Quackers and Mrs Goose

Summer has arrived @ Flowing River Farm. The sounds of the duck hierarchy echo in the early morning mist. It's a seemingly endless sound of well, drake  ducks pounding each other with their  bills  as they are  vying for the affections of the hen ducks. It causes us to pause and stare @ ducks who now have turned hostile to the same pen mates they endured Winter with. The hens have not a chance to even have breakfast @ the watermelon rinds splattered on the compost pile.

Somehow the hens find places of solitude to deposit their fertilized eggs. One chosen location is the exterior of the horse pen. Quackers  faithfully deposits her treasured eggs in a nest lined with grass clippings and has towering burn nettles protecting her from being spotted, she believes. So Quackers sits in the driving rain, in the intense heat and then decides after 7 days -that should be sufficient time and wanders back to the flock.

Mrs Goose decides it has become her task to sit on the abandoned eggs with her gosling perched on her back and her husband and Geezer plopped next to her. It's an emphatic honking and quacking that is accompanied by a well meaning hiss- hiss from the male goose. Wings flapping and neck arched @ anything that they deem is within their territory. The 0 turn  lawn mower and the farm van evoke thoughts of fury from all the geese. They charge @ the offenders with bravery unequaled and I remind them with amusement that I saved their life last Winter.

Next written Blog post will unveil the Joy Journey of the Geese last Winter and how they ended up @ Flowing River Farm.

Compost

-Special thanks to Jan Dworshack and the Arcadia Compost Champions!

Please watch for the Arcadia Compost Champions during the Arcadia, WI Broiler Dairy Parade @ 1:30 Sun. May 28th, 2017!!

Gratitude for Mother Figures of the Universe

Mother's Day weekend blessings to ALL women! I consider all females a reason to celebrate Mother's Day! We all had a Mom who thought it a grand idea to birth us, care for our physical needs,  and sat up with us when we couldn't sleep. Maybe Mom wasn't exactly what you believe you ordered, or maybe she surpassed your expectations. Mom, Mum, Mother, Mommy, Mother Nature, Ma- all words that build  a connection to all people who were ever born, and those to come. Let's build the bridges that connect us all together whatever form our lives have taken. Celebrate each other, Celebrate yourself and let your inner soulshine sparkle through. There's only one you, no one can ever be you! Be the person God created you to be and wear being a Mother or Father in a traditional or non-traditional role with pride.

I'm honoring my Ma-Sharon Salwey today. A strong soulshine woman who taught me how to be and not to be. Gifts, to be able to pick and choose what I wanted to be. Mom is one of my best friends. This sweet woman embellishes me with fresh wheat bread for my early morning wake up snack. Every AM I bow my head and thank her for giving me so much love in the form of the old fashioned wheat bread from the same organic flour mill-Great River now named, I grew up next to in Yaeger Valley. She provided a love for gardening, being organized, ambitious and giving heart and even insisted I learn to sew. The sewing class and my disdain for it- has  prompted me to have Tom do any of our  sewing with his vet suture material. She never shared my love of animals or farming or fieldwork, but honored the spot in me that had to be out in the thick of milking, doing fieldwork, burning brush and wanting my Barbie dolls to be able to drive heavy equipment. Thanks Mom, I picked the best Mommy in the world for me and am so delighted to have u want to picnic by the creek and even catch a trout with family as a way to celebrate the gift of family on Mother's Day weekend!   

Feel the Spirit in Peace, Love and Joy

Sue A Roskos

What is Sue's Joy Journey?

            After posting photos on Facebook, I have been titling some of the days “Sue’s Joy Journey.” So, special thanks to Chris for pausing and asking me “Sue, what exactly is your Joy Journey? Is it something that if I look up on the Internet on the computer, I would find out what it is?”

            So I slowed down for peace, love, and joy, and answered the question. It's just me being me, doing my daily living and shining my light and looking at each person in front of me as the most special person in the world. It’s a seeing and acknowledging them for where they are or where they are not. It’s seeing past all the fear or the hurt or the anger and being able to see God or the source of the divine love that connects all people and all creatures. It is a way to see into a person’s eyes. I meet them where they are, with a deep knowing that we are all one.

It is my divine calling I signed up for. My Joy Journey is to build the bridge on my inner journey and have it manifest in the outside world as a connector. I see people, places, situations and nature where they are. It’s a deep compassion-a kind of empathy. It’s like being in the current or the river that runs deep in the earth-you know what’s under there even if you can’t see it. It’s believing in anything or nothing. It’s just knowing that underneath all the divisions, its pure love.

It’s a deep knowing and faith, no matter what church you decide to attend or not to attend, or what God you think is the only way to eternal life – there’s no separation or division and it’s all man-made.

Nature and animals get it. They are happy when I sing their praises and offer blessings. It’s people, who sometimes don’t feel worthy of being praised or able accept a gift or can meet a thank you with gratitude. That’s me some days too. I’ve experienced everything everybody’s had as a perceived problem and realized its all situations awaiting a solution. It takes an incredible amount of discipline. It’s always practicing forgiveness of oneself for the moments and days or maybe months, when the wild horses get out of the corral. We wonder where our true self trotted off to and please God why can’t it come back? Then it’s joyful when you look to the river and there’s just a slight hint of a ray of light bouncing off the water. When we’re ready to be taught, it ends up being a very humbling experience. When you open up to the gift of the present and acknowledge that within all the heartache and pain and maybe some laughter, it’s possible to walk through the eye of the storm. It’s walking when you feel like you can’t put one more foot in front of the other. We’re all in this together. There isn’t one single person who hasn’t undergone what you felt. This is a journey together. I choose to dance on bridges to open the connection and send my song with a deep faith to the universe. It gives me great peace, love and joy in knowing we are never alone. Even if we are standing here on the earth with not a single person – it’s such a blessed feeling to be cradled in the midst of a sweet song - the symphony of the Earth angel choir. Thank you God in this world, for all the beautiful people who I feel have come before us and are here now and are yet to come. Thank you for providing very vibrant, pure love. It’s knowing that you can sit at a football game and be for or against other teams, you can sit in a political debate and be for or against something, you can be against social issues and you can feel like the world is against you. But really the world is a reflection of our own mind. So the sound of God and all the names we use and all the religions all mean the same thing and its love. It’s peeling away the layers that we hide behind and just be our authentic self. No one else can ever be you, so celebrate yourself.

            So you might see me smile and you will receive a kind word or a gesture. You might look at me and I am in the middle of winter and I’m all bundled up and I’m freezing. I’m wondering what I’m doing in Wisconsin when I’d rather be in shorts and t-shirt surrounded by nature, fresh fruit, animals, and walking in green pastures singing my songs to warm breezes, flowers, and trees. So I share with you a story or a piece of something. Maybe, I realize I have nothing physically to give and that I don’t need anything anymore. That it really is just being light and providing sunshine in my own way or lending an ear or acknowledging that I have intuition and know what is really going on with your life, underneath it all. So I celebrate you, I celebrate myself, because it’s all the same. When I'm actually handing you something, its actually doing something for me, much more than for you. When I'm feeling like I’ve lost my way and can’t get my mind out of a pity party for anything, all I can do is send a word of encouragement a text message or take a photo or go outside and Sing-a-Song and just say thank you. You actually carry me when I give to you and you think I am actually giving to you. It’s what you give back to me that sends me on my Joy Journey. You provide a service, you are quick to answer my call, you treat me with the utmost kindness and respect or you act like you don’t want to give me the time of day – but you would do anything for me because you know I love you for just who you are.

I don’t care if you clean the bathroom or you’re the president of a company – you’re all the same. I don’t care if you farm conventionally or organic, if your Democrat or Republican, if you’re for or against who I am – I know underneath it all it’s just pure love and causing great growth and development on this Joy Journey I signed up for with this energy that I call God. This is not an easy path. It takes a lot of strength to move forward and navigate in the physical world when your wings reach for the high spaces. I gave up thinking that I can be so in tune with all this energy and be inside buildings and sitting in chairs. I feel so light I could float away. I am such a free spirit - I just want to be outside. So much of what I thought to be true is not how I look at it as part of my growth and development.  I won’t stay in one place for long and send you silent blessings as I hear the deep calling voice and settle into a kettle of peace. I accept that nature and animals are my recharge. I decided that even God had to go into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights and if it means I have to get outside or pet an animal or thank someone – that’s who I am and I am what I am. I am blessed, I am rich, I am made in God’s image, so are you! I can do all things through Christ! My mind is alert, my heart is open, I am amazing! I am part of the beautiful flowing river of life. That is where the name for Flowing River Farm, where we reside, was created from. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart, be pure love. May I forgive myself that I might go out into the world to be a blessing. Faith is believing when sometimes you can’t see, but you know that you are being carried. We never ever are alone. My sincerest heartfelt gratitude to the countless people who held my hand and they didn’t even know it. Maybe you answered my call and continue to do so I am so thankful for that. Underneath it all-its beautiful peace love and joy always. I’ve had so many great teachers and look forward to forever be expanding, creative, and maintain a flexible mind. I am open to allowing all gifts and handfuls of blessings and to this thing called life that passes through us.

So thanks for being part of my Joy Journey. I promised The force of love, the Whippoorwill and the coyote and myself that I would say yes. I’m not perfect – don’t put me above anyone else. We all have it in us and we all have the same issues in different forms and manifestations. It’s just how we choose to develop our daily habits and forgiving ourselves for all the perceived wrongs and letting go and letting God or whoever you turn your life over to. Now lets go outside into the world and be a blessing.