.......A Soft Boiled Morning, Part Two

For the beginning of this story, please visit A Soft Boiled Morning, Part One

and now, for the rest of the story

.....I rushed back home, and with 10 minutes remaining before the next feeding, pulled into the home across the road,  to check on their dogs, who had been involved in a vicious dog fight early that morning (which had sent the youngest girl running to my house to use a telephone to call her father home, which woke me up early enough in the morning to hear the distress of my goat, which enabled me to assist with a birth that would likely have been the cause of death for she and her baby had I not been there to help……see how these things work?).  Hopped back in the car, and...nothing.  Nothing.  Not even an attempt to start.  

And for the next forty-five minutes, those neighbors, along with the man who lived next door to them and was clearly on his way somewhere—somewhere that wasn't my car, parked on the side of the road, stopped everything they were doing.  I needed help, they saw, and nothing distracted them from the task at hand.  Even as I would drag a bale of hay, on my back (what a sight that must have been) to the goat pen, they continued working.  Even as I bottle-fed that baby goat, they continued working. In fact, they continued working until I heard the (heavenly!) hum of my car, easing it's way up the gravel towards my home.

Those are my neighbors.  And they are good neighbors.  With big hearts.  And those are the stories that need to be told.  This, my call of action.  To tell the stories of kind people who have not much, but so much,  to give, and do, when the chips are down. To share the abundance of wealth that may be less evident, to the critical consumer eye, but there for the sharing, and shining, at a moment's notice.  

I'm an adventurous sort, without the budget of a world traveler, so, looking back, and looking forward, too, I can see that my grandest adventures are all playing out daily on, and around,  this very spot of land that is my home.

A spot, incidentally, that I asked for, though I couldn't have imagined how it would play out at the time.

Only a few weeks after I arrived in Austin, 15 years ago, I, by nothing more than a stroke of divine, and genius intervention, found myself at work as a land surveyors' assistant, which entailed researching deeds, and engaging in various search and discovery missions around this foreign area.  It was an incredible opportunity to get to know a new land, and I credit it for connecting me so deeply to the place I would call home.
  
Each road, river, lake visited by an awestruck flatlander, would find me overcome by the beauty of this place. And one refreshing, and surprisingly, cool afternoon, as I sat with my sack lunch on private lands, lakeside, with the sun dancing off the water, I recorded the moment in that journal which was my only friend in those early days in a new world.  I wrote…

One day, it would be my wish to own a small part of this Hill Country. Nothing big. Nothing grand. Just a simple small parcel, perhaps with nothing more than an adequate house I can call my own, space for a few animals, and land to grow my own food. What joy there would be in my morning if I could collect a few eggs, soft boil and toss them with some herbs from my garden, break my own bread, and have a quiet morning on the porch with a cup of coffee, a dog curled at my feet, pencil in hand.  (October, 1997)

Fifteen years later, this month, I sit on the porch of my sweet, adequate house, on a small parcel of the beautiful Hill Country.  I'm surrounded by animals, and gardens, and I've enjoyed, like so many days' beginnings, soft boiled eggs laid just this morning, tossed with fresh herbs from my gardens, a dog curled at my feet, a perfect steaming cup of coffee, a pencil, in my hand, and joy in the morning.

We've been here five years.  Five funny, often trying, sometimes frustrating, mostly joyful years. This is not the fancy farm of a domestic doyenne. This is the small farm of two middle-aged farmers struggling to learn the lessons it has for us. Two farmers whose happiest days are punctuated by quiet evenings on the porch, under the stars. Some folks, and sometimes those folks have been me, I admit, would suggest it takes a lot more more to lead a deeply satisfying life. If they were to share this breakfast with me, I might convince them, as I have been, joyfully, otherwise.

Pull up a chair, friend.  How do you take your coffee?

Oh!  

Did you come around for tips for a perfectly soft boiled egg?  And here I've prattled on, without a cooking tip, one. Well, let's remedy that.  Please visit The Food Lab: Perfect Boiled Eggs from the folks at Serious Eats. They say anything I would have said and then some.

Seriously, haven't you heard enough from me for one day?