wonderful fire tonight- currently 15 degrees outdoors...

happy chickens-

me ringing the bell...

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ringing the bell at freshway market in zebulon until 5

mark & meredith at mall of georgia

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birds in back pasture

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meredith and aunt mary thanksgiving 2010

have fun in the bucket with your family

fleck the cat getting ready for thanksgiving...

poor chipmonk is scared stiff (note tail) by hooflicker!

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another sunset

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sunset at mar-be-me farms concord, georgia

paint swirls in the sky at dusk

yoder!

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sunset

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gorgeous clouds after the rain

betsy playing with a cat

sunset at mar-be-me

meredith and fleck on the farm

fleck the cat guarding the hen house...

check out this cool cloud formation above the barns... Mar-Be-Me

meredith's kitten guarding the farm from the hay loft...

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enjoying the Westin @ Hilton Head

our free range road island red hens love organic melons

full moon over mar-be-me

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full moon over mar-be-me

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glad i have a gate here!

every day!

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today's drool-fest...

What do you do when they just stare...

Right to left: Belle, Bonnie and Bubba

Not pictured- Betsy (she begs the least of them!)

So here we are, back home after relaxing in the mountains and being started at by three cows. These cows are worse than dogs begging. Bubba is here just visiting (he has a job at the farm he has not yet accomplished...), but the girls let him know Day 1 that we feed around her at 5 pm. Amazingly, this is the daily seen at our barn. They eat grass all day and cattle conditioner as a treat...

After the trip to the mountains...

After a few days in the mountains enjoying the fresh air and fishing... This is not my most flattering photo, but it sure was FUN!

Some days the bucket is just too small... But we try any way!

Meredith & Rodeo...

I never actually had a horse growing up. I did ride some in high school, but I never feed, brushed, and worked a horse out daily...

So here we were last November, going to purchase two cows when we are offered a horse. FREE!

Rodeo. Yes Rodeo. We did not name him. The last place he would ever actually be is a rodeo. He is approx 18 years old give or take 3 to 5 years. He has been know to stumble from time to time. He looks like Mr Ed mumbling. He "talks" all the time.

As this photo shows, he is as easy as a slow rain on a hot day! Meredith gives him "spa" treatments all the time. He loves it. She brushes, scrapes, cleans, wipes him all the time. She braids his mane. She sings to him. He just mumbles....

His best friend is a stubborn donkey we refer to as the "Noble Steed" (Shrek). Honestly, if he could talk, I think he would sound just like Eddie Murphey. Yoder is certainly not noble, but he does run the farm and Rodeo is his soul mate. They freak out if they are out of sight of one another. Yoder "hee-haws" and Rodeo "whinnies". They start running back and forth in the pasture until reunited.

Their friendship reminds me that perhaps we should all do that when we can't see our dearest friends. Maybe we should only surround ourselves with those worth crying out for when they are not with us.

Note- Shout out to my sis, Caren, for making the blog header featured on this page. Thanks!

Welcome to Mar-Be-Me Farm

This is my attempt to introduce our little farm to the world wide web via blogging. Over the past eight years, my husband Mark, daughter Meredith, and I have taken a pasture with a house and turned it into a farm complete with cows, guineas, chickens, minature donkey, horse and a cat family living in the chicken coop.

Growing up on an acre lot in a neighborhood as a kid, going to Montrose, GA to visit my grandparents farm was a treat. Well, unless it was summer. They NEVER used A/C. Their farm just had goats and chickens and a massive garden. It was on family land that had been in the family for generations. I spent more time with my grandparents shelling peas than any other activity.

My husband always wanted to be a farmer, so his extensive career with Gold Kist/Southern States was way of realizing part of his dream. Unless a person is born into a farm family business it is near impossible to up start a farm and make a living. This reality caused him to be creative. He helped farmers professionally by becoming a nationally certified crop advisor. He dreamed about barns and fencing he would have at his own personal utopia some day. His doodling on napkins and scrap paper began to inspire me.

Although my dream at 17 was to live in a loft high above a city and buy unbelievable art that would eventually be priceless, my dream at 27 was totally different. I was blessed to have life experience that taught me that home is where the one's you love are, not a geographical place. It also taught me that some of the best dreams are not the one's the world tells you to have, but the one's you draw up with your true love as you wait for the power to come back on after an ice storm. It is the dream you have as you feel the rain fall on your back as you pick tomatoes to make homemade salsa. It is the dream that is born when our child lights up at a neighbor's farm...

So, December 2001, we made an offer on a nine acre property with a house (we affectionately still refer to the house as the "Money Pit"). It was a house we saw a year earlier that listed way higher than we could afford, but as fate would have it, the price was lowered about the time we got a contract to sell our house in a subdivision. We made a deal and moved in February 2002.

So, flash forward eight years... I get such a kick out of the every day comedy that I see at our little nine acre utopia. I thought you may, too.