Life on A Farm (12)

The day came, it was finally time to move out to the new farm. The house was delivered and it was put together and sealed and deemed livable. We would move what we had in the little single wide trailer out to the new house and eventually move our other things from storage out there and slowly but surely we would have our things back. I would have my own room, Matthew and Jacob would share a room, Michael would have his own room and the parents would have theirs on the other end of the house. Our living room, eating area and kitchen would be in the middle of the house. The house, even though it was a double wide mobile home was pretty nice and had plenty of room.
The house would sit at the back of the property on the flag part of the design. If you were looking at the front of the house, to the left in the corner several feet away, would be the barn after we put it back up. In between the house and barn would be the dog kennels and the storage shed. There was enough room behind the house for us kids to play and for a clothes line to be put up. To the right of the house would be the septic system area, in front of the house there was enough of a front yard before getting to the neighbor’s house. On the other side of the barn there was a kind of a ditch area that led to more of our land that was just full of wildflowers. We didn't do much with the land in the front on the flag pole part of the land. We just left it alone.

It was amazing living out there on that piece of property. The sky could be seen for miles every where you looked, there were no pine trees, if there were, they weren't the tall ones. The sunrises and sunsets out there could take anybody’s breath away and when a storm would come, you could see it before you smelled it. We didn't have too many neighbors, the street where our land was on was still being developed and not too many people had bought property. We eventually had neighbors move in to the property in front of us, they had a teenage daughter and a son that was near Matthew’s age. We would hang out with them, or rather, they would come over and hang out with us kids until the adopted mother thought they were too ‘worldly’ and they were not good for us to be around.

The house, the farm, the land was everything we had hoped it would be, but it wouldn't be enough to keep problems from happening. While we lived out at the new place, we were still working at the Retreat Center and over time my Dad had gotten small jobs cleaning a dentist office and a smaller church on the other side of town. The dentist office job was actually a bartering deal between my Dad and the dentist. We really couldn't afford dental work, and my Dad would need it the most, so in return for the services provided for my Dad, we would go clean the office every other day in the week. It was kind of cool, cleaning a dentist office. Michael and I were the usual ones that went with Dad to clean it. And there was the small church that was pastored by a pastor who had pastored at the Bible Church we used to attend. It was usually done one a week. 

There was a lot of stuff our family did, but it became more and more of a thing that Michael and I did with our Dad. Matthew didn't work a lot, he would stay with the adopted mother and do what, we had no idea. Well, I did. He would sit around the house eating whatever and watching television or movies or doing stuff on the computer. I really can’t remember a time he would work. He didn't know how to make his own bed, or even put the sheets and stuff on it if they needed to be washed. I was always making the beds, always making his. I didn't understand why I was always doing what he should have been doing all along and I really didn't like it or him and it would get worse.

At some point after we had moved out to the new property, it was time to put up a fence around the eleven acres. The parents decided that a wooden rail fence would go up at the front across the five acres and then along the sides of the property all the way to the back and long the sides of the flag part of the property there would be a four strand barb wire fence with green tee posts in between.  Dad would help, and sometimes the adopted mother when she wanted to tell everybody what to do, but anything that took time and actual work to do, would be left to Michael and I to do. Let me remind you that I was about 16 years old and Michael 15, but because of how we were being raised and treated, our physical appearance didn't really catch up with us for a while, so we looked like we were barely 13 years old. Michael and I would be the ones to hang the barb wire using a come along and our hands.
There would be times, Dad would come out and use the four wheeler with the come along but eventually we found out how to use the come along without the four wheeler. For days on end, we would put up the barb wire, we would first dig holes in the ground for the wooden posts, and in between those we would bang in the ground a tee post. The barb wire would go up, starting with the top and bottom line and then we would add two more strands in between. The barb wire would have to be nailed into the posts, tightened and then it would have to be clipped on with wire to the tee posts.
 It was a very tedious job and it required a lot of work, hard work. I would be doing the work of a grown man at the age of 15 or 16. We would be required to work out in the afternoon and if I remember right we worked in the summer time and anybody who lives in Texas or in the south, knows what summer is like. It was too much but we weren't allowed a choice. We would be allowed to take a break or we would sneak one in when we thought they couldn't see us. Our refreshment of water came from the hose or outside faucet. To this day, I can’t remember anybody coming out and offering us any kind of cold beverage and of course, Matthew was nowhere to be found, well, up at the house he was. He didn't do a thing with that fence.  So, between Michael and I and with the occasional help of the adopted Dad, we put up a four strand barb wire fence around 11 acres. Again, it was such hard work, there were many times I would get a migraine from being out in the heat and I remember Michael getting borderline heat stroke once. When something happened like that to us, we were told to just get some water from the faucet and sit down (outside) and take a break.
 I remember once, it was getting closer to the end of the day and I was fighting a massive migraine. I had my first migraine when I was six years old and it had made me sick to my stomach and made me throw up. So, the parents knew I had them and they knew what they did to me if I didn't take anything for them, which was pretty much most of the time. Well, this one day, I was fighting one, we had been out working on the fence all day and I was just getting sick. For some reason, the parents and Matthew and Jacob needed to go some where and they had told us both to keep working on the fence. I couldn't do it any more, my head was pounding and I knew that eventually I was going to just throw up, in fact, I was trying to get myself to do that, knowing that when I did I would feel some what better.  I finally decided to just lay down, I was seeing stars and in fact, my head was hurting so bad, I was in tears. The parents came home and when the adopted mother found out that I had been on the ground crying, she yelled at me and got so angry with me. She said something to the effect, ''didn't you know that you could have embarrassed us or something?'' It was about her. She didn't care that my head hurt so bad that it was about to blow up and it would be stuff like this that would start to make me even more angry and very convinced that she didn't love or care about me. In fact, I was starting to think that I was just around to work, since that was all I ever did.

If it was way too hot to work out side, we would be inside doing school. We would be doing school on our own though, in our rooms. She would buy us our school books, tell us what to do which basically was a chapter and then the review work. If we ever needed help, she would blow us off or get mad that we would ask for help and yell at us to go to our room and do our own work or ‘figure it out’. School was a joke and we weren't really sticking to the ATIA curriculum since it would require for her to actually sit down and do the school with us and she just didn't have to time to do that. Occasionally we would do stuff together as a family but those times were few and far in between.

If we weren't working with Dad, or working outside on the farm, we were given ‘free’ time but that was limited to a few things we were allowed to do. I was allowed to counted cross stitch or play my flute. I had a collection of hymnals and I would sit on my bed, with my fold up music stand and play hymn after hymn. I kind of liked it but I would always get nervous because the adopted mother would listen and correct me if she was in one of her perfection moods. It irritated me, everything with her had to be perfect. If you didn't do anything perfect or the way she wanted she would put you down and make you feel like a fool. 

Anyways, some times we were forced to find something to do outside and we didn't come into the house until the sun, literally went down. I remember I got a harmonica one time from Cracker Barrel and I taught myself how to play it. I would usually take my harmonica outside and go away from the house as far as I was allowed and I would sit and pick songs out on it. I would play while I stared at the huge Texas sky and I would imagine so much. I would imagine a life that wasn't as hard or full of work all the time. I would imagine what it would be like to have a mother who loved me, who wanted to treat me like I was her daughter, like I was special and worth something. I wondered what it would be like to have a Dad who would stand up for his daughter and wouldn't allow the adopted mother to put her daughter through so much grief. I wondered about a lot of things.

After the fence project went up, it was time to work on the barn. It had been sitting in a huge pile of different size pieces of lumber and tin roof. The weeds had grown through and around it by the time we got to it. It had been there long enough for a black widow spider to build her nest there. I will never forget the day I found her and almost touched her.

So, in between working at the church, retreat center and dentist office, we would start putting up the barn, which was huge. I think it was bigger than our house. It had three huge stalls on one side and on the other with a big walk way down the middle. We would work tirelessly on it and most of the time we would work on it until the sun went down. It took us a while but it went up. Before we finished, I would get my first kittens ever. A family at our church were giving some away and they had two. They had a pure white one with blue eyes and without me knowing, the parents had arranged for it to be mine by the time we went home from church that night. She was my very own cat and strangely, the adopted mother seemed happy and nice about the whole thing. I was finally getting my very first kitten and his name would be ‘Snowball’. He was awesome but he had to be an outside cat but I was fine with that, as long as I could have him and he was mine! It was my job to feed him and take care of him and he was so much fun. When we were allowed to play outside, I would sit and play with him. Within a week of us getting Snowball, the parents had decided to bring the other kitten home so Snowball would have a friend. The other kitten was solid black and although I don’t remember it’s name, he was just as cute and him and Snowball were just a pair.

The kittens weren't the only pets we had though, we had dogs. I really didn't like these dogs. We had a few full grown female Dalmatians and a mut lab dog but they were all kenneled and none of them were really tamed enough to be outside of their kennels and so it also became Michael and I’s jobs to clean the kennels almost every day and feed them. Never mind that these dogs were Matthew’s. The Dalmatians where his and yet he never had to do much, occasionally he would feed them but he never had to clean out their kennels because it would make him ‘throw up’.  We were still in the business of breeding the Dalmatians though, and we had a couple of them that would have puppies and when they did, we would bring them in the house for them to give birth to them. I really didn't like these dogs. They were annoying, I hated cleaning up after them and covering up the holes they would dig in the ground around their kennels. But, I would hate them even more after that tragic day when one of the female Dalmatians would kill my Snowball. 

I will never forget it. We kids had been outside that afternoon, playing or having free time, I was watching Jacob, who also played outside, as long as I was watching him to make sure he didn't get hurt or into something. One of the female Dalmatians were in the house in the laundry room which had a door that led to the back yard and she was in there with her puppies. Somehow she had gotten out and without a leash on. Any time the dogs had to be taken out side to potty, they would needed their leashes because they just weren't socially able to go out on their own, especially out on eleven acres. So, as I am out side in the backyard with Jacob, all I remember is Freckles having gotten out the back door and like always, she was just wild, she was outside and free. She would run and run all over the place. Well, the kittens had been outside too and they were usually out and about, not needing to worry about the dogs getting to them because the dogs were usually inside their kennels or on a leash. Freckles soon found Snowball, the black kitten having already taken off for the storage shed that had doors on it closed enough for only the kittens to get in. Snowball wouldn't make it. I started to scream, Freckles had grabbed Snowball and had started running with him in her mouth and then she started shaking him so badly. I could only scream, the adopted mother was in the house, I ran to the sliding door to tell her what was going on, she was on the phone and obviously preoccupied and didn't come right away. I couldn't leave Jacob alone, he would get hurt by the maniac dog running around. I tried to catch Freckles when she would come around, and eventually Michael and Matthew would start chasing her, trying to get Snowball out of her mouth. Eventually the dumb dog was caught, she had dropped Snowball by the door of the storage shed. Freckles had been taken back in the house and by that time, the adopted mother had come out to see what on earth had been going on and what the end result of the madness going on had done. We found Snowball in the shed, he hadn't gotten too far inside the door. He was bleeding and limp, breathing really heavy. I was pretty sure he had been killed but he was alive but barely. We tried to comfort him and clean him up but he had been traumatized and probably shaken really bad. We would watch him for a while, well, I would watch him for a while and then later that evening he died. I was devastated. Up until that day, I would rarely show emotion, let alone cry. In fact, I was told years later that I would never show any emotions whatsoever until that day that Snowball was attacked and died. I cried that day, I cried really hard. The first thing that was mine, that I could call my own had died and had died because other people had been careless and not very concerned. I cried because I could have saved him if I hadn't been watching Jacob like I was always doing it seemed. I cried because something I had gotten attached to, that had become my very own was forever gone. We would bury Snowball out behind the barn, in an area of ground that would eventually become the farm animal graveyard.  I think my Dad buried him. It was sad and I was just heartbroken beyond words. I was also angry but I wouldn't dare let anyone know that. I immediately hated that dog and the rest of them. They were mean and eventually Snowball wouldn't become the only victim to the mean dogs.

For once it seemed like, the adopted mother actually hugged me and told me how sorry she was that Snowball had died, she apologized for having been on the phone and not being able to come right away when the chaos was unfolding. She actually seemed genuinely concerned that I was hurt and in tears. Perhaps she showed concern because I was actually showing emotion? I’ll never really know why she seemed so concerned about me that day and in the days ahead. I was distraught over having lost Snowball and eventually the black one would become mine. I loved it but not as much as I had loved Snowball. No other cat would replace Snowball, or would be as special.

The incident with Snowball was very traumatic, for me anyways. I had never really seen anything in real life be destroyed or killed. It was a very rude awakening to the kind of life that happened on a farm, in the country. I was not prepared for the other things that would happen out there, I don’t think the parents would be either. There were a lot of things that we would have to get used to, things we would be introduced to, things we had neither seen or experienced in the city.

The incident with Snowball had also started something inside of me. I would start to become angry and even though I would never be allowed to display that outwardly or around where my parents could see, it would come out and in ways they would never know about, or at the time I at least thought they wouldn't.  I was getting angry, the hurt inside of me was going to start making its way to the surface and there would be a series of events that would begin to happen to me that would make the new life out in the country more of a nightmare rather than an idea of a ‘new life’.  I would have a couple of more years at home, a couple of more years to endure the grief and garbage that would be directed at me for whatever reason.

Until next time, be blessed to inspire and make a difference!

~The Adopted Child