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The Post with No Title

Posted on January 20, 2022 by Kelsey

Today was a fine old day. After little one finished her classes for the day, I took Dylan to Home Depot in our truck so he could buy stuff too big to fit in his car. We ate a little lunch on the way home, then I helped him unload his project supplies at his before he came back to ours to pick up his car, and we had a nice visit.

I had a look at the car this morning, and it still wanted to fault after I had put in the water on the cooling system. I used the OBDII device to reset the check engine light and hence the system, and it ran fine after that. I tried to burn the engine up for a couple of miles, but it ran at normal temeratures. I hate the modern car. Once it hits fault mode, it does not want to drive at all, and one had better have the OBDII device, ir a good pari of shoes.

This morning I had a good think for a bit, and come up with a theory of why I feel a certain way about my family up my mom’s side. I have always acknowledged that there was a difference because of the age gap between my brother and me, totalling just shy of ten years. I have always thought of that in terms of how we see our mom, and how I have memories of mom when she was barely out of her own childhood herself. What I had nto cottoned onto before was the dynamic of the extended family, my uncles and aunts, and how much things changed when mom and I moved to Colorado with her husband back in 1979.

Prior to 79, mom was closer to her siblings. Then she moved off, and those relationships sort of decreased. Everyone of her childhood family was growing up and moving out then, too. My unlces were still fairly young back in those days. My one aunt had been dead for a few years already. I have never been able to fully comprehend how her death had affected them all. But in those days before 79, letters were written which I have found, and found that I feature in them as an important member of the family. I was praised and thought of by all. Even when my mom’s brother married in 77, his faincee alays asked how I was in the time leading up to the marriage.

In more recent years one of my cousins has said his family always hated when our grandparents would bring me and come to visit them on the way out or back from Denver to California. I am sure they did not like the lack of warning before the visit, but I know for a fact that this cousin has not got a clue of how close knit that family was prior to his birth. I have the evidence in the letters, and the memories. And sure, I don’t know all of the politics, but I was there, which is a lot, especially when packed with as many memories as I have of those early days

Well, anyway. All these thougts I had last night has brought me to the conclusion that I now understand more deeply why I feel a sence of betrayal from that part of the family among those left, and she most recently departed. I lost all of that old family. I lost some good things and some bad things there. I took a fair amount of abusiveness from one of my uncles, and that I will never miss. I won’t miss the heartache of Jeannie’s death when she was only 19. Of all of my grandmother’s grandchildren, I was the only one to have heard her voice, to have felt her touch, to have seen her smile light up on her face, I got to know her before cancer set in, and I got to see her at the hospital just before she died. Chhildren were not allowed on ward in those days, unless they were patients, of course, and Jeannie pushed her IV pole down to the waiting room to see me, even in her weakened state. As I remember it, she was in San Diego, and my grandparents were living in Oceanside, and she was dead before we got home from that visit that night. I could be wrong. But there is nobody who can correct that now. That is lost now too.

So here is where I stand. I am alone from that past. Two of the uncles and two cousins are still alive, but I never hear from them or keep in touch. The cousins are especially to themselves. It’s life. As for how my grandma and I fell apart at the end, that was sort of a last severence of me from that past. It was not the greatest. And it has betrayed me, and everything that we once were, including a bit of that past.

Posted in Journal Entry, Memories, Philosophical | Comments Off

Randomness

Posted on January 10, 2022 by Kelsey

I have got to remember next year that when we put the Christmas bedding on, keep a proper duvet or comforter on the bed, and use the Christmas one as only a decorative on in the days and take it off at nights. That thing is awful to sleep under, gets too hot, and I get a bad night’s sleep. Point proven when we changed the bedding yesterday and I slept much better last night. Our youngest woke me at midnight-thirty, not feeling well, and that started me off on two hours of lying awake. When Missus got up at 4AM, I went back to sleep quickly, and even with all that, I got a much better night’s sleep.

But enough about me. Yes, that is two children not feeling well yesterday, though at different times. I was out of it a bit, too. It seems to be an eight-hour bug, or so. Both daughters have lost their lunches and felt a bit better, though their heads were still complaining. I never lost lunch but felt nauseous and headachy. Well, I am feeling better today, and oldest daughter is too, though she is still wanting to rest a bit. Youngest is not great, so I will put her to her bed after schooling, then I plan to go off to Smithfield Implement to get a few things.

My shopping list at Smithfield Implement are a couple of Kilner jars, a few power strips to use to try to discourage the dogs chewing from the smaller cables coming out of the outlets, and a crock to make sauerkraut with.

The dogs made it through the night last night with fewer accidents in the house than ever. I am really eager to get them trained to only go outside. Eventually it might be nice if they can come up the stairs and sleep where we do. But not till the stop leaving bombs and slippy spots on the floors.

It’s a couple of weeks shy of mid-winter now. It is not as cold as it has been in the past, and the winds have settled in the upper atmosphere to a straight east and west line, bouncing the highs and lows over the ten-day forecast in a near straight pair of highs and lows in the low thirties down to the high twenties. There is not much variety to come, and the wet seems to be over. It was a good break from the drought, but I fear it was not the end. I seriously need to adapt this farm to a new situation as the place becomes drier than in the past.

Hoomeschool: Youngest is lay down where she can hear teacher but is unable to participate. She is not feeling well. Not something I could do when I was a kid!

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I Suppose 5AM

Posted on January 8, 2022 by Kelsey

I think the reason 5AM often turns out to be a good time to write here is because I have had a few minutes alone with my thoughts and feel more peace than during the rest of the day when family is making noise and moving about the house with their projects and ideas and plans playing out. I need a bit to wrestle in peace with the things that are going on during a day, or at least a moment to process them.

I got up this morning because nature was whispering to me in my sleep. I walked through the sitting room where the hide-a-bed is folded out for grandson to sleep on, his pile of blankets looking as usual on top, the light on in the room like normal. The child’s gate in the doorway was open though, and that is not normal! I was sure I shut it when I came up to bed. So I checked among the blankets only to find he was not there. I looked in the girl’s room and on top of their cabin beds to see if he had sneaked in there, but no. So he must be with grandma downstairs, I thought. I went down, found that grandma was asleep on her chair in her craft room, and I pulled at the blankets to see if grandson had come and fallen asleep with her in her chair, as has happened before. Nope. He was not in the library, either. Panic time?

When I went back upstairs at last, I looked under the cabin beds, only to find a little head on a pillow, sticking out from a pile of blankets there. Little brat! Luckily, I had found him before I woke the whole family to help me go looking for him!

Okay, these are not thoughts about anything, just musings on a predawn situation. But I have been awake since 3:30, when all this went down. Now it is after 5:00AM, and a good time to take my anxieties back to sleep. And maybe that is the key. Maybe I need to write out my anxieties, and by 5AM, they are fully developed from the time alone with them since going to bed? What a world my head has made for itself!

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Bonfire Night

Posted on January 6, 2022 by Kelsey

When I lived in the UK I became familiar with Bonfire Night, the 5th of November, when the whole country seems to be set ablaze with fireworks, fires in people’s yards, and copious amounts of alcohol, not that the Brits need an excuse for that. I learned that Bonfire Night celebrates the fact that though Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament on the 5th of November 1605, he was caught, and the plot foiled. Now the Brits celebrate what for something that didn’t happen, which never made sense to me.

January 6th in America is our new Bonfire Night. On the 6th of January 2020, Twelfth Night, or Epiphany, for those of that bent, or for us more common folk, the day the Twelve Days Of Christmas song comes to an end, a mob was sent to the Capitol of the United States to try to stop the certification of the Election that unseated Donald J Trump from power. The mob broke into the Capitol encouraged to “fight like Hell to take back our country,” believing that the election had been rigged because they were egged on by a guy who in his past kept “a fixer,” and who exemplified the differences in race in America by being a white guy whose attorney went to jail while he got off from his crimes.

Is January 6th a day to celebrate in the future? Someone else is going to have to figure that out in the future. Today is the first anniversary. There are still a lot of people who passionately agree with that mob. I can only imagine that it feels a lot like it did in 1606 in the UK, when the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot occurred for the first time. For the first time, I really understand why they celebrate it.

“Donald Trump is your President, and there is nothing you can do about it,” said one of the kids on a group Zoom one of my daughters was involved in that day while in school. I heard that kid, knew that he was spewing his parent’s opinions. He said it just as I was watching the first reports of the Capitol being stormed online from another computer in the room. It was appalling to me, and a bit terrifying that there was a faction within the country willing to throw out our tradition of peaceful transitions of power, though I think Trump successfully began that when he belligerently took over from Obama. Those who wear or display “Let’s Go Brandon,” are a further continuation of those who have lost civility in our modern discourse and likely would sacrifice our Democracy for their Authoritarianism. America has hemorrhoids and rather than being discreet about them, they are showing themselves off in public.

Britain survived the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. It endured two Civil Wars, too. Since coming back to America from Britain, it has really struck me how similar the two countries are, though the similarities seemed offset by around two hundred or so years. Where we are, they were. A taxi driver that once took me to the airport said on the drive, “Isn’t it amazing that this tiny island once controlled most of the world?” That was only about an hundred years prior. That was when, as is still the case, America was the sole Superpower in the World, a vague way of saying it is in control of most of the world now.

America will likely survive the current internal strife. It will likely disappoint China and Russia and remain powerful for centuries to come. And may she celebrate the day she did not die.

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I Was Watching Jon Stewart

Posted on January 6, 2022 by Kelsey

I was just watching a clip on YouTube of Jon Stewart talking about Newsweek saying that he had accused J. K, Rowling of antisemitism based on a podcast he had done where he and guests went on about Harry Potter for a bit. Jon cleared the air completely in this clip by stating that he was not at all accusing Rowling of antisemitism, and that he and his guests were just having some fun in his podcast. He then accused Newsweek (and the Internet) of having an economy of arson. Well put, Mr. Stewart.

I think that the ‘economy of arson’ is a bit to the point of why I am hesitant to post as often as I would like to in this format. What I write comes from in my head, and through my interpretation, economized for writing, and condensed to the shortest possible presentation so it can be digested. Unfortunately, that results in a salad of lettuce where a Ceasar’s may be more appropriate. But not everyone wants to eat Ceasar’s, and I don’t always feel like making a Ceasar’s. So I am my mom standing there saying “well just starve then!”

There are other things that bother me from time to time, such as the blog editor or lack of, and the online blog editor which always begins to lag after only a few paragraphs of typing, or Windows 11 having the singularly worst spelling and grammar assist in the history of computing. It all adds up to being about as easy as typing the blog post up on paper and mailing it in from a post office on the other side of the country.

Dr. Laura once said on a show back in the mid 90’s that if you don’t want anyone to read something, then you should not write it down. If you write it down, then it is meant for someone to read. That was in response to a gal who had called in about someone reading her personal journal. I have always taken that as good advice.

These things have conspired with the occasional writer’s block to hinder my writing in my online journal and blog. Perhaps you have experienced the same? I share it to spur the questions.

Then there is the time of day I feel most inspired, like a drunk who feels compelled to talk or to tell everyone that he loves them. I am awake before 6AM quite often, long before I have come close to a full night’s sleep, and I feel the urge to write out my thoughts. Not to write them in detail, but to write them out of my head so I can get back to sleep and finish that full night as my brain requires of me. Ironic little ball of gelatin, isn’t it, my brain?

All that and anxiety.

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General 5AM Stuff

Posted on January 4, 2022 by Kelsey

The other night I was watching a few clips on YouTube when I came across the stand-up comedian, and thought, I could use a good laugh. Maybe he has got me one. He goes on a bit about Anxiety, and how other people don’t understand it. He says his friends tell him he needs to just drop that shit, then he says, “I wake up with this shit.” then screams. HIs whole story fell apart for me right then and there. I thought, “You SLEEP?”

It is 5:30 in the morning now. I would like to be asleep. I’m not. I don’t know why. I already made my credit card payment, and I have restarted the computer that the weather station is running through, so it is not frozen up anymore, and delivering the weather stats to the Internet. The dogs keep fighting. I hear them barking then going quiet, then barking some more. The girl is deaf, so that never helps. I don’t think she knows she is making noise. The boy is just a jerk to her when he feels like it. That is not helping the sleep.

When I rebooted the computer, it showed we are at 30F even. That was much warmer than I expected given the lows the last few mornings have hit subzero temperatures. We are forecast for snow, and weather like this is sure to deliver it. We are set for up to five days of snow, including today. That’s fine and dandy.

But it leads me back to my anxieties as the snow piles up on this place. I am done running the “farm” without a tractor. I have done everything I can now. I cannot make this place any better without the help of a heavy machine up to the tasks I still need to do, which at this point include the cleaning of the animal pens which have stacked up with hay they won’t eat, and which gets clogged half the summer with ice, and when it thaws is too heavy to move by hand. I have driveway work that needs doing, digging, composting (including that hay from the pens) tilling, a road that needs maintenance as well as the side of it that keeps getting trashed by the canal company, water lines to put in, dead animals that need moving which are too heavy for me to lift, logs to move, and so on and so on… The list goes on a lot longer than this, but whatever. The point is, I am done. I cannot wait another year to get in the seat of a heavy worker. The field work alone requires things I cannot just do with the truck, even if I wanted to. The grass over there is suffering and starting to clog up with weeds. I cannot even spray it from the truck. I am done. I need to get the tool to sort this shit out. Ability to move hay and snow alone would justify it for me, but I am way past that.

Damn dogs are still going at it. Idiots. If they would learn to stop pissing in the house, I could bring them up to the carpeted areas and have them sleep apart. That should stop the barking. I don’t think they need to be making this a habit.

Carolina Cooker sent me a marketing e-mail this morning, so I went to check out their site. They are made in China. Done.

That brings me back to YouTube. Two of my favorite influences on there have both said in their New Year’s videos that they intend to change up their formats. One is a social and political commentator, and the other is an historical re-enactor. The kicker is that both are heading the exact same direction, into the already flooded market of videographers who work in homesteading and self-reliance. They both also are interested in community building and have said they will be working to do as much in their new formats. Both want to see shopping done within the community, where neighbors provide their skills and talents for each other. Both are going anti industrialist and anti-globalist, and into the buy and provide local movement based on their New Year’s declarations. I am eager to see both! I think both will have unique perspectives that I am eager to learn from. Especially interesting is the re-enactor for his historical perspective.

Well, I am far enough into writing this blog now that the keyboard response is beginning to lag a little, which I think is due to memory being used up on the computer. That causes me anxiety. Yay. Time to go back to bed and lay awake thinking on the finances and how to get one of those goddamn tractors onto this farm within a reasonable monthly payment.

One last thing. Seems Coronavirus is getting closer. Lots of people I know of are down with it now. They are people in the work from home community. How does that happen? The weather across the country has gone to shit. The fire in Colorado was shaping up to take aim right at the homes of friends and family there. Betty White died. Seriously? Is 2022 going to be any better? It wouldn’t take much for it to be.

Posted in Coronavirus, Journal Entry, Regular Update, The Farm, Unfiled Customer Complaints | Comments Off

Here Comes the New Year

Posted on December 28, 2021 by Kelsey

Along goes 2021, and here comes 2022. It is always a surprise to see the passing of a year, as though it has not been a year since the last one. They do go fast! Or, they seem to, anyway!

This year we tried to see if we could sell our field, and that did not work out due to the drought in our area. Well, okay. What to do now? We have some things to fix on the house that we would have done if we had sold the field. Those will have to come out of earnings instead. I cannot cut the price from what we were asking. The field provides feed for our livestock for the low price of yearly property taxes, which are not much on unimproved land. We found out we are maybe two years from them putting the canal underground through our place, which will bring interesting changes to the land. Maybe then will be a better time to sell.

It has been another Covid year, and things have been home focused and slow for us just like last year. I cannot say we want for much outside of the home repairs and upgrades we would like to do. We will be working our plans on our place a bit different than we have though in the past. There is no chance of our land ever seeing irrigation, so we get what falls from the sky. These past few summers have not given us much hope, especially where the drought was concerned, and the hot, smokey days we had.

A few days before Christmas one of our llamas died. He was the old fellow, and his death came as no surprise. It may have come on the same day that one of our neighbors died. He was a 61-year-old man, and his death did come as a bit of a surprise to me, though that could be only because I have not had my nose in his business to know he was in ill health. What did surprise me is that the Facebook group for the local Church congregation he belonged to did not mention anything of it. I would have thought there would have been some word said, but alas, not. Then again, he was not a good Mormon boy, so maybe it is not a surprise. People who don’t conform do tend to get forgotten.

Our two new puppies are doing fair in their potty training. I am trying to get them past that and in good habits before moving onto other little tricks. They seem smart, and they seem to be picking it up. If anything, we fall short with getting them out to the yard at regular enough intervals.

Christmas was good to our family this year. We were able to be together. We got every gift and gave every gift we could have hoped to. The older kids made supper for Christmas Eve, which left us beaming with pride, especially as it was all very good! I cannot complain! I am off nearly everyone’s Christmas card list, at last. We did get missed by a few new people this year. That is fine with me. I never get it together to send cards out to others, and I have gotten them from a few people who seem to do it only because it is a social expectation. In other words, I wish they would keep in touch as friends, not as a once-a-year card recipient. If you want to be my friend, be it, and don’t just send a card because you think Jesus is watching you.

So, at my tender old age, with 51 looming at me in the near future, what will this year be about? I am going to have to think it out. I know there will be some wood working in the warmer seasons. I put off buying a tractor because we thought we would move. The day our llama died, I had a list of four or five jobs that would have been possible with one, but none of it got sorted properly because I cannot lift as much or do what I needed to. There was moving the dead llama, sorting out the ramp into the field where the canal company has once again ruined it, and cut off my access to my own land. There is putting hay to the ground where I can serve it out without having to climb up on top of it and risk falling. There is snow removal from where I have to do my work. There is moving quantities of firewood from the Service Yard to the house, and there is carrying large amounts of water to the animal tanks, so they have enough. That would have been that one day. I cannot do all that by hand.

My dog loves to steal cans from the recycle bin and play with them all over the dining room floor. She is raising Hell and getting in trouble with Missus, which means I may also, by proxy. Time to go find out if I’m dead.

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December 7th, 2021

Posted on December 7, 2021 by Kelsey

80 Years since the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It is something I hold against no Japanese living today. The world was different then. Hopefully. I guess we’ll find out with Russia and The Ukraine in the coming months. There is nothing like a spring offensive to ruin one’s hope for peace. But for today, I remember. I hope for peace.

I woke up this morning at 4AM. Joy. Then I felt kind of like rambling. Time for a blog entry! But to ramble about what? No idea!

I have walked the dogs twice this morning so far and made breakfast for Missus. Getting outside, even in the dark, gets me looking about at the place and what I would like to see done with it in the coming months. I know where my current goals stand and how I would like to get there, and it requires some rearranging around the yard to do it. I also know where Missus wants to go and how to arrange things to her benefit. For not, it is that driveway I want to add. It was meant to snow yesterday, but my oldest daughter is the only one who saw any of the white stuff coming down at all. I never saw a single flake when I was out. The temps are meant to get to mid 40’s today. That is pretty perfect for digging post holes and setting them to hold a gate. I can set the post for the hinge next to a post that has been there already for a couple of years and brace it to the established one. That ought to give it the strength to hold the gate while it is closed, which it will be for the next couple of months at least as I will need to put the dirt into the borrow pit to complete the driveway.

But first, I need to close off the end of the second llama pen, which is ready to do if I use the pieces of fencing I have against the property line. Only trouble there is that I will have to set in a three-post brace at the end of the llama pens. That all amounts to hand digging five post holes today, if I am up for it. Gah! Maybe. We’ll see. If that gets done, I can open the driveway up and at least take the truck over the borrow pit (most likely) for now. What would be really good is to get a dump truck full of that soil they are taking from the canal to start the fill till I can get some roadbed grade stuff to top it off. I know it would be best to put road grade stuff in all the way, but it is a pit that has only ever had water in it once that I have seen and should have time to settle. The bottom of the canal is the same as all of the other “dirt” around here. There should be no difference there. This whole place is sand.

I am fairly happy with how the driveway is shaping up. I got a trailer out of the new trailer parking area yesterday to clean out the junk that has been in it the last few weeks. It was fairly easy to access barring having to turn around in front of it at the back of the property, which will be remedied when the new drive and gate are finished. That will allow me to circle in from the west side and point out the mid drive right from in front of the trailer parking. Voila! Hook up and it is a straight drive out! Then when it is time to park, circle around from the west, and back the trailer only a couple of feet back into its spot. That is the real key issue to me. I am trying to always minimize backing on the property. It’s not because I cannot back a trailer. I am fair at it. It is because I don’t want to ever risk backing over a kid.

It appears I get to finish the workshop in the garage. I really need to start planning that out. So far, I see a bench up the east wall, and a proper workbench towards the middle of the garage. I’d like to remove the shelves and redo the southwest workbench, too. It does not go all the way to the wall and was only ever built to hold boards to the chop saw. The chop saw is fine for rough work, but I could do with a proper miter saw. Somewhat important. Not huge. Most important is a mill and a bandsaw. But first, electric properly installed in the garage. That’s of prime importance!

My hips are still sore from chasing llamas the other day. I really need to get a new pair of shoes. That would have prevented this. It buggers me off that I turned fifty in March, and now here it is just coming up to Christmas and I realize I am about to March again, and this time fifty-one! What’s happening to fifty? Can’t I enjoy that for another twenty years before fifty-one comes barreling in?

I can hear the goats waking up now. The dogs are finally settled down after a morning of raising absolute hell. I have walked them twice so far. Our oldest daughter is on the schedule for the next walk, then it is me and our youngest for the rest of the day. They are our dogs, after all! So, when I get busy, I need to not get too busy to do that.

I think our oldest son may end up with the log splitter from us in the end. I have contemplated which way to send it when it comes time to get rid of it, and that is the right direction, apparently. I don’t like certain elements of its design, and I am too old to put up with that. I see the Yardmax at IFA, and everything that is wrong with the Champion is not wrong on the Yardmax. I can see me getting that before the next splitting season. Maybe. It always depends on finances, doesn’t it? Anyway, we’ll have to work out how oldest finances the getting of the splitter.

Good grief! I can hear oldest daughter down the stairs now. It is too soon to walk the dogs again! But she is meant to walk them while she does her morning chores. The dogs are sleeping. Do I have her skip it, or walk them? Our youngest has come down in matching clothes! What is this? Who is this child? Oh, her hair, which she claims is already brushed, is a total mess. Of course! I recognize her now! She is mad at me because I told her her hair was a mess. Poor kid. Pout while you brush.

I expect I better go get a load of laundry going then plan on a shower later. It would be a good day to get those posts started in the llama pen area where the new drive is going in, and maybe do some cleaning on the garage to ready to up for presentation as a shop. Off to a day.

Posted in Journal Entry, Regular Update, The Farm, Woodshop | Comments Off

Random Morning Thoughts on a Monday

Posted on December 6, 2021 by Kelsey

It’s morning here on the farm. The goats are starting to make noise outside, and the dogs are fighting over chew toys and making a racket, too. I have been out to walk them twice already this morning and now my brain is whirring around with thoughts after the fashion of the dogs. There is no specific pattern to the thinking, but let’s see where it goes. I have already made breakfast for Missus, and coffee for us both, and I have till the girls come down to get this thinking done.

Yesterday was a busy day. Missus and I sorted out the last of the Christmas gift wrap. Then I went out and replaced the gate on the field front over the road. That has been a long time in coming. The chain that holds the gate shut is not long enough to reach the post, so I wired a second free standing post to the planted one, and can now close the gap with that, and chain the gate shut on it.

While I was doing all that, I spent 45 minutes aware of, or watching a couple in a car messing about at the far east end of the pasture. they would get out and mess with the fence, wave towards the llamas, and I think he showed his city boy self by grabbing the fence at one point and shaking it. I sure wish the electric was on when he did. That would have served him right. He was already on our property when he reached the fence! They would mess about a bit, then get into their car and sit for a bit, then move up the road or down it and park in another position. It was all pretty weird to watch as the owner of the land and animals they were harassing. They ring the neighbor’s doorbell, they walked into the neighbor’s backyard. They went down to the old guy who lives down the street from us, and by old, I am talking mid 90’s. They never came up to ours though, so I left them to it. They probably were just trying to get the attention of our little male llama. I should have a sign up asking to please not harass the animals in the field. That would be a nice touch for them if they ever return. I should probably get the electric fence going. That would be another nice touch.

I moved the trailers to a new parking area I made on top of the little pen I used to keep Big Pig in. They are now out of the way along the future driveway to the barn. They are also in a position where it is easy to hook up and drive them out of the property, which I should do today to empty one out ready for the coming snow, and to use to go get firewood.

The next steps for me are to finish the west drive around to the barn, clean out the garage, and set up storage in the barn. If I can do that, then pay down my current debts by spring, then it is time for a wood mill, a band saw, and electric to the outbuildings, including and especially to the garage. Looks like I am setting up permanent in there for a woodshop, which is great. It has an old concrete floor and a chance at being heat-able. We are thinking of a new building for Missus to run her business out of. Just a moveable one, so relatively cheap, but also able to be heated!

We ahve decided that since we are unable to get the value out of the property across the street right now that would make it possible for us to move right now, we are going to plan on being here for a while. No idea of that will change in the futire, but where there is no water available to make it a build lot, we best keep it for the animals to graze on. I need to find a grass that will grow on virtually nothing. The cost of irrigation shares is around $9,000 a share right now. The front field alone needs about 4 shares to maintain itself at the moment, and we have none. It is looking pretty bad. The back field benefits from leaching from the canal as it is lower than the canal, however, they are looking to put that in a pipe in the next two years or so, and we will likely lose that. I guess we may be headed to vacant lot. I’ll have to find another way to keep it useful and productive. In the long run I would rather see the place turned into a park than a storage shed location. But it is not going to make money as a park, or as it is, in the long run. Maybe we could lease it for someone else to figure it all out. But till the grass is completely gone, I will be grazing our llamas on it. I can talk to the farmer down the road who is my friend and see about getting it replanted with a better grass than is on it now that will flourish with less water. You know? I’d also like to get a beef steer soon, too.

Christmas is in a couple of weeks. I am excited to see the kids and be together as a family. That is always the very best part! Missus and I neither one live close to our siblings or parents to see any of them on the holidays, or really ever. We have to treasure what we have got here close at hand. We have family on my side spread through the United States, and on her side in England. We are kind of an independent entity here. It is what it is. There is no satisfaction in whining about it. The door’s open to those who wish to visit, and I have made it clear that I am in no position to go anywhere as we have responsibilities that tie us to the land here. But if they can’t come, again, it is what it is.

I hear the kids stirring and footfalls on the stairs. Probably oldest daughter on her way out to do her morning chores. The back door just went. It is meant to snow later today. I will probably head up to the thrift store to make a donation out of that trailer before then, and then off to the dump to drop off the rest. It’d sure be nice to empty it out before snow and ice freezes everything into it. Maybe then I can put the stuff we are keeping back into the barn for storage over the winter, and get my shop back!

Time to get rolling!

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December 2021

Posted on December 3, 2021 by Kelsey

This is the beginning of the last month of the year. It has been warm these recent days, and I have noticed that there is a distinct lack of snow on the mountains surrounding our fair valley. Of particular note in my mind was the words of a guy I used to buy wood from when we first started burning to keep warm. He pointed to the western mountains and said, “you see that snow line? Usually as it gets closer to us, people start buying wood from me.” I can’t remember if that was an October or November that he said that to me in, but the snow was at least half-way down the mountains, and it was definitely not a December! Here we are in 2021 with only the smallest patch of snow on the top of Oxford Peak, the highest mountain to the West, and sort of our weather rock.

Yesterday reached the low 50’s, and I took advantage of it to get some of the work outside done that I have been contemplating with only moderate seriousness. We have talked about running a drive through the far west side of the property at the back of the llama pens and curving around the back of the place to the ‘barn.’ That accessibility is meant to make moving trailers through this side of our property easier and give more use to the barn. It would also stop the need of driving between the barn and the granary, making a sort of yard space that is always kept free of car traffic. In theory it could also potentially reduce the driving in the front yard making that a cleaner space, but we’ll have to see. There is an advantage to accessing the front, and we do like how close we can get to the front door with the car, useful in winter, on rainy days which can be almost torrential, and when bringing in groceries and the like.

Yesterday’s work was to remove some posts that marked out boundaries to garden spaces that we will likely not use as such anymore. Those gardens were also good for housing Big Pig in the off seasons and keeping her on them when we wanted all the plant life removed. The posts I pulled were everything from metal T-posts to wooden railroad ties. I managed all with a high lift jack and a chain. I also have one metal piece that is rectangular in shape and has two holes through it, one to take a chain and hold it at any link, and the other to grab the T-post and lift it. It is really good at making the high lift jack a T-post puller. To pull the railroad ties I have a loop in the end of the chain and a hook on the other end, so I was able to grab the tie with it, and connect the chain to the jack lift, then pull upwards. It worked a treat! It’s not easy work getting a large piece of wood out of the ground that’s been buried in two and a half feet or more.

With the necessary posts cleared that we wanted moved, I am seeing a good space to put a large shed for Missus, as she has wanted for some time, which would also give her a good space for a flower garden around it. It also leaves me a good space to put a wood mill by the barn, which would up my wood game a bit. I only need a hobby mill, just large enough to cut some smaller pieces into boards.

The Forest Service limits the wood one takes from the mountains to seven feet in length, reducing what one can do with it at his end, and the wood from the dump is never quite right for milling. But my goals aren’t to build a house, they are to make furnishings and craft supplies, so longer pieces are not required. Perfect!

A hobby mill is cheaper, too, making it more realistic for me to get. Maybe after the GlowForge is paid off. I am working to make the wood hobby more than just a passive hobby for me. Supplying the material to work with is the next important step for me.

Missus is also working on getting her hobby set up as a business opportunity for herself. That will require a shed with a good workspace for her, and a bit of heat and air for when required, and space to store materials and tools. Let’s be honest. She needs more than a small or medium shed could provide. We’ll see what we can do! It will need electricity and water.

Anyway, all the speculation is off topic for what I got done, and what is in the immediate future for the drive space. Right off the bat, I have likely got a better space to put the trailers that we have got in. I will probably try them out today. I will be expanding the orchard out a bit, too, with more space for trees. I need to see how a new septic system will go in before finalizing any plans there, though. Using the area planned as a drive will keep me from driving anything between the barn and the granary. That will make that a safer space to use for kids to play in, and where things can be set up for games and hospitality. Maybe I will fence it off? A yard within a yard? Perhaps.

We tried this summer to sell the land over the road in an effort to move off this farm and onto one situated with all the land on one parcel. There were no offers because water connections to the local supply are impossible to get right now, and we are not willing to cut the price to effectively pay for someone to put in a well. If anyone is getting a well with our money, it is us. The situation as it is right now, we are not able to move, even though we are supposedly in a great seller’s market. Pretty funny.

No matter. We’ll just fix this place up a bit and make the best of it.

We have two new puppies running the house now. They are half Australian half Beagle, and brother and sister. We bought one for our youngest, but he had a bad first day that looked to me like a lot of stress for him, so I went over in the evening and got his sister and brought her home, which immediately calmed his nerves. My daughter calls her little boy Spot, and I call my little girl Snoopy. I don’t care if it is a boy’s name. I am called Kelsey, and I am a man. So screw it. I get a Snoopy Dog! And she is just lovely! We are training them to poo outside right now. Spot is having limited success, but Snoopy seems to be at least 50% there. I think I will get Snoopy up to scruff then trade and work with Spot. I think that will do it. We are having them use the orchard because people already seldom walk there, and because in the summer it gets sprayed down with large volumes of irrigation water from above which should help clean it up. It is a bit of a walk, and especially fun in the cold nights. But I think it will be worth the effort.

Well, it’s 5:30 in the morning, and I am due for a little more sleep. Time to go get it! But before I do, I just have to say, since the Windows 11 update, the spell checker built in absolutely sucks. I have to right click on an underlined word then click on Open Suggestion, a two-step operation I have to do twice before it responds and actually actuates. Sometimes it does not respond at all. I have a pretty new computer that works fine for absolutely everything else I do on it. Then the suggestions it gives sometimes appear questionable at least, and completely missing a word that I have misspelled by only one letter. Why it does not just show a list of suggestions on a single right click like before is completely beyond me! What genius thought up the two-click solution? Microsoft, this is just idiotic.

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