Jessie Gussman

USA Today best-selling author Jessie Gussman writes sweet and inspirational romance from her farm in central Virginia. Having attended, but never graduating from the school of hard knocks, Jessie uses real life on the farm to inspire her cowboy, rural and blue-collar fiction.



When she’s not chasing kids, cows and the occasional roll-away haybale, Jessie enjoys wading in Naked Creek and not cleaning her house. Most of the time her main goal is to keep from catching herself on fire…again.



If you enjoy fun stories with vivid characters showcasing strong families with a ribbon of faith tying everything together, you might enjoy Jessie’s books.

Bears and Books (but mostly bears)

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A couple years ago the hubs and girls and I were driving down the mountain – a back road with hairpin turns and you can’t go very fast – when my youngest daughter said, “Hey! I just saw a bear. Or a cat. It might have been a cat, but it looked like a bear.”

We weren’t going anywhere important and we weren’t going that fast, the road was deserted and so my husband stops and backs up.

As we’re backing up my daughter says, “Maybe it was a dog. Actually, yeah, I think it was a dog.”

At this point, I’m thinking to myself, she saw a wet rock.

So, we’re kind of laughing, thinking we’re going to see a interesting rock or possibly a house cat on the side of the mountain, or maybe a lost dog, but when we get back to the culvert where she saw it, sure enough, not five feet off the road was a mama bear with two little cubs.

Of course my husband winds his window down and hangs out of it with my phone. I’m remembering all the cautions to NOT mess with a mother bear with cubs, and I’m also having a little chat with the Lord. It went something like this:  if that bear attacks him, am I obligated to throw myself between them? I mean, I did voice my opinion- only once, Lord, so he wouldn’t say I was nagging – that I didn’t think it was a good idea to be so close, and, shockingly – that’s sarcasm – he didn’t listen to me, so really, Lord? Am I off the hook for this one?

Yeah, I know. You spiritual ladies would have been praying for safety and protection and probably wouldn’t even mention to the Good Lord one time about how good bear roast with mashed potatoes and gravy is.

Seriously, safety is of the Lord, and I believe that, but a person needs to show a little common sense, too, right?

Regardless, we didn’t get attacked and I actually got a picture of the bear (the real bear, not me – the hubs insisted I clarify).

I’ve told you we live way out, and seeing bears isn’t exactly a novelty. We have our dumpster about seventy-five yards below our house and we’ve had bears in it and around it and on it (that’s a real pain because they push the lids in and they – the lids not the bears – get stuck and are hard to pull out, and one of our kids – the one that’s named Not Me – will throw garbage on top of the lid without pulling it out, etc). We’ve stood on our deck with spotlights watching them. It’s always been at night, although a few times in the evening when we’re driving down our driveway we’ll see one.

Once, when I was picking blueberries I happened to look over and there was one in the field beside me. I think it saw me about the same time I saw it and conveniently we both ran in opposite directions and never did meet. Which, in my opinion, was a good thing.

Once when my oldest son was around twelve, maybe, he had a friend over. They’re tough dudes and wanted to sleep in a tent outside in the yard. I’m fine with that. I’ve told you about my oldest son, and I wasn’t worried about anything getting him.

I know none of you all ever did this, but I admit, I kind of messed with my kids some. Still do, I’m sorry. I said to my kid as he walked out with his sleeping bag, “You’ll be fine. Just make sure your tent is zipped up the whole way because bears can’t unzip it. Oh, and you did brush your teeth, correct? Because what smells like bad breath to humans smells like lunch to a black bear.”

Bears weren’t on his radar until I said that. : )

He kinda looked at his friend, then back at me trying to pretend his eyes weren’t the size of navel oranges. “Do you really think there are bears out there?”

I shook my head, hiding my evil smile with a fake worried look. “Nah. I was just messing with ya.”

Maybe some of you will be able to relate to this, but my husband is about a thirteen-year-old boy in a man’s body. I would like to say I’m more mature, but I can’t remember which of us had the idea.

About an hour after dark, the hubs and I crept through the yard, stopped about twenty feet from the boys’ tent and started to growl.

After about five seconds, our growls got increasingly loud and angry-sounding. (I’m actually pretty good at growling, and my whole family will agree with that statement. : )

There was some scrambling in the tent. Some yelling back and forth. More scrambling. The sound of the zipper yanking.

Then the boys shot out of the tent, flew down to the house, screaming like girls. Seriously. They were screaming so loud, they never heard the hubs and I rolling on the ground laughing until they were pounding on the door, which they couldn’t open because the hubs and I had locked it. : )

I know, I know. People like us should never have had kids. Our poor children. It’s pretty amazing that they seemed to have turned out almost normal and even more amazing that they still talk to us.

My son’s friend never came back, but I think that had more to do with the fact that we had beets for supper than any lingering issues over the bear noises.

But, you know, you reap what you sow and all that…

One June a few years after that – back when we just had a few chickens and not the big laying houses we have now – I had gone over to grab some eggs for breakfast before my kids got up. On my way back over to the house, when I was directly between the coop and the house – maybe sixty yards to both…you know how you just have this sensation that someone is watching you? You get that chill up your spine and the hair on the back of your neck raises? Know what I mean?

Seriously, I felt that, but knew it had to be nothing. My husband had left for work before daylight and our trucks were all on the road. The garage was behind me, beside the chicken coop, but it was locked up tight.

Still, that feeling had a hold on my neck and I couldn’t shake it. I stopped and turned around, scanning behind me.

Nothing.

I started to turn back around, thinking I was being silly, but still not feeling right, when my eye caught something off to the side at the edge of the woods just a dozen or so yards away.

So, yeah, I’m sure you already know it was a bear. It was sitting there – like a bear in a circus might sit, on its butt with its paws hanging down. I’m not very visual, but I can still see it, shiny black and perfectly outlined by the lush green just behind it. The round ears pricked and the nose lifted, a rectangular spot of brown on its chest.

It was staring at me.

To be fair, I was now staring right back at it, more because I was frozen and couldn’t move than to actually be rude or anything.

You know that feeling when your stomach is trying to run to the house but your heart and lungs have stopped working and your legs feel like logs caught in a pile up? It’s like the opposite of the warm fuzzies.

So, I was kinda racking my brain trying to figure out what to do. Do any of you know what to do in a situation like that? If you run, they chase you, right? I kinda felt like there must be cubs around or something, because why else would it just be staring at me?

So, I moved my eyes around (not my head, lol) but couldn’t see any little black bodies.

I thought about setting the eggs down (Do bears eat eggs?) kind of like a peace offering. But there went my kids’ breakfast. (Better to lose breakfast than to have mom get eaten? Maybe. Not sure on that one. I did have boys.)

So, I finally decide, it’s either going to eat me or it’s not. Right?

I don’t want anyone to get the mistaken idea that I was brave or anything. I seriously didn’t know what else to do – I turned around and finished walking to the house.

When I reached the door, I looked back over my shoulder and it was still sitting there, watching me. Honestly, I never even thought to go get a camera. I walked in the door, closed it and sat down on the floor. The kids found me there an hour or so later, and it was a little longer than that before my legs stopped feeling like Jello.

 

Ha. Okay, I love telling stories of life on the farm, but I actually do write books, too. I’ve been doing a little project with my life-time narrator, or-as-long-as-he’ll-have-me, Jay Dyess, and I wanted to share it with you.

 

We’ve been putting my audios up on YouTube where you can listen to the for FREE! We have around twenty of the fifty or so audios that we’ve made together up on Say with Jay – Jay’s channel. You can listen to any of them or all of them without paying a thing. I love that! I honestly can’t wait until they’re all up. I know you all work hard for your money and I love being able to give readers a bargain. : )

 

Here is the link to Say with Jay: https://www.youtube.com/c/SaywithJay/ Check it out. Listen to anything that catches your fancy and I’d love it if you’d hit the “Subscribe” button and leave a few comments!

Thanks so much for spending time with me today.

Fashion Over Function

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When I was pregnant with my daughter I did a needlepoint that said, “A daughter is a little girl that grows up to be a friend.”

At the time, I hoped that it would be true.

My oldest daughter, Julia, graduated from high school last year, and in just a few months, she’ll be turning eighteen. I know I’ll always be her mom, and I hope that she’ll always look to me for advice and guidance, but our relationship definitely feels like a friendly one as well.

I know her time in our home is finite, and I would never want her to not move on with whatever God calls her to do or go. But I want to cherish the time that she’s here – late night runs to Dunkin Donuts for salted caramel hot chocolate, getting dressing rooms across from each other as we try on clothes, walking by her at the table as she has her Bible and notebook spread out in front of her doing her devotions, shoving my writing aside as she throws herself across my bed and we talk about the right way to respond to someone who has hurt us.

Julia and I are about as opposite as two people can be. Just one of the many ways we are different is that she is amazingly talented at making things look beautiful – clothes, designs, our dinner table, entire rooms. She’s amazing. And she loves doing it.

Like most people, I love looking at pretty things.

However, I could never color in the lines – I still remember the frustration in my elementary art teacher’s voice as she looked at my hideous papers – and have zero talent in this area. None. I’m much more about function than fashion. I don’t care what the boots look like as long as they don’t leak. I’m not concerned about my hair style as long as it’s not in my face. I don’t notice the dirt on our vehicles and I don’t think about cleaning out our refrigerator until it’s full, and I realize I need to make space.

Anyway, last fall, Julia wanted to decorate our downstairs and I told her she could. Why not?

My husband and I did some remodeling after we moved in about fifteen years ago. I don’t really get picky about stuff. All I wanted was a big kitchen (because that’s where I spend all my time, right?) and big windows, because I love to look out and I also love having the sunlight stream in.

Well, our kitchen is about the size of a postage stamp, but I did get some nice windows. : )

I think I mentioned we live way out with no neighbors, so I’ve never had curtains on my windows. I wanted the windows for the function – being able to look out and also letting the sun in!

So, when Julia decorated, she got these really pretty white, flowy curtains and hung them in the windows. Ha. She put some greenery around them with lights and everything looks so pretty and amazing. But I laugh when I look at them, because it’s just Julia and I being different. I’d rather be able to look out than have pretty windows.

I would never tell her that.

So, a few weeks ago, in the middle of February, the girls and I and some friends were going on a trip to upstate New York. The day before we left, I was sitting on the floor, trying to get some words in, when Julia came in all dressed up. I guess I’ve had daughters long enough now that I realized she was picking out outfits to take with us on our trip. (Give me a few more years and I might actually think ahead and expect this rather than looking at her blankly for five minutes as she turns around in front of my full length mirror – which she doesn’t want in her room because it doesn’t match her decor, so I have it in mine, for her convenience. : )

“What do you think, mom?” she asks.

Okay, I’m speaking to the ladies here for a moment. Because we know this is a trick question, right?

So, the Bible commands us to be honest. We’re also commanded to be kind. Mutually exclusive at times, right?

Julia is standing in front of me with a flowy shirt on (I can’t remember what color…it might have had stripes, I’m not sure), a mustard yellow skirt, which was really cute and that color is trendy, I think. The skirt was knee length. Her lower legs were bare and she was wearing open-toe, strappy sandals with four inch heels.

I clear my throat. “It’s gonna be cold in Rochester.” (This is a safe statement.)

“This is a winter outfit.”

(Boy, I want to argue with that.) “It’s going to be a lot colder there and there’s always snow on the ground.” I’m eyeing her toes, all ten of them.

“These shoes are good in the snow.”

“Julia. Your toes are sticking out.” Okay, I’m pointing out the obvious here, because…come on. “You’re going to freeze to death just walking between the car and the auditorium.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Couldn’t you wear tights and boots?”

“Tights would look ridiculous with this outfit and my boots don’t match.”

Okay, ladies, we all know why she’s wearing this outfit, right? sigh This is where I am SO tempted to say to her, no one is going to look at you wearing that outfit in Rochester, NY in the middle of February and think you have a brain.

But that wouldn’t be very nice.

Also, I raised three boys. I’ve never met a teenaged boy who looked at a girl and cared whether or not she had a brain. Just saying.

So, I give up on the tights because it’s her feet that are actually going to be in the snow. “I just think boots would be a really good idea.”

“But I LOVE these shoes. And they’re so cute with this outfit.”

So, yeah. She packed the shoes. I could have made her wear the boots. Julia is the sweetest kid ever and she would have listened, and she would have had a great attitude, too, if I would have told her no way on the shoes.

But this isn’t going to kill her and she can make this decision/mistake (lol) herself, right?

So, yeah. Thursday evening we’ve arrived in Rochester, unpacked and dressed for the evening. We get into the elevator at the hotel. It’s like seven degrees outside. The wind is blowing and there’s snow on the ground.

Julia is wearing her strappy sandals, the knee-length skirt with no tights, and the flowy blouse. It’s like I said we were going to Rochester and Julia heard Hawaii.

I know she packed her boots and as we get into the elevator, I say, “Are you sure you don’t want to wear your boots? I think you’re going to be really cold.”

“My boots don’t match.”

“Everyone else there will be wearing boots.” I very seldom, if ever, use this argument on my kids. It has never been my goal to have my kids do what everyone else does. But, I’m kind of desperate.

“I don’t think so. Lots of people are going to have cute shoes that match their outfits.”

I have my doubts about that. Most of the other kids there probably have mothers that wouldn’t dream of allowing their child to dress in such a way that they’re almost guaranteed to freeze to death if the car breaks down. The elevator door starts to close as Julia and I are “discussing” this.

The doors are half-shut when a woman rushes around the corner. We stop the doors. They open and she hurries on.

She’s wearing a dress coat that covers her body from her ears to her toes, thick, furry winter boots, a corded scarf that’s wrapped around her neck and up her chin, a big, knitted hat and warm, fuzzy gloves.

The elevator goes completely silent. A big change from Julia and my slightly heated discussion.

The woman, who is standing in front of me and beside Julia, glances around the elevator. (Okay, this is where I admit that I left home and forgot my coat. I never wear it anyway. I’m standing there in a long sleeved shirt and puffer vest. Full disclosure – I did pack my flip flops, but I wasn’t wearing them Thursday evening. Honest.)

The lady leans forward, and, in a stage whisper speaks next to Julia’s ear. “You guys aren’t from around here, are you?”

Forgive me, but I snorted. Loudly.

Julia turns big eyes on the lady. “How did you know?”

The lady looks at me, then back to Julia. “You’re not really dressed for the weather.”

The lady became an instant friend. The elevator ride wasn’t that long, but we did a lot of laughing on

 

it.

Okay. We made it home from Rochester. Miraculously, Julia didn’t lose any toes to frost bite, and, maybe even more miraculously, I was not imprisoned or fined by child services. (I also did not drive on any sidewalks, but that is a completely different story.)

Moving on, I actually do write books (maybe some of you are doing some deep contemplation right now – do I really want to read books written by a crazy woman who wears flip flops in Rochester, NY in February and sets herself on fire? I’m sorry, I can’t answer that for you.) and I am in a year-long promo where we are

 

 

offering almost 100 books for FREE. You can check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/sweetandswoonyromance

 

Thanks so much for spending time with me today!

 

~Jessie

A Relaxing Sunday Morning on the Farm

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I don’t know what you all do before church on Sunday morning. Sleep in, maybe?

Sunday School down here doesn’t start until ten. We kinda have enough of our day in before that that I feel like I need to take a shower before we leave. : )

This past Sunday morning Wacko had her calf. She got her name honestly. If you’ve been on my list for very long, you know that there are new mama cows who will kill you. Wacko is one of those. : )

Her calf, a little bull, (I checked, because Watson gets confused about these things) was up and dry and Watson decided he wanted to tag her before we left for Sunday School.

Julia is really the only one of the four females in our house that takes any length of time to get ready.

Actually, I can get four small kids and myself bathed, showered and ready to go in the amount of time it takes Watson to shower and dress. I guess I said all that to say, Watson got the bander and ear ring and he and I rode in the Gator while the two little girls rode on the back as we went out to the field where Wacko was with her calf.

Julia didn’t come because she was grooming herself. In her defense, the house was clean when we got back. : )

So, I’ve talked before about how Watson and I band and tag calves. Well, earlier last week, we developed a slightly new system while picking up one of the neighbor’s calves that wasn’t eating.

We had to throw it on the back of the Gator, which doesn’t have any brakes, so you can’t really stop on a hill. (Well, you can. Dr. A, our neighbor, did stop – to shut a gate – but the Gator wasn’t there when he went to get back in. The Lord kinda guided it on its descent down through the cow pasture, and it didn’t hit any cows, or people – it went right between Watson and the two little girls – but a nice, old Virginia Pine has a couple of big gouges in it from acting as a makeshift emergency brake – that was just a few yards from the creek. Our Gator is currently in pieces at James River. But nothing died, which makes it a good day, and Dr. A is slightly wiser. ; )

Anyway, our new system, which we use when Watson wants to put the calf on the back of the Gator, is very similar to our old one – Watson gets out and picks up the calf. I get out and make sure the charging mama cow doesn’t kill my husband. (So, before we get out, I’ll say something like, Not sure I’m feeling it today; we’re all paid up on your life insurance policy, right? and Watson, who knows what it takes, will say, I was thinking about taking you out for lunch.)

So, we’ve used this new system successfully at the neighbor’s a couple of times (those stories some other time) but we’ve never done it here.

However, Wacko earned her nickname – she’s one of those mothers who will kill you first and ask questions later, so we (Watson) decided it would be better to put her calf on the back of the Gator and take it somewhere, bringing it back to Wacko when we were done.

Wacko isn’t dumb (we’re dealing with cows, so dumb is relative) and she’s keeping her calf pretty close to her.

Finally, Watson gets the Gator between Wacko and her calf, but we’re on a little rise, so as he’s jumping out to grab the calf, he said to me, “Put your foot on the brake.” I was already moving and I had it covered, sliding over to the driver’s side, ready to go fast as soon as the calf is on the back.

Watson grabs the calf about twenty yards in front of the Gator, but Wacko had swung a wide circle around and was catching up to him pretty fast.

Watson goes lumbering by the drivers’ side of the Gator, awkwardly carrying the calf, and Wacko, charging behind him, is closing the gap which is maybe three feet. There’s no way Watson is stopping and getting that calf on the back without Wacko crushing him against the side of the Gator.

Directly after Watson goes by, I open the Gator door, which causes Wacko to swerve, but she’s still going full speed. Maybe a second goes by and I know if I don’t do something, I really am going to be collecting life insurance.

So, I explode out of the Gator.

Now, in case this ever happens to you, if a cow is charging and you want to face off and change her direction, you need to be loud and scary.

I don’t know what your kids would say about you, but mine will say I’m definitely scary.  Loud? Not so much, but I guess I was thinking, would I rather have life insurance or lunch?

Seriously, I wasn’t sure if I could change her direction or not, but I figured at the very least I could run into her and slow her down a little. I yell, wave my arms and rush Wacko, kind of at an angle, and yeah, I’m both loud and scary.

Wacko swerves, and I follow alongside of her, pushing her out in a semi-circle.

I was feeling pretty good because I thought I’d saved my husband’s life.

I was pretty surprised to glance over and see the Gator rolling alongside us around that semi-circle. (Oh, I was supposed to have my foot on the brake. Kinda forgot about that. Thankfully the wheels were turned.)

Watson has somehow dodged behind the Gator, and is on other side (still carrying the calf). I can’t see him, but I can hear him yelling.

(If I run over my husband, I don’t think I get the life insurance. I’ll have to check the fine print. Maybe I can get Jay to read it to me. I’m sure he can make the fine print on a life insurance policy sound fabulous. : )

Watson is yelling something like, “You dingbat! You took your foot off the brake.” and I might or might not have said something like, “I should have let her kill you.” I’m thinking I should have gone for the life insurance over lunch (and I think Watson was thinking he should have married a woman with a brain).

So, yeah, we’re having this “conversation” while Wacko is still trying to kill me and Watson is still chasing the Gator, carrying the calf.

Thankfully my youngest daughter has a personality very similar to my oldest son – they were both born without fear. She jumps out of the back of the Gator, catches the door, which I never shut, and swings in, stomping on the brake.

Also, thankfully, my other daughter has been with us long enough to know to hold on, so she doesn’t fall off the back when it stops abruptly.

Watson throws himself and the calf over the side of the Gator, yells, “I’m in! Let’s GO!” I dive across my daughter, who for some strange reason has put the Gator in reverse.

lol

Back when I was a kid on the farm, we used to separate the piglets from their mother, castrate them and throw them back in the pigpen. If you were good, and did it fast enough, the piglets didn’t even have time to squeal. If they squealed…I’ve seen an eight hundred pound mama sow go vertical and look for all the world like she was going to scale a six foot gate.

Pigs are a lot different than cows (their teeth are bigger, for one) and if she’d have come over the fence, I didn’t have a thought in my head about charging her. I was a decent sprinter in high school, and I knew I could out run my sisters, which was exactly what I planned to do. We got the piglet tossed back in the pen, which calmed her down, but it’s nuts the things a mama will do for her baby.

It’s also scary.

So, Watson is on the back of the Gator, holding the calf. Our daughter is driving the Gator backwards, directly toward Wacko. I’m sitting beside her saying, “Go faster!” but what I mean is, “Go faster forward!”

Watson is in the back, not quite eye to eye with Wacko, shouting something which, interpreted, means, “My sweet, loving daughter. Please put the Gator in a forward gear – any forward gear – and drive as fast as you can away from this mama cow, and ignore your own mother who is just trying to collect life insurance on me.”

That’s not exactly what he said, but this is a family publication. : )

I don’t know what the calf was thinking, but I’m pretty sure Wacko was thinking there was enough room on the back of the Gator for her.

Yeah. My daughter jerked to a

stop, slammed it into forward something and floored it.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those movies where you have a whole parade of people chasing each other? Maybe Runaway Bride? (I’ve never seen it, but I think I saw a preview…)

Anyway, we didn’t exactly have a parade, but if you could have been standing beside our pasture field, you’d have seen the Gator go flying from the upper end, through a very confused-looking herd of cows with Wacko going as fast as she could behind us.

I think we’d gone about a half a mile (and left Wacko in the dust after two hundred yards) before my husband got himself to quite yelling, “Go faster, go faster, go faster.”

So, yeah, we tagged the little guy, banded him and ended up being early for Sunday School. (Have you ever sat in Sunday School and wondered what everyone else there did that morning? No? Just me, then, I guess. ; )

And, in case you all are wondering, Watson was a little annoyed with me, so, not only did I not get any life insurance, I also had to cook my own lunch.

Thanks so much for spending time with me today!

 

 

Jessie’s Diet Tips

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Earlier this month I went away for a bit to write. Now, the place that I stayed at was in the middle of a cow pasture. Not kidding. You had to go through two gates and drive through the cow pasture – being careful not to hit any cows – to get there.

So, yeah, I felt right at home, but I’m also lazy. I did take some groceries with me, but I’m one of those shoppers who only gets what’s on the list. I do not deviate. I guess some people call it a disability, but I get easily overwhelmed when presented with too much “stuff” and shopping is just one of those areas where my brain overloads really fast. I can do it, I just need a list, and honestly I don’t notice anything beyond focusing on getting the next thing on my list and getting out of the store.

Well, I decided to be healthy (why? I can’t really answer that) and I got the ingredients to make pumpkin mushroom soup (thanks for the recipe, Patrice!), blueberries and sweet potatoes. I also got a bag of peas and some cheese and a few filets of fish.

That’s what I had on my list.

I forgot to put ice cream on my list.

So, I left the store, drove to the place where I was staying, got out of the car, opened the gate, got back in the car, drove through the gate, got out of the car, shut the gate, careful to jump over the six inch deep mud puddle that was right where the gate closed on the other side, walked back to the car and drove through the pasture to the next gate, got out of the car, opened the gate, got back in the car, drove through the gate, got out of the car, shut the gate, got back in the car and drove to the house. (Also, the lock on the house was a little tricky and I didn’t lock it while I was there, but I did lock it when I left and it usually took me about ten minutes to get it unlocked when I got back to the house.)

So, anyway, it was quite a procedure to get in.

It was the next day before I realized I didn’t have any ice cream.

So, like I said, I’m lazy and it was a LOT easier for me to walk around the house lamenting the fact that there was NO ICE CREAM IN THE HOUSE than it was to leave, spend ten minutes locking the door, driving to the gate, stopping and getting out of the car, etc etc.

So, I’m stuck at this house with all this health food I thought it would be a good idea and NO ICE CREAM.

So, yeah. I ended up losing eight pounds. I guess I got better gas mileage on the way home than I did on the way down, but it took me longer because I stopped at Taco Bell like five times.

Alright, so my weight loss tip is put a fence and two gates around your house and you’ll make junk food runs less often. : )

So, the day after I got home Watson asked me to go with him to get a load of silage for our cows. I thought that was sweet – he missed me! But after I said, “Sure, I’ll go,” he said, “Dress warm. The heater in that old truck doesn’t work.”

Ha.

He didn’t miss me. He just wanted me along in case he got stranded along the road he’d have someone to push him.

Anyway, I put a bunch of layers on and got in the old dump truck. It’s the truck I drove last spring when I was hauling rocks – the one that didn’t have any brakes. I think the copperheads were all hibernating.

Watson said we had to hurry because there were no lights in the truck. Like, no headlights. No tail lights. No brake lights. No turn signals. No lights. At all. Also, not only does it not have a heater, but part of the floor is missing to the point where you can see the road flying by beneath you. That didn’t concern me too much, neither did the rattles and shakes until Watson said, “Is your door shut?”

Well, I’m an old hand at this, so, as we’re driving down the highway (not too fast because it has a top speed of like 40 mph), I grab the handle, shove it open and slam it shut. It still kinda rattles, like it’s thinking about falling off, but wants to wait until we’re going around a turn until it does so.

I check – because you all are thinking it too – no seatbelts. This does not shock anyone, right?

So, we’re going on these backroads and it’s wide enough for two cows to pass side-by-side as long as one of them isn’t pregnant and we’re going down this steep hill into a gully and the road kind of turns in the middle of the hill and right on the turn we meet a school bus.

(There were maybe two houses along that whole ten mile road and we passed, like, three busses. Maybe there was a field trip back there somewhere. idk)

So, Watson has just told me how he bypassed the air dryer because it was keeping the truck from airing up, and he mentioned that the truck was too far gone for him to want to put any money into maintenance and I grab ahold of the door handle – because when it evacuates, I’m going with it – and just pray the end is painless, because I drove the truck and the brakes didn’t work.

Watson slams on the brakes – the truck actually slows down – and he moves the truck as far off the road as possible and I’m pretty sure I see my guardian angle picking the bus up and moving it overtop of us and once we’ve made it down to the bottom of the gully and start up the other side I say, “I guess you fixed the brakes.”

Watson looks at me like I’m the stupidest person in the world and he says, “Well, yeah. You can’t drive a truck on the road with no brakes.”

Humph. That’s not what he said last spring when I was driving the truck. But hey, whatever. By the time we got home, I was too cold to be upset about it. Plus, I think that was our Valentine’s Day date and I didn’t want to ruin it.

Okay, that was yesterday and I’m still wearing my beanie hat and five layers of clothes. I think I might have mentioned that the hot water in our shower wasn’t working and I was terrified of taking all my clothes off and getting in the shower only to find that it STILL wasn’t working. I’m a big believer in better safe than sorry.

Thanks so much for spending time with me today!

Jessie Falls into the Arms of an Amishman

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In a previous blog I told you that my husband and I have two, twenty thousand bird, pastured, certified humane, poultry laying houses.

My husband and I are the only “English” family in the producer group in our area. There used to be more of us but currently there are three Amish families and one Mennonite family and us.

We take turns every summer hosting a Producer Picnic. This past summer it was Mr. and Mrs. Glick’s turn.

Mr. Glick and I have a bit of history. Embarrassing on my part. Actually, embarrassing on his part, too, probably, even though it was my fault. He’s really nice, and kind of shy. (Mrs. Glick is outgoing, super-nice and can arrange flowers like you wouldn’t believe. Beautiful bouquets using zinnias, lilies, Pixie dust and a Mason jar. My husband takes her kids candy when he picks up their eggs, he hauls our skid loader over and cleans their barn when they flip their flock, and she gives us vegetables, baked goods and beautiful flower arrangements in season.)

When we flip our flocks, we all go to each other’s farms and help. We carry the birds out after dark (since chickens are kind of hard, although not impossible, to catch during the day, but they don’t really move in the dark). Makes it easier to catch them, but you can’t see that great. Anyway, everyone was at our barn, and I think we were loading about 10K birds. Which is a lot. : )

After a couple of hours, you just kind of put one foot in front of the other, try not to trip on anything in the pitch dark and think about how happy you’ll be when it’s over, right? (It took us about seven hours that night, starting around five and finishing after midnight. I saw one little Amish boy, out way past his bedtime, sleeping, sitting up with his back against the side of the barn.)

So, to get the birds on the trucks, the guys make steps out of the crates, and we walk up about five steps to hand the birds to the guys on the trucks. They put them in crates on the truck, while we step back down and go for more. Well, we were filling two trucks that night, and I think I had about the last five birds for the first truck. I handed them off, then turned around – did I mention I was tired, and it was dark?

They were moving things around so they could move the truck and had moved the crates that made the steps. So, I stepped down about two steps, then the steps disappeared. But I didn’t realize it until my foot didn’t hit anything and I started to fall forward.

Mr. Glick was standing right at the bottom. My hands were windmilling – you know how that goes; you just try to grab onto anything, right? Well, I grabbed Mr. Glick. Well, not actually grabbed. It was more like my hands and cheek knocked his hat off, ran through his beard, slapped into his chest and shoulders and then slid down his front until I was basically face-planted at his feet. Maybe he was trying to catch me, but, I think, if he could have reacted fast enough, he would have run away. Trust me, if I could have reacted fast enough, I would have run away too, and fallen down somewhere else. Actually, I mentioned it was dark, and I didn’t even know who it was at first, other than it wasn’t my husband. : ) Take my word for it when I tell you he didn’t smell right.

So, anyway, we’re at the Glick’s house this past July, with a whole pile of kids running around. (Between our five families we have over thirty kids.) It’s dusk, and Mr. Glick is being careful to keep Mrs. Glick between him and I and making sure he’s well away from me if I look like I’m going down any steps. Kidding.

When the Amish eat in a group, the men eat first. My husband loves that, and I’m okay with it, since the Bible says the last shall be first and I’d rather eat first in Heaven. My daughters on the other hand…lol. So, the ladies had our chairs in a circle and were eating together and the men were sitting around the fire.

Julia isn’t Amish, and I’m boring, so she was sitting with her dad in the men’s group.

By the time it was dark, my youngest daughter was running around with a whole pack of kids. Seriously, they’d run by us, bonnet strings and black skirts flying (except my daughter who wasn’t wearing a bonnet – and God help the person who tries to make her – and had a jean skirt on), up the walk, in the summer kitchen door, past that window, into the kitchen, past the kitchen window and into the living room (right there, they would pass the printer and scanner that were set on a stand – not kidding, I was in the kitchen helping before everyone got there, and I admit to doing a double take when I saw their electronics hooked up. These are a different sect of Amish, not the Sinking Valley Amish, and they ARE allowed batteries.) From the living room window they’d run to the front door.

About that time the pack of boys – none of these were mine, thank God, or I wouldn’t have been nearly so relaxed – would run up the walk and into the summer kitchen, taking the same path through the house, but bursting out of the front door with slightly more force and velocity, taking the front porch steps in one leap, the pack splitting into two lines as they ran around the men’s circle and off into the darkness after the girls.

Kinda funny that kids are pretty much the same regardless of their culture.

My daughter told me later they were playing “Cowboys and Indians.” Which, I believe, is a politically incorrect way of saying they were playing “The Boys are Chasing the Girls.” : )

So, things quieted down for a little bit. (I found out later they were out behind the barn trying to ride an unbroken colt.)

The ladies were talking about the little five-year-old boy in their community who had drowned in the pond two months earlier. He was the nephew of our good friends who were at the picnic. He and his brothers had been fishing in the morning, then they’d gone to do some work. Before lunch sometime, he’d told his dad he was going to check his rod, see if he caught anything. When they sat down to eat lunch, his place was empty.

The police shut the road down for the funeral and we didn’t pick up eggs that day. But the ladies were saying the mother was expecting and with those hormones and everything was having a really hard time doing anything except sitting in her chair and rocking.

Death can happen at any time, of course. Maybe because we live on the farm, but I feel like we’re closer to it than most Americans. It’s a part of life. I suppose those of you who have read Boone’s book know how I feel about it. But again, as I sat there in the dark listening, it struck me how a mother’s heart for her children is the same in any culture.

Contemplating those more somber thoughts, I looked beyond the circle of ladies. The light from the half moon was strong enough for me to see the outline of two bodies, one that looked suspiciously like my daughter, crawling along the ridgepole of the two-story greenhouse between the shed and the house.

Thankfully my daughter was in the back, which made me believe that she was not the leader, but following someone who surely knew whether or not they were allowed to do whatever it was they were doing. (I found out later they were really NOT allowed to do any of the things they’d done that night. I also found out later that they were playing hide-and-seek and they were “hiding” on the ridgepole. That game has gotten a little more sophisticated since I was a kid.)

I also found out later that, among other things, the men were talking about making wine. (My husband came back with all these ideas about how to make good wine, and I’m kinda like, but we don’t drink wine – and I didn’t think the Amish did, either.  I have a few stories about that conversation the Amishmen had that night with my husband, but this is already longer than I was expecting it to be.)

I’m not sure if it was before the wine conversation or after it, but it was one of the times after the pack of kids flew by and things were quiet for about thirty seconds when I heard my oldest daughter scream from where the men were. Then laughter.

The oldest son of our good friends is about nineteen. He’s a great kid. He’s taken us for buggy rides and when we’re cleaning the barns out, no one works harder than he does. Apparently, he found a frog. And, the male chromosome does not allow a boy to hold a frog in his hand when there is a girl he can throw it on, right?

Julia is a girly-girl. Yeah, she does everything we ask her to, but she hates dirt, bugs, spiders, reptiles, amphibians, you get the picture, and would never go outside if she didn’t have to. Her reaction was even better than expected, I think. Later, we teased her that it was probably an Amish dating ritual:  throwing the frog on the lap is basically like saying, would you like to get married? Picking it carefully up and shaking your head as you set it down, would be a “no.” Jumping up, screaming and waving your hands around looks like a pretty excited “yes.”

So, maybe our daughter is engaged; we’re not sure. : )

Kidding. That boy is a great guy, but Julia is a little high-maintenance (her words) and she’s not the slightest bit interested in living without electricity. Or any modern convenience, to be honest.

Thanks so much for spending time with me today!

A Tradition from the Stable

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Hey, everyone! I’m so happy to get to blog about a Christmas tradition we have.

Except…our family doesn’t really have many Christmas traditions.

So many of the ladies on this blog have such a great talent for making things look beautiful and I just can’t wait to hear what they’re going to talk about. Some really neat, old-fashioned heirloom Christmas ornament or possibly a family keepsake that gets taken out and admired at Christmas. I feel warm and happy just thinking about all the wonderful blogs that are going to be posted the rest of this year.

Unfortunately, I pretty much lose everything I touch. And, if I don’t, our house is so crazy and busy, it would probably get broken anyway.

So, I figured I’d talk a little about something that I’m good at – being crazy. It’s kind of a Christmas tradition that we do things differently. After all, we’ve always been self-employed and we’ve almost always worked on Christmas Eve and often on Christmas Day as well. As farmers, the animals need milked and fed, the eggs gathered, the stalls cleaned.

In fact, one Christmas, we had goats in my house.

That sounds fun, until you remember that goats, while cute when they’re babies (SO adorable) also bring with them a smell that is…quite potent, let’s say. And in a house, in winter with all the windows tightly closed, it gets strong. Not even greenery can overpower the scent of goats. At least, not in my experience.

But you know, maybe it’s fitting because Jesus was born in a stable.

The year we had goats in our cellar, I couldn’t really walk through the house without remembering the stable in which Jesus was born and how much harder it must have been for Mary and Joseph than the picture we get from the Biblical account. We have a tendency to picture everyone smiling and happy and serene and cozy.

Maybe that’s the way it really was.

Or maybe the reality was that it was more like our lives. Messy. Smelly. Hard and heartbreaking.

Holidays can be the best time of the year. But they can also bring back memories that make us want to cry. Even get depressed. Maybe the heirloom bulb we’ve loved for years got broken. Maybe someone accidentally threw out the box of decorations that used to be our great-grandmother’s. Maybe a loved one went home to be with the Lord and their spot is empty.

Life is hard and it doesn’t always turn out the way we want it to. Expect it to. Feel like we deserve.

You know, it’s tempting to complain. Tempting to ask God, “Why?”

But isn’t the Christmas story proof that God can use what’s left and even turn it into something beautiful?

I think of the ride to Bethlehem. What was that like?

Maybe Mary says to Joseph, You know, dear, if we’d have left when I told you to, there would have been room in the inn.

And Joseph says to Mary, If you’d hadn’t had to change your outfit three times (and she interrupts him and says, But I couldn’t find anything that fit me and matched my hair covering, too!) and Joseph continues: then we wouldn’t have gotten behind the folks with the geriatric camel. Plus, there are only two passing zones between Nazareth and Bethlehem and both times you had to stop and find a bush, and everyone we had passed, passed us while I was waiting on you.

Mary: If you didn’t make our donkey walk so fast, it wouldn’t have been so bouncy and I wouldn’t have had to stop as much.

Joseph: I could have beaten the GPS by ten minutes if you could have held it a little longer.

Mary:  If you’d have stopped and asked for directions when we got lost, we wouldn’t have spent an entire afternoon wondering around Samaria, then we would have beaten the GPS AND gotten a room at the inn.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful. Maybe they were arguing on the way to Bethlehem, maybe they weren’t, but that’s not really what I was thinking.

My point is, Mary and Joseph might not have accepted things quite as easily as we sometimes think. I doubt I would have. But, for them, if things had gone perfectly and they had gotten a room at the inn, if Jesus had been born in comfort and cleanliness, it wouldn’t have been God’s perfect plan.

I know sometimes I fight and fuss about stuff, (like goats in my house) and I don’t realize that it’s not God’s plan for me to have what I want, even if it’s something good, like a room at the inn. Or a house that doesn’t smell like barn animals.

Maybe our family’s Christmas tradition could be that nothing in my house is perfect. The tree is crooked and looks like my kids and I decorated it (because we did!). There is mud in the hall because we walked in with our barn boots on to grab a drink from the fridge to give to the guy who drove two hours to drop parts off. There’s a lot of noise and chaos because we have two extra girls staying with us and my kids aren’t getting as many gifts because we’re buying gifts for them, too.

Nothing is perfect. Not the decorations, not the cleanliness, not the gifts and sometimes not even the smell.

But that’s what the stable means:  perfection isn’t the standard.

Love is.

Love is our Christmas tradition. Whether you belong to our family or are just visiting. Whether you’re dirty or clean, animal or human. You’ll find rest and comfort, laughter and joy in our home. Year after year, that’s my goal for Christmas and for my life – love like Jesus loved. Give like Jesus gave. Don’t worry about perfection or the smell of the stable or the rejection of some (like the innkeeper). Just do the best with what’s left, with what God has given you, and love as hard and deep and strong as you can.

That’s the Christmas tradition that started in a stable. Let’s keep it going.

My Favorite Things

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Hello! I’m Jessie Gussman and I’m so excited and honored to have been asked to join the amazing fillies at Petticoats and Pistols! I have to say, I’ve been watching things behind the scenes for a few weeks now, and these ladies are the absolute best. It’s a true joy for me to get to hang out in the P&P corral. I’ve been learning so much.

For my first blog, I wanted to share a bit about myself.

My kids have been listening to the soundtrack of The Sound of Music lately in the car. You know, A Few of My Favorite Things? Rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens? It was written to soothe the Von Trapp children during a thunderstorm. I suppose that might work for girls.

But I had boys. First, anyway.

My boys would never notice anything like raindrops on roses. Maybe if it were pee drops on roses–or pee on anything, for that matter. Pee always makes a boy laugh.

Our last two children were girls; they are so different than boys. My youngest is sweetly naïve and believes almost anything. When she was eight, she heard my husband joking, joking, with a friend about how we needed to go up to the barn after the lights went out and rotate the tail feathers on our 15,000 laying hens so they’d lay eggs in the morning.

The next day, after my daughter’s dental appointment, the dentist came out to me in the waiting room. After giving me the low-down on how I’d be paying for her oldest child’s college education with the dental work my daughter needed, the dentist said, “I can’t believe how

articulate your daughter is! It must be because you homeschool. She was telling us all about how you rotate the tail feathers on your chickens at night after the lights go out.” The doctor’s gaze was admiring. She shook her head in wonder. “I never knew you had to do that to get the chickens to lay eggs! That’s fascinating!”

Um…

 

Back in my own naïve young adulthood, I was two years into my degree when my husband, who had grown up around trucks, started a trucking company. I told everyone I quit school to keep his books, but it was actually because starting your own business means working 24/7, and I had started to believe in alien abduction, since I never saw my husband anymore.

Twenty-seven years later, I’ve almost adjusted.

Not long ago my husband and I were heading eastbound on the interstate, hauling eggs back from Ohio, going about 75 mph. My door jiggled open. At that speed some people might wonder if their door will actually open. I can’t say about a car, but in a 379 long-nose Pete? Yes.

Yes it will.

It was kind of interesting, watching the pavement fly by from a new and rather distressing perspective, as I leaned out, grabbing for the latch. I got the door shut and sat in my seat, panting. I hadn’t quite made it to the euphoria-from-having-cheated-death stage, when my husband, who never left off the throttle, because, you know, he’s a man, and we have to GET THERE FAST, looked over at me. “Wow. Wasn’t expecting that,” he said. With one hand on the wheel, he dug under his seat and handed me a wrench and screwdriver. “You mind checking the latch? I’d hate to lose that door.”

My husband was always interested in trucks—I should have seen the trucking company coming—but I really didn’t anticipate having five children. It took a little while for us to get with the program, but by the time they hit elementary school, in the midst of the chaos, we looked around at all those kids and said to each other, “What are we going to do with them?”

Hubby blames me, but I know it was his idea. We bought the 70 acres of woods beside us, put the kids to work clearing it, picking rocks, digging holes, lying irrigation.

We bought a big, old track hoe and rented a bulldozer and our early-teen boys learned how to use the stuff. I was banned from running heavy equipment after I ran over the lawnmower.

The best way to get a new lawnmower is to bulldoze the old one. (My next book is going to be titled, Getting What You Want; How to Run a Bulldozer.) Eventually we planted the 10,000 blueberry bushes we trucked back from Michigan.

Today, as I write this, blueberry season is over, but those little balls of nutrition sell before we’ve even gotten them picked.

Almost two years ago, just before Christmas, my husband looked at me and said, “I want to buy a farm in Virginia.”

I was completely happy in Pennsylvania. Our ancestors have lived there for hundreds of years. But three months after he said that, I drove my car, packed with my collection of hymnbooks and plants, and followed my husband and girls and our horses to our new home nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Central Virginia.

I grew up around dairy cattle, so these more aggressive beef mamas have been a learning curve for me.

I’ve been attacked, stepped on, smashed against the fence and bull-dozed into the ground.

I’ve saved lives, delivered calves, hauled dead cows through the pasture field in the dead of night, lived without electricity, been up to my armpits in…well, it’s a farm, so you can fill in that blank, lived through floods, and touched a cow’s cervix for the first time in my life (that baby lived). I even delivered a foal.

If you stick around you’ll probably be hearing about some of the crazy things that happen here. : )

Trucks. Chickens. Blueberries. Beef.

They represent some of my favorite things—now. Certainly when I was a young woman, thinking of majoring in pre-med and becoming a doctor, I never dreamed they would. Life sometimes has a way of not working out quite the way we think it will.

But, really, my most favorite things aren’t things at all. It’s the husband who’s held my hand through this crazy life. It’s the laughter I’ve shared with my family. It’s the music we’ve made together while our backs ached from work made lighter by willing hands and cheerful hearts.

I love showing that pulling-together spirit in my books. The irony. The fun. The values people have and the hard choices they make.

Titanium love. Steadfast devotion. Sacrifice.

Basically, real life. That’s the kind of life I want to live, and those are the kind of stories I want to write.

Life. Wrapped in love.

I look forward to settling in here and getting to know everyone. I’d love for everyone to tell me a little about yourself in the comments.

Love,

~Jessie