New Life Old Farmers

We boarded Sun boat with eager anticipation. The narrow boat is moored in a cut on the “River Great Ouse“, just outside Ely, Cambridgeshire. The Ely Cathedral is known as ‘The Ship of The Fens‘. We planned to get to know the boat better, with this small excursion, having plenty of time for shopping and wandering through the wonderful streets of Ely, as well as a pint or two.

The weather was beautiful, which was both a good and bad thing. Good because it was beautiful. Bad, because it meant anyone with a boat was out enjoying the last days of summer, this made finding a mooring for Sun difficult. We pass through Ely, looking for a mooring (a parking spot for the 72 foot long boat).

As we made our first pass through Ely, (notice the word ‘first’), we were greeted by other boaters who know whose boat we were on, and know that we’re not him. They look out for one another, and are reassured when they realize, that we are on the boat legitimately.

Sun runs at 4 mph, as the boats owner says, “She doesn’t do anything fast”. The speed limit on the river is almost always 4 mph, so one would think this is a perfect fit. Unless, however, you are the one trying to turn the boat around…all 72 slow feet of her on a river that is about 100 feet wide. My Loving Spouse, who really is quite the sailor, was extremely stressed trying to get Sun turned around and not run aground. A few shunts later and the boat is headed back into Ely, and once again, we’re looking for a mooring. We did this three times, which took approximately 3 hours. We eventually ‘made’ a mooring and tied up to a tree.

We’re off the boat and in a pub with a beer and a cider and happy to be so. Ely is a beautiful historical town…

…a wonderful place to shop…

Shopping was never as fun in England, as it was on this trip, and not just on gin. The first time I was ever in England, 10 dollars equaled 4 pounds. Now, 5 dollars equals 4 pounds. England (in my opinion) has not had nearly the inflation, that we have had to endure, for example, beautiful artisan loafs of bread were only 79p or roughly $1.00. Our money went farther than ever, and we actually came home under budget.

After two days in Ely, we’re ready to set off for St. Ives. We’ve been told, that we will love it. We imagine a two hour trip or so to get there…here is where our expectations and our reality collide.

We make the proper turn onto the ‘Old West River’. ‘River’ is a bit grand when describing the ‘Old West’, a ‘narrow creek’ might be better and remember, we’re in a 72 foot long boat. We’re also traveling upstream, so our 4 mph, is reduced to about 2 mph. My Loving Spouse gets even more anxious at the helm of Sun at this point, yes we do run aground a few times, but he cleverly gets it unstuck without asking me to jump into the river and push.

When the river widened, we searched for a pub….nothing, but some of my favorite animals.

It took us awhile to realize, that each page of the map was at least an hour’s travel time. It was 5pm with about 4-5 pages of the map left to St. Ives. After traveling through our first lock, we note that the map claims ‘The Crown’ has a mooring.

Sun takes up the entire mooring. We tie off quickly and go into the days favorite pub, The Crown.

We order take away and have a few pints. Everyone comes outside to join us, because they either like us, or they want to smoke…it is one of those for sure.

A bit of Irish music floats out of the jukebox and we were so grateful to have a place to moor up for the night and to stop!

We’d pictured our time on Sun, as cruising for an hour or so between stops at villages. Clearly a lack of information on our part. We were in the Fen, the very flat English countryside, with villages few and far between, at least at 2 mph. We set off from Earith in the morning and soon reach our first unmanned (do it yourself) lock.

We have to open the guillotine gate to bring the water up to Sun’s level. Then My Loving Spouse cruises in.

I am the ‘Lock master’. I have a special set of keys and shut the one gate, then open the second gate. It is not rocket science, but I feel a smug satisfaction all the same.

We cruise on toward Holywell. The map book describes the village as lovely. I am excited to stop there for lunch, roam the village and get our trip back on track.

I surprise myself by being a fairly good Narrow boat driver. I am sure it has to do with all my time driving our tractor with a load out front.

Boats steer the opposite way and every once in awhile I panic and quickly hand the tiller back to My Loving Spouse.

We reach Holywell and sort of slow down, but when you’re going as slow as we are, one cannot go much slower. Holywell does look charming, just what I wanted to explore…except…do you see anywhere to moor/park a 72 foot boat? Nope, neither did we. Disappointed, we had no choice but to just keep going, our spirits flagging a bit. We push on toward St. Ives, hopeful for a mooring.

Comforted (kind of) by more cows.

Grateful to be together, we are blessed.

Do we make it to St. Ives?

Stay tuned…..

We’ve returned from England with a condition few have ever experienced. We’re tan. The sun shone and shone and shone.

I am a bit at a loss to describe an adventure with so many parts to it. For a start, if you want to eat good English food, you must know people.

Sunday lunch is just a downright experience. If you’re not related to someone in England, then start making friends, because you want to be invited to Sunday lunch.

It is also helpful, if one of you was apprenticed as a chef (aged 15) in England. (In fact My Loving Spouse spent the Christmas he was 15, plucking pheasants all day for the Christmas dinner.) Apprenticed with another lad and that ‘lad’ went on to be something of a ‘legend’ at the Colchester Culinary Instituted.

If that Lad and partner now owns a restaurant where you can get Sticky Toffee pudding, (oh be still my heart)…

…as well as fish & chips…

It is not a good idea to have Fish & Chips from the local ‘chippy’ (Fish & Chips shop), even the photo doesn’t process it. We did this twice, before our stomachs won the day and we swore off them for the rest of the trip.

THE ‘Lads’ had been apprenticed at le Talbooth, which has always been a world class Michelin guide restaurant.

THE Lads lived across the river with other male employees of the restaurant. They might have reminisced about leaving work late at night, waving to their boss as they passed his window. They then ducked back and climbed up the outside of the restaurant to where the waitresses lived for after work parties.

Our ‘surprise’, planned by THE Lad, was a tour of the current Le Talbooth’s kitchens, dinner at Le Talbooth with a jazz band and spending the night in their ‘old’ cottage, which has recently been turned into an elegant two bedroom cottage.

Being such a fancy place, I was on my very best behavior. This shot was only for My Loving Spouse.

It was an amazing treat to experience all around!

Besides ‘good’ beer or bitter, My Loving Spouse was looking forward to full English breakfasts…

I will say he enjoyed quite a few, complete with broiled tomato and black pudding, no I didn’t try it.

‘Good Indian’ food was also on the list of ‘wants’. I liked all of the Indian food I had, but the ‘take away’ was not quite as good as the restaurant where we ‘sat down’.

Garlic free and delicious can often be a hard combination, but this was so good.

The relish tray was unique to each restaurant, which was sort of disappointing as the beet relish was so flavorful! I would have loved to have it again.

There is so much more to our adventure, but I will save it for another day.

We are home…grateful and indeed we are blessed.

Expedia keeps telling me that our trip, “Sun here we come” is around the corner. I keep laughing, because we are going to England, where it is currently not sunny, not at all.

THAT Window finally got delivered. Our contractor came right over and installed it and we are delighted! We finished siding the extension….even added a bit of the trim that goes along with it.

Fed the animals, ran the water and commented not for the first time, that we need a vacation.

We’ve made THE List for Number Two Son, who will be in staying at the farm and will be completely in ‘charge’ while we are away. We packed the requested items, that cannot be found in the UK.

Even the 9 hour plus flight sounds relaxing…. We’re packed and ready for a bit of family time, a bit of old friend time and an adventure on Sun. Sun is a narrow boat, that the Wonderful A is letting us borrow.

We’ll journey on some of England’s canals stopping at villages along the way for a pint and a pub lunch. We’re packed and ready for some time away together…across the pond.

Sun here we come!

Grateful and blessed indeed…

We hit the wall this week. Crabby and exhausted pretty much described both of us. One of us had a ‘come a part‘ (this is a wonderful British saying for ‘tantrum’), when the chicken would not scan at the self-checkout at Fred Myer. Another of us had their ‘come a part’, when we learned that, THAT Window’s date for delivery was being changed again!

I took a two hour nap and I don’t nap. My Loving Spouse declared the following day a ‘day off’. No work on the house or farm other than feeding the animals.

The clouds made the sky beautiful, friends came to play croquet, and they brought cold adult beverages.

We know that remodeling a home is a luxury, a very ‘first world situation’. So, we will not lament the frustrations of not receiving THAT Window, when we should have had it six weeks ago, or that when it was finally delivered to the store, an employee stole it. It is doubtful, that I will shop at Home Depot again. The window (ordered again elsewhere) will get here…eventually…I hope…BTW!

What I did do on the ‘day off’ was the perfect antidote for a hot summer’s day and the epitome of ‘for fun and for free’! My BGF and I floated the canal. We are careful to attach the ‘liquid supplies’ to the inner tube.

There are two hard parts when you float the canal, getting in and getting out. Getting in is colder!

…and we are off….cooled off…our very own lazy river…my very own lazy day…

To have this friend…believe me,

I am blessed!

I have a complete double gloved golfer’s tan, even though I haven’t played golf in years. I wear work gloves almost all the time. The exception this week, would be when My Loving Spouse and I had to rub Bag Balm on Agnes’ udder, milk her and unblock her teats. It was greasy, hot and messy. Agnes was not happy about being in the head catch & squeeze. My Loving Spouse was not happy about being on his knees in the floor of the barn with a cow’s teat in his hand. She did try to kick us and peed and pooped and swished her tail making everything even more messy. We finally got her unblocked and milk flowing freely for little Ike.

It would not have been so bad, but Ike spent day two of his life eating from only one ‘faucet’….so, we had to do it again. Agnes was not the only frustrated, irritated animal in the barn! Day three, My Loving Spouse declared them ‘on their own…I’m not milking that beef cow again’! Luckily, for us all, Ike seems to have figured it out.

This has allowed us to view our happy herd from the side of the house, where we have been installing cedar siding. In theory, this is not too hard. If the boards were not a tad warped, it would have made the job much easier.

My Loving Spouse was in charge of whacking one piece of siding into the ridge of the lower piece of siding for a necessary snug fit. My job was to use the very heavy nailing gun to nail it all in place. No one got ‘nailed’ or fell off of a ladder, so it is all good, very good.

We run the nail gun off of the compressor we call “Puffin’ Billy”, because it has a steady quiet popping rumble to it. We snagged this great little compressor at a garage sale for $20.

My Loving Spouse was in charge of figuring out how much cedar we needed. He tried to explain board feet, which is different than linear feet….(not to mention tired feet), but honestly, I just was too exhausted to care. He makes a few careful notations.

The electricians did the same thing making notes in handy spots.

We are at a sweet spot in our remodel progress, where each step really feels like a large accomplishment.

The porch gets laid out….and voila!

Our days have often started with My Loving Spouse in the morning telling me how nice and easy today’s job is and how quickly it is going to go. The end of the evening he is usually telling me, “I’m too old for this.”

The Dry Wall team was dropping off the heavy sheet rock. (They are our favorite, because 1. They do dry wall. 2. They showed up 3. They keep saying “No big deal, don’t worry”) My Loving Spouse told the head guy, “I’m too old to be hauling dry wall around”.

‘You’re not old!‘

“I just turned 70!” My Loving Spouse explained.

‘Sh&$ You are old!’

We might be old, but we are a formidable team…and we indeed are blessed.

Ike arrived without any of our usual drama. We had been checking my cow, Agnes around the clock for signs of calving. At 5:45am My Loving Spouse got up to do the morning ‘calf check’. He returned to say, we had a new born black calf. I donned my fluffy pink robe, shoved my feet into my sneakers and took off for the pasture to check out for myself our new addition.

I declared the tiny calf, adorable.

Mama Agnes, Ike and brother Hal….I call this their ‘Christmas card photo’. You know those photos, where everyone has been fighting and arguing, not happy to be together, but smiling for the camera as soon as someone says, “Say, Cheese!” The second the photo was finished, Hal started acting like a teenage brat, head butting the little calf and knocking Ike down.

I called My Loving Spouse on the phone,

“You need to come out here! We need to get Hal out of the field before he hurts the calf”.

‘Okay, I’ll get dressed’.

“You don’t have time to get dressed! Put on your robe and come quickly !!”

‘Oh, my, bloody hell!’

Moments later, we two old folk/farmers adorned in our bathrobes, ran around the field chasing one large teenage steer out of the field, keeping Agnes and baby Ike in the field and letting the two horses go where ever they wanted. By the time we were finally having our morning coffee, we had everyone in the cows’ field, except the annoying teenage steer, Hal, who was serving detention in the horses field and pouting.

Baby Ike is a small calf, as his father Danny the bull was a Galloway, which is a smaller breed. Ike is just about as cute as they come and we are so glad he is here safe and sound.

I like Ike.

I am grateful indeed and very blessed.

I have had bucket lift envy for sometime now. I’ve found this is a fairly common phenomenon among those of us with big tall barns. We were eating dinner with a wise older farmer from our church and his eyes glazed over a tad, when he found out we had a bucket lift for the weekend.

A big blue giant with a 40 foot lift.

Everything looks different from up high, although I seldom actually looked ‘down’.

We organized our time with THE Lift by the hardest jobs to do with a ladder. The first item on THE List was installing two new windows in The Buckaroo room. The new windows were hefty and the opening is the highest spot on the house. There are also electrical lines to be careful/cautious/mindful of. My Loving Spouse squeezes The Lift right into place, without smashing the downstairs windows in the process. (Harder than one might think, as The Lift does not move smoothly, but more in fits and jerks).

The old storm windows come down and with it a long and disgusting amount of dead flies. The flies had been stuck between the storm window and the old painted in place windows.

Ah, the country life….

The windows go in without a hitch….on our end. We had special ordered the windows from THE Home Depot. They had managed to place the safety catches on the windows in places that will do no earthly good in keeping kids safe from falling out of these very high widows. I launch into a long angry rant about Home Depot. This is not the first frustration brought on by that place. I pray for Lowes success, while saying the blessing at dinner later that night.

We spent the afternoon spraying 10 gallons of ‘Crabby Apple Red’ paint from Sherwin Williams on the highest, hardest to reach barns on our farm.

How to paint the cupola has been an often discussed topic. We’ve been told that the previous owner tied a rope around his youngest son, threw the (very long) rope over the barn and then drove away from the barn on a tractor, thereby hauling the boy up to the cupola. We’ve never found anyone small enough and brave enough to try this stunt. So enters The Lift…

My Loving Spouse makes a harness to keep him safe and attached to the lift, as even at the end of it’s reach is not quite long enough. (Note to self, if we ever do this again, get the 60 foot lift).

He gets all of the cupola he can safely manage painted. It is clearly time for lunch. We then set back into The Lift together to paint all the white parts of the barns, that we’d inadvertently sprayed with red. Armed with wasp spray we keep a diligent eye out for the flying stinging pests.

By the end of the day, we are exhausted..and the barns are looking grand.

The only thing left is to keep an eye on that cow of mine. Agnes was/is due to calf anytime.

We’re grateful to have this done and dreaming of our vacation next month!

We work so well together.

Indeed, we are blessed.

We got a plumbing bid for the new kitchen. The price was…not bad, except they couldn’t start for 6 weeks. The total $$ did not include fixing the ‘backing up’ problem we have every 3 months or so. (Drain lines…aren’t they grand!)

Plumbing…how hard can it be?

My Loving Spouse knows plumbing. He got the ‘up to date’ requirements for our plumbing code….and got to work. The water lines were easy, even boring (says the one of us who was not under the house).

We didn’t want to loose the kitchen sink until we had to, so we just cut out a cupboard, one we didn’t plan to re-use.

Figuring out the exact location of the drain line culprit was going to be tricky, possibly even messy and My Loving Spouse had reason to be concerned. We figured out where we believed the usual ‘blockage’ to be. Cut up the kitchen floor and started to dig.

The drain line was down there somewhere!

We dug, filling many 5 gallon buckets of dirt, that were carried outside to Blue.

It took us most of the day and we filled two tractor loads of dirt to uncover the mess of the drain line….under the old kitchen floor.

New pipes, old pipes and even a few abandoned pipes. Old, old brittle cast iron pipes…we find filled with debris and sediment.

Let me remind you dear reader, that the only way to know one’s drain pipe is filled with debris is to have the drain line open, which means…that you do not have a working drain line, so we kept digging.

It is a wonder we didn’t have blockages more often with the poor shape these drains were in. We used a cast iron cutting tool, along with a saws-all, a hammer and occasionally some ‘encouraging words’ to break the old pipe properly.

The only breaks we took, were to check on Agnes who was due to calve yesterday and a quick lunch, and trips back to the hardware store!!! (Stay tuned…as I write this Agnes is still ‘great with calve’).

Yes, it seems we have a stream in our kitchen. Luckily for us, we have a new floor planned, as the fir did not stand up to the wear and tear of farm life. Today was a first, I’ve never dug in the dirt in my kitchen before.

Other than many loads of dirt I dug out, I also dug out a collection of bones. Some chicken…some not.

The exceptional news is that the new drain line works wonderfully! Don’t be jealous, I know, it is a thing of beauty.

We are very, very tired. However, when one’s drain line is ‘open’, stopping halfway through the job is not an option, but we are done. We can flush and that my friends, is a beautiful thing.

Yes, indeed, we are blessed.

Black onyx is our roofing tile color and I’d like to say, that is mostly what we got…eventually, after our many trips to The Home Depot.

What is the hardest part of roofing a ‘small’ addition?

No, it wasn’t getting the gun away from the Damn Cat.

No, it wasn’t getting the under-layment down in the wind.

It wasn’t hiring a roofer? WHAT! Truly, that was never really even an option, because

1. This is a small project…to roofers.
2. I wanted to do it.

The hardest part of doing our roof was getting the 16 bags of roofing tiles each weighing 100+ pounds up on the roof. My Loving Spouse was gone for the weekend, so I was trying to figure out a way to get the bags up where we needed them. I hatched a plan that included a lot of heavy chain.

I lay them up over the roof line, one end wrapped around the axle of our quad bike. Old planks of lumber laid down to protect the under-layment as I pictured the bags working their way up the roof.

Two sets of ‘come-a-longs’ and canvas grocery bags to carry each set of tiles. The wind came up, but I was careful. I called my neighbor and left a message.

“If I don’t call you back in 20 minutes, come and see if I fell off the roof”. The wind got worse and the ‘come-a-longs’ were not ‘coming-a-long’. I decided to call it off for safety reasons. I called my friend and left a new message, “I’m off the roof and fine.” She called two hours later, “Oh, I see you called. What’s up?” Note to self: do not use great neighbor as a safety back up plan when on the roof.

All of my work was not in vain, as it got My Loving Spouse thinking. As he arrived home, he had a new plan. The plan included Blue, a large long metal pole and heavy chain.

It looked a bit like a battering ram, or a lance for a steed, but whatever it looked like, it worked brilliantly.

Before we knew it, we had all the heavy bundles on the roof.

We attached the drip edge, the flashing and the first couple of courses of shingle tiles.

Roofing is ‘not’ rocket science, however I wouldn’t want to do this for a living. We worked well together. My Loving Spouse putting the tiles out and me nailing them down.

Whack, whack, whack. I did get my chance to run our roofing nailer. Actually, I got quite good at it. Every once in a while I missed, but all I could say was…”Oh, well! or possibly a ‘Bad British Word”

We used twice as many nails on the windy side and worked like the formidable team, that we are. Some of the tiles are a tad crooked, but only the fly boys can see them…I imagine they’ll say something like,

“Wow, that roof looks like it was put on by a 60 year old woman!”

Indeed!!

I managed the bucket lift and moved My Loving Spouse up and down as he trimmed the edge of the roof.

We’ve checked off ‘roofing’ on our long list of ‘to-do’ items…

and we know that we are blessed!