Yet another busy day here today! It is my mom’s last day visiting us and we will be taking her down to Salt Lake City tomorrow. I will be sad to see her go. On the other hand, she has had such a horrible time here that I will be surprised if she ever comes back out before she and her mom get things patched up between them.
I started the day out with the irrigation and watering the lawn, then went to work on the lighting in the living room, which I have been so eager to get sorted for so long now! When we fist came up here it took 19 seconds from the flip of the switch to the first of the fluorescent tubes flickering on, and as long as a minute till the last one did. Now they have all been replaced with standard lights, and of course, the come on instantly. For now they are compact fluorescent, but I will be replacing those with LED as soon as I can, then putting in a dimmer switch. To bring the outdoors indoors a bit, I expect we will be putting in daylight balanced bulbs around where I worked today, which is a recessed gutter in the ceiling around the edges of the exterior walls. Then I will be putting in a regular ceiling rose in the middle of the room with warm lighting to offset the daylight bulbs. I also would like to build a mantle for the fireplace, and put a string of LED’s under it to illuminate the hearth. I would connect that to the gutter lighting.
Anyway, it is great to see progress there! We also did a bit of cleaning, particularly in the girls’ bedroom! They just had too much stuff and our six year old could not manage to clean it when it got a mess, so we have, shall we say, made it more manageable for her?
When Rosa came to collect the dining room table and hutch, she brought two of our neighbors, and my grandmother and uncle Steve, who were not really wanted in our house just at this time. I remained as civil as could be though, and we got it moved out and put in a smaller table from the barn. So now, the woman down the street has a table that can sit ten, and we have one that can sit four, as per grandma’s wishes, because that makes sense. On Tuesday we will be receiving the new dishes we ordered, and after that I can send the rest of the dishes from here to grandma’s house, because a woman living alone needs 18 or 20 plates, and a family of six needs none.
With all of this done, tomorrow brings us to Salt Lake and back, and some cleaning on the truck in the morning, and some rearranging before we leave.
I have to note here too, because this is my journal, after all, that when Grandma and Rosa were here, mom told Grandma about my brother Kendall getting into a motorcycle accident in which he slid under the back end of a car. Grandma’s response, “Well, that happens.” She never even asked if he was alight. What did catch her attention though, and she and Rosa spent a moment talking about under their breaths was a song lyric I put on the front door in chalk to remind us why we do everything we do every day, which is Bon Jovi’s “Because We Can!” I have no idea what her conscious told her that might mean, but I literally put it up there to remind myself to work hard every day at home! We are trying to build a farm here that can support our family going forward, and despite its failures, I really believe that we have sorted some issues out this year that will allow us a degree of bounty next year. We have so much work to do around here! Every day we are faced with a load of things to do. And the number one reason we will do anything, no matter where or what the situation, is because we can.
I think one of the next things to come will be a finished and clean garage, ready for the cabinets I need to add in there, and maybe even the washing machine from the barn, if it still works, and I can get the dead cat smell out of it.
To answer what you are asking yourself, my grandparents kept the barn, granary, and garage in such a mess when they had the place that when a cat died under that washer, they could not get in there to do anything about it, so it just sat there till it was mummified. Nasty beyond belief. And so was the dead cat thing. It was one of the things that pissed me off about them, where we had come up here to live and help them out, and just the moment I cleaned out the garage, against their objections because of the amount of debris I had to haul to the dump, which for some reason they thought they wanted, just at that very moment that I declared the garage clean, they suddenly decided it was important to park their car in there, rather than allowing me a space to workshop in. So I forced the issue and got both in there. Of course now, only one thing is in there, or will be in there. Life is good! Everything is to a point where all the cleaning left is small projects, a couple of hours each at most. So, it is not a stopping place. It is a starting place.
What are the next steps? Well, after returning mom on her way to home, we will come back, take a break, open our new dishes and wash them, clean out the current items, and probably prepare a load for my grandmother’s house. From there, I would like to start on the garage first, then the last room of the granary, although the order here is not too important. Then we need to get some genealogy in from the barn so I can copy photos. I’ll get my office set up for that, and get out my Elinchrome strobes, just for fun if I have to! This will be a job for the Nikon. Then that stuff can go over to Grandma’s house too. By then it will be after Christmas, I am sure! But really, we will need to get the kids ready for school soon too. Amid all of this, I need to get the ceiling out of the dining room where a drop ceiling had been put in some years ago. The carpet is out there, and the smell not so bad at all. I need to set up a ceiling fan for that room too, and one for the boys’ bedroom. Why? Because it gets hot, and because I can! I want that room to trap all the heat in it in the winter, then the fan to redistribute it around the house, hopefully more evenly.
Further, there are steps for outside too, such as gates for the pasture still, and a shelter to raise calves. I want the cow operation to go year round. I want to be sure to make some money on them, and have some for our freezer! I need to get something on the two harden spaces to kill off all the weeds and grasses growing in them. They need to be ready for summer next year, and ready for serious amounts of planting if we are going to make a push for a real successful year out there! I still have not finished the ceiling of the chicken coop either! That has to be done to keep the chickens safe. I don’t need another flock getting slaughtered by a stray mink again this year! They are getting close to laying! When those eggs start coming, I want to do a lot of things with them, including pickling!
Really, I need to sit down and make a list…
Kelsey J Bacon