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.
Splendor
October 29, 2012
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.
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