New Life Old Farmers

The first sign of spring has arrived, I turned off the seat warmer in my car.  I am pretty sure it has been on non-stop since October, but this week I turned it off, which must be a sign, that Spring is just around the corner.  
Then came the wind…a sure sign that winter is no longer in charge.  However, the wind was strong, very strong and very cold.  The wind was so strong and blowing in a new direction that it broke the large gate latch inviting all three horses to romp in the front yard.  Not so much fun for My Girl and Number Two Son who were frantically attempting to corral the 3 large animals with the wind howling.  The horses went out into the street and ventured for a bit into a neighboring field as well, completely increasing the horse wranglers angst.  A passing driver stopped to help with the wrangling and eventually the three horses were returned to our pasture.  The helpful stranger now couldn’t get back into her car, because in all the excitement her dog stepped on the latch inside her truck, completely locking her out…in the wind…the cold wind.

I was summoned to all the activity on my lunch break…in the wind…the cold wind…and turned my seat warmer back on.

The nitty-gritty truth is that we are a tad tired.  In a few short weeks we will mark the anniversary of our moving to Glory Farm.  The reality that we have been here for almost 2 years is a bit staggering.  The fact that we have only just managed to transform our bedroom has stood out to me, marking for me in a way all that we have done.  I am reminded of Dear John‘s words, our project here is “massive”…and we are ready for a day of rest.

However, I am delighted with our bedroom.  Having our room be ours and be restful and beautiful fills me up.  The white on white on white we moved into is no longer.  Number Two Son and I got the paint on the walls, while My Loving Spouse took care of adding the quarter round trim and took care of painting the baseboards, which pretty much took care of his knees.  (Please pass the Advil).  Number Two and I were back at our attempt to add gray paint to the walls, this time coming in with a new deeper, richer color…dark gray.  The dark gray was a bit of a leap from our standard colors, but it does allow the wide white trim and beautiful windows to stand out creating contrast and interest.  I love it, and so does My Loving Spouse (even if he didn’t actually love it the first minute he saw it).  It is warm and rich and refreshing.So…today is a day of rest!  We’ll go to church, we’ll drink coffee, we’ll put a huge pile of tools away, we’ll go look at cows and we’ll play.  My Loving Spouse is going to tinker with the much neglected Whoa Nelly Walton and I am starting a new quilt for a sick friend….and in our fatigue we are grateful….life is good.

I’d have to say that I think I have shown great restraint in not mentioning constantly occasionally that I am going to be a Grandmother!  Yep, yep, yep we’re waiting on a baby!!!  Not just any baby, but a GRAND BABY!  Number One Grandchild is due July 8, 2014…but I keep thinking it will be born on My Loving Spouse’s birthday a week or so early…no reason for thinking this, but I do.

I know this baby’s other Grandma is crocheting away and could possibly have made multiple blankets for this summer baby already.  So, does this baby really need a quilt from this Grandma?   Ah, no brainer…yes, absolutely, positively…and I had the need to make one.

I met up with the kids, parents of Number One Grandchild and spent a very fun morning picking out fabrics for the baby’s quilt.  I honestly could not wait to get home and start cutting it up.  I didn’t have a pattern, just a picture to go by, which lends itself to plenty of creativity.  Love that…

This quilt is really just random strips of colors.  Many quilters could sew this up from their left over scraps in no time, but since I’ve only been quilting for a little while, I don’t really have very many left over bits of fabric….yet!

This quilt has been so very much fun to make, BUT it is so not perfect!  I am told that the Amish make a ‘mistake’ in all their quilts as the only one that is perfect is God, that is a truism I can grasp.  I’m afraid though that my ‘mistakes’ are just that, mistakes, but made with love, not perfection I know it will be okay.  After all the hope is that it will be spit up on, dragged around and used.  Some would say the kid whales are not properly lined up with the Mama whale, I say…they are kids and are dawdling.

Sometimes you have a new machine and you really don’t know how to use the fancy bits, but you try anyway…. and your “Heart Grammy” ends up looking like “Pretzel Grammy”….and you just have to say ‘oh, well’…or you’re lucky enough to know the Number One’s will still really love the quilt and your daughter, My Girl says…’oh, pretzel Grammy will be your special code’…love that kid!  So to my family and friends… I pretzel you and to our Grand Baby…we pretzel you lots and lots!I want to give credit to the quilter/blogger from whom we took our inspiration.

 Cornbread & Beans Quilting

She has a neat site and story and lots of quilt patterns to buy and some for free!

As I requested My Girl to come and help me saw a ‘few’ boards, she said, “Ah, Mom, do you really think it was a good idea to start a new project?”  This spoken from the person who is living in a room with a new wall and closet framed out, but that is it, no electrical or drywall…so she might, maybe have had a point.

“Well, this is not exactly a new project, okay it is a new room, but as we needed to special order the wood floor for the attic, it was cheaper to order the wood floor for our bedroom.”  Yes, our bedroom is being redone and it is about time too!  I actually cannot believe we’ve lived with the past-its-prime-blue-with-pet-stained-(not our pets)-carpet for as long as we did.

Carpet is warmer, so we toyed with new carpet.  Carpet is dirtier, so we toyed with wood floors.  Wood floors are colder, so we thought about carpet again…  finally wood won.  Never were we so happy to get rid of any carpet as we were to rip out this stuff!  I actually enjoyed the new ambiance in our bedroom, called dusty plywood with a trashcan decor.

Down goes the hard wood, bam goes the nail gun.  95% of the floor was installed by myself, My Girl and Number Two Son.  The kids ran the chop saw and cut all the appropriate pieces to length, AND no blood was shed…success.  I used the nail gun and ensured that all was fastened down tightly.  Anywhere the wood slats did not look as good as say a professional floor layer would do it, we declared that this would just add to the ‘Old World Charm’ of the house.  We found ourselves saying that quite a bit in the whole process.  Yep, old world charm, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Yes, we did sort of work around our bed, as it took us a week to lay the floor after we got home from work. The weekend came and the heavy hitter arrived to help with the sanding.

We took turns applying the stain and wiping it off.  As one pair of knees wore out, we let the other pair jump in and get worn as well.  We kept repeating two phrases, “Old world charm” and “We do have Advil don’t we?” 

We had to spend the night upstairs.  The last time we did so, we were really cold, so this time we planned ahead and turned the heat on high in that room long before bedtime.  The room was so hot, not only were we sweating, but the heat woke up all the ladybugs that hibernate upstairs.  Bugs were landing on us all night and even though we knew they were ‘good’ bugs, they were still bugs!

We are really ready to move back into our room.  Our ‘closet’ is the library, which is a complete and utter wreck!

The floors are looking great, but they need another coat…tomorrow…more sanding and more varnish…and for us, a few more nights of sleeping with the lady bugs.

One of the joys of living in a small town is the enthusiasm shared by everyone for the high school’s sports teams.  Yesterday the Ellensburg High School girls basketball team was on their way to the state championship game.  Prior to leaving for the big game, the tradition is that the team makes their way around town to the 3 elementary schools.

As I arrived to work in my kindergarten class today, all my little kids were putting their finishing touches on the banners they’d each made for the basketball team.  Then it was time to join the rest of the school out in the parking lot.  A few of the older boys came and taught our little ones how to do a cheer and then we were ready.  The school bus came in with the horn honking escorted by two fire trucks with lights flashing.  The team exited the bus and ran down the long row of elementary kids giving high fives to them all.  Then it was back on the bus and off to the next school, waving and cheering and then…off to the BIG game.

Simple, important, fun, all rolled into one…go Bulldogs!

“Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey 
Chim chim cher-ee!
A sweep is as lucky, as lucky can be
Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey 
Chim chim cher-oo!
Good luck will rub off when I shakes ‘ands with you “

I get it now!  The chimney sweeper is lucky, because they did NOT fall off the bloody roof!  That is it, that is pretty much all of it, especially when the roof it tall and steep and it is cold…really cold.

As we heat primarily with wood, the flue remaining clear and open is very, very important.  Ours sort of stopped doing that, except it was cold…really cold, but thankfully not windy.  The roof is steeply pitched and the chimney cannot be reached easily, which of course did not stop My Loving Spouse from climbing up onto the roof to try out his Chimney sweeping skills.

I was out, so as Number Two Son came home, My Loving Spouse said, “Just keep an eye on me.”  As he was alone up there on the roof and might need help.  A tad of communication break down ensued as one man meant “a real live eye on me” and the other man thought, “he must have his phone and will text me if he needs me”…(just before he falls off the roof?) and went upstairs to his room, where he could not actually see or hear anything.

By the time I arrived home there were ladders leaning on the roof, every door in the house was open (remember it is cold…really cold) and the smoke alarm going off.  I walked into the family room to see My Loving Spouse surrounded by billowing smoke, and he said, “Don’t say a word!”  So I didn’t and kept on walking.  Minutes later I was summoned to help as the recently swept flue was obviously not clear and needed to be swept some more.  What fire was in the stove was pulled into a metal trash can and place on the front lawn, where it burned quite cheerily.  My Loving Spouse was back on the roof, I stood on the stove with the shop vacuum and tools to clear the debris shoved down.  I also texted Number Two that we needed help, the on-hand kind, where you can see us and hear us and hand us stuff.  (Sometimes we have to be really, really clear with our requests).

So, with all the doors open, and soot coming down the flue in heaps and chunks, and with every fan we owned on hand to blow the smoke out of the house and it being the most warm outside by the burning trash can on the front lawn, and all of us working, Team Chimney Sweep did manage to clear out the flue, enabling us to light a new warming fire and the flue…. we have vowed to forever clean before we need it.

We got the call!  Our Friend the Farmer needed help with a newborn calf that was cold and doing poorly.  The weather was set to get colder and snowier.  Did we want to help with this one?  Did we?  You betcha!  So this weekend there’s been a calf in the kitchen.

The little bull calf was born Friday morning on John Steinbeck’s birthday, so of course we immediately named him Steinbeck.  Our Friend the Farmer doesn’t name his cattle, but that doesn’t exactly stop us from naming his cattle.  When he got here, Steinbeck was cold, shivering and still wet with birthing fluids on him.  We put him in a big crate in the kitchen to help him begin to warm up.  We weren’t exactly prepared for what happened next, Zoe our 8 month old Black Labrador jumped into the box with him and began to clean him up.  Zoe licked Steinbeck from head to toe, just as a mother cow would do.  Zoe recognized this as a baby who needed her help, not bothered at all that he outweighed her.

Like human babies, it is crucial that the calf get the mother’s colostrum.  Even if they need to be bottle fed, keeping the calf on their mother’s milk is best.  This means milking the cow, well, this means Our Friend the Farmer milking the cow…this is a beef cow, not a milk cow, same equipment, different temperament.  The goal is to get the calf well and for it to go back to the Mama Cow, so the milking is good for everybody, except Our Friend the Farmer.  He delivered the precious colostrum to me in the one size fits all calves recycled beer bottle, all ready to feed to Steinbeck who loved it.  He did a good albeit noisy job of sucking up his first bottle.

Zoe stayed on duty all night.  Sleeping with Steinbeck and trying to let us know every time the calf moved a muscle.  Steinbeck’s front feet were born curled in.  This can happen for a variety of reasons, the Mama cow might have eaten lupin, which can cause it, or his position in the womb, being cold and having cold extremities is not good for this condition.  See how he stands on his front ‘knuckles’!As you can imagine, this is not Our Friend the Farmer’s first rodeo.  This curly hoof has happened before and he’s had luck splinting calves with this situation.  My Loving Spouse helps attach the home-made calf splints to Steinbeck with duck tape.The biggest concerns over Steinbeck were that he stopped sucking, oh and he needed to poop.  Well, in order to be a healthy calf with all his stomach parts he needed to poop.  He also needed to eat, suck, take the bottle, slurp up that good cow milk.Steinbeck does not like to poop.  I do not know if he has a calf-tummy ache, but this little bull could really holler, moo, when he needed to poop, which was lucky for me, as I was the Calf-care-taker-on-deck.  This mooing gave me a warning that there was soon to be calf poop in my kitchen (which is sort of gross).  I quickly donned my rubber gloves, grabbed lots of paper towels and handfuls of plastic grocery bags (see we recycle!)  I don’t mean to brag, but I was pretty darn good at catching cow poop….right into the plastic bag, tie it up throw it outside, wipe, repeat.

We could keep Steinbeck warm.  Zoe made sure he wasn’t alone, but we couldn’t get him to eat… not a good sign, so he got tubed to put Mama Cow’s milk straight into his tummy.  Still…the little calf was taking one step forward, two steps back.  It was not looking good…  The vet had one more thing to try…steroids.  Perhaps in the trauma of birth his brain is not damaged, just temporarily swollen.  Steroids and tubing 4 times a day, which only Our Friend the Farmer can do.  So, Steinbeck has been moved with his crate to Our Friend the Farmer’s basement, we’re keeping our fingers and our paws crossed for Steinbeck to make a full recovery……and Zoe the wonder Mama dog…is looking all over the house for her calf.

……

March 2014

We are sorry to say, that little Steinbeck did not make it….

part of the nature of farming, but we did all give it our best.

My Loving Spouse is a tad old-fashioned.  In other words, he doesn’t wear…pink…at all.  I will confess to having had a load of white laundry turn pink one day.  Luckily for us, it was mostly my things and I love pink.  There were a few pairs of socks that belonged to My Loving Spouse, which he quickly announced were now mine.  A few pairs of his boxer shorts also ended up a tad pink and have been delegated to the back of his underwear drawer.  He wears them only in desperation and is uncomfortable about it all day long, muttering things like, “What if anyone found out I have pink panties on?!”  I tell you this, so you will understand how uniquely odd it was the other morning for him to be fetching the morning coffee in my bathrobe, my pink bathrobe.  His was in the wash and it was a cold, very cold morning and I was sick in bed.  The conversation went something like this…

“Oh, just wear my bathrobe.”

“I am not going to wear your pink bathrobe.”

“Do you want me to go fetch the coffee?”

“No, I don’t want you to go.”

“So, just wear my bathrobe.”

“What if someone sees’ me?”

“Who is going to see you?  The kids are asleep and who comes here at 9:00 am on a Sunday morning?”

“Oh, my God, I cannot believe I am wearing my wife’s robe!” said with great disgust.

The truth is he looked really cute with it on, but the entire world will never know it, as he has declared that he will NEVER EVER wear it again!  Did anyone but me see him?  Almost!  Someone did drive into the yard and get out of their truck with an envelope, but at this point My Loving Spouse was racing through the house in record time for fear that ‘someone’ almost saw him in his wife’s pink robe.

Who came?  We didn’t know.  What envelope did he leave?  Nothing, we looked on every porch for the envelope.  It was all very peculiar and we wondered about it all weekend…  We came home from errands to find the envelope on the kitchen table…and inside, a wonderful present from the past!  Number Two Son met the Morning Stranger, one of the kids of John & Priscilla Brown who lived and loved this home before us.  He had brought us a great gift, which we treasure…pictures from the past…not of his family even, but of the original family who built this home.  

We are so very grateful to have this bit of history for this place we love.  The pictures will be framed and hung with honor in our respect of the past.  We both wish we could have thanked the Giver, the Morning Stranger, in person…one of us even thinks it would have been fine to thank them in a pink robe.

Prior to My Loving Spouse slitting his hand open, we were making progress on the attic restoration…slowly.  Luckily, we’ve had help from Team Offspring.  It was time to frame out the new wall in My Girl’s room, thereby creating a hallway to the attic from all the other upstairs bedrooms.  Creating a larger walk-in closet for My Girl, a trade off…smaller room/bigger closet, and of course the bonus to all…a bathroom upstairs!

We built the first wall in what I was calling ‘Amish’ style, building the wall on the floor and then raising it up into place.  It went up quite easily, just like in the movie ‘The Witness’ when they all get together and raise a barn…it was just like that, except Number Two Son filled in for Harrison Ford and there was no incredible sound track playing in the back ground, but other than that it was just like that, oh and our wall was a tad smaller than a barn.

Like the Amish, My Loving Spouse begins sporting a pair of suspenders, but that is really because The diet is working and he is just trying to keep his pants up!Number Two Son and My Girl have helped a LOT to work on the attic restoration for a variety of reasons…they are good people, they want a bathroom nearby, they get to use power nail guns, they live here and I make them.  Number Four Son on the other hand just likes to help.  He is not Amish, but he is filled with goodness just like them, which is very, very lucky for us!  Number Four was helping in a heavy job that required two working arms, cutting through the cast iron sewer pipe.  It turns out that there is actually a tool for just this purpose and Number Four knew just where to borrow one and how to use it…scary looking tool isn’t it?

Now the sewer pipe can be altered to take in the new toilet line.  So all we need to do now is…

…finish the electrical, finish the closet, move the door, add the plumbing, install the floor (whoops, go pick up the wood for the floor, which is in Spokane then install it), add insulation, put in a new window, install the sink, repair the sink (that is another story), install dry wall, faucets, build medicine cabinets, install light fixtures and tub, tile around tub, add shelving, bead board, paint, not in any order and then clean…clean…clean…and it will be done…just like that…so simple (except for what I forgot and except for breaking stuff and except for injuries and except for the fact we now only have weekends to work on it).

So, if you visit…bring your tools, your patience and a steady gait to find your way downstairs in the middle of the night to use the available bathroom.