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Changes have been happening the last few months, and I habe not kept up with my journal to chronicle them very well.  So, here is a quick run through some of the highlights.  

Katrina and I became grandparents a little over two months ago when Dylan’s Wynn was born.  They were unsure if Whitney was in false labor or the real thing, so we went over and quickly decided that they needed to be at the hospital to be sure.  After driving them down to Logan, the contractions were inside three minutes, but her water had not broke.  They broke it and she delivered Wynn by 4:30 The following morning.  He was three weeks early, but has overcome his troubles and is growing fast, and well.  

Grandma is deteriorating.  She is getting more forgetful than she was, and having trouble making sound decisions.  I always said that with David, as his dementia progressed, he was really the same, only intensified, or in concentrated form.  She is doing the same thing now.  We mostly go to the same places every time I take her out.  That is the same as before, but she takes longer at them.  We habe spent three of the last four Fridays at Verizon.  She has bought a phone, tried it, forgot parts to it when she went to return it, then given it to someone who works at the rest home, even though she is still paying for its cost, not the line, just the phone.  Same stuff as before, only more intensified.  

Kirynie turned 9.  That kid is such a treasure to me!  She is so smart, and despite some of her proclivities to be a bit obnoxious to her sister, and to feel sorry for herself, shenis a wonderful child!  She is very helpful with feeding the animals, and she reads a lot.  

Colvin turned 19 on the same day.  I have not seen him in so long, since that day…  My world fell apart.  I hope that he has grown to be a good man.  I wt would like it if he came to me, and on his terms.  I never met my dad, and never was able to set terms for that.  I know how it feels, and need him to make his move, if, and when he is ready.  I understand.  

The farm is coming along pretty well.  There are things I am happy with, and some things I am not, but we habe made such progress on getting things in place for the animals we raise.  Yes, there is still more to do, a lot more, but the place is coming along and may one day actually be our own.  That would be very weird! I built the last animal pen, and need to build shelters and the like now to improve the situation for our little ones. 

We have totally paused the indoor work so we could focus outside. So nothing has happened inside, but I suspect we will get moving just as soon as the weather cools a bit.  It has been in the mid to upper 90’s out, and we have no cooling.  Most of the house is usually hot, especially upstairs.

Those are some of the basics of what has been going on around here.  We always have more planned, but need to start looking at what needs to be finished for winter.  One is the firewood! I have not been up into the mountains yet, and need to get up there and order to chop down some of that Maple I’ve been planning on collecting.  I also need to split a lot of Cottonwood that I had cut down earlier in the year but has been too wet to split so far. I did build a place to hold the firewood over winter where I can place a tarp over it and keep it dry unless I’m able to get a roof built over it, which I hope to do next year if not this. It was a simple build, just using pallets and placing them in a grid on the ground, then using some more to build sides to hold the wood in. That will give me plenty of places to tie a tarp down if I need to, and it will hold several cords of wood. If I stack all the wood only to the top of the pallets, I should be able to fit four and a half chords just in this future Woodshed of mine.

Missus has come up with a great idea for The Granary. I had suggested she use it as a store and sell her arts and crafts and such from there, but she looked into the idea of using it as an Air BnB. If we do that, then we should be able to use the money we make to improve it until it has all the functionality we would like as both a bunkhouse for our visitors, and a few utilities for ourselves, such as maybe a deck and a fire pit and a little kitchenette that we can use during canning season. It’s certainly a good idea, and something to think about. I think we just might do it. 

Kelsey I Bacon

Yesterday I received confirmation that I have been removed from the records of the Mormon Church.  I was baptized in when I was eight years old, on my birthday, as I remember it.  I am told that it was my choice.  I habe a daughter who turns nine today, and despite the fact that I think she is way smarter at nine than I was at eight, choosing a life long commitment to a belief system that will hold her accountable for sins against a God she is supposed to also decide is real, and will excise a tax on her income for the rest of her life at the peril of her Eternal Soul, all seems a bit much to put upon her.  I know I was not ready to make such a commitment at that naive age.  And now, 38 years gone on, and a lot learned, both in the Church, and out, I am more than confident that joining the Mormon Church, or any religion, for that matter, is a serious mistake.  Although I have not attended a meeting at a ward house in about 18 years, just being labelled as ‘inactive’ was not enough.  I was tracked down and asked for by name when I lived in a foreign country!  Since when does a belief system require hunting me?  A belief system is something that I must subscribe to.  Well, I do not.  

On the evening of the Fourth of July of this year, the last thing I did for the day was to submit a letter of resignation through an attorney to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  That letter was revived and my name removed by the 7th.  Ten days after sending it in, I received my confirmation that it was done.  

How do I feel?  I am as ambivalent about it as I was about any reason or reservation I could dream up when I sent in the request to remove my name from the Church.  At the end of the day, a fraudulent organization could hold no ecclesiastical power over me.  I cannot be forced to drink the Kool-aid.  

This is the most important document I have ever had regarding religion, and especially the Mormon Church.  It is the one that declares that I am free.  It is the one that sticks a finger in the eye of those who profess it is divine truth because of its growth and membership.  Maybe I am just a rat jumping off a sinking ship, but be sure of this; the ship is sinking.  

Some day I may go ahead and write the reasons why I can be so sure that the Church, and religion in general are categorically false.  But for now, I have some things to do first.  For now, I plan to live free.  

Goodbye Religion.  You will never see me again in your halls and choirs.  Your cloisters can encase the small minded, and your curtains can fleece the fools.  But I will never bow my head to you again.

This is just me testing Open Live Writer, which is what Microsoft replaced Windows Live Writer With, but didn’t mention it anywhere, but luckily some random dude did on his blog, which I happened upon after an hour and a half trying to work out why Windows Live Writer didn’t work on any of our new Windows 10 machines.  Lucky me! 

Books to read…

Tomorrow brings an historic day, and an important day.  Tomorrow America votes, and finally puts to rest this seemingly endless charade we have called the 2016 Presidential Campaign!  And should Hillary Clinton win, then the loud, clear message will finally be heard, that the Presidency is no longer limited to only half of the inhabitants of this country.  After tomorrow, little girls will be able to dream of one day becoming the elected leader of this country, and those girls with their dreams will have to be taken very seriously.  To that end, all I want is equality and humanity! 

On the other hand, America may not vote to pass the mantle, but to toss the club to someone who will likely bash the whole nation over the collective head, and run away with all the money.

Too tired to keep going now.  Sleep required! 

Kelsey J Bacon 

Today I took the girls out into the little pasture and let them each take a turn at launching a model rocket.  Kiry went first, and we lost that rocket after the chute failed to deploy.  Khallie launched the second rocket, and we retrieved that about 500 to 600 feet from the launch site in the Robert’s field behind the house.  I launched the second rocket a second time, having the girls spot it, and it came down in the direction we thought the first rocket went in when it got lost.

Oh, also, when we left our place to search for that second rocket, I ducked the barbed wire first, then turned to check the girls as they came through, but forgot about the electric cow fence the Roberts keep.  I would not call it painful, but it sure as Hell wasn’t what I’d call the shock I got.  I hit that wire, and that sonofabitch hit me back like a ton of bricks.  It jarred me with such force that even now, 13 hours later, I can still feel the jolt throughout my body.  

This evening while we were feed ing the animals and watering the plants, I spotted the first rocket in the front yars, about 50 feet from where we launched it.  How did we miss that?  I’ll never know.  

Mom would have called today her birthday, even though it was celebrated on the 11th of July for most of her life.  After years of believing it was the 11th, she got a copy of her birth certificate, which stated it was on the 7th.  Unhappy with her mother for getting it wrong for so long, she started celebrating it on the 7th in spite of her mother saying “it was the 11th.  I ought to know, I was there.”  In the end, mom decided her birthday just went from the 7th till the 11th.  Well, happy first day of your birthday mom.  I love you! 

I still find it so difficult to look at your pictures.  You were supposed to be here another 20 years or so.  You would be turning 64 now.  Instead…  Instead I just hurt inside.  Instead, I have a hole in my heart.  Your father lived till he was 90.  His funeral was two years before yours.  At his, you sat and you cried on the very spot you would lay only two years later.  Momma, these thoughts!  They kill me inside.  I have such sorrows at that cemetery in Duschene, Utah.  At your father’s funeral I spoke to Nancy, and remembered him, though I was only five when he died, and it was shortly after that that I remember being at that place.  And how I still think the kids and grandkids at you father’s funeral should have thrown back shots of whiskey atop his coffin, to honor him as the man he was, rather than the sunshine we tell eachother at funerals. 

When I woke up the morning of April 9th, everything was normal.  Four agonizing days later, your favorite drawing was a stark reminder of you.  Your mother took off to Denver without me, and without asking if I wanted to go.  Add it to a long list of things for which I’ll never forgive her.  You, always the peace maker, would tell me to.  You’d lie and say you had, then drop it, and try to forget it.  You’d mean it well enough to be convincing.  I’ll never know the truth.  I’ll only know that you were always a better person than she, even though you worried deeper, and more that you were not.  

Happy Birthday mom.  Unhappy Birthday mom.  I know you suffered so much.  I am relieved that you are relieved of your pains.  I’d be so selfish to want you back to continue your suffering just for me.  I know you’d do it in a minute if you could.  I know you would tell me to tell your grand babies every single day that you love them.  So, I am so selfish.  I wish so much you could just tell them yourself!  

Dammit Mom!  

Tonight I just want to make a journal entry, rather than a blog post on one of the blogs.  I have started writing Dispatches From the Farm as letters to and old friend, which has helped in getting a post out now and then because it makes me feel like I have been writing something to someone.  These Journal entries here are more like letters written to myself, and that is easy enough for me.  Dispatches started out in a mindset of writing something akin to a Laura Engles story or a Tales From Lake Woebegone.  And while I’d like to give such personalities, I don’t want to cross lines of privacy with the people around me.  So, I keep it mostly about me, and on the farm.

Another failed aspect of Dispatches and all of my blogs, really, has been images.  It turned out to be a technical issue that had no resolution till I happened on a setting in the application I use on my Android that was preventing me from posting photos.  I adjusted the resolution down, and next thing you know…

…our lives on the farm are in living color!  And that is pretty exciting!

Our second child, Dylan, announced on Independence Day that he is moving out and moving in with his girlfriend into a house they will be renting in town for $1,000 a month (which is really high for town, and for a place in need of as much work as they say this place is).  Then, after two years of perfect payments, the owner will finance the house to them as a sale.  It will cost enough of their income that they have to rent a room or two out to friends.  Of course we have advised against it, but this is advice given to the guy who spends more than half his monthly income on a car he bought on loan without telling us he was doing it.  And they had already put the money on the house by the time they told us.  

They are running tight on money, and testing friendships in ways they never have before.  They are much braver than I am.  

So, with just us and the girls at home after this week, there will be some room changes going on.  No charge expected on how much we talk to Dylan, because he never says boo to us anyhow.  We have not existed for him since he was what, six?  The girls will move into the room the boys had, after freshening it up, and the rooms the girls and we are in will be used as a suite, which is great because they have to walk through our room to get to theirs anyhow.  We will put our bedroom into their current room, then make our current bedroom into a sitting room, complete with hide-a-bed to convert it into a guest room when required.  I’ll put in a sink and coffee station, and maybe we will round up a viewscreen for movies and such.  The seating will make for a nice place for bedtime stories!  And there is a balcony with full sliding glass for a great view, and a cozy hangout to watch snowfall on winter evenings.  

Katrina has worked out a deal with a friend of Jordan’s to buy a truck off her.  It is an ’82 Ford F150. Jordan thinks the engine is a 351, making it the little brother to the engine in my truck.  That will give us two trucks to get firewood with, or hay, or haul a trailer with, or whatever.  It should make a good animal getter too when we find something to buy.  It has two fuel tanks, making it potentially better for those long trips.  My folks had a van with the same engine and fueltank setup when I was learning to drive.  It was good.  Katrina is excited that it is four wheel drive and has an automatic transmission. It has a hitch reliever,  so we will have to set her up with a hitch ball.  That won’t be a problem!   It may be a lot better for getting firewood with than my truck stands to be.  And, she can paint the her logo on it.  Mine can have the farm logo on it without guilt!  

Well, it is bedtime. Our three year old is in our bed tonight.  She has been sleeping on our bedroom floor, which was progress…