I FARM HOUND DOGS, ONE AT A TIME

I'm no farmer.  Many people upon hearing that we live on 40 acres on top of a mountain somewhere assume that I must be.  But no, I'm no farmer.  My best friend Ginger is though.   She lives on a farm in Catawba, which is the top of another mountain in the same area code but still about an hour's drive from Bent Mountain.  Her husband used to say when they moved here that if we still lived in NJ,  they would be in Pennsylvania.  I guess that may be a joke you would only get if you were from New Jersey, living in Catawba and your friends lived on Bent Mountain, on the Floyd County border. 

Back to non-farming.  We do have a coonhound.  He's gorgeous.  We took pictures of him to the Ferrum Folklife Festival and determined that he was a rare fellow indeed; a very fancy English coonhound.  He's got brown spotted legs and a black spotted body and big brown and black spots all over.  Spott.  We added the extra "t" because of the fancy factor.   Doesn't take much to entertain a Florin.

We used to have bassett hounds, which were a bit easier to train,  but our sweet Millie (short for Mildred after my dear old great aunt who had both blue blood and blue hair) died a couple of years ago.  Spott showed up one day looking in the backdoor as our son Cameron was looking out.  Larry told Emma and I not to feed him.  In fact, Larry wouldn't even look at him as he had fallen in love immediately and we weren't in the market for another dog. However, the kids and I won out and Spott sleeps on my side of the bed when I'm out of town.  And he is Daddy's boy.  They like to putter around outside the house and Spott likes to show his dad how he can chase rabbits and deer.  He coonhound blubbers all over the back 40.  Don't get mad.  The rabbits ALWAYS win out.  Then Spott lays panting for the next two hours in the downstairs bathroom  trying to get cool and his tongue sticks to the hardwood floor.   He has a good life.

Larry has begun to think I might enjoy farming.  He is fixing our sweet little shed "The Bird House" into a chicken coop.  Ginger is moving back to Texas and we are going to inherit a dozen of so of her chickens in a couple of weeks.  My man is also fencing in the bottom field along the creek so we can grass finish our first steer this summer.   I haven't the heart to tell him.   I'm a spoiled sleeping on the bed coonhound farmer...not a chicken or cow farmer.  But I'm sincerely hoping that he is.