COVID-19 Diary, Part 4

Early April is a very popular time to have a birthday at Paradigm Farms. Carter has already celebrated his birthday and he was in good company over the past week as Hemi, Blu and Rey have all had birthdays as well. Carter had a video call with his two best friends on his birthday. Lots of people sang happy birthday to him over the phone, some of whom would have normally done so in person. BC – before coronavirus – birthdays are more fun than WC – with coronavirus – birthdays.

Jason has spent much of his “free” time attempting to get grocery deliveries arranged. Of course we can’t get deliveries to the farm, so we have our orders sent to my mom’s house. These days I think the odds of winning the lottery are higher than locking in a grocery delivery time. Often Instacart won’t even allow us to place an order they are so overwhelmed, so Jason has to try for a few days in a row before getting lucky and nabbing a delivery day about seven days out. I remember the good old days of February when we used to just go to the grocery store without worries about deathly illness. I feel very lucky that we even have a way to have groceries delivered. I know many people still just go to the store, but Jason and I take our jobs of running this farm and caring for all of the living creatures on it very seriously. We are doing our best to not only help flatten the curve, but to keep ourselves healthy. We’d prefer to just go to the store, it would be a lot easier, cheaper, and much less time consuming. If we were only responsible for ourselves we would be handling this pandemic slightly differently.

Spring grooming is happening in full force. My hands are blistered and calloused from so much time spent using a shedding blade. We’re grooming and bathing horses for a few hours each day. We’ve had absolutely glorious weather in which to do all of the grooming and bathing. It’s been sunny and warm and exceptionally pleasant. We’re having the type of weather where everyone with an office job wishes they worked on a farm.

I hope all of you are staying safe, healthy and finding new normals in this abnormal time.

Happy, Sam, Johnny, Taco and Quigly