My fearless, wasp killing husband in a severe thunderstorm. You sir, are my freakin’ hero.
P.s. there is a can of spray in his other hand. I was, conveniently, behind glass to avoid ticked off stinging insects.
These are a few of my faaaaavorite things
I’ve been really trying to be a good little minimalist lately (more on that later), and pare down all the crap in my life. You know, literally and metaphorically speaking (anyone need some chickens?).
In doing so, I am weeding out the junk and hanging on to the “good stuff”. I love, love, love to try out new and different things with the hope that I’ll discover something that so awesome, I won’t be able to understand how I ever went without it.
Anyhoo, I thought It’d share some of my newest favorites with you, in an absolutely random fashion.
1. Biokleen products. I have been on a many months’ long quest to find a good, eco friendly laundry detergent/soap. Now, I do make my own, but there are times when I need something with a bit more cleaning power for greasy clothes, and I also like to occasionally wash my clothes in a detergent to get out “the funk”. Enter Biokleen laundry detergent. Fabulous. I use only about a tablespoon or less for my HE washer on a large load. Clothes are wonderfully clean, and smell fresh, plus no harmful ingredients. As far as I can tell, no weird chemicals or animal testing for their products. So far,
I have used about half of a 64 oz. jug and it has been at least a solid month since bought it. Heck, maybe two! I’ll have to check. I also bought their dishwashing soap, and I love it. Smells like citrus, and literally leaves dishes squeaky clean. I was having issues with other soaps not cutting through grease well, bit it’s no longer an issue. I am also using Biokleen glass cleaner. Works great, though I sure love using vodka for that. You know, for cleaning, NOT drinking while cleaning, although I’m sure that has its perks.
2. French press for coffee. Who would have thought that for 13 bucks, you could have some totally great coffee time and time again? I got mine at IKEA, and I love it. The coffee turns out rich and somehow creamy, even. The only drawback? It takes a pretty good amount of coffee, and coffee ain’t cheap. Still…
3. Biscoff spread. It’s a cookie made into a silly peanut butter texture spread. If you love the taste of Graham crackers, you will love thus stuff. Truly “crack in a jar”. Yeah, probably not that great for you, either.
4. (I’m so hesitant and this one….sigh) My Motorola RAZR MAXX. I’m embarrassed. I finally gave in and got a smartphone. Yeah, me….the one that made fun of smartphone carrying people ever since they came out. Ugh. I wear the Cone of Shame. But, I use this little guy for so much. It is the best alarm I’ve ever owned (that is, one I didn’t want to beat the crap out of with a baseball bat when
it went off). It has replaced my silly paper trail and kept me up to date by using the free app called Cozi. (Cozi is a GREAT app! ) I can check prices, reviews, and weather wherever I go. In fact, I’m writing this blog on my “phone” right now. I use it in the kitchen for recipes, and in the stores as a calculator. Yep, I could live without it, but it certainly has made things easier for me! I am also not online as much, either. All around, I love it.
Well, I have “Swyped” my fingers numb, so until next time…
Crow-lateral damage, Devil’s grass, killer wasps, and other rants
I hate to kill things. Really, I do. I try to not squoosh bugs unless absolutely necessary, and I’d much rather relocate pests than kill them. Still, life in the country occasionally forces us to do things we wouldn’t normally do. Earlier this year, our ‘murder’ of crows that stays around the house taught themselves to kill my baby chicks by ripping off their heads and eating their hearts. Nice, huh? I haven’t ever been too bothered by the crows; I actually LIKE crows. They are extremely intelligent, and they were really good about chasing off any hawks on our property. However, then the crows figured out how to steal eggs out of the chicken coop. Annoying, to say the least. That was the final straw for me. Not only that, they ate every last peach off of my tree, and about 1/2 of my plums this year. I didn’t even get one. Not. A. Single. One. So, after the Great Egg Theft/Peach Destruction of 2012, Jason declared himself the Crow Hunter. He waits in the chicken coop with his faithful shotgun, and so far, we’re down 4 crows. My fear was that if we didn’t start taking out the main offenders, they would teach this to the younger crows and we’d be battling peach-eating, chick-killing, egg-sucking crows for the rest of our lives. All I need is for my hard work to go straight down the toilet! And speaking of that:
If there is one most hated thing I hate about gardening, it’s Bermuda Grass. I think it should be illegal. I HATE IT WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING. You can pull it, burn it, chop it, cover it, mulch it, cuss it, and it comes back every time. I read where it was called Devil’s Grass, and I can see why. I call it Cancer Grass (it spreads silently and quickly, without your detection), not to mention many, many very bad words. I can’t tell you how many hours of my life I have spent pulling it, digging it, and cussing it out. Now, some of this is our own fault. When we fenced in the front yard, what we SHOULD have done is drag the whole thing off with a box blade, down to straight sand. We didn’t. I assumed (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA) that heavy mulch would keep out the Bermuda. Now it has taken over everything. It sends runners into all of my beds, under all of my beds, IN my landscape timbers, through any barrier I have ever laid down, and now through my damn brick walkway. Yes, I can literally MOW my brick path. All of that work: now VOID.
So, I’ve been getting into this minimalism thing where I’m trying to make everything as simple as possible. Bermuda grass and minimalism do NOT go hand in hand. Unless, perhaps, you want a lawn. Which I do NOT. Jason and I have decided to rip up everything….yep, everything in the front yard, and drag it off with a blade. I’ve had it, had it, had it! I do not mind weeding, but the grass is too much. I’m getting older, bitchier, and I’m just done with Bermuda grass. So, I am going to document the progression of our ‘new’ yard. Wish us luck. It may just push me over the edge. I may concrete the front yard or set it on fire. Hormonal women do crazy things, what can I say?
And on the subject of grass: Have you ever thought about grass? How much it really costs you to even have grass? We have about 3 or 4 acres of ‘front yard’, most of it is covered in some kind of grass. Now, we don’t water it or fertilize it, or anything like that, but it still costs us a LOT to keep it mowed. We had to get a riding mower, which of course requires gas, new blades, all sorts of replacement parts every year to keep it running well. Then, there’s the time it requires to actually mow and weedeat. Some days you just want to set off a bomb in the middle of it all so you don’t have to see the growing grass mocking you hours after you just cut it. That, or a flock of sheep. I actually mentioned sheep to Jason and he looked at me like I had lost my mind. Just trying to help.
Last rant of the day: What is up with the wasps this year? Wasps are also something that I actually like. Yes, really. I have seen many a red wasp eating tomato hornworms off of my plants. The thing I do not like is when wasps decided to make your home their home. Oh yeah, and getting stung. Definitely don’t like that. This year, it seems as though we have a wasp explosion. They are everywhere; in my greenhouse, our firewood bin, my storage room, and now the front porch. Basically, I could no longer go anywhere without the white hot fear of ticking off a whole crapload of wasps wherever I went. It was bad enough that I couldn’t go into the right side of the yard, my greenhouse, or my storage building, but when I walked onto my front porch to see about 20 angry wasps yesterday, that was IT. I went to town to get wasp spray and one store was completely out, and I think I got the last 2 cans at WalMart, so I guess it isn’t just me. Luckily for me, my Knight in Shining Armor of a husband is pretty fearless when it comes to vanquishing stinging insects. He just walks right up to a nest and sprays away. It’s a great thing, because I’m the kind of person that actually utilizes the “25 foot distance” advertised on the wasp spray can and then runs away madly. God help anyone or anything that comes in between me and an open space at that point, because you will be vanquished. So far, 3 nests are somewhat destroyed but we’re waiting on another can of wasp spray and the evening hours before I can be assured they are really all dead.
In short, it’s been one of those weeks where you almost want to give up the farm and move to an efficiency apartment. But not quite.
Meet the chickens
So for today, let’s meet the M.L.C. chickens, shall we? It’s been long overdue. Let’s start with the roosters, or perhaps more correctly,the cockerels.
My pure-bred Silkie cockerel, Mr. Pufflepants, to the mid right. He was hatched last March and came from Ideal Poultry in Cameron, TX. His color is called ‘partridge’. Though I had several males in the group, he struck me as the best looking. The things I look for are fully feathered feet, as little ‘hard’ feathering as possible (esp. in the tail and feet), and a small frame with upright stance. As you can see, he really thinks he is HAWT, as they say. Really a stud. Never passes up an opportunity to do what roosters to best, besides crow, that is.
And now, we have Ernie the Wonder Chicken. Ernie was a wonderful gift from our fellow animal lover, Heather. I’ve talked about him in past posts, but Ernie is a ‘Showgirl’ chicken. He has the naked neck gene borrowed from a Transylvanian Naked Neck chicken with the silkie feathering of….a Silkie, of course. He is the father of all of the Showgirls that I have hatched. Funny, the older he gets, the more he looks like he has a mullet. Oh well.
Now for the newest addition, thanks to another chicken addict such as myself! I traded some Showgirls for a couple of little bantams. This little guy (he is as small as a dove, almost) is named Moe Banty. If you don’t know old country music, then you’re just on your own when it comes to figuring out where his name came from. Anyway, he is 8 inches tall and bulletproof. Classic ‘short man syndrome’. He is just a pet and that’s all. No baby bantams planned. Still not certain if he is an Old English Game Bird or a Dutch, as there are very similar color phases in both, but it really doesn’t matter anyway. He was only born this year, so he has a LOT of filling out to do still. Ought to be a very pretty boy over the next year.
And now for some hens. I do not name everyone; only the ones that strike me with their personalities for some reason or another. Here is my current favorite Showgirl, Lolly Popp. I’m sure you can figure out the name. Looks like a licorice lollipop attached to her body. I’m planning on hooking her up with Pufflepants for more lollipop looking babies. She is still young and ‘feathering out’. Ought to be a pretty stunning bird when it’s all said and done!
Now for my hen of choice #2. This is Phyllis (after Phyllis Diller). She is Lolly’s half sister. She is from a January 2012 hatch.
Ah! almost forgot my #3 hen. I haven’t named her, but she is out of Mr. Pufflepants and is Ernie’s favorite, too. Her mother was unfortunately killed by a fox last year. She is a bearded partridge Silkie. She is almost a spitting image of her mother, but even better! Her tail and feet feathers are very full and silky textured. Exactly what I’m looking for.
Now for some of the older hens in my old laying flock. The youngest birds I have in that pen are 2 years old. Here is my very oldest hen, a Plymouth Barred Rock called Doris. There WERE 3 Dorises (Dorii?), but now we’re just down to the one. She was rescued from a hoarding situation in July of 2009, and I believe that she is 4 years old, possibly 5. She has the somewhat annoying habit of pecking your legs, but it’s only for attention. In fact, all of the Dorises I rescued did that. My new Barred Rocks do not. She also has a very distinct call that differentiates her from my other Rocks.
Now, here is Buffy the Buff Orpington. Buffy was the sole chick I kept from a group of B.O.’s that we raised for a friend back in ’09. She has never, ever thought of herself as a chicken. Or a human. Or anything. She is her own self, and NOT a group player. It took me weeks to get her to finally hang with the flock and quit running off. She still lays a nice brown egg.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (I just wanted to say that) Here is our pair of geese. They also came from the hoarder’s house. I believe that they are also 4 years old. I thought for a very long time (years, actually) that I had a male and female. Well, they certainly ACTED like one was a male and one was a female. Now we just call them Ellen and Portia, and sometimes, Oprah and Gayle. You know, whatever. All I know is that this year both geese are laying, so it’s twice the eggs for me. I do feel sorry for them, though…they want a baby soooo bad. I did let them hatch out a tiny duck once which they promptly squished. 
And here’s one of our broiler chickens. We butchered them at 8 weeks (a couple of weeks ago now), so they have now gone to that big coop in the sky. Actually, the deep freezer in my barn. Anyhoo, they are delicious, let me tell you. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, like home-raised meat.
To finish, here is my little cutie pie, Abraham. Abraham Lincoln, to be exact. The kids said it looked like Lincoln to them, so Lincoln it is. I said I would never, ever get another Polish after the whole Wayward Jones saga (If you don’t know about Wayward, just do a search in my blog for her stories) I have no clue why I chose to torture myself with another Polish chicken. I just couldn’t pass up that little face though, ya know?
Hope you enjoyed the pics. This is certainly not all of my birds, but the select few.
Keep on cluckin’!
Getting fit on the farm
Since late last year, I had a serious case of the ‘blahs’. Didn’t want to cook, didn’t want to clean, didn’t want to even go outside. (Quelle horreur!) Unfortunately, it didn’t just stop at the blahs; I could no longer fit into about 90 percent of my clothes. I had put away my summer clothes thinking that by the following spring, I’d have lost a bit of weight.
WRONG.
It was a miracle I managed to wrestle my shorts on at all (without Vaseline), and buttoning them was out of the question unless a bungee cord and a ratchet strap was involved. I was really starting to sympathize with Dolly Parton when all of my shirts starting looking like crop tops. (FYI, why men love those things I’ll never know, and DO NOT want to know, but I firmly believe that men should have breast implants…performed on themselves. Moving on…)
My dress that was so cute last year made me look like I was smuggling a 12 pack of hot dogs over my ribs, and possibly 2 small hams beside my thighs. I refused to leave the house in jeans unless I had a rubber band through the buttonhole, and I became a serious fan of knits. Sadly, I outgrew the knits, and I knew it was time to do something.
Let me say that I have never been an athletic person. Ever. I was in seventh grade Athletics for some odd reason, and didn’t choose it again willingly until about eleventh grade when I got booted off of drill team (uh, as the manager; no workouts involved) for being a ‘bad influence’. So at that point in my life, I DID start running a bit if only to be able to get back to the locker room as quickly as possible. Then there was the tiny stint I attempted in college when I signed up for a 7:15am jogging class. Surely had to be under the influence of something. That was short-lived as I flipped my car about 2 months into it and finished the class by writing research papers on various sports. Annnnd, that is the full extent of my athletic life or lack thereof.
But Mother Nature can be a cruel thing, and I’m not in my twenties anymore. I can’t survive on the weird, random, and completely over-processed diet that I was used to. Plus, my metabolism seemed to be coming to a screeching halt. The formula that I had lived with for so long wasn’t adding up for me. So one night I was in the shower, of all odd places, and decided right then and there that I would sign up the following Monday for the gym (Beyond Fitness in Rusk) that my friend, Monica AKA She-Who-Walks-With-Many-Goats had been telling me about. And then I did something that no sane woman would ever do.
I got a mirror, stood in front of my full-length mirror, and looked at my unclothed backside.
My hand flew to my mouth and I damn near broke my mirror.
I came running out of the bedroom and found Jason.
“I have GILLS!” I wailed.
“What?”
“Gills! Oh my GOD, why didn’t you tell me?”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” he said.
“Oh, those God-awful rolls on the backside of my ribs…I can probably frickin’ breathe underwater!” I said breathlessly. “That’s it, I’m joining the gym Monday.”
“Are you serious?” He gave it a bit more contemplation. “Well, why don’t you run up and down those hills beside the house?”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Because those damn hills have been there for the entire four years we’ve lived here, and I haven’t run up and down them yet, now have I?”
Being an intelligent man, and seeing as I was probably looking like a snake about to strike, he relented.
“Okay, okay. Well, when do you start?”
“I’m going Monday at 5:30am.”
He laughs out loud. Then he notices the Stare of Death and Destruction that I’m giving him.
“Okay, well we’ll see.”
Well, I am happy to tell you that I DID manage to get up at 4:45am, drive 15 minutes to the gym (albeit in a dream-like trance), and I did do an hour-long spin class. Spin isn’t for sissies. No sir, it is most decidedly NOT. My only goal was to keep pedaling, and I did do that, but not much else. When class was over, I nearly fell into the bike beside me and had to quite literally waddle out to my car like a drunk penguin. Luckily, when I did fall, it was into my car seat.
I did not work out again for 8 days, and when I did, I went to a Zumba class. Funny, and I thought I might be getting off a little easy since I do like to dance. After an hour of pumping, wobbling, and hip-shaking I was coated in sweat and smelled like an old discarded sneaker. But I had done it!
Then I joined the gym’s weight-loss competition. By now, Jason thought I’d really lost it. But my thought was, if you’re gonna do it, do it all the way. Why not? The only thing I had to lose was some weight, and hopefully my gills, too.
I am very proud and happy to say that with the instructors’ help, the infectious exuberance of the other members, the admiration of my husband (who also joined the gym), and my own stubborn self, I have lost about 6.5 pounds. It doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but trust me, carry around a sack with 6.5 pounds in it all day and see if you don’t get a little tired yourself. My #1 goal was to break 130#, my #2 goal is to get to 124.5 pounds (my constant ‘old’ adult weight), and my #3 goal is to go beyond that. And #4 is to actually add some muscle back to my frame.
I haven’t even begin to mention my energy level. After the very first workout, I was high for a week. Really. Just so happy I did it. Each successive workout gives me a very needed boost to keep me ‘up’ for days. I do that and try to get some sun everyday to alleviate the ‘blahs’, and it DOES work. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t have done it and felt the difference. Sure, I still have my hormonally-challenged ‘yucky’ days; I can’t change everything. However, the good days now outnumber the ‘blah’ days. Now I feel like I am giving my family the best of ‘me’, or at least trying to.
Oh, and no more breathing underwater for me…the gills are gone!
And the wind….cried….Ernie….
I’m not exactly sure when I became the Crazy Chicken Lady. Probably about the same time that I began to decipher the chicken language. I could tell what a chicken was doing just by the sound it made. Found a bug? Excited peeping noise. Rooster found a bug? Excited clucking to get the ladies to come around. Frantic peeps? Obviously a lost chick looking for mama. Growling sound? Chicken unsure of what’s going on. The list goes on.
But I knew I’d really lost it when I started getting telepathic chicken messages. Allow me to explain….
Last year, we had a little bout of Arctic air blow through in late November. The winds whipped at the pines mercilessly, and temps dropped rapidly when the sun disappeared. As the night wore on, the lights flickered on and off frequently.
I had hatched out a late batch of chicks a few days prior. Not really the best idea to hatch out anything so vulnerable that late in the year, but that’s what happened.
About 3am, after a very fitful attempt at sleep, my eyes flew open. Our ceiling fan wasn’t moving. It was pitch black. There was something…something…something pecking at my brain. My mothering instinct was on overdrive, but it wasn’t something with the kids….I was forgetting something….what is it, what IS it……..OH MY GOD, THE BABY CHICKS! No electricity meant no heat lamp, which meant no heat for 14 tiny 2 day old chicks in a barn. I jumped out of the bed and ran to our barn, fully expecting to find 14 frozen bite-sized chicken nuggets in the brooder. Miraculously, they were piled in a fuzzy little heap, all very much alive although pretty disgruntled. I gathered them all into a plastic tote and hauled them into the house by our woodstove. Putting a towel on my lap, I took the 14 little fuzzies and wrapped them up until I felt that they wouldn’t keel over from hypothermia and then put them back into the bin. Listening to 14 peeping chicks for the remainder of the night wasn’t exactly what I’d describe as peaceful. Fortunately, the wind ended with daybreak and electricity was turned back on. No baby chicks were lost.
Was it just my mothering instinct? Or did the chicks send out a “Hey moron, we’re freezing out here” psychic message? Another example:
It was almost midnight, and I was in bed about to fall asleep. Suddenly, I heard a tiny, muffled sound of a rooster crowing, or at least I thought I did. Not any rooster, but Ernie specifically (trust me, once you’ve been around chickens long enough, you can distinguish their voices). How odd, I thought. Ernie never, ever crows at night….
THE DOOR! I forgot to shut the stupid coop door! I ran out to the coop as fast as a half-asleep person can and sure enough, the coop door was still very much wide-open with my very favorite hen sitting completely unprotected in front of it. Naturally. Did Ernie really crow? He’s certainly not revealing anything. Or am I slowly turning into a chicken myself?
One thing that is sure to get my attention is the sound of a baby chick in trouble. They tend to make an extremely annoying, loud pitched ‘PEEEEEP PEEP PEEEEEP’ to try and solicit some sympathy from Mama Hen. One day, right at dusk, I kept hearing a noise. A very familiar and annoying noise.
“Do you hear that?” I asked Jason.
“Yeah, just a bird,” he said, as he went back to reading.
I sat and listened for a few more seconds. My chicken senses were awakening.
“No. No it’s not, either,” I said.
I walked out to the front yard to find (surprise, surprise) a newly hatched 1 day old baby chicken who was very much lost and twice as confused. How it ended up all the way from the coop to the front yard, I’ll never really know. Regardless, “Big Mama Hen” came to the rescue that day. I swear, they seek me out, they really do. Oh well.
There’s probably not much need for a chicken psychic. Then again, maybe I could start the Psychic Chicken Network Hotline for chicken owners. (“Mrs. Jones, the reason Doris is acting so depressed is that she’s really wanting some vegetable scraps. Wait, hold on….can you hold Doris up to the phone again, please? Mmmhmmm….She is also telling me that you’re buying the cheap pellets again. Is that true, Mrs. Jones?”)
Until next time, keep on cluckin’.
Take me home, country roads
So last Saturday, Jason and I were on a little day trip and he wanted to show me a little house on a very obscure little county road. His friend acquaintance had owned the house for a grand total of 2 weeks about 15 years ago. The acquaintance was convinced it was haunted and sold it fourteen days after buying it.
As we turned onto the little road, I couldn’t help but notice the “Dead End” sign. Jason then told me the house was at the very end of this road. GREAT. Now I’m on a tiny, fairly uninhabited road with a haunted house at the very end of it, and I have no idea where I am. Doesn’t this remind you of some horror flick?
When we were about halfway down the road, my dear husband got the sudden urge to *cough cough* use the facilites, and so I pulled over so he could do his “bidness”. (Must be nice, huh?) Well, just about the time that all started, a truck comes pulling up behind us, so Jason jumps back into the car. I don’t have any choice but to forge on ahead since the road is way too narrow to let anyone pass.
Now the scenario is this: I’m in a little car on a tiny road in God-Knows-Where heading toward a haunted house being followed by a big, scary truck with a passenger whose eyeballs are now floating. Funny ha ha, right? So around 2 corners, and there is the Haunted, Creepy, Deserted little house. Jason said that maybe the truck was heading towards an oilfield just past the house. We weren’t so lucky. I pulled into the house’s drive and immediately noticed and remarked about the four “NO TRESPASSING” signs pasted all over the front of it and the trees in front. As a joke, Jason added, “Will Shoot To Kill”, to which I shrieked, “Oh my God, are you serious?”. Thankfully, THAT was a joke, though not very funny at the moment. Then we noticed that the truck had stopped and was taking up the majority of the road.
I whip the car into reverse, and as I am backing out, a man gets out of the passenger seat. Yep, gets right out at starts walking towards my car. If he had been a happy, smiling man it would have been one thing. Nope, I get the “I-just-escaped-the-nuthouse” man carrying a big huge bundle of WalMart sacks. (maybe to put our chopped up bodies in?) There was a look about this guy that immediately had both of us on high alert. I got a little weirded out by the shaved head and the big leather boots worn with shorts, not to mention the completely blank look he gave. I backed up all the way, and as he was advancing towards me and as the creepy truck was also slowly creeping towards us, I look the guy straight in the face, give him a huge smile and wave, hit the ditch and got the hell out of Dodge!
Immediately, Jason and I are both fumbling in the console for our gun…just in case. Who knows? Did we stumble upon a meth house? A murderous duo? Truly, no telling. Thank the good Lord that the truck did NOT follow us after that.
Anyway, after our adrenaline died down much later and we were sitting down to eat, I told Jason I had it all figured out.
Seeing us pull up in a Prius, the creepy duo decided they had happened upon some eco-conscious people, and the man was simply going to hand us the Wal Mart sacks for us to take them to be recycled. Yep, that was definitely it.
Anyone ever see Tucker & Dale vs Evil? All they were trying to do was be eco-friendly, and we had them figured as murderers. Shame on us!
Spring Pt. 2
Photo of the arch that Jason built. Needs some leveling! The wisteria on it sprung up about 3 years ago and I let it grow. It was already in the perfect spot. This was the first year that it bloomed.
Here’s another before and after. Before, fall of 2008:
Here it is today:
Spring on the Farm…2012
Not feeling at the top of my game today, so I’m in here uploading pics. Took several yesterday since there was the strong possibility of hail and high winds and I wanted to grab some photos before anything wrecked all of my work. Thankfully, we emerged unscathed. Here are some house photos.
As you can see, still a lot of bagged humus/soil conditioner laying around ready to be applied. Anyway, still haven’t finished staining the house. Also, we put down several loads of pine needles on the front yard (over cardboard) for our pathways.
Our onion patch and future home for my herbal healing garden.
My little wildflower patch beside the east fence. A mix from Wildseed Farms in Fredericksburg, TX. Finally, after only 5 years, I have figured out how to manually focus my camera like I’ve been wanting to do!
A rose that I bought from Chamblee Roses in Tyler, TX. Of course, I have forgotten the name of it :0( I think it is a woman’s name and it is a climber. I do not think it is Duchesse de Brabant, though. I bought that the other day.
And now for our official farm guard dog, Francesca Buttons:
We’ve come a looong way in under 4 years:
Now, I’m going to go slam back some more sweet tea! (unspiked) More pics as soon as I feel better.
Fix it or Nix it
Jason and I deemed this year the year of the Fix It. Allow me to elaborate. It seems that virtually everything we have is in some state of disrepair. I want to share with you the straw that broke the camel’s back.
It all began over a year ago, when our 4-wheeler (the Bayou) could no longer be started with the push button and had to be started with the pull start. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to start an older ATV with a pull start, but for those of you with noodle arms like mine, it’s pretty impossible. Well, it just is impossible. If I were stranded somewhere with the Bayou, I’d have to use the 2 legs God gave me to get out, ’cause there’s no way these arms are going to be able to pull start the thing. There is a way out of that…and that is to get the ATV rolling down a hill and start it that-a-way. I hate to call my Bayou a hooptie, but….
So, looking into the start problem, we had 2 problems. The battery was old and dead and some of the battery cables were bad. Not a problem, really, if you can pull start the thing, which obviously I cannot. Since I could neither pull start the Bayou, nor was I willing to roll it down a hill to start it, it sat. And sat and sat. And that’s a bad thing for anything with an engine. So, fast forward and one day last fall, I was doing some yard work and I reeeeeeally wanted the 4 wheeler to have a trailer so I could haul some stuff. I don’t even remember what now. We don’t have an official ATV trailer or anything like that, but I figured even the wheelbarrow would do if I could configure it the right way (the ‘barrow has 4 wheels, BTW). So, Jason decided to get the Bayou running so I could haul some widgets.
Forty five minutes later, Jason comes up the driveway from the bottom of our extremely sloped hill, red as a beet and soaked in sweat with wild eyes something akin to a shark in full feeding frenzy mode. I looked up and said:
Me: What have you been doing?
J: (out of breath) I have been trying to get this #$%@ 4-wheeler going for a (bleeping) HOUR!!!
Me: Where is it?
J: Down in the woods.
Me: In the woods.
J: (if looks could kill…)
Me: okay, well, let me help you. (getting up and looking around) Where’s the golf cart?
J: In the woods.
Me: What?
J: (purely frustrated) I TRIED TO PUSH START THE @#$% FOUR WHEELER DOWN THE HILL AND IT WOULDN’T START, THEN I TOOK THE @#$% GOLF CART DOWN THE HILL AND THE (bleeping) BATTERIES ARE HALF DEAD AND I’M SICK OF ALL THIS @#%^ THAT DOESN’T WORK AND BY GOD I SWEAR I AM TRADING ALL OF THIS @#%^ IN ON A (bleeping) MULE*!!!
Me: Ummmm, okay. Okay.
*UTV, not a flesh-and-blood mule, though I would have happily traded for one at that point.
So clearly we were not in any kind of happy mood. We walked down the hill (45 degree angle, BTW) and there was the Bayou and golf cart sitting there, pretty as you please. The next idea was to push the Bayou with the golf cart to try and get it started. This means Jason is on the Bayou and I’m shoving the thing with the cart through the woods. I guess you probably know this didn’t work either. As punishment, the Bayou got to spend the next week in the woods alone. I don’t even know how it got back up to the house, and I sure didn’t ask. All I know is that for our New Year’s goal, we decided that, come hell or high water (or both), we were going to fix things around here for good and get rid of extraneous stuff.
Obviously, the Bayou and golf cart were high on the list, but we also had our lawn tractor that refused to start and a generator that wouldn’t crank (and many other odds and ends). I can happily say that we’ve located the problems (mostly) with the Bayou and G.C. , the genny is going and that my lawn tractor is up and running…complete with a trailer. All I wanted was a trailer in the first place, right? And this is an honest-to-God cute little mini-trailer. I hauled about 10 loads of stuff around the farm yesterday with a smile on my face.
Before I go, I’ll tell you how ‘we’ fixed the lawn tractor. After checking pretty much everything on the tractor, Jason determined that everything was working except for some reason the carburetor wasn’t sending fuel to the engine. Jason utilized the little known “Old Mechanic Method” and gave the carb about 5 good whacks with a socket wrench. Runs like a dream.
My Little Country 