Reflections of Sunrise

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Kelsey

Wow!  September 2013 has rolled around!  When I was six I was amazed at the math I did that postulated that I would likely be alive to see the years change from dates beginning with 19, to ones that begin with 20.  My mother’s checkbook had a line on the checks that looked like this:  “19___.”  That was my first clue on the Y2K bug, by the way!  I started thinking of all the papers with that line on them, and how they would all have to be updated!  Mind you, it was 1977, and the only computer I had ever heard of at that point was the ATARI.  Well, never mind all of that! 

At that time of my life I was being brainwashed into believing in the Apocalypse, and that one of the possible outcomes of my life was to never see this massive date change, but rather, the end of the world.  At that time it was speculated that such a catastrophic event would be brought about by an inevitable nuclear war with the Soviet Union.  We were all going to die in one massive war, and that was it.  Fears were fueled over the pulpit, over the podium, and in everyday conversations.  Parents either taught their children, as my mom did me, or allowed their children to be taught by others, as my mom did me. 

As the years wore on, I witnessed a lot of things that changed my mind on such matters.  More people died in wars, car accidents, and by disease than by any World War, Apocalypse, or by Extinction Level Events.  The thought of such things cast a pall of depression over me just to think about! 

One thing did keep happening in my life that cast a new light upon my mind, however, and that was sunrise.  Yes, the dawn!  Every morning as I walked to school, no matter the state of the world, or the state of my mind, the sun just kept on coming up!  It might be hidden by the clouds, or it might have been beautified by the clouds, but no matter if I could not see it at all, I only needed to wait a day or a few, and there it was again, right in plain sight, rising up over the horizon, blasting its light across the landscape without a thought or a care of what events had occurred the day before, that would occur during its new day, or might happen tomorrow.  The sun was all about today.  It had been all about today since it first cast light, whenever that was!  It became something I could count on, more than anything in life.  That’s when I first leaned my arm on something other than the myths of my family, or of my society.

I am no mental horse.  I did not prop myself up and prepare to run.  It took a long time to take steps.  As a late teen, I often had depression and thoughts of suicide.  I would finish work at my first job, bagging groceries, and rather than go home, I would take a drive.  These drives led me out of the city, and down dark roads where I would increase the speed of my car to 80 miles an hour or so, click off my seatbelt, and eye up the telephone poles as they flashed by my windscreen.  Of all the myths, the fear of Hell may have dissuaded me from killing myself, but none of the myths ever saved me.  The only thing that did, the only thing that crossed my mind and reliably argued to me that there was hope beyond my depression was the thought of the morning sunrise.  Every day brought hope that things would get better, and hope that things could get better.  I also lamented the thought of missing those sunrises, and by my early twenties I began to become greedy for them.  As a teen, I was living in a repetitive day long before Bill Murray ever drove Punxsutawney Phil off a cliff in an old pickup truck. 

Where am I now?  Actually, I am sat in my room, on my bed, looking East towards the rising sun, the light still dim on the horizon as the sun slowly climbs up beyond it.  The world has had about 1.6 Trillion sunrises, mostly without me.  The ones I have seen have been amazing!  And if they carry on as they have, they will continue to be amazing!  I have learned to cherish each one, not just because each might be my last, but because each one is mine!  Each one brings me new hope.  Each one lights my day.  Each one is mine to do with as I please!  Each one is a new smile on the face of a trusted friend. 

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The Summer Wears On

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Kelsey

It’s been difficult to sit down and write lately.  The first winter in Idaho was one of adjustment.  We had not found our feet, probably in part for a lack of looking. Spring and Summer followed with lots of well laid plans, and because they were all achieved on a budget, it was a long couple of seasons plugging along till we got everything done that we could afford. 

Now, with less than a month to go before Autumn begins to settle in, we have a vegetable garden producing a bit of fun, a pumpkin patch, and a patch with watermelons, cantaloupes, and corn growing in it.  We have two cows in the pasture over the road, and an enlarged chicken flock.  All of this has added things to tend to, and to learn about to our list of daily doings. 

There is also a lot of work to be done around the house!  The place is about 100 years old now, and needs a lot of work done to it!  My pet project has been the pantry.  It stands to reason that if we are going to get the yard producing lots of food, then we are going to need a place to store it all once it’s harvested and canned.  I have started in one corner and begun to work my way around.  That way, I have a sort of template for how the entire room will go as I continue.  I could have built lots of shelves and then added caps to them, but I instead went from floor to ceiling in the one corner.  I am ready to start the second corner, having finished the area where the washing machine is and two of the doors into and out of the room.  I have improved the lighting in there, and in the basement, and added two outlets for convenience.  One is outside, to stop extension cords being trailed across the floor and through the back door, and the other behind the dryer, to rid us of the cord leading from the cubby behind the oven, through the little pantry, and into the big pantry.  All of this is actually pretty easy work to do.  It doesn’t even take a lot of time.  But on top of everything else, and with the kids and all, by the time I am sat down, I want to rest a bit and get my mind off things.  Hence the lack of blogging lately. 

I even have a hobby in my shop, which is a table that I am refinishing which is probably older than this house is.  It came from my Great-Great-Grandmother’s house in West Virginia, and even in its ancient state, it is a sturdy, strong table.  It deserves a good refinishing!  I had it as my first table in my first marriage.  My ex painted the top blue.  The refinishing work I am doing now is a way of erasing my ex, which helps to further close the door on that epoch.  My plan is to eventually have it and an equally old chair done and put on the front porch for my little computer to rest while I BLOG!  I am calling the whole project My Little Walden.  It is to be my relaxing place. 

I doubt next year will give me any more free time than this one has!  We intend to plow up more garden space, because after all, we can.  We may even cut into the irrigated land over the road where the cows graze.  I also want to raise bees.  We will likely get more cows next year too!  There will be paddocks to create, and field management to do.  I also want to get turkeys going, and waterfowl for the drainage ditch at the bottom of the field over the road.  All of this on top of what we have been doing this year!

My workshop needs more done in it to finish it.  I have a work bench down one side, and lighting, and some tools.  I still need a work bench on the other side, and some cabinetry, and more tools of course, always more tools!  I also need to get a permanent electrical installation out there!  Believe it or not, I am currently (pun intended) working with a power strip and an extension cord from the front porch of the house.  It all works because I only use one tool at a time, and the lighting is all LED, so low wattage requirements.  They don’t even dim when I run the high consumption saw.  But it is far from ideal!  Thing is, the entire operation is going on a $50 a week budget, so it is slow.  But I am positive that I am getting far more than $50 a week value out of it! 

Been fun writing, but I have to go now, as the baby is getting fussy and the day needs starting! 

Kelsey Bacon

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It’s Been So Long…

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Kelsey

I don’t even know where to begin!  The spring and summer have ramped us up from anticipation to just about building the place into a farm from the ground up.  We have been busy and broke every day!  The chickens needed an upgrade in their housing, the house has needed a ton of repairs, the yard has needed tending to, and the garden building and growing and tending.  We bought our first two cows to raise for beef for our family!  The whole process has been done on a serious learning curve too…  Amidst all this, we have been bringing up an infant, as well as our other three kids, and they have kept our hands full!  Our oldest teen has been fixing up a ‘69 Chevy truck that he bought for $200, and if you know classics, then you know by the price that the truck needs a lot of work!  Our younger teenage boy got himself an Xbox for Christmas, and it has needed daily playing in order to keep it lubricated and in fit working order.  Yes, the last two seasons have been keeping us busy! 

To start it all off with, I had to build the work bench in the garage, then equip it with tools to do some basic building and carpentry.  That has been a task that has spanned both seasons just for limited capital resources.  But things are being fitted in according to priority because of said limited resources, so what I have is useful to me! 

Things like buying cows are not just that, of course.  Once we got the cows, we had to feed them on Calf Starter till they were eight weeks old, then when it came time for them to start grazing, we had to do a little teaching.  We supplemented with some grain too.  When it came time to turn them out into the West Pasture, it needed some fencing put in and a few bands of electric wire to surround it so we could turn the cows loose in there to feed.  It was my first electric fence. 

Gardening involved growing some plants on the balcony, which missus handled most of, but she needed help of all sorts from time to time.  Then we built a hoop house, and had to learn by trial and error how to wind-proof it!  Then there were all the fittings and pots for that!  And now we are fitting it out for next year in order to get an early start!  Also, digging up grass and hand turning earth to put in the Pumpkin Patch and the Watermelon Patch were big jobs!  A full acre of land is a 200 foot by 200 foot square, and we have had to buy hoses to run from the one water spout all the way across to the apple trees we put in!  There is also a permanent hose set to the Vegetable Patch. 

All the while this all has been going on, we have also had my elderly grandparents to care for, with his Dementia to worsen his situation, and taking my wife the 85 miles to the airport when she has had to work out of town!  Yes, things have been keeping us plenty busy! 

Fortunately we got the drainpipe leak into the basement sorted out a month and a half ago with some elbow grease and a lot of help from my uncle Steven!  That has sorted out the smells coming from there, and it has lessened the water the sump pump has had to pump by a little bit, anyhow!  I still need to deepen the sump pit though, and try to stop the basement from filling up with water in the first place! 

Did I mention the fences we put up either side of the house to distinguish the front yard from the back, or the fence we took down that cut the property in half and how now there is three quarters of an acre of lawn to mow each week or two?  Or perhaps I also failed to mention that I have begun to remodel the pantry with cabinetry and shelving I am building myself?  We re-stained the kitchen cabinets this weekend, and plan to paint in there soon.  The whole house needs freshening up! 

The Farming Life is a good life!  I can say that with all conviction!  Did I mention that I have tickets to see Brad Paisley on August Second?  Well, at least there is something to look forward to other than death! 

We spent today, my wife’s birthday, driving my grandparents to Salt Lake City for his semi-annual appointment with the specialist on his dementia.  It’s now just after midnight!  Time for bed! 

Kelsey J Bacon

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Fixing

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Kelsey

So, I have finally put a 1TB drive in where the C: drive is, and installed Windows 8 on my primary PC.  This is a good thing, because just as I had adapted my netbook PC with a 750 GB C: Drive, and Windows 8, guess what?  The power supply seems to have died!  Typical, eh? 

Of course, none of this matches to the fun of yesterday!  There were four horses running all around the road by the far end of the field, and they had our two really worked up, which I would not care too much about apart from the fact that I know there is bad fencing down that end.  So I grabbed Jordan and hurried down there, in my grandmother’s van.  The horses started to run off, but not knowing where they lived, I supposed that they belonged to the people across the road from that end of the field.  So I pressed on with the intent of guiding them back to their home.  The four horses were running alongside the road, a little ways off, and I was of course driving on the road.  Suddenly they veered up onto the road, and one of them kicked the right front quarter-panel of the van, denting it in and cracking the paint.

Total cost of the repair, $1,127.97.  Luckily the deductible is only $100!

I think that the result was the lesser of the two possible evils too, because if our horses had tried to run through where the fencing was bad, they would have cost us a whole lot more in vet bills!  I also discovered that the part of the fence that was bad is now much worse, and all that remains there is a single electric fence wire.  Clearly, we have got some repairs to do!  Ad it to a long, long list! 

Kelsey J Bacon

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Frozen Pipes

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Kelsey

This year, today marks the day id finally got cold enough to endanger our home’s water supply.  I found it out at 3:30 in the morning.  Khallarnie woke up and cried for a bottle, which is rare as of late, but I needed the toilette, so I volunteered to go get her a bottle.  I flushed and did not hear the water running to fill the tank, and when I went to wash my hands only got enough cold water to do just that, just barely. 

When I went to the kitchen after to get the bottle, I double checked there just to be sure, and there was no water at all.  So that confirmed in my mind that there was a freeze on the water line.  I went back up with the bottle and fed the baby.  After she fell back to sleep, I got up, much to the surprise of my missus.  “Can’t it wait till morning?” she asked.

“In the morning we will have people wanting showers, or coffee, or lean dishes or flushed toilettes and so on, so I’d rather just sort it out now, and hopefully before we end up with a busted water line.”  That was not entirely true because I knew that when my cousin had put in the new water line from the main to the house, he used a flex line that allowed for expansion, and would not bust when it freezes.  I also knew that he ran it through a basement window rather than use a masonry bit on the wall, so why ever he did that, it would likely be there that it is frozen. 

I gathered my wife’s industrial heat gun that she bought for embossing, and dressed very warm and with two pairs of socks because I knew there was going to be water in the basement.  The first stop was out front with the kettle in hand, and a visit to the frost free hydrant by the garage.  That worked just fine, and I filled the kettle up for a coffee.  That confirmed my suspicions that it was us, not the city, who had the water problem, and isolated that problem to roughly the basement window, as suspected. 

After a hot drink, I climbed into the basement and retrieved the electrical cord from the sump pump, which was running but not pumping water out because the outlet pipe is frozen solid.  Okay, I won’t be plugging that back in, and that is also likely how my grandparents have burned out numerous pumps in the past on this house.  I brought the cord over to the location where the water main came through the basement window and plugged in the super hot heat gun.  A couple of flexes of the main and I could hear the ice inside breaking apart.  I applied heat, and warmed about three feet of pipe to the Styrofoam in the window.  The window well is crammed full of Styrofoam to insulate, but I cut about an inch of it away from the pipe in order to get heat to it going outside.  I only had to warm into that hole for a minute and I heard a loud banging in the pipe as the water began to rush through. Just like that, and for today, the problem is almost solved. 

The last trick was to turn on a tap in the bathroom to a little less tan a quarter of an inch wide flow.  That flow should generally prevent any more freezing till I can come up with a more permanent solution, such as rerouting the water line through a basement wall below the window by at least two and a half or three feet.  Relatively speaking, that would likely be one of the easiest things to do to fix the problem, and the best.  I genuinely have no idea why it was not done in the first place. 

This is the first year that anyone has spent the winter in the house since my grandparent bought it 12 years ago, and they claim nobody did when the last owners had it before them.  So we have maybe twenty years or so of the house sitting vacant in the winters, and no history telling us what to expect.  As problems present themselves, we have got to come up with solutions that will work for many years to come in the bitter cold here.  I am told that I can expect winter days to stay as cold as –20 F  That being the case, I have to get sump water out of the basement without the benefit of a location below the pump line to drop the water into, which would allow me to keep the drain pipe below ground, or even on a down hill slant in order to keep it empty and frost free.  I also have this freezing water main problem, a busted drain I cannot access from the kitchen into the basement which is likely broken because of freezing also, and a diesel truck that will not start below 10 F unless we can get a block heater installed.  We also have windows that need further insulating to prevent heat loss.  We are currently spending more than $400 per month for heating on the house!  Draught-proofing also needs to be put around the back door, and a cold pantry sorted out as the room was only at 34 F when I went into it this morning to get to the basement door. 

It is all part of the fun and is perfectly acceptable!  I am more than happy to sort all of these problems out! 

Kelsey J Bacon

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The Blue Spruce in the Moonlight

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Kelsey

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Some Thoughts on the New Year

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Kelsey

Our House

There is a total of eight inches of snow on the ground at our place right now, and now that night has fallen here, the fog has crept in too.  The environment is more than I could have expected for winters!  The summer already proved to be warm and wonderful.

The “drawing” above is the house as it looked this afternoon at sunset.

What I want to do is come up with a better header for The Prospering Peasant as I am getting myself ready for some serious blogging on that site.  I’d like more of a woodcut engraving appearance to it.  This is clearly not the image for it, but a good practice image.

So, Christmas has come and gone, and I am busy spending this weeks allowance on a new power supply for my Netbook, which I am not happy about, and a few other things such as Windows 8 for the desktop in the hopes that it will address all of the RAM and give me more power in Photoshop and the like.  I also finally ordered my first spare for the KitchenAid mixer; a flat beater.  The next to come will be either a dough hook or a mixing bowl, though I think the bowl would be most useful!

After getting the computers all up to speed for the New Year, I want to work on a couple of things, including saving for a decent little Table Saw, and getting some fencing sorted out here.  I shot a photo of a tree today and got some of that stupid orange fencing in the background that granny put up in the summer to keep the chickens in.  Come summer, I want the chickens contained and the flower beds up to date.  I’d like some of the fencing set for horses, cows, goats, and sheep too, so that we can start getting some of each of these animals.  I would like to get started on remodeling the utility room into a prep pantry by summer!  That’s one room that is going to need some serious work!

I expect a lot of changes come the New Year, and will post them as they come, as always!

Kelsey J Bacon

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2013 – A Big Year

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Kelsey

2013 promises to be a big year!  First of all, in the minds of some 26 percent of Americans, it is a year that was not supposed to happen.  Did Gallop interview children for its polls?  Every time a new doomsday prediction happens, the result is the same.  We all wake up the next morning and read about the people who killed themselves, and mourn their loss, and their foolishness, and move on.  The sun rises, and the preachers post their view that no man knows when the end times will come, then start soon again on their tirades about how immoral everyone is, and that this is the end times!  This is one of the reasons I am not religious at all.  I am not having any of it.  I am not having any distractions from living the life I have got, and making it the best possible life I can for myself, and for those around me, family and friends, and even people I do not know.  I have no interest is wasting my time and money on those who busy themselves with the philosophies that distract, or disrepute life for less than it really is.  There is only one thing that can be proved that life is.  One chance.  For each of us, it is one chance to live, and make it good for ourselves, and leave the place in the condition for a chance to make it good for others who come after.  This is the foundation of 2013 for me. 

So, as 2012 comes to an end, I am putting together my list.  It is not a list of resolutions in the traditional sense.  Resolutions are things that we set to try to improve our lives, but often get broken by February.  I am setting mine as a list of goals for the year which are to be written down and focused on.  They have reasons and rationale!  For example, I have fences to build around the yard to keep the animals that we rely on for our food in their places.  I cannot have the goats and chickens and cows running through the garden and eating the vegetables. 

The biggest goals for this year have entirely to do with our home, making it a better and more livable place, and giving our family what I can best describe as “food security.”  In other words, I am building the place into a working farm where most of our food can be raised.  I want to buy the staples at Sam’s, of course, such as sugar and salt, and even flour.  But all the meat and vegetables should come from on the land we live on. 

The biggest staple for our survival is water.  If we are going to raise our animals, then we must have water to raise the grass in the field across the road, and we must have water to raise the vegetables in the garden on this side of the street.  We have access to irrigation across the road, but no access to electricity there.  Smarts must be used in deciding how we work! 

We have other aspects as well to consider, such as networking in the house.  There is nothing like convenience to define efficiency.  It is a happy place when dreams can be had in a comfortable place, and the work to achieve those dreams be done after a good rest.  So, I want to be able to sit in a comfortable place to research recipes and then be able to access those in the kitchen to try out.  There needs to be a cache of recipes for the staples at home too, such as favorite breads, cookies, mayonnaise, and so on.  There should be an accessible shopping list kept from the kitchen, but in a place that can be accessed from the store too.  Does that mean keeping the list on a Google Drive account that can be accessed from Sam’s Club via WiFi?  Shopping and budget are best kept in control with proper planning. 

At some time in this year, we are likely to lose one of our family members into a care home because of his dementia.  If so, he will likely end up in the same home that our aunt Amy is in.  How will costs be covered and visits be arranged?  How will both visit home, if it is viable? 

Goal planning should be arranged around these considerations, in order to make it a better place for us to live!  So this is what I am up to today, and for the next few days! 

Happy to report that it has been a White and Wonderful Christmas this year!  It is snowing today, as we all recover from the festivities of Christmas Day!  I celebrate it, yes.  I celebrate it as a time to be with my family, and to treat them to the things that we cannot always do.  This year we went out for our Christmas meal on Christmas Eve, and then we stayed at home and opened gifts and had a buffet on the dining room table on Christmas Day.  We had Aunt Amy with us on both days! 

Well, part of the New Year’s goals is going to require an exact model of the house in Google Sketch-Up.  So, I have lots of work to do! 

Kelsey J Bacon

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Little Eyes

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Kelsey

4:30 in the morning.  The dark silence of sleep is torn in two by a shrill cry.  My eyes open, but the view is pretty much the same.  Darkness.  This is not morning yet, not how I would define it.  Another cry.  Find the faint green numbers on the clock face, and confirm my conclusions.  Another cry, another conclusion.  The baby is hungry.  Not a bad night’s sleep, really, as I was asleep before midnight last night.  Missus’s head lifts off her pillow with the next cry.  She strains to look at the clock.  “Four thirty,” I say. 

“Oh.”  Tired, she pauses to think.  “Not really that bad then.  Do you need the loo?” 

“Yes, actually.  Do you want me to go ahead and do the bottle while I am down there?”

“Do you mind?”

“Be right back!”

Passing by the cot, two little dark spots look out in anticipation of who is going to end the wanting.  Another cry. 

A few minutes later, missus is downstairs for her wake-up, and I am sat on the bed holding a doll-like figure in my arms, those same two dark spots looking up, over the bottle in my hand, as if memorizing the outlines of my face in the faint yellowish hue of the nightlight.

Little eyes, looking up.  Tummy filling up.  Her little mind is forming synaptic connections, learning the shapes of things around her, trying to figure them out for what they are, memorizing the ones she sees when her tummy fills up, learning what to rely on, what to trust.  Little eyes, searching the world around her, inputting data faster than any other sense. 

Two hours have finally passed, the bottle is empty and cold on the shelf next to the bed.  On my left arm lies a head with two little eyes struggling at last to stay open.  Her restless body twitches.  Finally the little eyes close.  A deep sigh.  Dreams of shapes she does not understand pass through her mind, reinforcing the newly created synaptic connections.  Her mind filling up.  The visions of her little eyes.

Kelsey J Bacon

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Posting From My Netbook Again

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Kelsey

Well, I cannot believe it!  I am actually posting this blog post from my Netbook again, after two years of it either not running, or running on Ubuntu, which does not support an even half decent local blog editor!  I have been awaiting this day since the license on my copy of Windows 7 decided that it was not a valid copy, even though it came loaded on my TOSHIBA Netbook PC. 

Impression of Windows 8 so far?  Well, I cannot start anything from the menu except for the desktop because the screen resolution is too low.  So, basically I am buggered from the start screen!  I will admit, that does not hold the highest importance to me, but I cannot even start an e-mail client at this point!  We’ll see what else does not work! 

Kelsey J Bacon

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