My Loving Spouse has dabbled in planting corn more than once, but this year he really threw his hoe in the ring/field. He ordered special sweet corn kernels to plant. He tilled the soil, planted two rows two weeks apart and watered it religiously.
I’m pretty sure it was that fact that I was the Queen of weeding and thinning, that gave this harvest its exceptional turn out. Sadly, for all my pumpkin loving fans, my pumpkin harvest was quite low this year. (Only 20 pumpkins…thank you, I do hear your collective ‘gasp’).
Imagine my delight to find these beauties when we were harvesting the corn. I love how my pumpkin vines creep and curl everywhere.
My Loving Corn Grower shared corn on the cob with friends and colleagues. We ate it. The chickens ate it. Charlie our Duck ate it.
When the black birds started to eat it, it was time to harvest the rest.
The Head Corn Grower becomes the head corn chopper. Taking off both ends.
I then took off the coarsest of the husks and begin filling quart sized freezer baggies. 6 ears to a bag and I label whether the corn came from the front row of the field which was planted later than the back row of the field, just incase we notice a difference when we start to eat it.
Our buckets overflow with husks and the corn cob ends.
Much to the delight of Agnes and Ike…nothing goes to waste. Yes, the summer flies are brutal on the cows.
We cease production at 84 ears.
Now the black birds are happy again, and we pull out a number of corn stalks daily and throw them over the fence to the cows.
I’ve tried to not write this post many times, but I have got to get it out of my head. Perhaps again, this post will someday help the children I love know me better when they are older.
My favorite sound is my children’s laughter.
I am a very poor speller.
I am the granddaughter of Jews who had to flee their home and country.
I’d rather work outside than inside.
I am uncomfortable around guns, it is what my oldest brother used to take his life. I am also grateful that My Loving Spouse knows how to use one.
I like cows better than cats.
My mom & dad were Betty and Joe. I have a lot of ‘Betty’ sayings in my head. Joe mostly said, “Keep your eye on the ball”, which is always good advice.
I am a good neighbor.
When this child needed a safe home, we gave him one.
When any of my kids (including this one) needed money, I would offer them a job. I believe the empowerment of earning one’s own cash is important. I guess that makes me a capitalist.
The people I know want a good world for our children, even if we may not always agree on the road to get there.
When I was about 6 my brother told me the car lighter wasn’t hot and to put my finger in it. I learned to not trust what he said. Saying so doesn’t always make it true.
I don’t like being manipulated.
5 months ago, I began to listen to vast quantities of varied news channels, podcasts and daily researching the local news in many cities. I was prepared for bias. I wasn’t prepared for the absence of information. I wasn’t prepared for the media to say something wasn’t ‘hot’ because they said so. I believe if we truly want to be informed, not manipulated it takes listening and watching a lot of voices. Why do they cover some news and not others….and then say it wasn’t real?
I remember when people would say, “I may not agree with what you are saying, but I will fight for your right to say it.” I haven’t heard that in a long time.
Our country is divided. I didn’t vote for this President, but he won. What happened to the peaceful passing of power? I’ve heard people I care about say, it is okay to be rude about the president, because he is rude. Hmmm, Betty used to say, ‘two wrongs don’t make a right.’
I believe all lives matter. I was shocked when Black Lives Matter didn’t condemn the killing of the black teenager in CHOP in Seattle, I can be naive. Betty would say, “actions speak louder than words”.
I don’t like ‘do as I say, not as I do.’
I believe in tithing, whether I can go to my church or not.
I love Pinterest, seriously I really do. I know to not always believe what is written, especially if it says something like “Build a Paver Patio in Just One Day”. What I think they meant was, you can sign the check that pays the Pro to install a very tiny paver patio for you in one day.
What to do about the area between the wood shed, the pathway and the new back door has had us stumped for sometime.
Another path? Just weird.
Big concrete pad? Ugly, expensive and doesn’t go with the house.
Grass? Won’t grow right, more to mow and problem with snow removal.
We finally agree and decide on a used brick patio between the two buildings.
Day 1
We take out the old path and remove the first layer of dirt.
Day 3
We drive to Walla Walla to pick up about 900 used bricks ($400) at what really is a great price.
We take the ‘path less traveled’ on the way home driving thorough beautiful wheat fields being harvested and I nap. How to unload the bricks in one day? Call in for young, strong back up.
Day 4
The bricks are stacked and organized by kind and quality. I go back to removing dirt.
Day 6, 7, 8
The area is 12 1/2 X 19 feet and My Loving Spouse calculates we need to remove 7 1/2 inches over the entire area. The dirt needs to remain as compact as possible, so we do not use the rototiller. I dig out a lot of dirt.
Day 9, 10
Dig straight sides and figure out how to keep everything level. Buy plastic brick borders.
Day 11
Dirt removed I lay weed screen and feel that progress is beginning to be made. We start filling the area with the 2 inch layer of gravel prior to the 2 inch layer of sand.
Day 12
The gravel is sourced from our driveway. Wait! What? Actually, contrary to common belief, we do know what we are doing. The top coat of our driveway is the wrong kind of rock, which is another story, so we are re-purposing it.
My Loving Spouse comes home from Yard Sales with a gravel rake, it is just the tool we needed.
Day 13
We go buy paver sand for the base. We figure we need 15 bags. They say we need 90 at $5.39 a bag. They advise we use less sand and more gravel. We return home with 20 bags and begin removing more driveway and raking more gravel.
More gravel spreading….Bad British Word.
Day 14
Sooooo hot and humid, patio work comes to a halt. I try my hand at making some fun t-shirts for THE Granddaughter who loves her chickens.
Day 15
Yippee and Yee-haw, I begin laying brick.
Except….my small area of bricks use up one complete bag of sand over the gravel (nicely raked if I do say so myself). This cannot be right, this uses too much sand. I consult My Loving Spouse and it is determined that ‘Someone’ (see Day 7) calculated incorrectly and we/I have dug out an inch deeper than needed. (A moment of silence would be appropriate here).
Oh, bloody hell, there is only one thing to do…more gravel, less driveway more raking. Discuss when we will be ordering the correct gravel for the driveway.
Day 16
The brick laying now begins and I am the bricklayer, as I have the body parts for the job. No, not boobs, sheesh, bendable knees!
Day 17 begins by harvesting sand from nearby sandstone cliffs.
My Loving Spouse shovels loose sand into a bucket.
I cross the road with the bucket and dump it through the screen and into the tote and repeat about 20 times. The sand blowing into my face just adds to the fun.
Proper supervision….
Day 18
I start each of these days in lazy fashion, drinking coffee and reading my book. (Some might say this is nothing new). Then we harvest more sand and I am back on my knees. For each ‘line’ I try to use some of the broken bricks as I don’t want to end up at the end of the patio with only broken bricks left to finish the job.
My neighbors and My Loving Spouse keep me encouraged as the patio takes shape. Each evening I am sweaty and sandy. I take a shower, then enjoy a vodka grapefruit juice, because grapefruit is good for you….and some Advil.
Day 19
Day 20
We go harvest more sand. Each sand trip saves us about $100 a trip, plus we’re helping to keep sand off of the road. I always wear gloves.
What’s wrong with this picture?
My Loving Spouse keeps telling me it looks good and he’s proud of me, believe me this (and a dash of stubbornness) keeps me going.
Day 21
I am more than a tad excited that the rest of the job can be done standing up.
This Polymeric sand is key. It is suppose to bind together when damped and keep weeds and insects out of the cracks. Trust me, I do not want to be weeding a patio.
This job just blows….my mind.
It is not completely level or straight, but it has ‘old world charm’…and we love it.
When it comes to Dr. Who, I know close to nothing. If you are wondering what I just said, then you know less than me. (Dr. Who is a long running British Science Fiction show.) All my favorite nerds (which I only say with ‘love’, go ahead and roll your eyes). I don’t really know what the Tardis does. I do know however, that Number Two Son not only knows what it does, but loves Doctor Who and I love Number Two (a lot). So when a friend said to me, “Hey look at this Tardis on my phone, wouldn’t that make a great quilt pattern?”, I not only agreed, but began planning. Surprises are fun.
I used 3 inch blocks in blues for a creative replica of a Police Box/Tardis. These blocks end up with a fairly large quilt, but as Number Two is about 6’3″, that was okay.
I only used fabrics I had on hand, because Covid and shopping do not really go together. There was plenty of inspiration and ideas on Pinterest, which helped to get me started.
I ran out of room on my design wall, however I knew once I’d started sewing I would gain more space.
My Girl walked into my sewing room, while the Tardis was in production. She took one look at it and not only knew what it was, but knew exactly who it was for.
Quilting this on my machine was a tad daunting. I tried setting up a card table to help support the weight of the fabric and that was really helpful for moving the fabric around.
I stitched just off of the ditch on the Tardis itself.
The more I quilted the Tardis, the more fun I had.
Quilting each element of the Tardis in its own way.
Quilting is creative fun. Quilting for someone else is the very best kind of creative fun.
I learned a lot while working on the Tardis, no, not about Dr. Who, but about doing the quilting on my machine and how much fun it can be.
I told Number Two that I had a small surprise for him. His birthday is not until October, so there was no way I was going to wait…besides presents for no reason other than to say, ‘I love you’ are always the best.
We’ve been having a bit of a knees up around here, British slang for ‘party’. After all My Loving Spouse’s corn is up.
My breakfast is ‘Pinterest’ perfect. Greek yogurt, granola and straight off the cane raspberry’s.
…the work we’ve got planned on this hot August day requires I dress for the weather. I know, I know, one must have no shame to post these kind of photos…white legs, white socks, black sneakers….
Not everyone can carry this look off, but I am pretty sure I rock it. We (My Loving Spouse and I) have construction knees to put up today.
All four knees were hand cut by My Loving Spouse and I get to work slathering on the paint.
The spindles for the new porch railing arrived, so construction begins in earnest.
As I am in charge of painting, I am super glad the spindles came primed.
My Loving Spouse screws the knees to the corners and pronounces those fateful words, “we’ll caulk it.”
The porch railing is installed, the knees are up, we’ve stair railings to build, and a few hundred bricks to lay, but believe me, we’re loving the items we check off the list.
Benny and Jett are doing great. They’ve only gotten out once, (rookie mistake), and they really do only poop in one spot. They provide a fair amount of amusement daily.
Summer water is always important, especially for our cows. The more the grass grows, the more they have to eat or shall I say, the more we don’t have to feed them. Irrigation water comes to you when you neighbor is done with it. Making the most of our irrigation is important, so I began some research.
Keyline Design is a serious approach to water and compacted soil. Unfortunately, I do not have this cool tractor implement. I do however, have my fabulous old school edger.
I take to our pastures and let me tell you, this baby cuts through cow poop like a warm knife through butter.
Will it work? It can’t hurt. I am hopeful to make the most of all of our irrigation water.
My Loving Spouse misses the water or the ocean or sailing or adventure, adventure that is not fencing. So he took care of that…
The plan was to sail it on the Colombian river. This was a great plan because the river is only about 40 minutes away and I get sea sick, so we’re hopeful that I will be an excellent first mate, not puking my guts out.
Apparently, ‘she will sail’….if we can launch her.
Lola’s trial one… There is not a prayer of getting her in the water.
We come back at it with a loooonger extension and plans to get Lola in the water.
A lot more of Lola got wet, but not enough to sail her. My Loving Spouse is sad, but savy and he has Lola up for sale before you can say “Jack Robinson”. Lola is sold, the alpacas are happy and the irrigation is flowing…stay tuned, the summer is young.
Two young male alpacas, Benny (2) with the mutton chops and Jett (3) with the awesome hair-do. My Loving Spouse had his play list all ready and hit Elton John’s ‘Bennie and the Jets’ as we left the farm to pick them up. As Elton’s lyrics say, ‘our weird and wonderful’ new animals.
We had just recently discovered all the positives of alpacas.
Comedy
Hypo-allergenic fleece
Non-aggressive
Easy on fences (huge plus)
Eats almost any grass and weed and doesn’t need much
Weighs only about 150 pounds
The herd picks a spot and poops in it. Everyone, seriously!
Our dear old boys (horses) are really getting on in years and cannot be ridden. We are also getting on in years and have decided that our horse riding days are over. A sad decision, but there is so much we’d still like to do, that getting thrown off of a horse would mess up, that it was the right decision for us. As our horses age, we’ll still need someone to help the cows eat the grass. Everyone was interested to meet the new additions.
The cats and the alpacas did not know what to make of each other. Sundance, My Loving Spouse’s horse took one look at them and took off. He wanted nothing to do with them. My Loving Spouse is researching how to build a loom out of old sewing machine parts. Our Sweet Neighbor Sue hits it off with Benny.
Our animals bring us such joy and sorrow. The next morning, my horse Beau was standing in the far corner of the North Four. We’re not sure how long he stood there, but he wouldn’t leave Sundance who was down and had died. The bossy red horse enjoying grass one day to gone the next.
Sundance and Pat
The humans and Beau are sad, as is right. We worry about Beau, a herd animal. Surprisingly, of all things, he finds comfort being near Benny and Jett….
Corrugated gray poly-carbonate sheets cut by My Loving Spouse with a metal cutting blade in his grinder became the roof for our Greenhouse. The gray ‘roofing’ material also became our gable ends.
I’d like to tell you that putting on the roof was a piece of cake, but there was a bit of a learning curve to our keeping it straight. It could possibly be ‘user error’.
The old windows we used open on one side. There are enough gaps in how we built it to let in our friendly bee polinators.
We’ve got our tomatoes in half barrels as raised beds. We’re using strings attached to the roof to help support the vines.
My Loving Spouse built a slated counter height bench for starting plants and right now we are working on tomatillos. We’re behind on everything, but seriously, what else is new. I’m planning on being really ahead on next year’s growing!
What great fun we will have experimenting with our Greenhouse. If we stink at growing stuff, at least it is cute. We make a ‘Dutch door’ with a re-salvaged door and another re-salvaged window. I roll the barrel I’ve been saving/hording out of the field, setting it next to the Greenhouse, for nothing other than its charm.
We didn’t plant a thing this last weekend, as we were working on fences. Re-doing the field fence, that to quote someone around here, “the bloody cows made a mess of”. I am counting the hours until ‘my’ summer begins and our school year is over.
So what are your plans this summer, where odd times reign supreme?
We’ve plans for another animal addition to the farm. Can you guess what it or they are?
Week 9 or so of our COVID Stay-at-home/what happened to our life order, we started building a green house. One of us has a cache of old windows, because old stuff is cool, especially windows.
My Loving Spouse informed me that the windows had to sort of match or otherwise the Green House would look like a Bad British Word. The size of the Green house was dictated by the windows we chose. Luckily, I had plenty to pick from and was still able to make sure the Green house turned out ‘cute’, which is as important as growing stuff.
We set all the posts in concrete, because we want the Green House to stay here at the farm and not get blown across the valley. If you don’t believe me about our wind, you’ve never been here in the spring.
I was going to say something clever, like during times of stress we ‘over build’, while other people may ‘over eat’ or ‘over drink’, but the truth is, we’re doing that too.
I am one of the few from my school who works everyday from school. An elementary school without the children is pretty quiet and sad. I cannot help, but be very concerned about ‘our’ kids.
Building our Green house is a creative way to control something, while so much is out of our control. We build and then make an adjustment or two along the way.
Three feet high trusses are determined too steep. We revamp the design and I become (if I do say so myself), quite the truss builder. My Loving Spouse and I have no truss issues.
Our growing season is short. We are both looking forward to having the Green house to start plants, extend the growing season and enjoy the simple pleasure of gardening. Our little house is not done, but we’re pleased with how much we’ve accomplished.
Honestly, right now, I struggle more with frustrations than I do fear, but I want to focus more on ‘hope’….
After living for most of my 50++ years in the suburbs of Southern California with pools and sidewalks, I am now living on a farm in the Pacific Northwest with animals and dirt…and having the time of my life! Change is good….and I am blessed.
Retirement brought the end of our time at Glory Farm and a move to Scotland, where we live in a historical small fishing village along the North Sea...To God Be The Glory
