New Life Old Farmers

Daisy was our city dog.  A terrier who chased (and killed squirrels), was so protective of her home and her people (including the Damn Cat), that many people including family were not comfortable around her.  When I was alone in previous years, she did keep me feeling safe.  When the Damn Cat got stuck in the tree she climbed the tree (TRUE story) and showed her how to come down.

Daisy was not a good farm dog.  She liked to run off, even with 4 acres she chose to run down the street and away.  She did not hear, but probably she won’t have come anyway, because she was a bit headstrong.  When she did get out, she also liked to roll in horse poop.  She had a muscle virus that left one side of her head caved in…she was not a pretty dog…but still she was ours.  We were afraid of her transition to farm life….she was getting old…

So, last week when she died peacefully in her sleep, we were sad, but actually a bit relieved.  She did not get hit by a car, she did not have to be put down.  We were sad…

One child was sadder than the other.  One child left the ‘grave’ and said, “Okay, so now we can get a puppy!”

We, the parental units laid down the rules…

There would be NO ONE bringing home any puppies.  This was our word and we were going to stick to it…. and we did, well, at least until after dinner.

We are sort of a two dog family and our sweet old lab was lonesome, you could say we are just not patient people, but we were…we’d been patient, taking care of Daisy for the years she took care of us.

And so welcome to Glory Farm little Zoe…

We’re not really the kind of people who spoil their pups..she’s just trying to keep my pillow warm for me…

I thought we were getting a sweet family dog…. My Loving Spouse…(with his eyes lit up)..Hunting Buddy!

And for our dear old dog… a perky little friend…

“So, how are you really?”, asked my loving Mentor as we caught up on the phone.  I was dusting as we talked.

“Honestly, the hardest thing for me to get used to is how quickly and how dirty the house gets”.

“Well, on your blog it seems so charming.”

“It is“, I answered, “and can you believe I just dusted the windows in the family room, where I dust all the time and wiped out a huge spider web with 5 dead flys in it!”

“Perhaps you should put a picture of that on your blog”, she said.  Now, she is a wonderful, kind, wise and enriching friend…but I am pretty sure she is wrong here.  No one wants to see a picture of that, however the odds of you seeing it, should you visit are actually fairly high.

As I texted My Loving Spouse the other day…

Even cleaning outside doesn’t last that long…so we have a simple system.

Washing the windows – spray them with the hose…

Washing the porches – spray them with the hose…

Washing the horses – hose..

Washing the cow – ha!  Trick question… even we don’t wash the cow.

Washing the car – (almost never happens)…hose.  I put The Teen to work.  She was on it, with the hose today.

Washing the dog…hose.

The old cold storage room/dog room was really stinky.  We’d pulled out the carpet, removed the rest of the ancient linoleum and tried to dust out the dirt the dogs had brought in…still dirty…still stinky.  So…if it works so well outside…let’s bring it inside…somebody, please bring me a hose.

I wish I could hose down more rooms…it was so therapeutic!

Our scarecrow is up!

She was built out of the ‘good junk’ from the work shop and she is one classy lady.

(Tons of great junk with lots of potential or Tons of junk that is not going to be easy to weld together)

‘We’ built her, our responsibilities breaking down as follows:

Design – 100% Me

Welding – 80% My Loving Spouse, 20% Me

Grinding – 100% My Loving Spouse

Arguing about design details 50%/50%

Arguing about the inability to weld just ‘anything’ I thought should go together 50%/50%

…but we did get her done…

she is fantastic….

I’ll let the pictures tell the story…

(Shovel Head
Tractor Bit Bow & Chain Hair)

(Old Andiron Legs which are wonderful
or as some say,
“Why did you have to pick something so heavy?”)

(Body to Leg Attachment)

(Perky Blue Skirt)

(Gladys shoulders and arm attached
boob building first vise/mammogram)

(Gladys get a bit of neck grinding)

(Garden Gladys’ Ta Da moment)

(Garden Gladys where she belongs.)

It might be a ‘girl’ thing…so far, I’m about the only one that thinks Gladys is fabulous!  The guys….not so much.  My Loving Spouse to quote, “That is the strangest scarecrow I’ve ever seen.”  A neighboring male (who shall remain more nameless than usual) wondered why Gladys’ boobs went down, well.. I am using really old parts.

If you want to know her full name… Garden Gladys Night and the ________.  You’ll have to ask My Loving Spouse.

If you want to weld some junk, come on over, I’ve only just begun!

Future projects?

I got to drive Whoa Nellie Walton today.  Well, actually I got to steer Whoa Nellie.  She doesn’t run and did I mention she doesn’t have any brakes.  It seems My Loving Spouse has been ‘making steady progress’ on her and she needed a bath, or her engine cleaned or her gunk cleared.  Whatever, it was determined that taking the truck to the water would be easier than taking the water to the truck, so we did.

Notice the heavy chain…all we had to do was pull her out of the workshop across the yard (missing the chicken coop), through a gate and stop at the garage.  The whole ‘stopping part’ is what I’d call ‘hopeful slowing down’ as there are no, none, zip, zero, nada brakes.  I still stepped on the brake pedal, because that is what I am inclined to do when seated behind the wheel of a vehicle to which I’d like stopped, but still, it doesn’t help.

Putting her back into the workshop was going to take a bit more maneuvering, pushing the non-running truck backwards, lining it up to go back through the gate, turn around the chicken coop, straighten it up and push it back into the work shop again…none of this with power, very much room or as I might have mentioned….brakes.  My Loving Spouse asked if I wanted to be the Driver/Pusher in the running truck or the Steering Driver of the non-running truck.  I opted for steering the truck with no brakes (AND no seat…just a up-turned bucket), because I figured with no power and no brakes, if anything went wrong it couldn’t actually be my fault…all I had to do was steer….and hopefully slow down.

Being practical and thinking things through, we did have a back up plan and a reliable method of communication, should I need to alert My Loving Spouse aka Driver/Pusher that things were not going well on my end…

…truly never a dull moment.

My little view is one I treasure.  I’d started to say I was ‘lucky’, but as I read somewhere recently, that is not true…I am blessed.  Very much so, as I sit in one of my favorite spots…our front porch swing…and focus on the abundant daisies, not on the abundant chipped and peeling paint…I will get to that another day.

The Grand Dogs are here for their summer vacation, happily tearing across the pasture to fetch their ball.  They find the pond not cold, but delightful…as only two dirty dogs on a hot summer day can.

The chickens never cease to amaze us with their strange sounds and humorous chicken personalities.

Their eggs tend to come in all shapes and sizes, which makes me wonder where the eggs in the stores come from with their unity in form and color.  One of our hens tends to lay an egg like a very large torpedo, which almost does not fit in the carton, the egg is so long.

Yesterday’s mystery was an egg that looked left over from Easter.

Fresh from the nesting box….

unbelievable with two tones…

isn’t mother nature cool?

The Teen and I learned to weld!  Woo and Hoo!  I am ready to go burn some metal!  Melt some metal?  Whatever, there is a whole shop full of ‘junk’ just waiting for me to turn it into ‘stuff’!  All I have to do is not burn the work shop down, seriously, I think I can do that.

We had a great, relaxing and productive weekend.  One of those few times where we took on enough projects to feel happy about what got done, but not as overwhelmed as usual.  The big workshop door was repaired, so it can now be slid open and closed, which is making My Loving Spouse very happy.

Sometimes it is just nice, convenient even when ‘stuff’, especially tools work.  I get it!  This week the final wheelbarrow broke.  UGH!  When I had it full and was using it, which is the only time they seem to break!  I said, “To…blank-et-y blank with it”.  You know you’re living in the country when you have coveting wheelbarrow issues, which I confess I do.  I took my pocket-money and bought myself (but I share) a sweet new wheelbarrow… a two-wheeler… steel handled baby…destined for a long and happy life with me on the farm.

So, My Clever Loving Spouse had a great idea for the broken wheelbarrow.  He’d teach us to weld and build me a trailer for the John D. ride on mower at the same time, (as I’ll have to confess to actually coveting the ride on mower trailers as well.)   This would be a handy gardener’s dream on steroids kind of thing.

Step One, The Teen and I unbolt all the attached parts on the wheelbarrow and on an old power sprayer.

(Notice the multi-tasking teen, wrench in one hand, iPhone in the other)

Measuring the steel part we’d dismantled from the power sprayer, this gets bolted to the wheel barrow, after welding washers to the axles and the axles to this new big axle.

Only one wheel needed trimming after a slight mis-measuring…

practically a record.

The Teen receives her tutorial and tries welding the trailer attachment.

The final attachment is hardest to weld, as the metal is so thin.  My Loving Spouse and I  both take a stab at it and all we do is burn two small holes in the wheelbarrow or what I like to call a trailer vent.

It is decided to just bolt the piece to the wheelbarrow.

The old workshop stool was used to hold up the wheelbarrow/trailer during this final stage.

The stool took the most ‘hits’

getting just a tad singed, with a hole drilled through it as well!

The stories this old stool could tell….

However, we did reach our ‘Ta-Da” moment!

SWEET!

Now, not only can I stop coveting the trailers at the local hardware store,

but I can do some serious gardening clean up,

as well as giving my loved ones a lift!

Growing up in Southern California, my experience with productive vegetable gardens is a bit lacking.  We had citrus trees, fruit trees and jam was made in abundance.  One year when I was ‘The Teen’, my mother decided we needed a vegetable garden and corralled us to all help and it was a hot day.  I really only remember two things about this:

1.  The gigantic water fight we got into while building the garden, complete with water hoses and a secret attack on the vegetable garden designer herself.

2.  The sight of my father pushing a wheel barrow.  Our Dad, the Pajama King Salesman of the West, hey, somebody has to sell pajamas or the entire world would sleep naked, and he was a very, very good pajama salesman.  Men’s pajamas as well, so we (except my Mother) all grew up sleeping in pajamas with fly’s, whether we needed the fly’s or not!  Dad grew up in New York City, and did not really do yard work, seeing him behind the wheel barrow was a unique event.

I do not remember this garden producing anything anyone actually wanted to eat.

Southern California vegetable garden number two was my idea, as I was now ‘the mother’ and decided we needed a productive vegetable garden.  I put it in a year before meeting My Loving Spouse, with the help of a friend who owned her own rototiller (still very impressive thing for So. California) and my own set of ‘teens’.  We laid out a beautiful vegetable garden, intermixed with flowers, a dwarf lime tree called The Bartender’s Friend (which did not end up to be my friend as it produced ZERO limes), sun flowers, tomatoes, herbs and other edibles.  It did, just okay.  Actually the tomatoes did do well.  They were wonderful, tasty, yellow, cherry sized delights and by then I’d met My Loving Spouse and he hated them.

So, do we have the most amazing vegetable garden in Ellensburg?

Surely, NOT.

Do we have the most amazing vegetable garden in my history?

Absolutely!

And yes….

fresh tastes better,

much, much better!

We would both agree that the workshop is still a disaster.  The three bays are slightly improved from a year ago and now at least each section has an assigned function.  I would say the ‘disaster’ status comes from the amount of dirt, broken doors, lack of order and chicken poop that one must deal with inside.  My Loving Spouse would say the ‘disaster’ status comes from broken doors, lack of lighting, lack of time to fix it and ‘people’ (probably me) who keep moving his stuff, (which in my defense, I do not move his stuff.  I return his stuff, because I have this weird notion that tractor parts and power tools do not add to the functionality of our kitchen counters).

One side of the workshop shortly after we moved in, I’d like to say it looks vastly different now, but….

The Workshop is a treasure trove of ‘stuff’, metal bits and pieces, old nails, door knobs, tools, cans of oil, parts of tractors, chains, wire, wheels, a coal-burning stove and a pile of coal.  Then of course there is the ‘junk’.  The ‘junk’ was in a large old wash pail, where My Loving Spouse threw the ‘junk’ when he was ‘cleaning up’.  The wash pail became too heavy to move, which is why it never got thrown out, which is also lucky for me, as I like the ‘junk’.  The ‘junk’ is now being turned into other ‘stuff’, which is a story I’ll save for another day…

One bay has a large door that does not open at all on one end (it only looks open in the picture at the top of the website, as it had fallen off completely), this door needs to be fixed (no small job), and a small door on the other side that has also completely fallen off and a large section of the wall has a hole in it which needs repair as well.  This wall used to be off its foundation, but My Loving Spouse fixed it, so we are making some progress.  You could say it tends to be a bit drafty and cold in the winter, not exactly a warm and cozy man cave.

We need the workshop to work…better.  It is frustrating for My Loving Spouse when he needs to fix stuff, because he cannot see and cannot find things and stuff is always needing to be fixed, like the (bad British word) ride on mower which has broken three belts in almost three days.  To say nothing of the other projects we haven’t finished, started or come to terms over.

It feels a bit like we are at the end of a 10 month pregnancy and now have beautiful but colicky twins….with diaper rash!  The house and farm are beautiful, except where it is not.  Some of the farm’s issues we either didn’t know existed or didn’t know that they cannot be fixed, and we are just a tad tired.  I don’t know how to fix the Work Shop, but my dream for My Loving Spouse is for him to have lots of light, doors that work, everything clean (whoops… he doesn’t care about that), no chicken poop or holes in the wall.  Hmm, I wonder if I could hire someone to do that???  I’d need a really good work force, do you think there is an Amish ‘r Us.

In the end, my fantasy dream Work Shop will include My Loving Spouse inside, happily whistling while he fixes all the things that break, carefully and thoughtfully planning the next step of this massive renovation, with all his tools where they go… or maybe just plenty of light and doors that work.

If I said I wasn’t looking forward to this Monday morning, I’d be lying…..like a rug.  I told My Loving Spouse last night, “You know I love you and the kids?  Tomorrow morning, you will all be gone and well, …… I am sort of giddy with excitement at the thought!”.  The house all to myself, albeit a dirty house, but a quiet one!  Oh, come on you mothers that are rolling your eyes!  It has been six weeks since I had a quiet morning and my sanity left a long time ago.  I had a plan.  Dusting, laundry, bill paying, weeding around the pumpkins, watering and quiet, quiet, quiet.  It was a beautiful thing… then a strange car pulled up with an older lady in it.

“Is that your big black animal in the road?”  

“Excuse me?”

“Down by my house, I live down the street.”

Oh, I thought, one of Our Friend the Farmer’s heifers has gotten out.

“Oh,”  I said, “A cow?”

“Yes”

“Oh, no it is not mine, but I know who it belongs to.  I will go try to put her back in the pasture.  Is it number 203?”

“Well, I didn’t really get close enough to get it’s name”

She looked at me a bit oddly, thinking I might be a bit odd as well, since I knew the name/number of the cow, but not as odd as I thought of her as she’d obviously lived here a long time and didn’t know that the ‘big black animal’ was a cow.  I thanked her again, and told her I’d handle it.  I figured I’d either get the heifer back in and then let Our Friend the Farmer know she’d gotten out again, or I’d not be able to get her back in and let him know she was out again.

I grabbed a long shovel, because it is a good tool to encourage cows to go where you want them to, or protect myself, in case the heifer didn’t like my ‘attitude’.  Our Friend the Farmer always has a shovel with him.  I could have saddled my horse to wrangle the heifer, but that could take too long and I didn’t want her to get hit on the road.  I would have jumped on my ‘bike’ (quad/4 wheeler), except we don’t have one.  Our Friend the Farmer is always saying, “Pat, you need to get a bike.”  So, I jumped into the only available vehicle I had, a tad ‘non-farmy’, my jaunty, cute, red Lexus and drove off down the road to wrangle the heifer.

Cattle like to do three things, eat, drink and poop.  The cow/heifer that manages to get out of the pasture is not actually the smart one.  It is sort of the dumb one, because it not only leaves the place where there is food and water, but it usually cannot figure out how to get back there when it wants to.  My plan was to open the gate to the pasture and then get behind the heifer and ‘encourage’ her in the right direction, I’ve seen this done and usually they are so happy to get back into the pasture they sort of take off at a run as soon as they see the open gate.  Just as I got to the wayward heifer, one of Our Friend the Farmer’s Top Men was there doing exactly what I’d planned to do, darn it.  I didn’t get to be the cow ‘hero’, but I did get to go home to a quiet house.