so there's this guy living in my barn.

yeah, really.
 a nomadic friend sent me a fb message the other day desperate to get out of his current living situation.  all i had to offer was a hammock in the barn.  i guess he really was desperate, 'cause he showed up on my doorstep 3 days later.  the quiet one is avoiding him like the plague.  he likes his kingdom to be lacking in all unknown persons when he arrives, but i have a feeling he's not going to care soon.  today the nomad and i spent the afternoon clearing a fence row that's been bothering tq1 and me for years.  i'm thinking once he sees how awesome it is to have free labor for the price of bunking a nomad in the barn, he's probably not going to mind.
clearing fence rows doesn't really sound like such a fantastic thing, does it?  amazingly, it's the greatest chore i've found in all the time i've been on the farm.  everything else is sisyphistic.  laundry doesn't stay folded, dishes don't stay clean, bellies don't stay full, goats don't stay milked, grass doesn't stay cut.  but fence rows?  fence rows can stay clean for YEARS! and the work is surprisingly quick.  i mean, in 2 hours we were 1/4 of the way done. by the end of the summer i might actually have one whole side of the road cleared!  how cool would that be?
it's day 3 of summer break.  so far my children have not turned into tv zombies and they've not driven me nuts.  i am, however, taking a timeout from them so i can write a long overdue blog. so far the kids have been spending all their time wet and dirty.  i'm soooo thankful that pirate and monkey are old enough to play together now.  i've been hauling them out to which ever field i'm working in and turning them loose to catch crawdads and tadpoles and whatever else it is that turns my caucasian children into urchins of unidentifiable origin by the end of the day.  bill waterson (the greatest philosopher of the modern day, IMHO)once said "if your knees aren't green by the end of the day you ought to seriously reexamine your life"  i think that's pretty terrific advice, and my kids are living it to the fullest.
now, if you don't mind, i'm going to go spray my kids with the waterhose while i fill up the pool.  accidentally, of course.