Year after Year we pimp ourselves up and make the tedious drive into town to present ourselves at Rbts nephews house on Christmas eve. We sit and watch them perform a gift exchange and general socializing. They all pack up and head off to church for the evening service and we head home again. there for a total of 2.5 hours. It's tough. since my first marriage in 1977 I have always been the one to have to drive some where on Christmas. with the exception of one year when I convinced my first mother in law. A Ukrainian lady, to let me do Christmas dinner instead...I turned myself in side out preparing the whole meal deal, turkey, ham, meatballs and gravy, potatoes, pyrogies, cabbage rolls, salads and stuffing, homemade buns and fresh pies for dessert. We were to eat at 2pm. Sids sister had a 3 hour drive to get home afterwards. She and her family had come the day before and stayed at the mothers house in town. They slept late on Christmas day and at basically noon my mother in law made them a breakfast of potato pancakes, ham and eggs so at 2 pm when they arrived at my place they weren't hungry. all they did was drink and nibble and they were back at the mother in laws for HER Christmas supper at 4 pm. Sid drove in and I stayed home...I was livid, and since then never offered to make dinner again, not that I would have been allowed...when I complained to Sid that his family did eat much of my dinner, his response was " well, if had tasted more like my moms, maybe they would have eaten more". there was me told.
since marrying Rbt. I have tried to have Christmas dinner here but there were no free slots...unless I wanted it a week before or after...hahahaha the one time I did have a New Years day dinner, three people showed up....apparently we live to far from the city...hahahaha screw them. I happen to be an awesome cook, and they will never know because they are to f-ing lame to bother coming out.
I just get tired of being the people that invited because they feel they have to and we wouldn't be missed if we didn't bother showing up.
Christmas is depressing, it builds a persons expectations so much, to the point where how can you not be disappointed.
We are eating left over meatballs I took to the family dinner last night and they didn't eat. along with some coleslaw and broccoli salad I have in the fridge. I think there might even be a piece of leftover cherry pie in the freezer as a special treat for Rbt. Merry Christmas y'all.
Splendor
December 25, 2012
December 20, 2012
College
I apologize for the infrequent postings of late. My spare time is used up on the bathroom renovation that seems to be taking forever. The work is progressing very slowly, which might be for the best in the long run but seems frustrating right now.
Every third day or so we are compelled to drive to town for more supplies and tools we forgot to get the last time. Makes me want to pull my hair out. If we had done this sort of thing before we would have better idea what things were needed to do the job right but we are learning as we go and so it is taking many trips to the hardware store. One day we were in LOWES in Edm. so long, the older guy working in the tile department asked us if we wanted to fill out applications...hahahaha every body's a comedian.
We did luck out and one of Rbt.s nephews owns a wet saw for cutting tile. that saved us a bundle of money.
I have the tub deck framed now and today I got my first lesson in taping and mudding the drywall. putting up rounded corner bead and the like. I was alone and willingly admit to be a nervous wreck. But I got my little job done without any catastrophes, and am ready to apply the second coat tomorrow.
Christmas is on hold for us this year...we both discussed it and have agreed to put off our Christmas dinner for two until the reno is complete, at which time we will do the big turkey dinner and the fixing's as a celebration.
We do plan to drive to Rbts nephews place on Christmas eve, where Rbts brothers 4 sons and families get together for dinner ... we have gone 3 yrs in a row now and always have a nice time. After dinner they all go to the tiny church nearby and we head home. Neither of us being particularly religious and find going that one time a year a bit hypocritical.
Rbt. took me to see THE HOBBIT movie, thanks to Jen for sending us the cineplex gift cards. It was awesome. Rbt fell asleep briefly near the beginning but then got his second wind and stayed awake to see the rest. I thought momentarily that I was going to have to elbow him like I did during the third and final show of Lord of the Rings, when he was snoring too loudly. First movie I've seen since the new year.
I desperately want to see Les Miserable between Christmas and New year. Rbt took me to the theatre production for our 5 th anniversary and I loved it. The movie looks even better. I mean with Hugh Jackman and Russel Crow in it, it's gotta be good. We will use the other gift card Jen generously sent us to see that.
Rbt and I never go out for New years. We prefer to stay home and watch the comedians on TV and the year end reviews on the National (Rbt.s favorite thing to watch) and I go along with that, just happy to have him in the house early. We cut loose and eat potato chips and dip, open a box of chocolates and drink pop. Party animals that we are. If we lived closer to the city I would love to watch the fireworks, I haven't seen live fireworks since I was kid in PG.
Other than that, I will just keep plugging away at this reno, for a small job it sure is taking it's time... I keep waiting for Rbt to give me a hand but he barely manages to get the chores done before dark and by then I am tired so the reno ends for the day. maybe this weekend. He is going to have to hook up the plumbing of the bathtub soon since I refuse to do that job.
The world is suppose to end tomorrow according to peoples interpretation of the myan calendar. If that's the case, I won't have to pay off my latest Visa Bill...hurray.... if it's not, damn I guess I'll have to pay it.
All the best to you, one way or the other. It's been a blast knowing you all.
Every third day or so we are compelled to drive to town for more supplies and tools we forgot to get the last time. Makes me want to pull my hair out. If we had done this sort of thing before we would have better idea what things were needed to do the job right but we are learning as we go and so it is taking many trips to the hardware store. One day we were in LOWES in Edm. so long, the older guy working in the tile department asked us if we wanted to fill out applications...hahahaha every body's a comedian.
We did luck out and one of Rbt.s nephews owns a wet saw for cutting tile. that saved us a bundle of money.
I have the tub deck framed now and today I got my first lesson in taping and mudding the drywall. putting up rounded corner bead and the like. I was alone and willingly admit to be a nervous wreck. But I got my little job done without any catastrophes, and am ready to apply the second coat tomorrow.
Christmas is on hold for us this year...we both discussed it and have agreed to put off our Christmas dinner for two until the reno is complete, at which time we will do the big turkey dinner and the fixing's as a celebration.
We do plan to drive to Rbts nephews place on Christmas eve, where Rbts brothers 4 sons and families get together for dinner ... we have gone 3 yrs in a row now and always have a nice time. After dinner they all go to the tiny church nearby and we head home. Neither of us being particularly religious and find going that one time a year a bit hypocritical.
Rbt. took me to see THE HOBBIT movie, thanks to Jen for sending us the cineplex gift cards. It was awesome. Rbt fell asleep briefly near the beginning but then got his second wind and stayed awake to see the rest. I thought momentarily that I was going to have to elbow him like I did during the third and final show of Lord of the Rings, when he was snoring too loudly. First movie I've seen since the new year.
I desperately want to see Les Miserable between Christmas and New year. Rbt took me to the theatre production for our 5 th anniversary and I loved it. The movie looks even better. I mean with Hugh Jackman and Russel Crow in it, it's gotta be good. We will use the other gift card Jen generously sent us to see that.
Rbt and I never go out for New years. We prefer to stay home and watch the comedians on TV and the year end reviews on the National (Rbt.s favorite thing to watch) and I go along with that, just happy to have him in the house early. We cut loose and eat potato chips and dip, open a box of chocolates and drink pop. Party animals that we are. If we lived closer to the city I would love to watch the fireworks, I haven't seen live fireworks since I was kid in PG.
Other than that, I will just keep plugging away at this reno, for a small job it sure is taking it's time... I keep waiting for Rbt to give me a hand but he barely manages to get the chores done before dark and by then I am tired so the reno ends for the day. maybe this weekend. He is going to have to hook up the plumbing of the bathtub soon since I refuse to do that job.
The world is suppose to end tomorrow according to peoples interpretation of the myan calendar. If that's the case, I won't have to pay off my latest Visa Bill...hurray.... if it's not, damn I guess I'll have to pay it.
All the best to you, one way or the other. It's been a blast knowing you all.
December 10, 2012
Renovation Hell
Bathroom reno has begun. I basically demo'd the tub surround and walls myself, Rbt showed up in time to help carry it to the burning barrel.
Yesterday I forced myself to go down to the crawl space and re-enforce the joists under the tub area (something that should have been done the first time, when the guys built the house with the huge tub) and my efforts have already payed off, even before installing our new but much smaller tub. The movement in the floor and the subsequent squeaking has stopped. Yay...
It was pretty traumatic though...being down there for three hours. in dim lit space all by myself, especially with my severe issue with claustrophobia... the job was hard enough as it was but try doing it while your whole body is tensed up and screaming for you to get out.....it wasn't pretty, profuse sweating, the smelly fear based sweat, talking to myself, mostly in encouragement, sometimes in anger. I hate this weakness I have...that I can't bully into subordination.
Any way it worked so well Rbt wants us to do the same thing under the kitchen floor....hahahahahahha.... that's maniacal nervous laughter you hear.
Next on my list is to lay a second layer of sub floor, the professional plumber who plumbed the house when it was new...must have been drunk because he bored huge 5-6 inch holes in the sub floor for the drain and such but he's got about 5 holes all over the place and the tub only had one drain....hahaha so we need to bolster that by gluing and screwing a sheet of 3/4 inch ply on top...then I have to drywall the walls because the builders just built the tub surround over the insulation and vapour barrier. I want drywall there too, then I get to start constructing the new deck for the smaller tub. then apply 3/4 plywood to the top and sides of it and then the tiling begins.... I never done any of this before so it is pretty nerve wracking...and expensive...but the house is worth less money if the tub is defective..so we hope to increase the value by doing the reno. besides I love to take baths from time to time and I had a real problem accessing the old one now that I am gibbled up.
I'd have pictures on here but blogger won't let me.... gotta look into that...half the fun of blogging is being able to brag about stuff.
Yesterday I forced myself to go down to the crawl space and re-enforce the joists under the tub area (something that should have been done the first time, when the guys built the house with the huge tub) and my efforts have already payed off, even before installing our new but much smaller tub. The movement in the floor and the subsequent squeaking has stopped. Yay...
It was pretty traumatic though...being down there for three hours. in dim lit space all by myself, especially with my severe issue with claustrophobia... the job was hard enough as it was but try doing it while your whole body is tensed up and screaming for you to get out.....it wasn't pretty, profuse sweating, the smelly fear based sweat, talking to myself, mostly in encouragement, sometimes in anger. I hate this weakness I have...that I can't bully into subordination.
Any way it worked so well Rbt wants us to do the same thing under the kitchen floor....hahahahahahha.... that's maniacal nervous laughter you hear.
Next on my list is to lay a second layer of sub floor, the professional plumber who plumbed the house when it was new...must have been drunk because he bored huge 5-6 inch holes in the sub floor for the drain and such but he's got about 5 holes all over the place and the tub only had one drain....hahaha so we need to bolster that by gluing and screwing a sheet of 3/4 inch ply on top...then I have to drywall the walls because the builders just built the tub surround over the insulation and vapour barrier. I want drywall there too, then I get to start constructing the new deck for the smaller tub. then apply 3/4 plywood to the top and sides of it and then the tiling begins.... I never done any of this before so it is pretty nerve wracking...and expensive...but the house is worth less money if the tub is defective..so we hope to increase the value by doing the reno. besides I love to take baths from time to time and I had a real problem accessing the old one now that I am gibbled up.
I'd have pictures on here but blogger won't let me.... gotta look into that...half the fun of blogging is being able to brag about stuff.
November 30, 2012
Revelations
Life here has turned up side down.
Real estate assessments, searching for acreages, condos on the island, talking to the accountant about tax implications, it sure sounds like leaving the farm to me.
Scared senseless, more like. I waffle between excitement and horror. I don't think anyone can do one job for 35 years and not feel panic at the thought of having to learn to do something else, especially in their fifties.
In an ideal world we wouldn't have to work after we sell, but interest rates being what they are even a million dollars in the bank will only make you at best 25,000. per year....and they say it takes about 3500-4500 per month for a couple to retire comfortably. that comes to nearly 50,000. per year....a long, long way from 25,000. so we hope to only have to have part time jobs so we have lots of time to spend together. Old age pension is a few years away.
Actually in an ideal world, we would be able to make a living here the way were able to ten years ago. But the fact is, government wants to squeeze out the small farmer, and have big corporate farms working in tandem with the packing plants, they've done it to the HOG guys and their are decimated. Financially, the writing is on the wall for us, but our hearts are telling us we're not ready to quit yet. It's the land, it's hard to tear yourself away. It's worked its way into your lungs, bone and sinew, until the thought of leaving it feels like ripping a limb off without anesthetic.
This coming year will be the teller. But hold onto your hats, cause it's gonna be a whing-dinger.
Real estate assessments, searching for acreages, condos on the island, talking to the accountant about tax implications, it sure sounds like leaving the farm to me.
Scared senseless, more like. I waffle between excitement and horror. I don't think anyone can do one job for 35 years and not feel panic at the thought of having to learn to do something else, especially in their fifties.
In an ideal world we wouldn't have to work after we sell, but interest rates being what they are even a million dollars in the bank will only make you at best 25,000. per year....and they say it takes about 3500-4500 per month for a couple to retire comfortably. that comes to nearly 50,000. per year....a long, long way from 25,000. so we hope to only have to have part time jobs so we have lots of time to spend together. Old age pension is a few years away.
Actually in an ideal world, we would be able to make a living here the way were able to ten years ago. But the fact is, government wants to squeeze out the small farmer, and have big corporate farms working in tandem with the packing plants, they've done it to the HOG guys and their are decimated. Financially, the writing is on the wall for us, but our hearts are telling us we're not ready to quit yet. It's the land, it's hard to tear yourself away. It's worked its way into your lungs, bone and sinew, until the thought of leaving it feels like ripping a limb off without anesthetic.
This coming year will be the teller. But hold onto your hats, cause it's gonna be a whing-dinger.
November 10, 2012
A Busy Week Past
I was busy all week doing nothing basically, you know what that's like. Quick trips to town for banking, odds and ends groceries, a bit of laundry, vaccuming and such, preparing meals and zippo the days are gone. I did manage to get a bit of painting done late in the afternoons. Here are three of my latest efforts. Some better than others but it keeps the cabin fever at bay so I keep trying.
Okay, I apologize, BLOGGER won't let me upload my latest paintings to this post. You'll have to check them out on face book or flickr.
This coming week we will finally put this years calves on the truck and send them off to market. Fingers crossed we top the market, they are a pretty nice set of calves. So tuesday they get loaded, Wednesday we make the three hour drive to watch them sell and get the cheque, on Thursday we have to deliver some freezer beef and again on Friday. See, I told you it was a busy couple of weeks.
Okay, I apologize, BLOGGER won't let me upload my latest paintings to this post. You'll have to check them out on face book or flickr.
This coming week we will finally put this years calves on the truck and send them off to market. Fingers crossed we top the market, they are a pretty nice set of calves. So tuesday they get loaded, Wednesday we make the three hour drive to watch them sell and get the cheque, on Thursday we have to deliver some freezer beef and again on Friday. See, I told you it was a busy couple of weeks.
November 2, 2012
Sharpest tacks...just saying
Got our flu shot today. Ouch...why do I always get the girls with the ham fists... felt like she was trying to jab a pencil in my arm for the love of God.
We tied the 45 minute drive to get the shot in with taking our bottles to the depot. I spent an hour last week resorting them all and counting carefully so that I knew how many there were and what we could expect as payment. For my convenience I put them in bags of 60 (that's what fit in each bag), and told Rbt that day that I was going to do an honesty check on the depot.
A few years ago, after my son moved out of the house next door, we got the task of taking all their empty bottles to the depot. I estimated about $ 145. worth but were paid only 75. I squawked, but they were throwing them into a huge dumpster type bin as they sorted them and so there was no way to recount.
A deliberate move on their part I still think. We left it, but since then we have changed depots and I thought I would test these new folks.
So I counted and we should have got $ 75.oo + change. I climbed into the back of the truck to hand the many bags to his lordship, I have to untie them too he's all thumbs...and just rips them open ( I wanted to re-use them) and he quietly asks me how many in this bag? 60 bottles I said, and he goes up to the window, hands the bag to the guy there and tells him " there are 60 bottles in this bag !!! I told him not to tell them what was in each bag, when he came back for a second but he continued to do it.......I could have strangled him, I must have had a really bad look on my face because he was looking at me kinda funny.... oh believe me, I wanted to say something....but it wouldn't have been nice...and I've been told I am too hard on his sensitive feelings...well then he shouldn't be such an imbecile and I wouldn't refer to him as a dim bulb. Just saying... They aren't going to cheat you if you let them know that you know exactly how many bottles you have per bag....duhhhhhhh
we just needed to know and then if they counted the same, (which I hoped they would) then they pass the test and we would keep dealing with them...all without them knowing. That's the point of an undercover op....arggghhhhh
After I explained it to him three times in the truck on the way home, he sheepishly apologized, he didn't realize that was why I had counted them. Ugh... and people wonder why I have gray hair and a twitchy eyelid.
We tied the 45 minute drive to get the shot in with taking our bottles to the depot. I spent an hour last week resorting them all and counting carefully so that I knew how many there were and what we could expect as payment. For my convenience I put them in bags of 60 (that's what fit in each bag), and told Rbt that day that I was going to do an honesty check on the depot.
A few years ago, after my son moved out of the house next door, we got the task of taking all their empty bottles to the depot. I estimated about $ 145. worth but were paid only 75. I squawked, but they were throwing them into a huge dumpster type bin as they sorted them and so there was no way to recount.
A deliberate move on their part I still think. We left it, but since then we have changed depots and I thought I would test these new folks.
So I counted and we should have got $ 75.oo + change. I climbed into the back of the truck to hand the many bags to his lordship, I have to untie them too he's all thumbs...and just rips them open ( I wanted to re-use them) and he quietly asks me how many in this bag? 60 bottles I said, and he goes up to the window, hands the bag to the guy there and tells him " there are 60 bottles in this bag !!! I told him not to tell them what was in each bag, when he came back for a second but he continued to do it.......I could have strangled him, I must have had a really bad look on my face because he was looking at me kinda funny.... oh believe me, I wanted to say something....but it wouldn't have been nice...and I've been told I am too hard on his sensitive feelings...well then he shouldn't be such an imbecile and I wouldn't refer to him as a dim bulb. Just saying... They aren't going to cheat you if you let them know that you know exactly how many bottles you have per bag....duhhhhhhh
we just needed to know and then if they counted the same, (which I hoped they would) then they pass the test and we would keep dealing with them...all without them knowing. That's the point of an undercover op....arggghhhhh
After I explained it to him three times in the truck on the way home, he sheepishly apologized, he didn't realize that was why I had counted them. Ugh... and people wonder why I have gray hair and a twitchy eyelid.
October 29, 2012
Ten Things...
Ten things I Hate
Liars
Drunks
Solicitation (Telemarketers, door to door salesmen and JW's)
Really bad waitresses
Pushy sales people
Shopping for shoes (I loathe having to buy new shoes)
Small yappy dogs
Tight fitting clothes
Flying by myself
Flat tires
Ten things I Like:
Books
Chinese food
Being outside (all seasons)
Building (especially new houses)
Animals (dogs in particular)
Growing things (it makes me feel empowered)
Music ( all kinds)
Painting (even though it makes me anxious)
My family (just the fact that I have one makes me happy)
When Jen calls ( she makes me feel connected)
And Ten things I don't give a shit about:
daytime soaps (lame TV series)
How much it rains in Toronto
Whether Angelina Jolie has botoxed lips
Ipads or smart phones (I just want a nice plain cell phone)
Christmas (its commercialism at the least)
Going to church
The body mass index ( for obvious reasons)
Going some where hot for the winter
Whether there is an NHL hockey season this winter or not
A tax on junk food
Ten things that make my blood boil:
Child porn ( makes me want to commit murder)
Foreign countries buying Canadian companies
Idiotic American politicians and their views on rape and abortion
The obvious selection of which countries to aid in ousting regimes based on their production of oil
Conrad Black wanting his Canadian citizenship back ( I say go to hell Connnie)
Omar Khadrs return to Canada ( his sister and mother at least, should have been deported)
The pariah scum bags that follow honest immigrants to this country and set up the same kind of environment of fear and intimidation tactics that they ran in their old country.( Ship them all back I say, the gangster ones I mean. You break the law here, and sionara scum bag.)
Black kids being shot in the streets because they are wearing a hoodie
The continuous enabling of first nations people to be welfare cases
More pipelines being built when the 50 year old ones are just abandoned.
Liars
Drunks
Solicitation (Telemarketers, door to door salesmen and JW's)
Really bad waitresses
Pushy sales people
Shopping for shoes (I loathe having to buy new shoes)
Small yappy dogs
Tight fitting clothes
Flying by myself
Flat tires
Ten things I Like:
Books
Chinese food
Being outside (all seasons)
Building (especially new houses)
Animals (dogs in particular)
Growing things (it makes me feel empowered)
Music ( all kinds)
Painting (even though it makes me anxious)
My family (just the fact that I have one makes me happy)
When Jen calls ( she makes me feel connected)
And Ten things I don't give a shit about:
daytime soaps (lame TV series)
How much it rains in Toronto
Whether Angelina Jolie has botoxed lips
Ipads or smart phones (I just want a nice plain cell phone)
Christmas (its commercialism at the least)
Going to church
The body mass index ( for obvious reasons)
Going some where hot for the winter
Whether there is an NHL hockey season this winter or not
A tax on junk food
Ten things that make my blood boil:
Child porn ( makes me want to commit murder)
Foreign countries buying Canadian companies
Idiotic American politicians and their views on rape and abortion
The obvious selection of which countries to aid in ousting regimes based on their production of oil
Conrad Black wanting his Canadian citizenship back ( I say go to hell Connnie)
Omar Khadrs return to Canada ( his sister and mother at least, should have been deported)
The pariah scum bags that follow honest immigrants to this country and set up the same kind of environment of fear and intimidation tactics that they ran in their old country.( Ship them all back I say, the gangster ones I mean. You break the law here, and sionara scum bag.)
Black kids being shot in the streets because they are wearing a hoodie
The continuous enabling of first nations people to be welfare cases
More pipelines being built when the 50 year old ones are just abandoned.
Winter has arrived
It snowed here yesterday, we now have about 3 inches on the ground. I am hoping that the warmer they are forecasting for later in the week actually happens. It is way to early for snow to stay. I hadn't prepared my mind for it at all. What a shock.
We are butchering three beef this morning. No ecoli here....we hire a fully certified and licensed mobile butcher to come and do the killing and gutting. They are downed with one clean shot to the brain, while they stand placidly eating their meal of grain. Nice and calm. Hung by the back feet while the hide is removed and then the tractor moves them to clean ground and they are gutted, cut in half, length wise and lowered into a plastic covered truck box, each beef is encased it it's own layer of plastic, and then hauled to the meat cutters where, as per our instructions the beef is hung for 21 days in a large cooler until tender and then cut to the customers instructions. Frozen over night and delivered to their door. The meat is never near or in contact with any manure that could contain ecoli.
The difference between our beef and the XL beef is that ours is not killed, gutted and cut up in the same place, and our beef hangs in a cooler for 21 days to tenderize it, while the XL beef is cut and boxed the same day it's killed and shipped to stores, where it is mechanically tenderized.
Gruesome details I know and I have probably put you off beef for at least a month by explaining the process, but it's good to know where your food comes from.
I have been painting the past couple of days, trying to finish a large 30 x 40 canvas. I always start out excited as I spread the first layer of colour on a new canvas, the background. Next I define the areas by adding more and darker colours, my favorite phase is adding the detail. But the painting always goes through this phase of ugliness, or it's not the painting that does, it's me. I go through this phase of thinking I've completely screwed it up now...and then just want to smash it and throw it in the trash...but I keep plugging away and then it starts to look good to me again. hahahah, it drives Rbt. crazy. It drives me crazy. The whole tortured artist thing...hahahaha
And yes, it's another landscape, I feel the need to keep trying to capture the beauty of nature again and again, never quite getting it just so. I am driven...but sometimes I break free and paint a building or bird or something inanimate.
After painting a picture of some flowers from an odd perspective a sister of mine commented on a social media platform that at least it wasn't a landscape.
Huh, as if. I happen to love my landscapes, so there...(sticking my tongue out childishly)
Gotta go find Rbt his insulated coveralls, it is officially winter when he starts wearing warmer clothes.
We are butchering three beef this morning. No ecoli here....we hire a fully certified and licensed mobile butcher to come and do the killing and gutting. They are downed with one clean shot to the brain, while they stand placidly eating their meal of grain. Nice and calm. Hung by the back feet while the hide is removed and then the tractor moves them to clean ground and they are gutted, cut in half, length wise and lowered into a plastic covered truck box, each beef is encased it it's own layer of plastic, and then hauled to the meat cutters where, as per our instructions the beef is hung for 21 days in a large cooler until tender and then cut to the customers instructions. Frozen over night and delivered to their door. The meat is never near or in contact with any manure that could contain ecoli.
The difference between our beef and the XL beef is that ours is not killed, gutted and cut up in the same place, and our beef hangs in a cooler for 21 days to tenderize it, while the XL beef is cut and boxed the same day it's killed and shipped to stores, where it is mechanically tenderized.
Gruesome details I know and I have probably put you off beef for at least a month by explaining the process, but it's good to know where your food comes from.
I have been painting the past couple of days, trying to finish a large 30 x 40 canvas. I always start out excited as I spread the first layer of colour on a new canvas, the background. Next I define the areas by adding more and darker colours, my favorite phase is adding the detail. But the painting always goes through this phase of ugliness, or it's not the painting that does, it's me. I go through this phase of thinking I've completely screwed it up now...and then just want to smash it and throw it in the trash...but I keep plugging away and then it starts to look good to me again. hahahah, it drives Rbt. crazy. It drives me crazy. The whole tortured artist thing...hahahaha
And yes, it's another landscape, I feel the need to keep trying to capture the beauty of nature again and again, never quite getting it just so. I am driven...but sometimes I break free and paint a building or bird or something inanimate.
After painting a picture of some flowers from an odd perspective a sister of mine commented on a social media platform that at least it wasn't a landscape.
Huh, as if. I happen to love my landscapes, so there...(sticking my tongue out childishly)
Gotta go find Rbt his insulated coveralls, it is officially winter when he starts wearing warmer clothes.
October 24, 2012
A Little Sad
Today I am feeling a bit sad. Peggy's son Glenn died 12 years ago today. I didn't know him as well as I should have, but what I did know of him was good. Glenn loved music, and worked hard. He used humour as a shield and would have made a very good living as a stand up comedian. Glenn could always crack me up, no matter how sombre the mood of a room was, he could lighten it with just a few quick lines.
Sadly, as life often tends to do, things kind of dumped on Glenn at a point in his life where some big changes were taking place and he wasn't able to find the right life skills to manage it all. Glenns death was a tragedy that never should have happened. He should be married now, with a couple of kids, maybe running his own business and living a good life. We'll never know what might have been for Glenn, he will stay forever a twenty something year old man in our memories, with sad eyes and a quiet smile. Miss you kiddo.
Freeze up is happening as I write. We have no snow on the ground right here but it is all around us. Winter is coming..... that phrase sounds so sinister to me, like there is more coming than just cold temps, snow and howling winds. My imagination running wild I fear.
We have had cold temperatures, with day time highs of -1, yuk, that makes it a misery to work outside, but work we must. All the things we put off while scrambling to get the crops harvested are now knocking at the door... fencing mostly, replacing posts that were broken by either the bulls fighting and pushing each other right through a plank fence or a barbed wire fence with power on it, or by Robt backing the tractor up too far and knocking over a corral fence. yikes...it happens sometimes, when he is in a rush, and his mind has jumped ahead ten or twenty jobs instead of being in the job he's doing at the time. An easy fix though, we just pound another post in the ground, the problem with doing it now though is the ground is beginning to freeze and it takes a lot of pounding....my job, to run the post driver, very noisy and repetitive, and if you already have a headache, well...
I've had a weird headache for three days now, checked my Blood pressure last night finally and it's a bit high...chest feels heavy and I am having trouble breathing without wheezing. It's almost like the last time I had pneumonia but not quite. If the BP is still high tomorrow morning I will go to outpatients...I hate going there when I'm not really ill, but the high BP worries me.
I had my last eye tests done two weeks ago, and for a change I got a bit of really good news... these tests were done once a year since I started one of the medications they had me on for Lupus. I took the drug for 4 1/2 years and the drug company insisted that anyone taking the med. for more than 1 year needed to have these eye exams done annually, because the drug could sometimes collect in the layers of the retina and cause permanent blindness.
The tests were easy enough to do, the chart, a field vision test and coloured photo's of the eyeball itself and the retinal layers, they take about 2 hours to get through and this last time it went even faster because I was able to perform the tests much faster this time. The more your vision is jeopardized the longer it takes to perform the tests because it is based on how many lights you see and how many you miss, the computer will keep going back to the ones you missed and repeating them getting brighter and brighter until you see them. I got the field vision test done in record time, never missed a light...yahoo....
So when it came time to finally have my five minute visit with my super hero eye specialist DR. Mark GREVE, he told me the vision in my left eye,(the one I had the stroke in) has improved significantly probably for a number of reasons: 1) a natural regeneration of the retina and the laser surgery he had performed. 2) the fact that I am no longer taking those three very strong and dangerous medications. and 3) the diabetic medication I am on is controlling the blood sugar better.
For what ever reason it has occurred I am grateful. I could tell that my eye sight had improved. Dr. GREVE told me I no longer had to come for those tests since I was not taking the medication any longer and every thing looked good in the eyes. I took that opportunity to thank him for all the hard work he did to give me back the use of my left eye after the stroke. Although he would have liked to have continued with the eye injections to restore the vision fully, the violent and very serious reaction I had after the third injection prevented us from continuing with that treatment. He did tell me that the blockage that caused the hemoraging in the first place was still there and that it could happen again, if it did I was to contact him immediately rather that going through my optomitrist and that the prognosis may not be as good the next time because of my inability to tolerate the eyeball injection of Anastin, which really did make a tremendous improvement everytime I had it done.
In my mind he is a super hero. He starts seeing patients at 7 am and often times when we leave the office at 7 - 7:30 pm after a very long wait to see him there are still 20 or more patients yet to go. His staff say sometimes he is there until 10 pm. There are four other doctors that work out of the ALBERTA RETINA CONSULTANTS office and they are all as busy. It is the only retina specialist facility in western Canada. This last visit I talked with a fellow and his mother who had flown up from Vancouver to have the injections done on the mother and another couple who were from eastern Saskatchewan and a man from Whitehorse....very busy indeed. THANK YOU !!! DR. GREVE my hero!
This is the first winter, in five years that I will not have to make Robt white knuckle drive me into Edmonton for a specialists appointment during a blizzard or freezing rain storm. He never complained but I always felt so guilty.
He loves me, what can I say ... I love him :)
Sadly, as life often tends to do, things kind of dumped on Glenn at a point in his life where some big changes were taking place and he wasn't able to find the right life skills to manage it all. Glenns death was a tragedy that never should have happened. He should be married now, with a couple of kids, maybe running his own business and living a good life. We'll never know what might have been for Glenn, he will stay forever a twenty something year old man in our memories, with sad eyes and a quiet smile. Miss you kiddo.
Freeze up is happening as I write. We have no snow on the ground right here but it is all around us. Winter is coming..... that phrase sounds so sinister to me, like there is more coming than just cold temps, snow and howling winds. My imagination running wild I fear.
We have had cold temperatures, with day time highs of -1, yuk, that makes it a misery to work outside, but work we must. All the things we put off while scrambling to get the crops harvested are now knocking at the door... fencing mostly, replacing posts that were broken by either the bulls fighting and pushing each other right through a plank fence or a barbed wire fence with power on it, or by Robt backing the tractor up too far and knocking over a corral fence. yikes...it happens sometimes, when he is in a rush, and his mind has jumped ahead ten or twenty jobs instead of being in the job he's doing at the time. An easy fix though, we just pound another post in the ground, the problem with doing it now though is the ground is beginning to freeze and it takes a lot of pounding....my job, to run the post driver, very noisy and repetitive, and if you already have a headache, well...
I've had a weird headache for three days now, checked my Blood pressure last night finally and it's a bit high...chest feels heavy and I am having trouble breathing without wheezing. It's almost like the last time I had pneumonia but not quite. If the BP is still high tomorrow morning I will go to outpatients...I hate going there when I'm not really ill, but the high BP worries me.
I had my last eye tests done two weeks ago, and for a change I got a bit of really good news... these tests were done once a year since I started one of the medications they had me on for Lupus. I took the drug for 4 1/2 years and the drug company insisted that anyone taking the med. for more than 1 year needed to have these eye exams done annually, because the drug could sometimes collect in the layers of the retina and cause permanent blindness.
The tests were easy enough to do, the chart, a field vision test and coloured photo's of the eyeball itself and the retinal layers, they take about 2 hours to get through and this last time it went even faster because I was able to perform the tests much faster this time. The more your vision is jeopardized the longer it takes to perform the tests because it is based on how many lights you see and how many you miss, the computer will keep going back to the ones you missed and repeating them getting brighter and brighter until you see them. I got the field vision test done in record time, never missed a light...yahoo....
So when it came time to finally have my five minute visit with my super hero eye specialist DR. Mark GREVE, he told me the vision in my left eye,(the one I had the stroke in) has improved significantly probably for a number of reasons: 1) a natural regeneration of the retina and the laser surgery he had performed. 2) the fact that I am no longer taking those three very strong and dangerous medications. and 3) the diabetic medication I am on is controlling the blood sugar better.
For what ever reason it has occurred I am grateful. I could tell that my eye sight had improved. Dr. GREVE told me I no longer had to come for those tests since I was not taking the medication any longer and every thing looked good in the eyes. I took that opportunity to thank him for all the hard work he did to give me back the use of my left eye after the stroke. Although he would have liked to have continued with the eye injections to restore the vision fully, the violent and very serious reaction I had after the third injection prevented us from continuing with that treatment. He did tell me that the blockage that caused the hemoraging in the first place was still there and that it could happen again, if it did I was to contact him immediately rather that going through my optomitrist and that the prognosis may not be as good the next time because of my inability to tolerate the eyeball injection of Anastin, which really did make a tremendous improvement everytime I had it done.
In my mind he is a super hero. He starts seeing patients at 7 am and often times when we leave the office at 7 - 7:30 pm after a very long wait to see him there are still 20 or more patients yet to go. His staff say sometimes he is there until 10 pm. There are four other doctors that work out of the ALBERTA RETINA CONSULTANTS office and they are all as busy. It is the only retina specialist facility in western Canada. This last visit I talked with a fellow and his mother who had flown up from Vancouver to have the injections done on the mother and another couple who were from eastern Saskatchewan and a man from Whitehorse....very busy indeed. THANK YOU !!! DR. GREVE my hero!
This is the first winter, in five years that I will not have to make Robt white knuckle drive me into Edmonton for a specialists appointment during a blizzard or freezing rain storm. He never complained but I always felt so guilty.
He loves me, what can I say ... I love him :)
October 20, 2012
SOCKS, one hundred and one uses
You know how you go back and re-read something and realize you maybe shouldn't have written what you wrote. Ya, I did that in my last couple of posts. Personal stuff that maybe I shouldn't have vented about, not wanting the whole world to know about my financial difficulties ahahaha. Ergo, the sock solution comes to mind. Stuffing to commence at the close of this post.
To quote from one of my favorite HBO series "THE GAME OF THRONES"
Winter is Coming.
What does that mean, hmmmm, well for starters, Robt spends days changing oil in all the equipment that gets used in the winter months, changing to a lighter viscosity so it doesn't thicken up like molasses when the temperature drops to -40*c ugh....I hate it when it gets that cold, there is so much stress involved...worrying about pipes freezing, cattle dying and Robt getting frostbite.
The Cows are herded home making it easier to feed and water them once the dugouts are froze over. Just the two of us to herd a hundred + cows home along the road...some of the neighbours land has no fence between it and the road the damn bags always want to take off onto the open fields. Robt tries to keep them moving by luring them along the roadway with a prime bale of hay on the tractor....and I follow either on the quad or the pickup depending on how cold it is...to keep the rear of the herd moving along and not dawdling or going where they are not suppose to.
All the bales Robt hauls home need to be stacked....one on end like a soup tin and then one on top sitting the normal way...the rain and snow hits rolls down the curved sides of the bale and drips to the ground not hitting the bottom bale at all, in theory anyway...but the main reason we stack them like that is for the wind break they create...up here on the hill as we are the winter wind chill can be ferocious...any wind break is a good thing...so we line the outer fences of all the corrals with stacks of bales, mostly straw, so the cows don't break their necks trying to reach a hay bale they shouldn't be.
Rain gutters need to be cleaned, the chimney for the wood stove cleaned and the summer clothes go away for another year and out come the heavy gear.
The corrals have to be cleaned of last years manure and it needs to be hauled out to the field, normally we have a fellow come and do that job but this year to due to lack of funds we will only clean the two important pens pre and post calving and the rest will wait. We'll do the work ourselves, haul it out in the old truck and just dump it in piles to be spread later by tractor. Normally, when the manure crew come, they have a huge loader tractor whose front end bucket is so big it holds the combined volume of three of our tractor buckets full. He brings 5 big semi trucks with manure boxes on the back, the box is equipped with a big beater at the back end and the floor of the box has chains on it that move along the length of the floor to move the manure toward the back of the truck box, until it reaches the beater where it is flailed into the air, landing on the field behind the truck as he travels across the field. When they are done, Robt goes with the big tractor and discs it into the soil to benefit next years crop. That job normally costs $4,000. - 5,000. When we do it every other year, which happens some times due to timing,( Once it freezes we can't do it), the job costs a lot more...and takes two days....the last bill like that was $7,500.
We managed to get the rest of the crop off....normally we curse a strong wind, mostly for the damage it does, blowing big trees onto the fences and letting the cows get out, taking the tin roof off the machine sheds etc....but last week the wind blew here for three full days....gusts up to 70 km. 24 hrs a day...and dried the swathes of grain so much after the snow we had the week before that we were able to combine and get the oats off dry enough that it will keep in the bin for the winter and not spoil. That was a HUGE relief....our friend Raymond came to run the combine and Robt hauled the grain to the bins with the two trucks and I baled the straw right behind the combine so it wouldn't blow across the field and be lost...Without that straw we would have had to buy bedding for the cattle ....so Robt was adamant that I do the baling as soon as it came out of the combine.
The first day we combined just us two....and the wind was horrendous...as the straw came out the back of the combine after the oat kernels were rubbed off, it should have normally just fallen straight to the ground in a neat row...but the wind was blowing it in some places more than ten feet to the side of the combine and only half of it was hitting the ground, the rest was scattered across acres of stubble field. I had to follow so close to the combine that the front grill of the new John Deere tractor was just covered in Oat chaff and the engine temp kept heating up because it couldn't breath, I had to stop and remove the chaff to the engine from over heating. The worst part was the time Robt forgot I was right behind him and for some reason decided to back the combine up....I saw the huge blue combine coming back towards me and threw the tractor into reverse, but it didn't engage and he hit the front of the tractor with the back end of the combine.....it happened in slow motion...that piece of equipment, three times bigger than the tractor I was in, our $ 150,000.oo Once in a life time brand new tractor, backing slowly but inexorably toward the front of the tractor... and then bang, luckily not at a great speed but it hit none the less, a not so gently nudge. All I could think then and since was, Robt is a very lucky man, and thank God we ordered the tractor with that heavy duty grill protector...or the whole front end would have been caved in...and I would have wept like a new born baby crying for the tit....and Robt would have had to leave the country of course.... But the only damage done was a bit of paint rubbed off the protector and a bit of metal peeled off. Whewwww....dodged that bullet.
Well, Robt has come in for breakfast finally, so I have to go bang out some porridge... Talk to ya later...
To quote from one of my favorite HBO series "THE GAME OF THRONES"
Winter is Coming.
What does that mean, hmmmm, well for starters, Robt spends days changing oil in all the equipment that gets used in the winter months, changing to a lighter viscosity so it doesn't thicken up like molasses when the temperature drops to -40*c ugh....I hate it when it gets that cold, there is so much stress involved...worrying about pipes freezing, cattle dying and Robt getting frostbite.
The Cows are herded home making it easier to feed and water them once the dugouts are froze over. Just the two of us to herd a hundred + cows home along the road...some of the neighbours land has no fence between it and the road the damn bags always want to take off onto the open fields. Robt tries to keep them moving by luring them along the roadway with a prime bale of hay on the tractor....and I follow either on the quad or the pickup depending on how cold it is...to keep the rear of the herd moving along and not dawdling or going where they are not suppose to.
All the bales Robt hauls home need to be stacked....one on end like a soup tin and then one on top sitting the normal way...the rain and snow hits rolls down the curved sides of the bale and drips to the ground not hitting the bottom bale at all, in theory anyway...but the main reason we stack them like that is for the wind break they create...up here on the hill as we are the winter wind chill can be ferocious...any wind break is a good thing...so we line the outer fences of all the corrals with stacks of bales, mostly straw, so the cows don't break their necks trying to reach a hay bale they shouldn't be.
Rain gutters need to be cleaned, the chimney for the wood stove cleaned and the summer clothes go away for another year and out come the heavy gear.
The corrals have to be cleaned of last years manure and it needs to be hauled out to the field, normally we have a fellow come and do that job but this year to due to lack of funds we will only clean the two important pens pre and post calving and the rest will wait. We'll do the work ourselves, haul it out in the old truck and just dump it in piles to be spread later by tractor. Normally, when the manure crew come, they have a huge loader tractor whose front end bucket is so big it holds the combined volume of three of our tractor buckets full. He brings 5 big semi trucks with manure boxes on the back, the box is equipped with a big beater at the back end and the floor of the box has chains on it that move along the length of the floor to move the manure toward the back of the truck box, until it reaches the beater where it is flailed into the air, landing on the field behind the truck as he travels across the field. When they are done, Robt goes with the big tractor and discs it into the soil to benefit next years crop. That job normally costs $4,000. - 5,000. When we do it every other year, which happens some times due to timing,( Once it freezes we can't do it), the job costs a lot more...and takes two days....the last bill like that was $7,500.
We managed to get the rest of the crop off....normally we curse a strong wind, mostly for the damage it does, blowing big trees onto the fences and letting the cows get out, taking the tin roof off the machine sheds etc....but last week the wind blew here for three full days....gusts up to 70 km. 24 hrs a day...and dried the swathes of grain so much after the snow we had the week before that we were able to combine and get the oats off dry enough that it will keep in the bin for the winter and not spoil. That was a HUGE relief....our friend Raymond came to run the combine and Robt hauled the grain to the bins with the two trucks and I baled the straw right behind the combine so it wouldn't blow across the field and be lost...Without that straw we would have had to buy bedding for the cattle ....so Robt was adamant that I do the baling as soon as it came out of the combine.
The first day we combined just us two....and the wind was horrendous...as the straw came out the back of the combine after the oat kernels were rubbed off, it should have normally just fallen straight to the ground in a neat row...but the wind was blowing it in some places more than ten feet to the side of the combine and only half of it was hitting the ground, the rest was scattered across acres of stubble field. I had to follow so close to the combine that the front grill of the new John Deere tractor was just covered in Oat chaff and the engine temp kept heating up because it couldn't breath, I had to stop and remove the chaff to the engine from over heating. The worst part was the time Robt forgot I was right behind him and for some reason decided to back the combine up....I saw the huge blue combine coming back towards me and threw the tractor into reverse, but it didn't engage and he hit the front of the tractor with the back end of the combine.....it happened in slow motion...that piece of equipment, three times bigger than the tractor I was in, our $ 150,000.oo Once in a life time brand new tractor, backing slowly but inexorably toward the front of the tractor... and then bang, luckily not at a great speed but it hit none the less, a not so gently nudge. All I could think then and since was, Robt is a very lucky man, and thank God we ordered the tractor with that heavy duty grill protector...or the whole front end would have been caved in...and I would have wept like a new born baby crying for the tit....and Robt would have had to leave the country of course.... But the only damage done was a bit of paint rubbed off the protector and a bit of metal peeled off. Whewwww....dodged that bullet.
Well, Robt has come in for breakfast finally, so I have to go bang out some porridge... Talk to ya later...
October 13, 2012
Another Day
Another Day, another Dime ( used to be a dollar but times are tough) hahaha.
While I was venting a bit of steam one day in conversation with Robt. words came out of my mouth that I had never heard before. I know what you are thinking....swear words rights....well you'd be partially right, some of what I said was cursing but I had a bit of an epiphany and was actually rendered speechless, no mean feat that, to render chatty Cathy mute...hahahahaha
Back to my epiphany, I was pouring my heart out to Robt, frustration over another set of friends moving away in retirement, lack of fun in our life, the weather and farm life in general when I heard myself say " I don't know why I married another farmer, farming was never a passion of mine, it's just something I went along with because the men in my life loved it."
I don't know what I would have done with my life had I not met my first farmer husband, probably moved back to BC with mom and Dad and went back to school. I wanted, when I was a teenager, to be an English teacher. I think I would have been a reasonably good one.
The look on Robt's face when I said that, you'd think I kicked a puppy rightthere in front of him.
I have been content with the farming gig for 35 years now, and I froth at the mouth when I think that I will still be doing it when I am ready for the nursing home. I had such grand dreams, well grand might be a bit to dramatic a term, but my dreams for the last half of my life were certainly more varied than driving tractor and chasing cows.
It's just too bad that to live even a tiny bit of the life I had hoped to be living when I was 54 means that Robt has to give up any of the life he lives and breaths.
"If I wasn't chained to the farm I would....." move closer to the city, an acreage I think so that I could garden and be outside with nature, which is as necessary to me as breathing. I would do some volunteer work, perhaps in adult literacy or just wiping drooling chins at the lodge...reading to seniors....I would be able to attend every family function my family cared to plan and maybe even throw my own reunion, I would be sure to make it to that one then...hahahaha Robt and I would be able to spend more time together that didn't involve instructions on what work I was to do next or arguing over loan payments and tractor repairs. I'd be able to have a small house dog again, right now I am hardly in the house to care for one and coyotes would eat it if I left it outside while I drove tractor for 12 hours a day. I would definitely get a better handle on this fibromyalgia, stress wouldn't be such a huge factor in my health. I'd have more time to paint more than 2 paintings a year, and well, you get the idea... I'd have to have a job of course at least part time...I think I would prefer to work at home depot or Rona...the paint or tool department in the winter and the parking lot garden centre during the summer. I'd ride my bike to work when I could and join the rec centre swimming laps everyday.
I used to dream about kayaking, hiking in the mountains, learning to ski and skijoring with a great dog, moving into the wilderness and making a home with my own hands but that is a young persons dream and mine have matured and pared themselves down to more practical ones over the years.
In the mean time though I guess I will just keep plodding along here on the farm. It's what Robt. loves and I love him, it's just that simple and that complicated.
While I was venting a bit of steam one day in conversation with Robt. words came out of my mouth that I had never heard before. I know what you are thinking....swear words rights....well you'd be partially right, some of what I said was cursing but I had a bit of an epiphany and was actually rendered speechless, no mean feat that, to render chatty Cathy mute...hahahahaha
Back to my epiphany, I was pouring my heart out to Robt, frustration over another set of friends moving away in retirement, lack of fun in our life, the weather and farm life in general when I heard myself say " I don't know why I married another farmer, farming was never a passion of mine, it's just something I went along with because the men in my life loved it."
I don't know what I would have done with my life had I not met my first farmer husband, probably moved back to BC with mom and Dad and went back to school. I wanted, when I was a teenager, to be an English teacher. I think I would have been a reasonably good one.
The look on Robt's face when I said that, you'd think I kicked a puppy rightthere in front of him.
I have been content with the farming gig for 35 years now, and I froth at the mouth when I think that I will still be doing it when I am ready for the nursing home. I had such grand dreams, well grand might be a bit to dramatic a term, but my dreams for the last half of my life were certainly more varied than driving tractor and chasing cows.
It's just too bad that to live even a tiny bit of the life I had hoped to be living when I was 54 means that Robt has to give up any of the life he lives and breaths.
"If I wasn't chained to the farm I would....." move closer to the city, an acreage I think so that I could garden and be outside with nature, which is as necessary to me as breathing. I would do some volunteer work, perhaps in adult literacy or just wiping drooling chins at the lodge...reading to seniors....I would be able to attend every family function my family cared to plan and maybe even throw my own reunion, I would be sure to make it to that one then...hahahaha Robt and I would be able to spend more time together that didn't involve instructions on what work I was to do next or arguing over loan payments and tractor repairs. I'd be able to have a small house dog again, right now I am hardly in the house to care for one and coyotes would eat it if I left it outside while I drove tractor for 12 hours a day. I would definitely get a better handle on this fibromyalgia, stress wouldn't be such a huge factor in my health. I'd have more time to paint more than 2 paintings a year, and well, you get the idea... I'd have to have a job of course at least part time...I think I would prefer to work at home depot or Rona...the paint or tool department in the winter and the parking lot garden centre during the summer. I'd ride my bike to work when I could and join the rec centre swimming laps everyday.
I used to dream about kayaking, hiking in the mountains, learning to ski and skijoring with a great dog, moving into the wilderness and making a home with my own hands but that is a young persons dream and mine have matured and pared themselves down to more practical ones over the years.
In the mean time though I guess I will just keep plodding along here on the farm. It's what Robt. loves and I love him, it's just that simple and that complicated.
October 12, 2012
A HOSE JOB
You know, who ever said " BE GOOD AND WORK HARD AND YOU'LL GET AHEAD IN LIFE", they LIED. I've worked hard, really hard for thirty five years now at this "JOB" we call farming and I can see quite plainly now what rewards I am going to get, a minimum wage job at Home Depot and my retirement years in a trailer park. Not that there is anything the matter with some trailer parks but when you have pushed your body beyond it's limits doing work it wasn't meant to do, try to be everything to everybody, have given up close friendships and visits with family to give the farm 100 % effort thinking it will provide you with a great retirement, huh.... not so, lies, lies, lies...... but you just expect more than a trailer park for all the sacrifices. You deserve more that's for sure.
If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would be spouting off about how there just seems to be no way to make a living at farming anymore, at least not the small family farm.. Before BSE hit 9 years ago...we were getting 60-70 cents per pound for good cows. For one year after the BSE scare we couldn't sell an animal. Auction marts shut down there was no market, period...so that meant no income, ZIPPO, nothing for one whole year. I had to cash in my investments that I had acquired with the proceeds of the sale of my farm after I met Robt. to make the farm payments and keep the bank from repo-ing the farm because we were forced to mortgage the land to build this house after the first one was moving downhill with foundation undermining due to an underground spring....Insurance found a way to wheedle out of a payout, as per usual, and we got no compensation for the loss of our first house...a $200,000.oo hit to the pocket book.
Last year, eight years after BSE, cattle prices finally got back to where they had been before the scare. Cows were worth about $ 900. and our calves were worth about $ 1,000. We breathed a sigh of relief when we left the auction mart with our cheque in our hands. A whole years worth of work and sacrifice scribbled on one little piece of paper. We deposited it in the bank the next day and by the time we walked out the door our account was back in the red. It barely covered the overdraft we had on the farm account and put the money back into our savings that we had had to use to tide us over from the used up overdraft until the calves sold. But the first time we bought something we were back to using the overdraft.
This year it's worse...we worked all year hoping the calf prices would stay up or even better than last year...we had rain ( hurray) but the states didn't and so the USA drought brought the price of feed sky high, so the cattle buyers were going to have to pay more to feed the calves they bought so they wanted to pay less for the calves, to keep their profit margin high....so we would be getting less for the calves...but we weaned them anyway and were getting them ready to sell when the whole Ecoli meat debacle happened....the price per calf has dropped a lot more now...and if we sold them right now, we wouldn't make enough money to pay the bank...never mind replace any of the money we sucked out of our savings....(my down payment on our retirement place money).
So times are tough.....and it used to be things got this tough every ten years or so...but this past decade it seems like every other year there is some reason why we can't make a living... The farm is no longer sustainable as it is. Time to walk away, I say. Man, is that a scary thought. I have never done anything else but farm, oh I had a few half ass jobs, waiting tables, picking fruit and working at a drive in theatre.
Robt has come in for lunch, god I hate cooking.... so I have to close this for today but be assured I will be touching on this subject again very soon, the calves will be going to market before the end of the month...so wish us luck.
If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would be spouting off about how there just seems to be no way to make a living at farming anymore, at least not the small family farm.. Before BSE hit 9 years ago...we were getting 60-70 cents per pound for good cows. For one year after the BSE scare we couldn't sell an animal. Auction marts shut down there was no market, period...so that meant no income, ZIPPO, nothing for one whole year. I had to cash in my investments that I had acquired with the proceeds of the sale of my farm after I met Robt. to make the farm payments and keep the bank from repo-ing the farm because we were forced to mortgage the land to build this house after the first one was moving downhill with foundation undermining due to an underground spring....Insurance found a way to wheedle out of a payout, as per usual, and we got no compensation for the loss of our first house...a $200,000.oo hit to the pocket book.
Last year, eight years after BSE, cattle prices finally got back to where they had been before the scare. Cows were worth about $ 900. and our calves were worth about $ 1,000. We breathed a sigh of relief when we left the auction mart with our cheque in our hands. A whole years worth of work and sacrifice scribbled on one little piece of paper. We deposited it in the bank the next day and by the time we walked out the door our account was back in the red. It barely covered the overdraft we had on the farm account and put the money back into our savings that we had had to use to tide us over from the used up overdraft until the calves sold. But the first time we bought something we were back to using the overdraft.
This year it's worse...we worked all year hoping the calf prices would stay up or even better than last year...we had rain ( hurray) but the states didn't and so the USA drought brought the price of feed sky high, so the cattle buyers were going to have to pay more to feed the calves they bought so they wanted to pay less for the calves, to keep their profit margin high....so we would be getting less for the calves...but we weaned them anyway and were getting them ready to sell when the whole Ecoli meat debacle happened....the price per calf has dropped a lot more now...and if we sold them right now, we wouldn't make enough money to pay the bank...never mind replace any of the money we sucked out of our savings....(my down payment on our retirement place money).
So times are tough.....and it used to be things got this tough every ten years or so...but this past decade it seems like every other year there is some reason why we can't make a living... The farm is no longer sustainable as it is. Time to walk away, I say. Man, is that a scary thought. I have never done anything else but farm, oh I had a few half ass jobs, waiting tables, picking fruit and working at a drive in theatre.
Robt has come in for lunch, god I hate cooking.... so I have to close this for today but be assured I will be touching on this subject again very soon, the calves will be going to market before the end of the month...so wish us luck.
October 3, 2012
A Sad, Sad week.
They say death comes in three's. This week it happened just like that.
A cousin of Roberts that I had only met a few years ago died of colon cancer, she was a wonderful lady, classy. A tall slim redhead, she was funny and clever and very kind. We hit it off the moment we met and might have formed a lasting friendship had she not lived a thousand miles away.
Two mornings ago we were woken up by the phone ringing at 6:30 am, Roberts youngest aunt calling to tell us that her older sister and Roberts beloved aunt Mary had passed away. In actuality we had lost her ten years ago to Alzheimer's disease. Aunt Mary was Robts mothers sister. A small petite lady who married an American army officer back in the early forties and moved to the US. They were up here visiting one year when their infant son Daniel, when he died of S.I.D.S. (only they didn't know what it was back then) They stayed for a month longer and became very attached to then toddler Robt. Ever since then they doted on him. In his late teens and onward Robt travelled to Richland Wash. to spend every American thanksgiving and Christmas with them. He stayed for nearly two months every year. They had two daughters, older than Rob, but still thought he was the "bees knees" as aunt Mary would say.
And then just today, after eleven wonderful, loyal years it is with great sadness we had to part with the best dog we have ever been privileged to share our lives with. Owen was an old soul, with a huge heart and a bottomless well of love for the undeserving and sometimes un-appreciative humans that we are. Rest in Peace our dear, dear beloved friend.
A cousin of Roberts that I had only met a few years ago died of colon cancer, she was a wonderful lady, classy. A tall slim redhead, she was funny and clever and very kind. We hit it off the moment we met and might have formed a lasting friendship had she not lived a thousand miles away.
Two mornings ago we were woken up by the phone ringing at 6:30 am, Roberts youngest aunt calling to tell us that her older sister and Roberts beloved aunt Mary had passed away. In actuality we had lost her ten years ago to Alzheimer's disease. Aunt Mary was Robts mothers sister. A small petite lady who married an American army officer back in the early forties and moved to the US. They were up here visiting one year when their infant son Daniel, when he died of S.I.D.S. (only they didn't know what it was back then) They stayed for a month longer and became very attached to then toddler Robt. Ever since then they doted on him. In his late teens and onward Robt travelled to Richland Wash. to spend every American thanksgiving and Christmas with them. He stayed for nearly two months every year. They had two daughters, older than Rob, but still thought he was the "bees knees" as aunt Mary would say.
And then just today, after eleven wonderful, loyal years it is with great sadness we had to part with the best dog we have ever been privileged to share our lives with. Owen was an old soul, with a huge heart and a bottomless well of love for the undeserving and sometimes un-appreciative humans that we are. Rest in Peace our dear, dear beloved friend.
August 19, 2012
Today I ...
Today I woke up in a foul mood. It was 30 degrees here yesterday with virtually no wind so when it starts to cool down at night I open all the windows. The problem with that is that when the coyotes are close, which they were last night, really close, in my front yard, I could see them. They yipe and kiyie all night, talking to each other...no sleep for me. So around 5 am they finally start moving away from the yard and I can only here them at a distance now, much better, but by then the birds were twittering and that evil little bitch squirrel is chattering like crazy, telling all her kind that danger is close (ie: coyotes) At 6 am, in and out of sleep, I hear Rbt get up and quietly close the window....most days he would head outside and haul some bales, which is what he did the past two days and I was able to sleep, undisturbed for a couple more hours...but he slips back into bed and starts rubbing my back....
WARNING: for those of you uninterested in my very personal life skip the following paragraph...
Rbt persisted in trying awaken me by the old and might I add ineffective, romantic back rub, in spite of my desperate attempt to ignore him and fall asleep again...but after nearly an hour of on again off again pestering I finally spoke to him......"IF YOU WERE ON THE VERGE OF FALLING ASLEEP AND I STARTED TO RUB YOUR BACK, WOULD IT MAKE YOU SLEEP OR WAKE YOU UP ?"
We have talked about this until I am sick to death of it. Lucky him, he sleeps like the dead and hears nothing... I on the other hand, am a horribly light sleeper and pain and night sweats are constantly waking me. We go to bed around 11 pm. he snores the moment his head hits the pillow and I read until about 1 am before I can sleep. So at 6 am he is all bright eye, bushy tailed and I am dragging my ass around with only 4-5 hours of very poor quality sleep then he gets offended when I am angry he wakes me up...Sometimes spouseacide looks like a very good option. Jail doesn't seem so bad, I've always wanted to get a degree.
I went to sit down in the armchair with a soda and sandwich last night and when I reached for the lever to raise the foot rest lost the grip on the plate and watched in horror as my sandwich went ass over tea kettle and landed on my pants...mayo, margarine and mustard, oh and a very juicy ripe tomato slice slid down the side of my pants to land on the leather seat...It took me fifteen minutes to clean the mess and by then I had missed half my show...God damn it.
I hope I can sleep better tonight. Damned coyotes.
You know what the answer is, you just chose to ignore it...
WARNING: for those of you uninterested in my very personal life skip the following paragraph...
Rbt persisted in trying awaken me by the old and might I add ineffective, romantic back rub, in spite of my desperate attempt to ignore him and fall asleep again...but after nearly an hour of on again off again pestering I finally spoke to him......"IF YOU WERE ON THE VERGE OF FALLING ASLEEP AND I STARTED TO RUB YOUR BACK, WOULD IT MAKE YOU SLEEP OR WAKE YOU UP ?"
We have talked about this until I am sick to death of it. Lucky him, he sleeps like the dead and hears nothing... I on the other hand, am a horribly light sleeper and pain and night sweats are constantly waking me. We go to bed around 11 pm. he snores the moment his head hits the pillow and I read until about 1 am before I can sleep. So at 6 am he is all bright eye, bushy tailed and I am dragging my ass around with only 4-5 hours of very poor quality sleep then he gets offended when I am angry he wakes me up...Sometimes spouseacide looks like a very good option. Jail doesn't seem so bad, I've always wanted to get a degree.
I went to sit down in the armchair with a soda and sandwich last night and when I reached for the lever to raise the foot rest lost the grip on the plate and watched in horror as my sandwich went ass over tea kettle and landed on my pants...mayo, margarine and mustard, oh and a very juicy ripe tomato slice slid down the side of my pants to land on the leather seat...It took me fifteen minutes to clean the mess and by then I had missed half my show...God damn it.
I hope I can sleep better tonight. Damned coyotes.
You know what the answer is, you just chose to ignore it...
August 12, 2012
Light Show Last night
The Perseid meteor shower of 2012 was visible last night after midnight. I sat and watched from the comfort of my bedroom window for over an hour.
They said on the news that there would be about 100 meteors per hour travel across the night sky, I saw 113 streak past. Some were dim and barely visible other were bright, with hints of colour to them and visible from horizon to horizon. Those were the best and are what kept me watching for so long...I just had to see one more. . . Robt snored through the whole thing...but alas, bed was calling and I tore myself away to catch some sleep. They were visible until dawn...
Today I get to be semi-lazy...finished baling hay yesterday...hurahhh. Rbt is hauling the bales home now and I have a two day vacation of sorts...I have to harvest stuff from the garden, mow the lawn, pull the dead flowers from flower beds and cook some nourishing food for a change, we are both tired of sandwiches...but when I am in the field I can't be Suzy homemaker.
I am trying really hard not to let our financial woes stress me out. But the time of both of us staying home to work the farm is coming to an end. We either have to flip a coin to see who gets a job or sell up and retire. Big changes are looming
Today I get to be semi-lazy...finished baling hay yesterday...hurahhh. Rbt is hauling the bales home now and I have a two day vacation of sorts...I have to harvest stuff from the garden, mow the lawn, pull the dead flowers from flower beds and cook some nourishing food for a change, we are both tired of sandwiches...but when I am in the field I can't be Suzy homemaker.
I am trying really hard not to let our financial woes stress me out. But the time of both of us staying home to work the farm is coming to an end. We either have to flip a coin to see who gets a job or sell up and retire. Big changes are looming
August 11, 2012
GRRRRrrrrrrrr
yesterday was just one of those days where no matter what you do something or everything is going to go wrong. This new baler we bought a couple of years ago is going to drive me insane. Every time I go to use it, some part falls off the damned thing. God forbid we would ever be organized enough to have checked it all over during the winter and repaired what needs to be fixed and checked everything for tightness. I have owned two other balers in my life (of a different make, New Holland) this baler is a knock off CaseIH baler made to New Holland specs....yaaaaaa right.... everything about them is lighter and flimsier. Just got one big issue fixed with it to the tune of $750. go out and bale three bales of hay and whoops, part of the pick up falls off, the weld broke and there ya go...we limped through to finish last night...Robt has removed the remainder of the broken piece and we will try to finish the hay that's down with it like this....makes me very nervous though....
Last night I had to get out of the tractor and fix twine tying issues over 30 times...towards the end Rbt was looking fearful that I would do something crazy....like LIGHT IT ON FIRE.... I couldn't have done that...I didn't have any matches...
This rogue mule buck has taken up residency in our yard...he spends his days trying to beat the heat by hiding in one or other of the machine sheds...and at night my yard is a veritable smorgasbord of shrubbery. why leave....my theory is that the mosquito's are slightly less numerous in the yard where the grass is shorter than they are further out in nature....but my God, are they vicious....
Swarms of them, thousands at a time...attack when I go to the garden or when I get out of the tractor...there is a can of bug dope in every vehicle and machine on the place... horrendous....thank god for dragon flies...
Last night I had to get out of the tractor and fix twine tying issues over 30 times...towards the end Rbt was looking fearful that I would do something crazy....like LIGHT IT ON FIRE.... I couldn't have done that...I didn't have any matches...
This rogue mule buck has taken up residency in our yard...he spends his days trying to beat the heat by hiding in one or other of the machine sheds...and at night my yard is a veritable smorgasbord of shrubbery. why leave....my theory is that the mosquito's are slightly less numerous in the yard where the grass is shorter than they are further out in nature....but my God, are they vicious....
Swarms of them, thousands at a time...attack when I go to the garden or when I get out of the tractor...there is a can of bug dope in every vehicle and machine on the place... horrendous....thank god for dragon flies...
August 2, 2012
Another notch on the stick of life
I have been busy mowing the lawn every three days since it rained and gave it a new lease on life. I have also been cutting more hay down and the other day was given quite a shock when I was beetling down the field, my mind in auto pilot when a huge mule deer buck with his velveteen antlers lept up a dozen feet in front of the tractor where he had been laying in the tall hay, and streaked across the field to the nearest trees. Man were his antlers big. That got the old blood system gushing...I never did get back into auto mode...I kept waiting for something else to appear in my path.
The humidity here this year is awful, we don't normally suffer with too much humidity. Send it back to Ontario is my vote...
Watching the Olympics a bit, I mean what options do we have they are on everything. I especially enjoy the rowing and diving...and love, love, love equestrian but haven't seen one competition yet...
Today is a lovely coolish day with a nice wind, my kind of day... I hate it when it gets too hot. I am having trouble keeping up to the hummingbirds, with filling the feeders, wow do we have loads of them this year.
Robt got my pond running again, whoopee. I have to go start dinner now...first hot meal in a couple of day and I am looking forward to it.
July 21, 2012
La Dee Da Dee Da Dee Da
Been awhile I know, but that only means I have a lot more to write about.
Had a native lady (and I use the term loosely) drive in the yard chauffeuring her brother around the country. They had come out our way to see the quarter of land he used to own... and they remembered Robt's parents as being kindly to him (basically he took them for stooges and used their equipment for free).
They came just after supper time...and she was the rudest most obnoxious person I have met in ages... maybe ever. She kept asking me to give her stuff, she wanted one of my benches...her reasoning was, since I had two I could give her one...then she wanted me to make her some chairs for her patio table...then she asked me for cuttings from nearly every plant in the yard...and they both asked if we had vegetables from the garden yet...they would love to have some lettuce....and finally she harassed Robt about giving her his grandfathers stool that he used to sit on in his work shop in Edmonton. It's a hundred years old and partially broken, it sits out under the covered part of the deck with a planter on it. She wanted it, it's broken she says you can't sit on it...you should give it to me...and Robt kept saying no but she wouldn't drop it. She insulted our dogs...in front of us, saying they were gross and lumpy and that we should get rid of them and get a new one... we gave them tea and cake on the deck...(thank God Robt never invited them inside) when they finally left...she sarcastically said in a Soto voice, THANKS FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY. After they drove out of the yard...I went inside and said to Robt..." does it make me a bad person if I have the over whelming urge to lock the doors and check my pockets...." . Not so oddly, he had the same feeling. We kept the gates to our yard locked for over a week. It was a pain in the ass but it made us feel somewhat more in control. Geesh, the nerve of some people....
Robt had a bad day last week...we had just bought some windshield wipers for our dodge Dakota farm truck and he went to the garage to replace the old ones...lifting the wiper arm away from the windshield, it is suppose to stay in place when it is brought perpendicular to the window....but after removing the old wiper , the arm snapped back into position against the glass and since there was no wiper part, just the metal bracket it snaps into....it broke the windshield...in a surprisingly spectacular way....and it is spidering out in a hundred different directions....Oh Dear.... Robt was in shock at it happening...and when he first came outside to tell me I didn't believe him...but when I saw for myself the damage....Damn....why does this shit always happen to us....hahahahaha Cost of a new windshield was not as much as we at first imagined it would be but 255. + install is bad enough...
Robt has had a head cold the past few days... and we had to cancel a dinner invitation because he was so poorly. I don't know what it is about men when they get sick...they act like little babies... Mine, just goes useless like a limp dish rag...he just sleeps, and heaves big sighs...moans and groans...and won't bother eating unless I make him soup and butter his crackers.
Oddly though when I get sick I still have to do the cooking, and I don't get time to lay in bed all day in peace, he's coming in and out of the house, asking where this or that is or using the phone and getting people on the other end to phone him back with parts numbers or prices and then leaves the house so that I have to answer the damned thing or at the least be woke up by the ringing.
When he was sick, I either quietly read in another room, or went outside to work and leave him in peace....
He was getting up during the night to blow his nose or cough up phlegm...and turns the overhead light on in the bedroom, runs the water in the en suite, opening and closing drawers and slamming the fridge door...and walking in his usual heavy way...waking me up at 3 am , then he falls back to sleep in a Tylenol stupor and I am awake the rest of night... By the third night the Murphy bed was looking pretty inviting...
So Friday night we had a dinner invitation with our friends who are about to leave on a 5 week road trip to Ontario to visit family, and I was looking forward to getting out and visiting with some one besides Robt after three weeks of near solitude. But at noon Friday he comes wandering into the house all tuckered out and limp again, says hes not feeling so great again and thinks we should cancel....What can I say....if he's sick he's sick...I was disappointed but shit happens right....
He calls and makes his apologies...for us not coming that evening...we had lunch then and after wards I expected him to go lay down for a rest...but he surprised me by saying he was going to go cutting hay...and he did...until 11 pm... so apparently he wasn't as sick as I was lead to believe...or he had a miraculous recovery over lunch.. Today it's raining cats and dogs and he wanted to go to his brothers...but I mentioned that he was still contagious and it wouldn't be good to go around spreading his germs... so we stayed home...
Really, do I look as stupid as he seems to think I am.
enough said....
I know you are all shocked right, my Robt, he's such a nice, kind, gentle guy...HA I will quote the old adage about a mile, and my shoes...
Had a native lady (and I use the term loosely) drive in the yard chauffeuring her brother around the country. They had come out our way to see the quarter of land he used to own... and they remembered Robt's parents as being kindly to him (basically he took them for stooges and used their equipment for free).
They came just after supper time...and she was the rudest most obnoxious person I have met in ages... maybe ever. She kept asking me to give her stuff, she wanted one of my benches...her reasoning was, since I had two I could give her one...then she wanted me to make her some chairs for her patio table...then she asked me for cuttings from nearly every plant in the yard...and they both asked if we had vegetables from the garden yet...they would love to have some lettuce....and finally she harassed Robt about giving her his grandfathers stool that he used to sit on in his work shop in Edmonton. It's a hundred years old and partially broken, it sits out under the covered part of the deck with a planter on it. She wanted it, it's broken she says you can't sit on it...you should give it to me...and Robt kept saying no but she wouldn't drop it. She insulted our dogs...in front of us, saying they were gross and lumpy and that we should get rid of them and get a new one... we gave them tea and cake on the deck...(thank God Robt never invited them inside) when they finally left...she sarcastically said in a Soto voice, THANKS FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY. After they drove out of the yard...I went inside and said to Robt..." does it make me a bad person if I have the over whelming urge to lock the doors and check my pockets...." . Not so oddly, he had the same feeling. We kept the gates to our yard locked for over a week. It was a pain in the ass but it made us feel somewhat more in control. Geesh, the nerve of some people....
Robt had a bad day last week...we had just bought some windshield wipers for our dodge Dakota farm truck and he went to the garage to replace the old ones...lifting the wiper arm away from the windshield, it is suppose to stay in place when it is brought perpendicular to the window....but after removing the old wiper , the arm snapped back into position against the glass and since there was no wiper part, just the metal bracket it snaps into....it broke the windshield...in a surprisingly spectacular way....and it is spidering out in a hundred different directions....Oh Dear.... Robt was in shock at it happening...and when he first came outside to tell me I didn't believe him...but when I saw for myself the damage....Damn....why does this shit always happen to us....hahahahaha Cost of a new windshield was not as much as we at first imagined it would be but 255. + install is bad enough...
Robt has had a head cold the past few days... and we had to cancel a dinner invitation because he was so poorly. I don't know what it is about men when they get sick...they act like little babies... Mine, just goes useless like a limp dish rag...he just sleeps, and heaves big sighs...moans and groans...and won't bother eating unless I make him soup and butter his crackers.
Oddly though when I get sick I still have to do the cooking, and I don't get time to lay in bed all day in peace, he's coming in and out of the house, asking where this or that is or using the phone and getting people on the other end to phone him back with parts numbers or prices and then leaves the house so that I have to answer the damned thing or at the least be woke up by the ringing.
When he was sick, I either quietly read in another room, or went outside to work and leave him in peace....
He was getting up during the night to blow his nose or cough up phlegm...and turns the overhead light on in the bedroom, runs the water in the en suite, opening and closing drawers and slamming the fridge door...and walking in his usual heavy way...waking me up at 3 am , then he falls back to sleep in a Tylenol stupor and I am awake the rest of night... By the third night the Murphy bed was looking pretty inviting...
So Friday night we had a dinner invitation with our friends who are about to leave on a 5 week road trip to Ontario to visit family, and I was looking forward to getting out and visiting with some one besides Robt after three weeks of near solitude. But at noon Friday he comes wandering into the house all tuckered out and limp again, says hes not feeling so great again and thinks we should cancel....What can I say....if he's sick he's sick...I was disappointed but shit happens right....
He calls and makes his apologies...for us not coming that evening...we had lunch then and after wards I expected him to go lay down for a rest...but he surprised me by saying he was going to go cutting hay...and he did...until 11 pm... so apparently he wasn't as sick as I was lead to believe...or he had a miraculous recovery over lunch.. Today it's raining cats and dogs and he wanted to go to his brothers...but I mentioned that he was still contagious and it wouldn't be good to go around spreading his germs... so we stayed home...
Really, do I look as stupid as he seems to think I am.
enough said....
I know you are all shocked right, my Robt, he's such a nice, kind, gentle guy...HA I will quote the old adage about a mile, and my shoes...
June 25, 2012
Well Howdy, I know, I know it's been forever since I wrote something down on here...I have no excuse other than life gets in the way.
Now that Robt has realized I am not going to die tomorrow after all he is back to working me like a slave. While he was doing the last of his spring seeding last week I was given the task of taking down an old barbed wire fence that has been standing or a better descriptive would be, not standing, since the 1940's. no kidding. Old twisted tamarack posts and weird old kinds of barbed wire...rusted and repaired again and again. Ant hills galore...red ants to be more specific...nasty angry little red bastards...the first day I was bitten three times, the second day only once....lessons not wasted on me, you can see. Rule # 1 - don't hang on to the post too long....
Rule # 2 - don't stand in one place too long.
Rule # 3 - tuck your pants into your socks.
I had to wear a pair of Robts heavy leather gloves to protect my hands from the barbs on the wire....Robt insisted... and I got a huge blister the first day from the gloves seam rubbing on my thumb...
First I had to remove the staple from the first wire...which entails walking along the fence for a 1/4 mile pulling out staples, some of which, seemed like they had been there since the time of moses...while carrying a pail to put the staples into once I got them out of the tamarack posts...hahahaha easy enough to begin with but by the time I was on the last wire the pail was getting pretty heavy...once the staple were removed from that first wire I could unwind it from the last post and start rolling it up...the first one I made the circle too small and had to hold the roll up for the whole 1/4 mile...it got fricking heavy, necessity being the mother of invention, but I think laziness was actually the real reason, I started the next wire in a much bigger circle and then after I got it going a few dozen feet I could sit it on the ground and without bending over too much could just roll it along while winding up the strung out wire...I had to do that four different times until the wire was all rolled up...then I could take the tractor and with a chain on the loader, could attach it to each post and pull them out one at a time... 173 posts were pulled out....then I got to load the wire into the truck and take it to the dump for recycling...and the posts we both loaded into our old truck and hauled them home to pile them on a garbage wood pile which we will burn this winter....
This fence has been an eye sore for years and the field looks so much better with it gone...Robt plowed up the spot and seeded it down...even the neighbour said how much better it looked and was impressed that we worked so hard on a shitty chore.....
We had a couple of rainy day a while ago and I managed to finish my painting from January.
I have to admit I am luke warm about this one...it is based on a sketch I drew during the winter while waiting for Robt in the barn. The sketch is based on our own Dry Lake just south of the house...that last summer with all the rain, had water in it for the first time in ten years... I had problems with the stormy looking sky...but managed to turn it around and drag it up to respectable, just....
I am going to start another painting soon...and am not building furniture right now...just busy driving tractor and fencing...soon haying will start.
Ayla Graduated last month and looks spectacular in her gown...we are so proud.
Now that Robt has realized I am not going to die tomorrow after all he is back to working me like a slave. While he was doing the last of his spring seeding last week I was given the task of taking down an old barbed wire fence that has been standing or a better descriptive would be, not standing, since the 1940's. no kidding. Old twisted tamarack posts and weird old kinds of barbed wire...rusted and repaired again and again. Ant hills galore...red ants to be more specific...nasty angry little red bastards...the first day I was bitten three times, the second day only once....lessons not wasted on me, you can see. Rule # 1 - don't hang on to the post too long....
Rule # 2 - don't stand in one place too long.
Rule # 3 - tuck your pants into your socks.
I had to wear a pair of Robts heavy leather gloves to protect my hands from the barbs on the wire....Robt insisted... and I got a huge blister the first day from the gloves seam rubbing on my thumb...
First I had to remove the staple from the first wire...which entails walking along the fence for a 1/4 mile pulling out staples, some of which, seemed like they had been there since the time of moses...while carrying a pail to put the staples into once I got them out of the tamarack posts...hahahaha easy enough to begin with but by the time I was on the last wire the pail was getting pretty heavy...once the staple were removed from that first wire I could unwind it from the last post and start rolling it up...the first one I made the circle too small and had to hold the roll up for the whole 1/4 mile...it got fricking heavy, necessity being the mother of invention, but I think laziness was actually the real reason, I started the next wire in a much bigger circle and then after I got it going a few dozen feet I could sit it on the ground and without bending over too much could just roll it along while winding up the strung out wire...I had to do that four different times until the wire was all rolled up...then I could take the tractor and with a chain on the loader, could attach it to each post and pull them out one at a time... 173 posts were pulled out....then I got to load the wire into the truck and take it to the dump for recycling...and the posts we both loaded into our old truck and hauled them home to pile them on a garbage wood pile which we will burn this winter....
This fence has been an eye sore for years and the field looks so much better with it gone...Robt plowed up the spot and seeded it down...even the neighbour said how much better it looked and was impressed that we worked so hard on a shitty chore.....
We had a couple of rainy day a while ago and I managed to finish my painting from January.
I am going to start another painting soon...and am not building furniture right now...just busy driving tractor and fencing...soon haying will start.
Ayla Graduated last month and looks spectacular in her gown...we are so proud.
May 16, 2012
No half measures
The first posting for a while that I don't have a new piece of furniture to brag about. I have taken a break from carpentry, mostly because my hands were getting to crippled and Robt put his foot down...about taking so many ibprofen...It was getting a bit ridiculous. So a break, let my fingers straighten out and work again and we'll see.
I am working my way through a very, very long list of chores around the yard I need to do...I make myself these lists to help me focus and prioritise...anal I know but it works for me...so I go down the list and by the time the snow flies I have about 2/3's done. not bad. I notice I am slowing down, no more super woman stunts..unless you want to count the perfect 10 point dive I took out of the behemoth tractor yesterday....I climbed into this big boy around 2 pm yesterday and bounced and chattered my way across a 40 acre field in two directions until about 9 pm... the cab of this tractor is about 15 feet off the ground and age has the better of it. the seat is shot and bounces up and down like a one of those Bogey cars the pimps drive around Harlem...my feet barely touch the ground and I have to stretch one leg out to the bar on the door to brace myself and avoid concussion when my head bounces off the sides of the cab...not even kidding. Going in one direction on the stubble field is okay, smooth...but then you turn and go across that swath to completely break up the soil...it's that direction that just kills me...
The air conditioner does NOT work and it was 26 degrees here yesterday....there is a window that opens but it just sucks dirt inside...I drank water like a lunatic but never once had to climb out and pee...so the heat was good for something....because I don't know if I could have gotten back in after getting down. Needless to say by around 7 pm I was making deals with the devil, God, you name it....to just let me hang on long enough to finish.... the worst part was I could see Robt, leisurely walking around the barn yard feeding grain etc.....and I wanted to throttle him.... I feel he sometimes takes advantage....and he argues, that I could have quit anytime....
Oh, he doesn't really know me even after 19 years of married life...I never quit half way through anything. It is why I am so desperate to get off the farm...I know that as long as we stay here I will be working my ass off. I tried to do very little the first couple years I was supposedly sick and the whole place went to rack and ruin....He admits he can't do it on his own and we don't make enough money to pay someone a wage. so there it is....
any way I digress, when I went to finally get out of this chamber of torture...my knees were so weak and sore...my neck was paralyzed and I was in a foul mood.....I stepped out onto the top rung of the ladder, which is perforated ,my shoe caught on the roughness and I lost my balance, leaned against the handle grip of the door and its gargantuan weight swung me out with the door and off the steps completely...I ricocheted off the 7 ft tall dual tires and landed on the ground on my right butt cheek and elbow....I was laughing so hard I couldn't cry...I did that this morning when I went to get out of bed and couldn't move...hahahahah no tractor work for me today...and I managed to put a believable enough pouty face on to con Rbt. into helping me plant my baby spruce trees since it was a cooler cloudy day....
I have to go nurse my pasta sauce and start the spaghetti to boil...whip up a salad and eat....
I am working my way through a very, very long list of chores around the yard I need to do...I make myself these lists to help me focus and prioritise...anal I know but it works for me...so I go down the list and by the time the snow flies I have about 2/3's done. not bad. I notice I am slowing down, no more super woman stunts..unless you want to count the perfect 10 point dive I took out of the behemoth tractor yesterday....I climbed into this big boy around 2 pm yesterday and bounced and chattered my way across a 40 acre field in two directions until about 9 pm... the cab of this tractor is about 15 feet off the ground and age has the better of it. the seat is shot and bounces up and down like a one of those Bogey cars the pimps drive around Harlem...my feet barely touch the ground and I have to stretch one leg out to the bar on the door to brace myself and avoid concussion when my head bounces off the sides of the cab...not even kidding. Going in one direction on the stubble field is okay, smooth...but then you turn and go across that swath to completely break up the soil...it's that direction that just kills me...
The air conditioner does NOT work and it was 26 degrees here yesterday....there is a window that opens but it just sucks dirt inside...I drank water like a lunatic but never once had to climb out and pee...so the heat was good for something....because I don't know if I could have gotten back in after getting down. Needless to say by around 7 pm I was making deals with the devil, God, you name it....to just let me hang on long enough to finish.... the worst part was I could see Robt, leisurely walking around the barn yard feeding grain etc.....and I wanted to throttle him.... I feel he sometimes takes advantage....and he argues, that I could have quit anytime....
Oh, he doesn't really know me even after 19 years of married life...I never quit half way through anything. It is why I am so desperate to get off the farm...I know that as long as we stay here I will be working my ass off. I tried to do very little the first couple years I was supposedly sick and the whole place went to rack and ruin....He admits he can't do it on his own and we don't make enough money to pay someone a wage. so there it is....
any way I digress, when I went to finally get out of this chamber of torture...my knees were so weak and sore...my neck was paralyzed and I was in a foul mood.....I stepped out onto the top rung of the ladder, which is perforated ,my shoe caught on the roughness and I lost my balance, leaned against the handle grip of the door and its gargantuan weight swung me out with the door and off the steps completely...I ricocheted off the 7 ft tall dual tires and landed on the ground on my right butt cheek and elbow....I was laughing so hard I couldn't cry...I did that this morning when I went to get out of bed and couldn't move...hahahahah no tractor work for me today...and I managed to put a believable enough pouty face on to con Rbt. into helping me plant my baby spruce trees since it was a cooler cloudy day....
I have to go nurse my pasta sauce and start the spaghetti to boil...whip up a salad and eat....
May 13, 2012
Floored
I was floored on Friday at the doctors. He gave me the Golden handshake after dropping a bomb shell on me... The MRI that I traumatized myself for live going to have, showed I have no Cancer (that's awesome news) but I didn't know we had been looking for any....but apparently I glowed...arthritis shows up as light spots on the images...and every joint in my body glowed...hahahaha that was no news to me, since I was well aware of it on one of my BAD days... but he said that the MRI guy that interprets the pictures and writes the report...said and I have a copy right here in front of me...that this patient shows signs of severe osteo-arthritis in nearly all spinal discs but that some of them are deteriorated so badly that there are pieces missing...they are sending me to a spinal surgeon...( that should take a year or two of waiting for that appointment).... anyway, he suggested cortisone shots in the spine to numb the pain and as it progresses they can go in a kill the nerves in the worst areas so there is no sensation in that spot...but that, for me would have to be a last resort... In the mean time, lifestyle change was highly recommended and a modification of work and hobbies to cause the least amount of wear and tear on the joints, especially my back and neck...which were the worst areas affected.
So I finished my armoire for the deck... and before I could get a photo taken R had it half full of his gear, which I what I built it for but it makes for a lousy picture...but here goes...
So I finished my armoire for the deck... and before I could get a photo taken R had it half full of his gear, which I what I built it for but it makes for a lousy picture...but here goes...
May 6, 2012
I am so far behind on this blogging thing, it's debatable whether I should even bother anymore....
I have been busy putting together an armoire cabinet for out on the deck to store Robts over alls and muddy boots in rather than stare at them in thier usual heap while we dine al fresco.....It has become some what of a challenge to build this thing...5 1/2 ft tall and 5 ft long, shelves on one side, hangers on the other with two doors, completely out of barn wood..with no raw edges showing.
I have a whole new appreciation for those furniture makers and crafty folks who do barn wood creations with no cut edges showing...geesh...it's not as easy as it looks.
Very stressful actually, to get it all right the first time, no wrong cuts because there is only so much of this wood around.
Any way I'm nearly done and will post pictures of course when it is finished... In the mean time, because we all know I can't just sit still and take it easy, I whipped up a couple of more stools, the first one I made (white) was lonely. so now he has companions....these things are so strong...I can sit on the and wiggle around and there is no moaning, groaning or creaking....I am impressed with the design. I made the seats a wee bit bigger than was in the plan because I wanted both my butt cheeks to have something to rest on....hahahaha Robt uses one as a side table while sitting in the recliner and the seat is big enough that it's just the right size for a table top....hahahahah what does that say about my ass....hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah that cracks me up....
I have been busy putting together an armoire cabinet for out on the deck to store Robts over alls and muddy boots in rather than stare at them in thier usual heap while we dine al fresco.....It has become some what of a challenge to build this thing...5 1/2 ft tall and 5 ft long, shelves on one side, hangers on the other with two doors, completely out of barn wood..with no raw edges showing.
I have a whole new appreciation for those furniture makers and crafty folks who do barn wood creations with no cut edges showing...geesh...it's not as easy as it looks.
Very stressful actually, to get it all right the first time, no wrong cuts because there is only so much of this wood around.
Any way I'm nearly done and will post pictures of course when it is finished... In the mean time, because we all know I can't just sit still and take it easy, I whipped up a couple of more stools, the first one I made (white) was lonely. so now he has companions....these things are so strong...I can sit on the and wiggle around and there is no moaning, groaning or creaking....I am impressed with the design. I made the seats a wee bit bigger than was in the plan because I wanted both my butt cheeks to have something to rest on....hahahaha Robt uses one as a side table while sitting in the recliner and the seat is big enough that it's just the right size for a table top....hahahahah what does that say about my ass....hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah that cracks me up....
April 25, 2012
The AYLA cabinet
Well I finally finished the little cabinet I was making. Both R and I are more than happy with the way it turned out, we are especially enamoured of the colour I eventually settled on, and it only took the purchase of three seperate litres of paint to find the right colour. Due to my chickening out at the last minute...but I would have been money ahead had I just sticked with my gut and gone with the original colour that caught my eye on the paint card.
Called STILL WATERS, we are thinking of painting a few walls this colour too, maybe our whole bedroom.
You might notice that there are no fancy legs on this cabinet like I mentions origially, we bought them but were not happy with the flimsy way they attached to the outside rib of the cabinet, and when stood on the legs the weight of the cabinet made it seem very wobbly and precarious. So for the time being we turned it into a floor model and I like it very much... Inside the double doors are two shelves, where I store my Wii attachments, photo albums and binoculours. LOVE IT, LOVE it...love it....heee heee heee... 50+ yrs old and still able to surprise myself...not bad for an old brawd....
I am quickly whipping up a pair of stools to turn my single one into a trio... and then I will begin cutting planks for the outdoor armoir I want for storing rain coats and winter boots in on the deck...
Incase I didn't post a completed picture of my awesome X Bench here it is, all polyurethaned and sanded it feels like glass and is great to sit on...
Called STILL WATERS, we are thinking of painting a few walls this colour too, maybe our whole bedroom.
You might notice that there are no fancy legs on this cabinet like I mentions origially, we bought them but were not happy with the flimsy way they attached to the outside rib of the cabinet, and when stood on the legs the weight of the cabinet made it seem very wobbly and precarious. So for the time being we turned it into a floor model and I like it very much... Inside the double doors are two shelves, where I store my Wii attachments, photo albums and binoculours. LOVE IT, LOVE it...love it....heee heee heee... 50+ yrs old and still able to surprise myself...not bad for an old brawd....
I am quickly whipping up a pair of stools to turn my single one into a trio... and then I will begin cutting planks for the outdoor armoir I want for storing rain coats and winter boots in on the deck...
Incase I didn't post a completed picture of my awesome X Bench here it is, all polyurethaned and sanded it feels like glass and is great to sit on...
April 14, 2012
Wholely Hell
It's snowing here again, our brief taste of spring lasted two whole days... and boy was it nice, shirt sleeves and runners, yes it had dried up that much. But now, it is back to parkas, lined gloves and insulated rubber boots because it is MUDDY ! !
I trudge my way up to the small heated room in our barn where I assemble all my projects...my latest is a small dresser/cabinet called THE AYLA CABINET, no kidding that really is its name, so of course I just had to build it.
Originally the lady built it to house her daughters doll house and furniture...but I added an extra shelf and it will be home to I don't know what yet...
It has certainly been challenging, using plywood for some of the sides and such, I had a heart attack when I went to buy the plywood...I went there wanting to get sanded both sides pine but it was nearly $ 90. so I cheaped out, much to Robts relief and bought just construction grade....I regret that now, it is put together, it would have looked so much more fine with good plywood...I can sand some of the divots out and fill some others but in the end it looks a bit rough. Oh well, it's just peasant furniture after all...
It was made to add fancy turned legs on the end of the 2 x 2 corner pieces but I had trouble finding any with a 2 x 2 square top so we settled for round and I am not liking the transition...too late now, since I have glued and doweled them on.... I committed my myself to a colour too....a light sea foam/ turquoise that I thought looked kind of retro-ish.... I will of course distress the edges and what have you and I splurged on something I have wanted for years and years....small fancy glass pulls for the two doors and the drawer...they are lovely...and so girly...Robt was surprised I didn't go for some old antique looking brass monstrosity...but I envisioned this cabinet being very feminine... so if I can improve the look of the leg transition from square to round...I will be very excited about how it turned out...in spite of nearly pulling my hair out installing the damned drawer sliders...there has to be a simple trick to that, that I just wasn't seeing...but I prevailed in the end...stubbornness pays off at last.
I hope to have all the doors hung by end of tomorrow and will take an unfinished picture, before beginning the priming and painting stage... so stay tuned...
Poor Robt goes for his age 55+ routine colonoscopy on Thursday. He has never had surgery or any procedure of any kind done and if he acts the way he does when forced to go to the dentist I may drug him up myself and wear a disguise...he is abrupt and uncommunicative to the point of rudeness. so I plan to have lots to do up in the barn after I drive him home and he can whimper and gripe all he wants after the ordeal... like he does to me...
I trudge my way up to the small heated room in our barn where I assemble all my projects...my latest is a small dresser/cabinet called THE AYLA CABINET, no kidding that really is its name, so of course I just had to build it.
Originally the lady built it to house her daughters doll house and furniture...but I added an extra shelf and it will be home to I don't know what yet...
It has certainly been challenging, using plywood for some of the sides and such, I had a heart attack when I went to buy the plywood...I went there wanting to get sanded both sides pine but it was nearly $ 90. so I cheaped out, much to Robts relief and bought just construction grade....I regret that now, it is put together, it would have looked so much more fine with good plywood...I can sand some of the divots out and fill some others but in the end it looks a bit rough. Oh well, it's just peasant furniture after all...
It was made to add fancy turned legs on the end of the 2 x 2 corner pieces but I had trouble finding any with a 2 x 2 square top so we settled for round and I am not liking the transition...too late now, since I have glued and doweled them on.... I committed my myself to a colour too....a light sea foam/ turquoise that I thought looked kind of retro-ish.... I will of course distress the edges and what have you and I splurged on something I have wanted for years and years....small fancy glass pulls for the two doors and the drawer...they are lovely...and so girly...Robt was surprised I didn't go for some old antique looking brass monstrosity...but I envisioned this cabinet being very feminine... so if I can improve the look of the leg transition from square to round...I will be very excited about how it turned out...in spite of nearly pulling my hair out installing the damned drawer sliders...there has to be a simple trick to that, that I just wasn't seeing...but I prevailed in the end...stubbornness pays off at last.
I hope to have all the doors hung by end of tomorrow and will take an unfinished picture, before beginning the priming and painting stage... so stay tuned...
Poor Robt goes for his age 55+ routine colonoscopy on Thursday. He has never had surgery or any procedure of any kind done and if he acts the way he does when forced to go to the dentist I may drug him up myself and wear a disguise...he is abrupt and uncommunicative to the point of rudeness. so I plan to have lots to do up in the barn after I drive him home and he can whimper and gripe all he wants after the ordeal... like he does to me...
April 5, 2012
Moan and Groan
I gots a sick tummy.
The new med. I just started is making me feel bad. I will endure, because I think the benefits at this point out weigh the negatives..so far anyway. hahaha
The weather man was threatening another huge winter storm for Alberta and our area appeared to big smack dab in the middle of the worst of it. But we woke this morning to a light snow and brisk winds but so far nothing, now they are saying that the snow will stop in early afternoon and Robert is a happy man...He hates the snow.. understandably, since it causes him much more work when it snows..but we both generally dislike the muck and grim and wet mess of it.
Robert made a quick trip into town yesterday and chose to stay home...I worked in my wood shed, assembling two more simple benches that I had cut the pieces for a few days ago...I have to leave them in the barn to dry out a bit before I paint them, since the wood was damp from the last snow we had a few days ago....that is the downfall of this being a new hobby, I haven't quite got the logistics worked out....and I am reluctant to make to many commitments because it is just a hobby, who knows , this time next month I could be into rock polishing...or jewellery making...hahahah not likely but you get my drift...
I would love to take up welding....hard to do since we only have an antique welder that cost a fortune to just turn it on...the new ones run on oxygen...and cut like a laser.... I would do metal sculpture if I could...I have this vision in my head of a beautiful tree with all its limbs and twigs..and bark...and I would use it to hang my twinkle lights...and it would never rot, fall over or break...
Robert bought me a pair of wood clamps the other day...they were on sale and he surprised me with them....Oh My God, where have they been all my life... I have only ever had the old, screw clamps that are ancient and are hard to turn the threaded cog...with arthritic fingers...so these new clamps are heaven...you just pull the trigger like a water pistol and voila it tightens up and holds like a hot damn... I'm in love ...with Robert of course but there are two new men in my life as well... twins, left and right Pro-grade Clamp....
Wow, I'm wood working in this century finally...hahahahaha I have to be careful what I ooh and awe over because Robert wants to buy it for me and I'm weak and will let him, when I know we can't afford it...so now I walk into the hardware store, get what I went for and walk out...after paying of course...I have to appear indifferent...and it's soooooooo hard.
The new med. I just started is making me feel bad. I will endure, because I think the benefits at this point out weigh the negatives..so far anyway. hahaha
The weather man was threatening another huge winter storm for Alberta and our area appeared to big smack dab in the middle of the worst of it. But we woke this morning to a light snow and brisk winds but so far nothing, now they are saying that the snow will stop in early afternoon and Robert is a happy man...He hates the snow.. understandably, since it causes him much more work when it snows..but we both generally dislike the muck and grim and wet mess of it.
Robert made a quick trip into town yesterday and chose to stay home...I worked in my wood shed, assembling two more simple benches that I had cut the pieces for a few days ago...I have to leave them in the barn to dry out a bit before I paint them, since the wood was damp from the last snow we had a few days ago....that is the downfall of this being a new hobby, I haven't quite got the logistics worked out....and I am reluctant to make to many commitments because it is just a hobby, who knows , this time next month I could be into rock polishing...or jewellery making...hahahah not likely but you get my drift...
I would love to take up welding....hard to do since we only have an antique welder that cost a fortune to just turn it on...the new ones run on oxygen...and cut like a laser.... I would do metal sculpture if I could...I have this vision in my head of a beautiful tree with all its limbs and twigs..and bark...and I would use it to hang my twinkle lights...and it would never rot, fall over or break...
Robert bought me a pair of wood clamps the other day...they were on sale and he surprised me with them....Oh My God, where have they been all my life... I have only ever had the old, screw clamps that are ancient and are hard to turn the threaded cog...with arthritic fingers...so these new clamps are heaven...you just pull the trigger like a water pistol and voila it tightens up and holds like a hot damn... I'm in love ...with Robert of course but there are two new men in my life as well... twins, left and right Pro-grade Clamp....
April 1, 2012
The best one so far... says Robert
Robert likes this bench so much he asked me the day I finished it, to build another one ... a wedding gift for a niece this spring.
I want to make one and try to sell it.... but have no idea what price to set for it. Any ideas ?
This bench was pretty easy to make too...of course I probably shouldn't tell you that...Robt says it is because I am getting better at doing them that it is getting easier...or seems like it is.
We vaccinated the cows yesterday, to keep them and their babies healthy for the summer...the cow gets the vaccine, she builds antibodies in her blood and milk and passes the antibodies on to the calf...
The whole process of working the cattle is a misery this time of the year...rarely is it ever dry enough to wear regular shoes...yesterday, we needed hip waders... after disturbing the ground last fall with our corral re-construction it was very soft, add to that a foot of snow melting on it and a hundred + cows churning it up and by the half way point it had gone from mud to muck to eventually soup...and that's the point at which I belly flopped (nearly) in the deepest hole...and then a cow came after me....before Robt could intervene...I was plastered up against the metal panel with my right foot up and between the rest of me and the cows head...apparently she took exception to my using her fecal matter as a bath product hahahahaha
She chickened out before she did too much damage...and by the time Robt got close ..I was pretty livid...I put up my hand in the STOP motion and told him to not say a word....that if he could drag me out here to do this crappy (pun intended) work again (I did get a few years reprieve when I was told I was ill) then I was going to do all the work like I used to ..not just the fluff stuff...
we tried leaving all the work on his shoulders and he couldn't keep up, it takes more than two but two is all we have so, so be it...but two of us WILL be doing the work and if he doesn't like it he knows what he can do about....call a truck to haul the cattle to auction...it would alleviate 60 % of our work load...and free up the winter months...
We have to work the cattle in the mud again in 10 days to sort them for breeding groups...certain cows go to certain bulls sort of thing...then again in May we have to separate the babies and run them through the barn for their vaccinations... and then they all get walked up the road to our other land in early June...and then.......drum roll please...we get 2 months of nearly cow free time...all we have to do is take salt and make sure the batteries of the solar waterers are charged...and move them to new pasture every couple of weeks...which means opening a gate or two...
I love this time of year.... I got a rash and itch from spending a few hours with all that manure and mud seeping through my clothes while we finished the cattle work...and the sun block I decided to put on after getting a bit of a burn on my face two days before while hoof trimming the cows...gave me an allergic reaction and by 8 pm last night when I got to come in and shower...I had welts on my face and it was on fire....I vaguely remember there was a reason I don't wear sunblock ......but I remember now... NO Sunblock. this stuff was the stuff made for kids with allergies...too...so so much for that...theory.
I want to make one and try to sell it.... but have no idea what price to set for it. Any ideas ?
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| before I stained it |
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| after I stained it |
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| here's proof I actually made it |
This bench was pretty easy to make too...of course I probably shouldn't tell you that...Robt says it is because I am getting better at doing them that it is getting easier...or seems like it is.
We vaccinated the cows yesterday, to keep them and their babies healthy for the summer...the cow gets the vaccine, she builds antibodies in her blood and milk and passes the antibodies on to the calf...
The whole process of working the cattle is a misery this time of the year...rarely is it ever dry enough to wear regular shoes...yesterday, we needed hip waders... after disturbing the ground last fall with our corral re-construction it was very soft, add to that a foot of snow melting on it and a hundred + cows churning it up and by the half way point it had gone from mud to muck to eventually soup...and that's the point at which I belly flopped (nearly) in the deepest hole...and then a cow came after me....before Robt could intervene...I was plastered up against the metal panel with my right foot up and between the rest of me and the cows head...apparently she took exception to my using her fecal matter as a bath product hahahahaha
She chickened out before she did too much damage...and by the time Robt got close ..I was pretty livid...I put up my hand in the STOP motion and told him to not say a word....that if he could drag me out here to do this crappy (pun intended) work again (I did get a few years reprieve when I was told I was ill) then I was going to do all the work like I used to ..not just the fluff stuff...
we tried leaving all the work on his shoulders and he couldn't keep up, it takes more than two but two is all we have so, so be it...but two of us WILL be doing the work and if he doesn't like it he knows what he can do about....call a truck to haul the cattle to auction...it would alleviate 60 % of our work load...and free up the winter months...
We have to work the cattle in the mud again in 10 days to sort them for breeding groups...certain cows go to certain bulls sort of thing...then again in May we have to separate the babies and run them through the barn for their vaccinations... and then they all get walked up the road to our other land in early June...and then.......drum roll please...we get 2 months of nearly cow free time...all we have to do is take salt and make sure the batteries of the solar waterers are charged...and move them to new pasture every couple of weeks...which means opening a gate or two...
I love this time of year.... I got a rash and itch from spending a few hours with all that manure and mud seeping through my clothes while we finished the cattle work...and the sun block I decided to put on after getting a bit of a burn on my face two days before while hoof trimming the cows...gave me an allergic reaction and by 8 pm last night when I got to come in and shower...I had welts on my face and it was on fire....I vaguely remember there was a reason I don't wear sunblock ......but I remember now... NO Sunblock. this stuff was the stuff made for kids with allergies...too...so so much for that...theory.
March 25, 2012
Another Challenge Met
So, here is the little stool I mentioned the other day. Stained, painted and Polyurethaned to within an inch of its little life...smooth like glass to the touch, with just that little touch of distress to make it looked used and loved.This so far is Roberts favorite thing I've made. he has already used it twice the first day to sit at the kitchen counter and listen to the weather on the radio...you have to sit close because the signal is weak...
It is 24 inches tall in total and as solidly built as a tank...I sit on it and wiggle around, it doesn't creak, groan or squeek.
I hope to build more of these...I have a couple of people in need of a good stool, whom I like enough to gift them with one....Roberts looking at me funny when I write that part...geez...he wants me to sell everything no more giving things away for free... Well I'll leave it up to him to find some smuck to pay $75. for a stool...that's what he thinks its worth....Oh God, I've created a monster....
Any way here it is and I like it....
March 23, 2012
Shyte !!!
It's snowing here like there's no tomorrow....started yesterday afternoon while we were in the city for my mam/bone density appointment...we chose to cut the day short (which means no shopping) and head home...I did manage to finaggle a quick stop at a Home Depot store for a few pieces of planed lumber to build a couple more stools but other than that it was straight home...the roads were bad and here at home we had about 6 inches on the ground already.
It continued to snow all night and this morning when we went up to the barn I was shovelling at least 8-10 inches off the sidewalk and it's STILL snowing.
We are going to brave the roads once more though and take some trash to the dump and pick up two parcels at the post office... and some oil for the tractor...
Hope the snow stops soon... and am glad to hear that Ayla is having a grand time in Mexico...inspite of having to pee in the bath tub..hahahahaha
It continued to snow all night and this morning when we went up to the barn I was shovelling at least 8-10 inches off the sidewalk and it's STILL snowing.
We are going to brave the roads once more though and take some trash to the dump and pick up two parcels at the post office... and some oil for the tractor...
Hope the snow stops soon... and am glad to hear that Ayla is having a grand time in Mexico...inspite of having to pee in the bath tub..hahahahaha
March 20, 2012
The Unveiling
Well here it is ....my massive comfy garden bench, built entirely from salvaged 2 x 6 fence planks from the junk pile, mortise and tenon joinery and a shit load of sanding, sanding and more sanding. FYI, I am not in love with the Jacobean stain colour but we bought it, so I used it. Three coats of Polyurethane to protect it from the elements and voila.....it is ready to sit out in my yard beneath the pine trees so I can sit, eat my lunch and enjoy the antics of the squirrel chasing the blue jays over the dwindling number of sunflower seeds in the feeder.
I have moved on to building a pair of stools...like bar stools only not so tall...I have them together and today my big mission is to cut the two 15 in. diameter circles out of two 2 x 10's laminated together, with the jig saw.... then sanding and more sanding and I can paint them. pictures to follow of course. Then I want to make a pair of side tables for out on the deck... and so on and so on....
March 17, 2012
Can't argue with Science
After having dug to a depth of 10 feet last year outside of Vancouver BC. scientists found traces of copper cable dating back 100 years. They came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 100 years ago.
Not to be outdone by Vancouver, in the weeks that followed, a Toronto Ontario archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet somewhere just outside Trenton. Shortly after, a story in the Toronto Sun read: " Toronto archaeologists report a finding of 200 year old copper cable, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network 100 years earlier than Vancouver."
One week later, a local newspaper in Yorkton, Saskatchewan reported the following: " After digging down about 30 feet deep in his pasture near the community of Springside, farmer Bob, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing. Bob has therefore concluded that 300 years ago, Saskatchewan had already gone wireless."
written by Lee Hart, this appeared in the Grainews magazine march 12.
Both Robt and I had a good laugh over this...and I thought I would share...
Not to be outdone by Vancouver, in the weeks that followed, a Toronto Ontario archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet somewhere just outside Trenton. Shortly after, a story in the Toronto Sun read: " Toronto archaeologists report a finding of 200 year old copper cable, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network 100 years earlier than Vancouver."
One week later, a local newspaper in Yorkton, Saskatchewan reported the following: " After digging down about 30 feet deep in his pasture near the community of Springside, farmer Bob, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing. Bob has therefore concluded that 300 years ago, Saskatchewan had already gone wireless."
written by Lee Hart, this appeared in the Grainews magazine march 12.
Both Robt and I had a good laugh over this...and I thought I would share...
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