New Life Old Farmers

I do love Pinterest, except when I don’t!  Some of the wonderful, stunning, beautiful decorating ideas for the home are just beyond me and my immediate reaction is, “Nice, yes, but who is going to dust it?”  Don’t get me wrong, I really do enjoy the creative, fun, and whimsical, wonderful ideas that are on Pinterest, but it can also make me crazy….like voices saying…’hurry up, get ready for Thanksgiving, Christmas is coming and you are not ready, your home does not look perfect yet and you are late.  Late, late, late…’ and then I must remind myself…ah, really?  It is only November 7, 2013.

We do have a beautiful home.  I do want it to look warm and inviting and festive, and I do recognize that this is mostly for me.  Most of my family will nod politely and say, “that looks nice”, no matter what I do, so keeping it simple is really best for everyone!  I decided that whatever I got done in one day, was going to be ‘good enough’.  The amazing part, was that when I stopped worrying about being ‘late’ or any other craziness, I really started to enjoy the creativity that comes with adding a bit of Thanksgiving decorating, and managed to dust a little along the way.

Pinterest perfect? Hahahahahaha…. I know it is not.  That is okay with me, this is for us.

My favorite bits are the hand-made clay turkeys made by little hands now grown….

….and our ‘gratitude board’ that we all do have a part in.  It is not perfect either, but a work in progress, just like me.

If you are not getting ready for Thanksgiving then you are probably our family in England and if you do not know what Pinterest is, you are probably Our Friend the Farmer and you’ll have to ask one of the girls in your family.

The Teen and I spent a surprising amount of time canning all types of goodies this harvest.  Both of us were neophytes, so we made a cozy, surprisingly competent team.  I could almost hear my mother muttering things like…”not quite so much, that looks good, are you sure you are doing it right and Wow, this is good.”

These are country apples picked straight from our neighbor’s tree across the street to our table, so our first step was to cut out the worms.  Luckily for us, we did not find any wiggling worms, just a few places where they had been.  Those apple pieces went into the chicken feed pile, as chickens are not as discerning about eating apple bits with worm particles as we are, in fact that is their favorite part.

Love the rose-red color of these apples!

For those of you who have made a lot of applesauce you are now probably screaming, “You left the skin on!!”  Well, it turns out that it is not just our country men neighbors that have all the neat tools.  Our Sweet Neighbor Sue provided us not only with the apples, but an applesauce grinder/saucer/make-the-job-easier-tool.  No peeling apples, very little waste!

We almost ran out of pots and room on the stove.  No, we didn’t plan on washing the walls of the kitchen afterward from all that steam, but the kitchen is a tad cleaner now, because of it.

How cool is this!  Applesauce on one side, skin on the other.  The whole job easier and a fun tool to use.  The Teen was a cranking expert.  We added just a tad of cinnamon and nothing else, for a wonderful sweet batch of beautiful pink applesauce.

 We feeling pretty proud of ourselves as our harvest canning combo came out to:

Applesauce
Beets
Piccalilli
Pears
Beans

Not too shabby!

We informed The Offspring, that we were having a work party weekend and they were ‘invited’ (conscripted) to join us in the fun.

“Woo Hoo”, they said…or something like it.

We are under the gun to get ready for winter and with one winter under my belt, I’d had some… concerns.  Hauling water to our growing herd with frozen hoses was not a situation I wanted to repeat.  All we needed to do was, dig trenches, add piping, install stand pipes and turn the water on…no big deal.

The first stop was (early in the morning) to pick up the ‘Ditch Witch’, a Bob Cat supper digger.  My Loving Spouse popped out of the truck went into the shop, saw no one there, came out and set off the bugler alarm.

“They’ve been broken into”, he told me, “the lock is broken and no one is there”.  We ‘called it’ in to the alarm company to alert them that we were the ones that set off the alarm, but the lock seemed to be broken.  He was instructed to remain in the truck and wait for the police.  A pair of Ellensburg’s finest showed up fairly soon.  They were a cautious, careful duo, who were not immediately won over by My Loving Spouse’s British accent, so he opened his coat to show them he was unarmed, explained what had happened and offered to pick them up some doughnuts, to which they were not amused.  Turns out the lock just looked broken, they hadn’t been burgled, they’d just forgotten to lock up well the night before, so we were back to our working weekend in no time flat.

We off loaded the Ditch Witch and started to dig in…literally.  We knew we had to be careful.  We did not want to dig up and sever the electrical that ran all the power for the barn, the garage and the woodshed!  My Loving Spouse informed us approximately where he believed the power lines to be, and told us all multiple times, that we were going to need to be careful.  It was a great relief to The Offspring and I, that when the power lines did get sort of completely severed, it was while My Loving Spouse was driving the ‘Witch’….(Bad British word).

The Ditch Witch digs a deep, narrow trench just right for a water line that will not freeze (we hope).  The trench is narrow…really narrow.  Luckily for us, Our Friend the Farmer, used this digger a few weeks ago and added an exceedingly thin shovel to his arsenal of digging equipment.  Knowing what we were up to, he dropped off the new shovel for us to use, which we did, almost immediately.

We’d hoped to add two new stand pipes one at each end of the barn.  We’d really needed to make use of our time this Saturday, so we were on ‘it’ no matter the weather.  Luckily, for us, it only rained a little, was cold (not freezing) and the wind only blew in the afternoon (cold wind…very cold).  Yep, it wasn’t all that fun, to continually lie in the dirt looking for leaks.

Somewhere along the dig, we hit what had to be an old ‘dump’ from years gone by, as we unearthed bits of pottery, glass bottles and the top of an old iron stove, to say nothing of wood, wire, rocks and old rusty nails.

We actually did have enough help.  The Offspring reported for duty with good attitudes and giggles, a welcomed change from when they were ‘younger’ and showed up with sarcasm and sullenness.  Our Friend the Farmer stopped by in the afternoon to check on his shovel and was soon bonding with his buddy, My Loving Spouse over the fine tuning of hose clamps and leaks.  I think it was everyone’s good attitude that contributed to the surprisingly small amount of ‘Bad British’ words being uttered.

At the end of the day, we were muddy, tired and wondering where the Advil was, but we were also delighted to stand back and say, ‘we’d done it‘ as the new stand pipe got turned on and the trough filled up easily and quickly.  A long day’s work, but so totally worth it!

As for the severed power lines… well, tomorrow is another day.

After ‘denial’ comes ‘acceptance’…

It was clear that I had arrived at ‘acceptance’ when I found myself ordering not one, but two firewood organizers.  Gone was any sense of my ‘denial’, ‘denial’ that the whole ‘cold’ season was a fluke last year and the need for warmth in the form of large, large piles of firewood a necessity.

If you’ve been raised by my mother, after ‘acceptance’ comes ‘preparedness’ to say nothing of ‘organization’.  In my ‘acceptance’, came the realization that the need for firewood, in the wood shed, on the porch and in the house, was our reality and the cute little fire wood baskets of last year needed replacement with hefty, large, useful and attractive wood storage system/s.

Set and ready and looking good.  Getting the hang of this stuff….bring it on….

We did it.  We got away, on purpose, to have fun, relax, rest and look at the ocean, just the two of us, but as soon as we saw the beach we thought…wouldn’t the dogs have fun here…and wouldn’t it be neat to ride the horses here… but that was about it, surprisingly (sarcastic font needed) no thought about missing the cats.  There is a lot of water (rivers, lakes, ponds, the sound and streams) here in Washington, but the ocean is still the ocean and there is nothing like the sight and sound of the waves.  My Loving Spouse just needed to refuel his soul and look at the sea and so we spent the weekend at Ocean Shores.

There was a brief, but expensive stop along the way at a Sewing machine store.  I am on my 4th quilt on a borrowed sewing machine.  I’ve been doing my research about the sewing machines the other quilters use and as helpful as they’ve tried to be, I was getting no where.  I finally realized, that they all pretty much love the brands they have and that none of them were cheap.  My ‘budget’ was way out of whack.  “Oh…”, I said, “It’ll be hard for me to buy one with out My Loving Spouse.  I’d never be able to spend that kind of money on myself”.  So we stopped at the store….looked around…got hooked by the salesman (who we really liked), did NOT buy the one that came with a laser…but fell for the floor model, which was on sale.  I received My Loving Spouse’s text half way through the selling ‘spiel’.  It can even sew leather and naugahyde (new seats for Whoa Nelly).  We’d spent more than we thought on a machine that has more than we’d ever dreamed…and for much of the weekend I felt both stunned and excited!

Ocean Shores is a small town with a big beach and one can drive right on the beach!  So of course we did…a lot!!  That in itself was quite unique and wonderful, driving by the cliffs and seeing how the wind changed the beach just over night with the ever-changing tides was quite an experience.

The tiny town was just perfect for us!  We poked around enjoying every store they had and were both surprised and delighted at the offerings.  The prices were good.  The content was interesting.  The humor brought out loud laughter often and it was a delightful time.  Oh, and we spent very little money, which was good given the whole sewing machine store stop!

I love these small stores strung so colorfully together.  What an improvement over a ‘mini-strip mall’ (and yes they had those too).

We clearly stumbled on the whole eating out in a new place.  We’d been advised to have razor clams and eggs for breakfast, which honestly seemed a bit more on the extreme clam eating learning curve than we were probably ready for, so Friday night at what looked like the the last ‘decent’ restaurant open on our way, we did try razor clams.  I’d been raised in the ‘clean your plate’ age, but still only managed to eat three bites of my razor clam fritters.  My Loving Spouse did eat his whole dinner of fried razor clams and then got to spend the night with them as they ‘revisited’ him often.  We were assured by the locals that if we didn’t like razor clams, we just ate at the wrong place, which I am sure was at least half-true.  Our dinner was topped only by our lunch the next day somewhere ‘nameless’ up the coast at what we thought was a road side ‘diner’, but turned into more of a ‘colorful’, tough, mid-life, loud, never-been-a-beauty queen, chic bar.  We did pay our tab, but otherwise, it was eat and run!  We did find the ‘right’ restaurant for us, but only managed on it at the last-minute, for a piece of pie (heavenly and reasonable) and yes, we’ll be back to the “Home Port”.

We drove along the coast with the forest on one side and the ocean on the other, with plenty of blue skies.  Small houses dotted along in different states of repair, some well cared for others old and aged, almost all decorated with different buoys rolled in from the sea.  We drove through part of the Indian reservation and I was ‘disturbed’ by the squalor that they chose to live in.  I say ‘chose’ as we all do have the choice to pick up after ourselves, keep our homes tidy and take care of what we have to live with.  I’d never really seen this up close and it made me sad and anxious to leave the area.

The Off Spring managed to keep all the animals alive and the house from burning down so we consider it all a success, especially as Elsie Gump took the opportunity to break out of the pasture and try a chomp on the roses.  Number Two Son became the cattle wrangler, mostly by making noise behind the three-legged cow to get her back into a more secure pasture….but whatever works!

We had a great time away and as always were glad to be home, greeted by a beautiful carpet of yellow leaves and …the cats.

‘We’ had a lazy fall day yesterday, except the ‘we’ was not I, nor was it My Loving Spouse.  It was our beautiful Beau.  The weather has been downright glorious, warm in the day..70 degrees, with blue skies and colorful leaves everywhere!  I wanted to ride my horse up on the trail and enjoy the beautiful day and the fall colors from a different view.  I scurried through my work and proceeded to saddle up Beau.  Beau already has started to grow a woolly winter coat, so I’d thought I’d made a good choice to take advantage of a ride while we still could.

I often feel as if I should pinch myself, when I think “I have a horse“!  No one on the streets where we grew up had horses.  Horse ownership in the town was available to only the very rich and those owners were knowledgeable and able, about what needed to be done in order to ride.  To find myself as the horse ‘readier’ still catches me by surprise, especially when I clean their hoofs and think how far I’ve come!

So with the fall beauty everywhere, I readied us for a wonderful peaceful ride.

Except it wasn’t…  Beau was being lazy.  He did not want to go for a ride.  He especially did not want to go without the other horses and instead of acting like a the proud and beautiful quarter horse he is, he acted like a stubborn mule (sorry, mule lovers).  He did a lot of backing up, when I wanted him to go forward, so instead we went around in circles.  I pulling his head around to move his feet and remind him/us who is boss.  We did move down the trail, but instead of it being the pleasurably, beautiful, relaxing ride I envisioned, it looked more like we were making figure eights down the trail as I had to keep after him about which way I wanted us to go.  By turning him in circles, it forces him to move his feet, especially effective when he is being lazy.  Noticeably this post is now lacking the plethora of fall trail ride pictures I’d anticipated.

When we got back to the farm, we did more figure eights.  This time around the barrels in our ‘arena’ and we did not go at a walk, but kicked it/him in gear and finally got into a nice ‘racing’ lope around reminding me once again how far I’ve come…even if I do still hang on tight!

We’ve been doing more ‘unfencing’.  Oh, I do have a ‘thing’ for taking stuff down!  The pictures are hard pressed to really tell the story, but this old fence is, as we used to say in the Real Estate business (usually referring to a bad roof) “is at the end of its useful life”.  The fence line was a meandering trail, crooked and leaning in many places.

…. held up with a farmer’s special ‘go to’ supplies…metal fence stakes and ‘blue chain’ (baling twine).

Most of the posts were quite rotten and once the ‘blue chain’ was removed pushed over quite easily and yes, that is sort of my favorite part.

The rails pulled off easily as well, so it was a productive and rewarding day for My Loving Spouse and I, with surprisingly few injuries.  At the end of the day, only two smashed toes and one giant splinter.  We were even able to begin putting up the new fence.  The posts are recycled railroad ties and most of the rails will be salvaged from the old fence.  We did run into one little problem though, those railroad ties are really, really heavy…and I mean heavy.  By the time we were putting in the third post, we’d fashioned some carrier straps to assist us with the lifting, but I think when we start on the rest of the fence we’ll need more help in the form of strong young men, so we’ll probably be ‘inviting’ Number Four Son over to play.  Just at the time the rails were going on Number Two Son came home with a couple of friends (girls).  One of which said, “Power tools!!!  Can I help?  I love this stuff” and they proceeded to help finish off the day’s work.  Uhmmm, yes, she can come back!

We have a long way to go, before this job is done.  This fence was so obviously in need of removal and in the center of the farm, that it is an improvement to just have it started…and so we are pretty happy with it.

I love the signs of fall!  The pumpkins from my patch (20, but who’s counting?…ah, yes..I am) and especially the pumpkin that grew stuck in the wire fence.  The colors…everywhere we look are vibrant and a treat for the eyes!!!  I am not used to the way seasons change so quickly here.  The signs of fall, some make me giggle.  Some…like our molting chicken, well… I’m sorry it is just down right ugly, but to me it is all new, all different and I am enjoying it completely!

Many, many years ago, a few days before Christmas one of my little nephews confined in me,  “I sure hope I don’t get books and clothes again this Christmas.” Unbeknownst to him, his gift from me was cowboy boots.  Giving little boys cowboy boots is one of life’s delightful pleasures.  He was very happy with his boots and I’m sure they were worn to pieces, however the phrase ‘books and clothes’ has never worn out and became our pat answer for all future gift giving occasions.

“Hey, want to know what I got you for your birthday?  ….Books and Clothes”.

Of course one can measure how old one is by how much they now actually like books and clothes as presents.  Yep, I like them a lot!

It is Number Two Son’s birthday and he loves books and clothes, especially books.  We do give him things other than books and clothes, just not very often.  This year’s present…yes, we nailed it!  It came about only because we live in the country and people/men talk about hunting.  It is hunting season, so they/men talk about hunting a lot.  Actually, they/men do talk about it all year, it is just that their hunting stories now are current stories, as opposed to their stories the rest of the year when they/men talk about old hunting stories.  If a hunting story is especially impressive, they/men will even share someone else’s hunting story.  Such was the case the other night when My Loving Spouse was telling the story of our neighbor the Fire Captain’s championship (that term might not actually be completely correct, as I might not have been paying the proper ‘hunting story attention’) elk hunting story.  The thing about hunting stories is that they seldom end.  A hunting story is started, which leads to another hunting story, which leads to… and so forth and so on.  This time though, the hunting story ‘ramble’ was a great thing.  My Loving Spouse mentioned bow hunting.  (City folks…bow and arrow…Robin Hood).  Number Two Son’s eyes lit up.  “Oh, I think I’d like that!”…and I realized he would.  Even as a little guy when given the opportunity for adventurous games and opportunities, he’d make a bee line for the archery area.

We jumped on the hunt (shopping) to find him a compound bow, which is modern and fancy (I’m pretty sure this is not the correct hunting technical term, but I am going with it as it looks pretty fancy to me).  We were hoping to be able to give him his bow present a few days early while his brother would still be at the farm.  After all, a bow and arrow is pretty neat, but being able to ‘play’ with your brother with it, well, that is just even better.

My Loving Spouse and I found a great deal and picked up the present Friday evening.  I said, “We’ll wait until Number Two gets off work tomorrow to give it to him.”

“What?”  My Loving Spouse has Attention Gift Giving Disorder.  If you are unaware of this issue it plays out like this, he buys a present and gives the present in the same hour, even if the gift giving event is days or weeks away.

“We can’t give it to them tonight, they’ll want to play with it in the dark.”

“What?  No, they won’t… they’ll wait until tomorrow”.  So we gave into the Disorder and the delight of giving him his gift.

There was also a tutorial presentation by My Loving Spouse about never removing hunting tips with your fingers, but to always use a special tool as those babies are sharp, which luckily did not require stitches, but has resulted in a new packet of bandaging supplies.  Nice for him to take one for the team and leave a lasting impression for the boys.

“Mom, do we really have to wait until tomorrow to shoot it?”  See, I knew it.  Out came a bale of straw to shoot into and the truck driven out to the site left running to provide light from its headlights, as Number Two tried out his new bow, in the dark.

Number One Son said, “It is a pretty neat present.  You gave it to the right one, as he is clearly the best at it”.

So, Number Two Son, we love you.  We love that you love your gift and for Christmas…yep, you’re back to books and clothes.