Puppies and peaches

Kelly Van Gundy and two of her four chil­dren just got back from South Car­olina where they had gone to “help out” a sis­ter Bap­tist con­gre­ga­tion and their community.

They brought back peaches and a puppy, a small hand-held black puppy of no ori­gin except a Wal­mart park­ing lot with six lit­ter mates. He was the last and Kelly said, “We’ll make him healthy and love him.”

So he rode cud­dled in a car load of good Chris­tians all the way back to Delaware County.

Here on our farm AJ (Andrew Jack­son High School was where the group had stayed) smelled out the lay of the land — the Aus­tralian shep­herd Ollie, the Lab/pit bull Buck, another Van Gundy kid, and Fran­cis, a res­cued cat with a bal­ance prob­lem; he often runs side­ways and his head shakes, but he has turned out to be a great rat­ter and a very friendly friend to AJ. Also sit­ting on the lawn with the puppy was a young man with phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions who loves dogs and who felt right at home sur­rounded by them.

While John Van Gundy milked and Kelly mowed and the puppy played, two of the VG boys went to the creek and brought back a bucket full of craw­dads to watch and let go again. A creek is healthy that holds craw­fish and safe to swim in which the boys did from head to toe.

A neigh­bor brought some sweet corn so we husked it and started the water to boil. The peaches got cut up with some saved for a cob­bler later on. Maybe it was the puppy, but on a hot sum­mer after­noon life felt very good; for what was lost and left had now found a home. Haven’t we all!

Sylvia Zim­mer­man is the owner of Ful­ton Creek Jer­sey Cheese in Rich­wood. She holds two grad­u­ate degrees and, when not work­ing on her farm or pur­su­ing her inter­est in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, writes her own blog.

Posted by Sylvia Zimmerman on Jul 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.