A Farm Away From Home

May 6, 2018
Macey

Greetings, Big Ole World! Many have asked just what we have been up to in Florida and the answer is far too convoluted and long to provide, but we thought it would be fun to give y’all a taste. As Dustin had quickly secured a job writing the blog for our lovely former employers, Mike’s Camera (www.mikescamera.blog) and transferring VHS tapes for the locals down here in Leesburg, FL, (a.k.a. Retirementville), I started to feel nervous about finding employment. Because of our upcoming travels we had made it pretty difficult to find a normal job, so I turned to the good ol’ internet. Soon I found myself moving cabinets one day, rearranging garages and making beds on another, and finally landing on something a little more steady: riding and tending to horses in middle-of-nowhere Florida. Not only was I tending to Arabian horses, but Abyssinian cats and over-friendly Labradoodles as well. As interesting as it was I didn’t last long after falling off the horses many times, and the hour and a half commute was a little too much for this girl. As luck would have it, however, the day after I had gone to pick up the last of my wages I received a phone call asking if we could come take care of the farm for a week while the owner took 5 of the horses up to NC for an endurance race. Excited for the opportunity for some real country living, we happily accepted the job and ended up back there (and again the week after). We were left with 3 horses, 8 adult Labradoodles, 3 puppies, 9 Abyssinian cats, and 9 kittens.

Here is a video that Dustin put together that really sums up our farm experience. Make sure to turn on the sound:

Here are some other notable highlights:
In order to expedite getting one of the horses ready to be carted off to the race we had to catch him at 4:30 AM. Dustin felt like a real cowboy, for he was the one to rope the horse after about an hour of chasing him down. The next week when we had to get a different horse ready we had a quite different experience—the horse was quite cooperative! However, we (as in both of us) heard an eerie voice very clearly saying, “Macey, where are you?” Nobody, I mean nobody, was around for miles. To add to the experience, that evening, while swaying in the hammock, we both woke in the middle of the night to hear what I could only describe as a howl starting out as a human mimicking a werewolf and then something very gargled and animal like.

Not all the creatures in the woods were as frightening. One evening while we were making the rounds I noticed a twinkle in the distance. Filled with excitement that there might be a firefly in our midst (and Dustin had yet to see them in his lifetime!), we ran towards the fence to find one of the most magical sights I could have imagined. Hundreds of fireflies danced in and out of the trees lighting it up like a mystical fairy garden.

The country side of Florida is truly extraordinary with fields of wildflowers as far as the eyes can see. Amongst the flowers are fields of peanuts, as well as their charming signs: p-nuts, p-nutz, pnts, peenuts, and the one we enjoyed most of all just said “…peanuts”.

Sometimes as part of an errand for the farm, like getting a tank of nitrogen filled, or sometimes just because we were relatively close, we were fortunate to have the chance to also explore Crystal River, the adorable town of Dunnellon, the road where “Jeepers Creepers” was filmed, and most notably Rainbow Springs with its gorgeous clear water, gardens, and an abandoned zoo exhibit.

Again, check out this awesome little video Dustin made:

During the second week we found the true country experience we were craving in a Saturday evening at the small towns local bar, Willard’s, followed up with a truly unique church service the next day at Lighthouse Ministry, led by the almost overwhelmingly charismatic Reverend Bobby Taft.

 

Take Away:

• There are so many working opportunities out there, you truly never know what people are up to and if the opportunity to try something new comes your way, take it.
• The country is a wonderful place to find culture and stories that you couldn’t make up in your wildest dreams.
• Florida is an unexpectedly beautiful place and deserves more credit than the vast dumpy swampland as which it tends to be dismissed.

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