people some time in a place that may actually be good for them.
So now...my dearest friend for the last 50 years recently lost his wife to cancer. I remember so well when we were kids here running around on the farm and am amazed at how things ...especially kids have changed. We now have a whole generation of "indoor" kids who are intimidated by and uninterested in anything outside their walls. Too bad for them.
So today, on this most beautiful day in June, I am remembering my life in the country without a telephone or television. My unheated bedroom, average temperature in the winter, 40 degrees. Playing solitaire and listing to AM radio in the summer evening. Hot dusty air, buzzing bugs, gnats...lots of gnats...the sound of grazing animals ripping off chunks of grass and grinding them lazily while staring calmly at the trees. Owls hooting, crows calling, a mockingbird singing away at 2 in the morning. Sitting on the back porch steps with my pal, chatting away through the night about life and nothing. Animals animals animals, wild and domestic. All leading lives parallel to mine.
Picking wild, stickery, blackberries and paying the price with chigger bites and poison ivy the next day. Catching little crawfish in the stream behind the house. Hoeing beans, ugh, weeding and sweating in the garden. Moving many many wheelbarrows full of rocks. Walking down a hot road to the country store that served as meeting place, post office and Hershey's ice cream destination.
A lot of that is gone now...the store that once sheltered sleeping cats and gossiping neighbors by it's pot belly stove, is boarded up and slowly being eaten by vines and vandals. Many of the people have moved on in one way or the other and have been replaced by their children. Technology allows us now to choose how much of the world we want to bring into our lives and when. Air conditioning, central heating and telephones arrived (and is now going away again.ha ha). The pace of life has picked up like crazy.
And no, I'm not 100 years old..only a little more than 1/2 way there. This is all not so long ago as to be a time forgotten.
But the best things still remain...the bugs...the farm animals grazing. The horses are long gone but we have goats and cows to keep us busy and chickens to give us eggs and Guinea Hens to eat bugs and make us laugh. The birds are still here making nests and calling. The owls still hoot. The blackberries are still stickery. The poison ivy still catches us now and then. There is still an abundance of rocks and weeds to attend to. And lightning bugs..lotsa them. All the things that really make life important are still here.
I think I'll go feed some watermelon the the goats now. They'll like that. And I will too.
