So, summer is almost upon is, officially, and it is 2014, and things are ticking along just as well as can be expected for us. The kids are already out of school for the summer, and Missus and I are trying to get this little one acre farm up and running and the six and a half acres across the street producing enough grass to feed a few cows to raise and sell. Not everything goes perfectly, but I do feel like things in general are on an upswing as things come to life around here. Despite the problem with the irrigation, which will in the end only affect one paddock, the animals we have are feeding nicely over there. Hopefully there is plenty of food to last them the summer.
Jordan did not graduate with his class, was two classes short, which isn’t bad for a guy who took the first semester of high school off because of recovery from a head injury. He’s just got to finish the two classes over the summer and get his diploma, and he is a free man, so watch out world!
Dylan is starting his first job this week. He is going to be working on the Bowles’ farm a mile south of us. I can look out the window right now and not one single thins obstructs the view to where he has to show up to work. I am excited that he will be starting out with farm work. He needs the hard work to liven him up and get him away from the magic box that lights up his life.
Kiry will be starting first grade in the fall. Wow… She will go from two days a week to four days a week at school (the days are longer in school here to make up for the Friday off) and given how much she learned in Kindergarten, I can’t wait till she is smarter than me by the time she finishes the first semester of first grade.
Khallarnie is walking and starting to talk a little now. She is a cheeky bugger! That girl has already learned to ignore people she doesn’t want to hear, which is a valuable life skill as an adult, but not that great for those who are still learning at her age and up.
Katrina is working to beautify the yard. She has been planting what she bought at the nursery yesterday, and today we will be putting some vegetables in the ground. FOOD! The vegetables are her department, and the meat is mine. She has got a lot of work to do, and I am trying to help her along the way. She is adding lots of plant species in the yard that will return each year and hopefully reduce much of our work to maintenance and weeding. We have many things to do, building and planting and harvesting this summer, and then it is off to food preservation!
My biggest headache right now is why the three inch irrigation line is not pressurized enough to run the heads on half of it. I have got a bit or poly tape to put on the borders of the paddocks still in the back pasture across the street. When that is done, and the back fence is brought up to scruff, and gates installed across the street, I have the fence on this side of the street to rework. The cows next door like to reach through and eat from our grass and garden. I want them to get electrocuted when they do that. Not severely, of course, just a little shock so they keep their heads out.
All of this is fine and well with me, because the paradox of the pursuit of happiness is that happiness is the pursuit itself. I figure by the end of this summer I will have everything in place here to begin raising some cows for beef, which I will be able to sell and make a little money from. It won’t be a huge amount at all, but a stipend that hopefully will help us get some more things around here sorted out so that by the time we retire, we will be pretty much off grid and able to support ourselves at a fairly low cost, and we will be able to carry on doing work we love, because let’s be honest, neither of us looks forward to a lazy time of putting our feet up and becoming stale and old and irrelevant. The day I loose my usefulness is the day I might as well die.
Today is a Sunday. I went to bed just after midnight because I had to turn on the irrigation water across the street. I woke up and was outside again at 4:30 this morning trying to figure out our pressure problems. I shut off the water at 6:00AM. Two hours have since passed, and I have not talked myself back into bed yet. Amazingly, since 4:30, I have seen three of my kids wandering to the bathroom and around the house. Who knew these people were such early risers? Maybe they need a pancake breakfast! ‘Round here, if I serve pancakes for breakfast, there is a tradition that it signifies a hard day of work ahead.
Pancakes or none, I anticipate a hard day of work ahead!
Kelsey J Bacon