How do farm kids and farm dogs spend the hot, dirty Virginia summers? Playing outside getting hotter and dirtier! {smile}

When I finally got tired of this…

And this…

And this…

We headed out for a walk. I needed a break by then anyway. Cleaning floors in our house is almost more futile than doing laundry or dishes. I don’t even get a one day reprieve. {sigh} So I took a break to get some fresh air with the dogs. Along the way we made sure to get pictures of this…

And this…

And this…

Because farm kids are crazy about bugs and wildlife. Particularly anything that they can catch in their own two hands! I love to save pictures of everything to show them if they’re not there. And any time they find something, they come running to show me, hollering “Momma, get your camera!!”

That’s his “I know we can’t keep him, Momma…No pets in the house that aren’t housebroken…No cleaning cages…You’re so unfair…” look. You might feel sorry for him. But that’s because you weren’t here for the cricket incident of 2012. Or the frog incident of 2013. Or the bird incident of 2014. Trust me, no critters in the house is generous.

And eventually we made it to our muddy pond.

It’s really not a “pond” in the go-fishing, go-swimming sense. It’s a low spot that collects all the area drainage from the fields. But it’s about waist deep on me. Deep enough to be fun. And wide enough to require Coal to swim. Penny only has to swim at the very center for, like, two steps.

The kiddos are allowed to go wading up to the top of their muck boots, but not all the way in. There’s no fish to speak of, but there’s plenty of frogs to chase and tadpoles to pester and every once in a while you’ll run into a snake–you know, just to make things interesting!

You can see that Penny is a bit of a snorkeler. Coal dives in head first after a frog, and comes up snorting and spewing water every which way. {smile} It can get pretty murky once the dogs are in there stirring things up. In the winter the water is much clearer and cleaner. You can see the leaves on the bottom.

Oh yeah, and it kinds stinks in the summer. Like dirty pond water.

After 30 minutes of chasing frogs, we headed home. I usually go the long way back home so they have time to dry out a little bit.

You know, before they plop their dirty, pond-stinkin’ selves onto my newly mopped kitchen floor. {sigh}

Such is the farm life! {smile} Someone posted on Facebook recently asking about a dog breed that doesn’t shed much because they don’t want to be cleaning up hair all the time. I laughed! If only dog fur was the biggest mess the mutts made! I picked up Penny’s bed the other day to sweep underneath of it and sand literally poured out of the seams–as if I had emptied a beach bag. A river of yellow grit just spilled onto the floor. And I thought, well, at least it’s not another mouth to feed!

How’s your summer going? I’m pretty happy with some of the work we’ve been getting done around here. The chicken house is in good shape, the sheep are sheared, and the grass is growing. Everything else is just icing on the cake!

By the way, did you stop by the Simple Sunday link up last week? I found this great pork chops with pineapple salsa recipe from Homemade Hoopla that I’m going to be trying next week. There’s a lot of great home and homemaking ideas in the link ukp, and a new one coming up this week. Be sure to stop by!

See where I’m sharing…