So, I’m back.

Many thanks to all of you who wrote in asking where the heck I’ve been lately, and asking me to pick up the diaries again. You made my year.

The answer is that I’ve been here - on the farm, working like the dickens. I took time out from the diaries to write a book with my Stand & Deliver business colleague, Peter Meyers, about high performance communication, to be published by Atria Books, due out in Dec. 2010. (Title still undecided…) So the writing slot of the day was spoken for…

And, we’ve had a few things going on in the meantime!

Rich and I were married on April 10, in a beautiful Victorian-style wedding in Portmeirion. We honeymooned in Provence, and were just headed home to pick up the reins of the farm again when the volcano in Iceland erupted! We ended up being delayed two extra days in Amsterdam on the way home, which, let’s face it, ain’t really that much of a hardship…

The new Mrs. Jones on honeymoon in Provence

Rich drinking champagne after the hot air balloon ride

But my parents, who had come over from California for the wedding, got stranded in London when their flight was cancelled. In a bold move, they decided to book passage home on the Queen Mary in a month’s time, and spend the month of May with us, on the farm!

You think it was funny to see a San Francisco radio talk show host try to learn to milk a goat? Wait and see what happens when her artist wine-country parents try to survive a month on the farm…

The first thing I did was wheel them down to the army surplus store, where I bought them wellies, grey hooded sweatshirts and waterproof trousers. I could just imagine my dad’s black leather jacket, smartly creased black trousers and shiny black shoes meeting up with a load of chicken poo.

Then I drove them into town to pick up some art supplies, and turned them loose on our massive kitchen table to be creative. (Artists are great that way…self-entertaining!)

My parents, the artists

All the kids love having my parents here - none more than Benji. He’s only seen them before on Skype. He sidled up to me after they arrived and confessed, “I thought they were just cartoons!” So he’s enjoying the reality of having two more real live grandparents around, to go along with his beloved Taid.

So far my parents have taken a few tentative steps toward getting involved with the farm. My mom came out with me to do the goats twice - watching gingerly as I slung the buckets around and sluiced down the center aisle of the barn with hypochlorite and water. “Do you enjoy that?” she asked.

I stopped and thought for a minute, wanting to be accurate. “I enjoy being able to do it,” I said. “I didn’t use to enjoy it, before I knew what I was doing. Too scary. But yes, now I enjoy struggling with a big bale of hay, or sweeping out, or feeding the goats. It makes my brain go quiet. I’m not thinking anything while I’m working - just working.”

Glenda, the white Saanen, is hugely pregnant with what we hope is twins. We can’t keep the billy if there is one - they pee on their front legs and make everything stink! But if there’s a nanny, we’ll keep her and add her to the herd. I’m hoping to be able to find a home for the billy - he’ll be a nice one, with papers and a pedigree, from a good milky line. But no one wants billies, for the same reason that we don’t - and we’ve had people tell us to just eat him.

I don’t think I could - I’ve gotten pretty tough about slaughtering and eating animals in the past two years on the farm - even assisted Rich the last time he slaughtered lambs. But I just don’t think I could eat a goat kid. They have too much personality - it would be like eating a horse.

And speaking of pregnant, all the sheep are pregnant and ready to pop as well!

We scheduled things months ago, breeding the sheep and goats so that nothing would be born while we were away on honeymoon. So now we’re back, and all hell is ready to break loose.

Add to that, the fact that Rich has taken so much time off from the harps for the wedding and honeymoon, that he can’t afford to take off any more. So he casually mentioned that I would have to do most the lambing by myself, and I almost fainted!

“I can’t do that!” I gasped. “I have no idea what I’m doing!”

“You’ll be fine,” he said encouragingly. “You’ve watched me do it for two years now.”

“I know, but I wasn’t watching thinking that I would have to do it by myself!”

He handed me a book.

“This has some good diagrams. If there’s just a head poking out, or back legs, call me. I can be home in twenty minutes.”

“But…” I protested…

“Most of it is just common sense,” he reassured me, and he was gone.

Stay tuned….