New Life Old Farmers

The attic bath remains a work in progress, it is just that the progress has been on hiatus.  We now call it a half bath, because it is half done.  This bath could well turn into a 2 year project, but luckily for me, I’ve met a friend here who’s husband took 8 years to finish their bathroom, so you could say that we are way ahead of schedule.

All the dry wall is up and we’ve begun to attach the bead board and the bathroom is starting to take shape!

Yesterday was a big day for the half bath…we hung the sink!  The sink that I bought off of Craig’s list almost 2 years ago!  It is an old school-house sink at five feet long and will make this bathroom amazing.  The sink is also heavy…very heavy, so making sure it stayed put when we put it up was very, very important.

My Loving Spouse made a bracket from an old piece of hard iron to hold the sink on the wall.  The iron was drilled with many a drill bit to anchor it securely to the studs.  I am on hand to run up and down stairs for more drill bits, help lift the HEAVY sink at the right time and ask important questions like,”Are you sure you’re drilling in the right direction?”  My Loving Spouse’s comment is left out for many a reason.We (The Royal We) do get the lag screws screwed and manage to pick up the heavy (Bad British Word) of a sink.  Settling the sink onto the bracket is a turning point in the half bath.  We do some rejoicing as we look around the ‘attic’ and see not how far we still have to go, but how far we’ve come!

Country life is truly romantic.  There is plenty of quality time to spend with one’s spouse, whispering sweet things one another…such was our weekend, as I said,

“First one to fall in the pond is a rotten egg”.

Our days have taken on a sort of rhythm here…keep the cows in the pasture and get ready for the family reunion.  A lot of the family is coming for the Fourth of July and we’re getting ready, working on the half bath, grooming the croquet course and removing the scum from the pond.  Yes, that is right, pond scum.  We do not know what it is and we’ve never had it before but it is down right gross and needed to be removed.  With a series of chains, ropes and rakes we ran them all over and under the pond to remove the algae type scum.Slimy and green and long, I pulled it up and out onto the dry land with the occasional tiny rainbow trout caught in the mess.…and as we repaired fences, removed pond scum and returned the shine to our pond…I thought about the ‘romance’ of the country and wondered what other people were doing this weekend…and, yes, I was the rotten egg.

It was raining late last night and one of the offspring was not yet home, when I saw flashing blue lights in the driveway.  My mother’s heart skipped a beat as I alerted My Loving Spouse.  He looked out the window and said those words that bring about immediate and frantic action.

‘There’s a cow in the road….oh, Bad British Word it is Bob!’

We jammed on our boots and flew out into the rain to meet the boys in blue.

“We just chased a cow into your front yard.”

‘Oh, thank you!  That is Bob.’

With a bit of help from the Officer’s flash light I chased Bob through the flower garden and back toward the pasture where My Loving Spouse had opened the gate.  Bob does not like to be chased and all he really wanted was his Mommy.  He never really understands that we are chasing him back to her.  Chasing cows in the rain and in the dark the only ones really having fun, were the officers.  They laughed and joked.

‘When he ran into your yard he bucked and kicked.  I figured if he wasn’t your cow, that he was now.’

I jumped on the bike (quad) to help close the right gates to keep Bob where he belonged.  I’ve gotten quite good on the bike as I zip around the farm taking care of things, except I’ve never ridden it in the dark night before and did not know where one vital item was…the light switch.  Finding the light switch in the dark was not actually easy either, so I stopped the bike before I ran into anything, in an effort to keep the evening rescues down to a minimum.

The two soggy old folks thanked the Officers again, as I planned my next project…the one I’d been putting off…fence repair.

I could have almost pinched myself.  Who would have thought that I’d be riding my own horse through a real vineyard with stops for wine tasting along the way!  The Cave B Estate Winery Trail Ride was my mother’s day gift from Team Offspring and let me tell you, those kids knocked it out of the park!

The day was perfectly beautiful.  The skies were blue, the weather was warm and the scenery was stunning.The trail was well-marked at the start…Then it became a bit of a hunt to find the orange ribbon trail markers and I’m sure, we were not the only ones to make a wrong turn in the sage brush.  The wrong turns and the trail that was not really quite a trail yet was part of the fun.  We were trail blazers…until of course we stopped to taste some wine.…and marveled at the beauty of the Columbia river…

This winery has a rich history and it is impressive to see what the owners have built in 30 years…a place to grow wine, but most of all a place for people to come and enjoy its natural beauty.

We circled back to the winery to finish tasting my favorite wines, the reds, eat lunch and have the prize drawings.  To top off all the other wonderful parts of the day, the ride was a ‘prize ride’.  Tickets were given to each rider.  The riders then dropped their tickets into the prizes that they most wanted to win….  By the time we figured this part out, My Loving Spouse was happy to stay sitting in the shade, so I had to pick his prize hopefuls for him…  He mostly dropped his tickets with the hopes of winning wine, a sliver bracelet for his wife, gift cards and a load of gravel.

I was the big winner!  You know you’re living in the country when you win…one load of gravel!

If our chickens cross the road it is not a good thing, at least not for them.  If our chicks turn into roosters, then they cross the road.  The road being where our sweet neighbors live.  The roosters are then transported to Grannie’s house where they live a happy life…until she eats them.

Our hens have been ‘off the lay’ as it were, in other words, we’ve been eating store-bought eggs and let me tell you they are not good.  We’ve been patient with the girls and their lack of egg delivery.  I even cleaned their nesting boxes to encourage better laying.  I also set a deadline and had My Loving Spouse give them ‘the talk’.  If they didn’t start laying by Mother’s day…they were going to cross the road.  The chickens have one job here and that is to provide eggs, if they cannot do that, well, then as the Red Queen in Alice and Wonderland would say, “Off with their heads”.

I think that the girls got the word, and just in the nick of time.  This morning 4 freshly laid eggs awaited me, can you say…reprieve?

It is that time of year, time to plant the vegetable garden.  This entails two very important steps.  Step one is rototilling.  Rototilling is best done by a strong short person.  I am stronger than I used to be, but truly there is really nothing short about me, except for my hair….and sometimes my patience.  Every time I rototill I think to myself,  I need a taller rototiller or I need a shorter helper.  The rototiller is one of those items with a bit of ‘history’ and the ‘history’ is that we got it because sometimes it catches fire.  (Farming is dangerous work).  So far, it has only done it once but the once was the last time we used it, so I was ready in case it happened again.  ‘Ready’ being a lung full of air and luckily for me, I do have a lot of hot air, so if I had to blow the fire out, I could probably do it.  Luckily, the tiller co-operated and with the garden freshly tilled the only thing left to do was the planning.

We (My Loving Spouse and I) agree about most things about the vegetable garden planning, except one and that one thing is called pumpkins. I don’t think you can really grow too many pumpkins and he thinks that they are a bit messy, take up a lot of room and invade other space.  (Space that has to be weeded and there is only one of us weeding and her name is not My Loving Spouse!)

Being reasonable people, we came to an agreement.  The pumpkins could be grown in the vegetable garden and they could even have half of the garden, but if their vines grew over the line, I was to clip them off and keep them in control!

Garden Gladys Knight the best scare crow in town is even set and ready to patrol the perimeter.May the planting begin!

Back in ‘the day’, (the day being before I’d met My Loving Spouse) and I was internet dating, I read a fair share of men’s profiles and there were some men who claimed that they were ‘sexy’.  Really!  I used to think, in our age group 50-60, I don’t want some old boy who thinks he is ‘sexy’.  I want somebody that is ‘handy’…now that is sexy.  On our third date (Easter Sunday), My Loving Spouse in his good church clothes fixed my toilet… Oh, be still my heart!  Someone once told My Loving Spouse, ‘why you are as handy as pockets’ and I’d have to say, that it is true.

With 5 grazing animals to feed, grass is a premium.  Getting all of the pastures to produce more grass is like money in the bank.  We have never had the means to get water on the North 4…until now.  Over time we’ve turned what is a an old (100 years) broken irrigation drain that runs through our farm into a means of irrigating the North 4.

So enters My Loving Spouse, my favorite handy man, who sealed the sides of the box he’d built, added an extension on the pipe we’d laid to return the water to the ditch, so that the box will fill with water.  He then, just rebuilt an old pump that was here.Number One Son had gotten us some old fire hose the station was throwing out.  The hose has a few leaks, but it doesn’t really matter to us, because they are small enough to just water whatever spot they happen to be in.My Loving Spouse then took a bit of pipe, welded three lengths of re-bar onto it to make a tri-pod, adding a large sprinkler to the top and we have water!The water sprinkler covers about 50 feet, moves pretty easily and cost…zero.  Handy as pockets and he’s all mine!

We spent our Sunday picking up piglets.  We were excited because we found piglets for a very good price near THE Grandson, so we got to see, snuggle, read to and enjoy the little cutie-pie a bit in the afternoon.  We even got to show him the new piglets.Can you see what is wrong with this picture?  Go ahead, take another look…  Yes, that is right, the dog crate/pig carrier is in the back seat of the cab, not in the bed of the truck where pigs should normally ride!  Our great price on the piglets came with a small cost, as most great prices do.  The piglets were little, only 5 weeks and My Loving Spouse was afraid that they’d get too cold, if they traveled 3 hours in the bed of the truck, so they traveled inside with us.  The ride started out a tad smelly and moved on to down right stinky!  Opening the windows only helped to blow the stench more in our faces, or so it seemed.  Did you know, that piglets do not actually like to be confined to a dog carrier…for 3 hours!  They slept a little bit, but they were also noisy, which moved into downright loud, as they became more and more anxious about being confined.  The last 15 minutes were just plain ugly.  They were squealing and thrashing about to the point My Loving Spouse was concerned that they were fighting, asking me tensely to check on them, which is pretty hard to do, when they are directly behind you and I do not exactly speak pig, so they did not understand when I tried to tell them, that ‘Yes, we were almost there’.  Their trashing about even managed to spray a bit of the pig poop around the cab of the truck and all I can say, is that this adds a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘bringing home the bacon’.

Eventually, we made it home!  My Girl came out to help and pretty soon we had the piglets roaming around their new sty.  Since My Girl is a vegan, she is sure that the pigs like her best.

They are also all boys/boars and without even discussing it, My Loving Spouse and I came up with the same names for them…Manny, Moe and Jack.

The Pig Boys are intact or entire or some such word that means…they still have their little boy balls.  All I can say is, stay tuned for the great piglet castration!

My Loving Spouse is ready for more pigs.  Piglets as it were, which meant…cleaning out the pig pen.  He’s been ready to do this cleaning out for a while now and wouldn’t you know it, it is a two person job.

‘Do you want to clean out the pig pen when I get home?’

“No.”  (In case you are wondering, ‘no’ is a complete sentence.)

‘Why not?’, he inquired as if I were the crazy one.

“It is windy.”

It is one thing to dig around in pig poop, and quite another to have it blown in your face.  I held firm, until this weekend, when it was actually very nice, beautiful, non-windy weather.

‘I want us to clean out the pig pen.’

“Uhmmm….ok.”   (The things one must do for our spouses and for really, really good bacon).

My Loving Spouse was the loader, pig poop scooper.Lucy the red hen and her chicks were the supervisors.…and I was on the front line…the pig poop pusher-scrape-it-off-the-sides-of-the-sty-worker.  (The smell reminiscent of my childhood, when one of the neighbors’ cess-pools over flowed and my parents were secretly gleeful, that it wasn’t theirs.)

Now if you ever over hear ‘some one’ say,

“Well, that is just a load of sh*t”, you now know what it looks like.With the pig yard cleaned up, we’re ready to procure.  Pig shopping is done on-line and Craig’s list is the pig procuring hot spot.  Piglets are currently not abundant, so in order to actually procure any piglets, we have to be willing to drive all around the state.  Searching on-line for anything, often leads to some interesting discoveries.  The closer we search to the city, the more often we find people selling piglets that look like this…

(source)

When of course what we want is something more like this…Whenever there is something that we need/want, where the demand is high and the price is high, My Loving Spouse starts thinking…‘maybe I am in the wrong business’…and he starts researching.  As we know, you can find out almost anything on the internet, which is why this morning I have already over heard how easily one can castrate a pig.

Piglets are not the only ones to play in their bowls, so in our search, extra consideration is given to locations, that might not only be a good price, but are in the neighborhood of THE Grandson…our favorite little trough wallow-er.