Saturn, limit your limits

Our first Saturn return, we lived on a farm up Crupperneck road, a road shaped like it sounds. We were not yet thirty. We'd built a grainery, goat barn, woodshed, hayshed, hog lot and barn... and we'd settled in with dairy goats, cows, a few rabbits and chickens.  Sarah was 2, Heather was 4 and Jennifer was 6 when we moved there. Jennifer had already been in another school before we moved there. We didn't have 2 cents to rub together and we lived off what we grew -- mostly. If we'd been a little older and lot wiser, we'd have made a good thing of the situation. Even after what happened.



What happened was a chimney fire and a miscalculation in montly payments charged by FHA on the loan and a burgeoning balloon payment we were not going to be able to make, in spite of Mark's good job with Island Creek Coal company, and our meager sales on the farm products. We bit too big a chunk; and couldn't chew it up.

Cows died from grass tetany
goats were attacked by neighbor's dogs
 disgruntled neighbors robbed us blind
 and there was that chimney fire.

Flash forward.  We are now in our second Saturn return. We moved to a farm as if we were driven to set up the same situations once more.  We moved there 3 days before a major storm that shut down utilities for 11 days. That was no big concern. We actually enjoyed it. We worked every bit as hard on this rented farm as we had on the one we were buying in our twenties.  We built a hay loft, goat barn, equipment shed and cleaned up the place as good as we could with what there was to work with. We cut wood, enough wood to last several witners in a regular house -- all those downed trees providing easy enough harvest.

But the house was cold and colder and the wood poured through the stove like water down the creek. We didn't stay warm this past winter, but we didn't freeze if we wore two or three shirts, a sweater and a coat and kept our hands half-gloved when were weren't near the heating stove. Chilly though we were, and fighting all the infestations of the old farm house and the bad water and all the other shortcomings, we were happy enough.

Until the chimney fire.
And the disgruntled neighbors.
And the dog trouble

Now, we're moving on. Hopefully, without getting robbed blind this time by those who've been there longer, the settled ones who belong there.