Reknitted

Well, my time at home is nearly to an end, and while I've missed the farm and my in-laws and my chickens a ton, I've also knitted myself back together and am more than ready to take the reins of responsibility again.

I'm going to a Halloween party today where I'll see a whole lot of ladies that I originally brought together; am so happy they have gone on as a group, it shows I've done at least one thing right in my life. They will be surprised to see me, particularly 35 pounds lighter and a strawberry blond rather than a flaming red-head.

I've been to a day long yoga retreat, heaven on earth, and I've had one go at my new beginners Pilates DVD...hokey smokes...fun but if I keep it up I'll have abs of steel. I've missed my window of opportunity to run away to the beach but the month isn't over yet. I've made a new friend, something not to be sneezed at. And every where I've gone the world is a blaze of color.

Thursday Thankies

Big fat seedless grapes

Oracles

Bram Stoker

Finding Fun

An update is in order. Today I am supposed to be birthing, creating, or nurturing. So first thing I put my Chiquita banana sticker to good use. I'll see if my FIL notices, can read, and will laugh. His laughs these days consists of one short bark, but I take what I can get.

I haven't mentioned my 10 girls in a long time, they are about 6 months old now and each day I get between 8-10 big brown eggs, very often with double and occasionally triple yolks. I've not the heart to tell them more white less yolk is what their silly humans need, they are so proud of their output.

We've set up a system of three doors. The wooden door they know to never come out, the 2nd screen door they always can come out and go in, and the 3rd screen door they can crowd around but never go out because when I'm coming in, it always means goodies. Fresh pumpkin, zucchini, tomatoes, apples, corn, radish and carrot tops...who knew chickens could be trained or as I mentioned in an earlier post, seek and give affection. My SIL will be here for ten days in my stead this month while I'm working at home, and I'm already worrying about will she know to hug them and accept their thank you curtsy.

It is back to that 30 tree orchard today. I had the pruning 1/2 finished, turns out I started way to early and now they need pruned again. I'll begin with the espaliered apples along the fence, easiest to reach.

My rainy day project is the workshop. Up until this May, when his dementia really set in, his shop was quite tidy, he always knew where to reach for a tool. In the course of the summer it became what you see here in the 3rd image. We spent so much time here, he and I, working on farm projects, or just running our gums around the little wood stove, and now he won't even come down there. He knows he is finished with it. It has been a difficult job but someone will have to do it sometime, it might as well be me who gets it started.

The little grey board, lower left is his very last project. It is part of the latch system on chicken house door, it pulled off one day in late spring during one of our strong valley winds. He fooled with it off and on for three days, would pick up a screw and lay it down, turn the board over and consider the wrong side, and then he laid it down for good, he could no longer make his mind and hands work in unison to put in a screw. I've left it laying there, perhaps hoping for some kind of miracle, but they are thin on the ground for 91 year old men.

That's all the news that is fit to print folks, now to have my second cuppa and cruise some of my own favorite blogs.

Tuesday Thankies
Blue sky
Crisp air
Sharp pruners
Postscript: Yes the sticker got a laugh~

Fishy Freedom

Earlier this summer I had a dock built on my 70 foot-ish pond.
Laying on the dock looking down into the water became an exercise in futility, nothing to see.
I thought to get some Koi, my pocketbook thought otherwise.
I got twenty bucks worth of gold fish, 8 for a dollar.
We constructed a pen attached to the dock and released the 160 fish into it.
When I started to think about time to let them go, I began feeding them at a plastic floating circle and rang a cow bell at each feeding.
Two days ago we let our beauties go, most are six inches long and about 3/4 of an inch wide.
Guess what? When I ring the cowbell they come back to the feeding ring!

I didn't think I'd ever see them again except maybe at feeding time, but they really show up well, little schools of them snaking their way from here to there, little clusters of them lurking under leaves and in grasses around the pond.

I wish you all well little companions, thank you for being a colorful and fascinating part of my summer of 2009.

Tuesday Thankies:
Calves safely born
Autumn Mists
Working Furnace

PS: I've been asked how they will fare through the winter. The goldfish idea came from a friend who was a Washington state fish hatchery manager for many years. I asked him the same question. He said feed until the water temperature gets down to 42 degrees. At that temperature they 'go to ground' in the mud at the bottom and sort of hibernate I guess. He said don't be tempted to feed, just let them sleep and look forward to spring. So now you all know as much as I do.

2nd question, yes that 'gold' fish is greenish, there were also some greyish, blackish, and creamish. This morning when I rang the bell I think every nose was there, they'd been hiding under the dock. This evening only about 40 came to the bell, I could see other swirling and swishing groups further out, too busy running free to bother with free fish chips. Their food is like flamingo shrimp, formulated to make their color bright. We'll see how pale they are come spring ;)

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Hello my friends,

We seem to have hit a plateau in the effort to outrun my FIL's dementia. Each day we have a holding pattern and he still finds something to enjoy about life is a present.

As a life-long active man who could always find something to do, something to fix, sitting in his big brown easy chair with his swollen feet up drives him crazy. He recognizes he will no long drive his tractor, mow his lawn, or feed his cows, but his heart still yearns for some kind of movement. So the solution this summer has been the phone call that says "can we go for a ride?".

We've been a lot of places these long summer days, but by far his favorite thing now is to push the cart at Wal-Mart. If it's good for him it's good for me. Today his beautiful daughters came down from Seattle to take MIL to visit family graves, so FIL and I took the opportunity to really goof off. His choice, whatever he wanted. Three hours up and down the isles at the newly revamped Wal-Mart superstore. According to my pedometer that was 3.2 miles.

He bought a nice bunch of bananas. I bought a cushy chicken floor mat, a really lovely soapstone incense burner, and a little tripod for my new camera.

I know Wal-Mart really takes a hit from communities who've seen their local shops fold when WM moves in, from lower echelon employees who have little hope of getting insurance and making a family living wage, their ungreen practices, all the overwhelming stuff each store contains. But it will always hold a special spot in my heart where my FIL spent his 91st summer, driving the grocery cart train in out around and about as his mind slowly degenerated and his body weakened. Thank you Wal-Mart for being there for me.

Saturday Thankies:
Multiple Public Restrooms
Traveling Oxygen
Good Transportation

Spencerian Penmanship

I miss my Spencerian penmanship quiet time. Skritch, skritch, skritch

went my oblique angle dip pen across my copy book...with my slow but steady progress in alignment and size even my regular handwriting improved, I've gotten a compliment or two from clerks when I hand over a check. I have enough nibs to last me till the cows come home, and some lovely dip pens.
And the whole series of the Mott Media copybooks. Sometimes I look back through them and can't believe I sat down and took the time to make rows of o's and e's and s's. But each little homemade class is an exercise in stepping back from the technology overload that sometimes overwhelms me.

And one day I'll be back in my own home with space for odd hobbies, and I'll probably look back on this time away from home with some kind of nostalgia.

FIL is on a fairly even keel this week. No huge mountain and valley glucose readings, the insulin shot I give him each morning has really helped in that department. He is up to 3 liters of oxygen as the congestive heart failure kicks in fast gear, he welcomes the loaner wheelchair lift from door to car to store. With the recent heat wave he will give me a call sometime of an afternoon and say "can we go for a ride?". You bet, and off we go. We've found some neat little restaurants, and explored some of the small towns around; Napavine, Onalaska, Winlock. Mostly we just go. We had to go to Lincare and get bigger oxygen bottles!

He wanted to go with MIL and I to get groceries and 'just sit in the car'. I told him he was welcome to do that if he would leave the car running so he had air conditioning. No...he is too frugal for that, so I said "when I take my friend Theresa shopping I push her wheelchair and she pushs the shopping cart". I don't think he grasped to concept until I parked him near the necessity rooms and gave him a note to give to someone to call me if he needed me. Then a light bulb when off, he said "there's a cart, I can push it!". He did great too, wish I had a picture of us weaving and careening through a Wal_Mart Superstore, a real power high.

The funnest thing this week was playing cards with him last night. As his dementia picked up speed this spring I asked all his kids if he'd ever played games with them and they all fell about laughing at the very idea. But last night he asked his usual "what's next, what now?" question and I said we could play cards or dominos...do you know how? He didn't but he was willing to learn so we played War for about an hour and a half. He has trouble recognizing 5's and the Ace standing for 1 made him laugh, he liked having ended up with both Jokers. "Wild card" he'd chortle and roll his eyes. All in all it was good fun and good for his brain; anything with numbers or dates is pretty much beyond him normally.

Anyway, that is life on the farm for now, tomorrow the old chickens will meet the freezer and the little girls will take over. Today I found their first egg. And who knew chickens would or could be affectionate?? They are so cute. These may never make the freezer but that's ok, we don't really need to eat many eggs anyway. I sure won't miss the old red one that breaks the eggs in the nest and gobbles the yolks.

The gold fish are getting big! Four to Five inches long and fat. I bought a little scoop net the other day so I could show you all. And at this size, according to the shops we've been in, our $20.00 investment in 160 gold fish for the pond are now worth $1600.00 retail. Who knew?

Friday Thankies
That Hazel can be jollied
That Gene has learned to laugh
That our Rob will be home in a few hours. Wait 'till he sees the 60 yards of hog fuel I had delivered today...

Golfball talley: 155 gleaned by the electrician assistant this week, for a total so far of 697. Two buckets gone with Electrician who gave me a "no bill, these are enough". Cool!

Goofball Talley and MIL's Button Box

This week my MIL has been scouring her cupboards for a soft measuring tape, she probably has about 4 hours into the job total. I spent 4 minutes in the sewing store and $1.09 and got us a new one. We are all so interesting in our infinite variety of personalities. I'll let you guess which one of us has more money and which more time...sort of. And now I have scored some more buttons courtesy of her searching. I'm thinking zipper pulls would be a good embellishment for something.

This week FIL has graduated to a wheel chair for any outdoor excursions and his short term memory continues to fall away. Today the loaner bull is on his mind. We sent it home in April. I tell FIL "Ben picked it up along with the red cow, remember how much trouble we had getting her into the trailer...and how the bull then followed her right in...boys being boys", and he nods and says "Oh...I'd like to go for a little ride". "And what about that bull?" Going for a little ride is his new favorite hobby. Friday we went to a quilt show :-) He thought that was real cool, he remembers quilting is my passion. Or at least he did that day.

Golfball Goofball update. I picked errant golf balls from our pasture this morning, about a third of it anyway. A large kitty litter bucket full is 30 pounds and holds 275 balls. Someday I'm going to learn to start from the far end and work back...30 pounds is way more than I want to carry a quarter of a mile.
A rather pedestrian collection today though
275 total including
1 split
12 brights
1 'pasture moist' and tossed
and one for my non-collection, a #3 Noodle Jagermeister with a winged bird and cross insignia. Jagermeister turns out to be a 70 proof herbal 'digestive' aid.
So 697 since I began counting.

The ones that didn't get counted are how ever many the ball rustlers got picking by flashlight in the night after jumping our fence. I'll have a surprise for them next time. Balls are nothing, fencing is expensive and hard work.

Sunday Blessings
Margaret's help
Beautiful weather
Sticky notes

Christmas In July

I got a chance to get away and take a card-making class last Saturday, a mini-artist's date. Nice classmates, great teacher and fun all around. I'm not crazy about how the rub-on technique used center bottom turned out so I'll cut out something else to layer over. That is the card-makers credo...when in doubt, layer.

On the home front at the farm, you can almost see pieces of my FIL's memory chipping off and falling away into the abyss that is dementia. It is incredible how quickly this disease of age spreads once it gets it's toehold. He is loosing his ability to connect his thoughts together coherently about anything recent. The real cruelty is he recognizes and knows it. On the other hand we had a couple of good laughs yesterday and those are worth their weight in gold.

Wednesday Thankies
Fresh raspberries and blueberries
North Fork Construction
A job well done, and done

Sewing House

Are these the cutest buttons you've ever seen? This image is from SnapDragon's blog. Can you see this idea translated to selvage buttons? With real buttons stitched on? Bliss~

A friend wrote something this week that made me smile. Someone was regretting not having a sewing room and Linda said "we have a sewing house". I am extremely fortunate to have a big well lighted room in my house to call my quilt-room, and here in the 5th Wheel RV at the farm I dedicated a quarter of the space to sewing. On the go I carry a busybag or busybox and can instantly have a sewing room anywhere. Life is good with a needle in hand.

Friday Thankies
Rob will be home this afternoon!
Oxygen and Lincare
Summer berries

Fishy Story, Or the 160 Who Came To Dinner

What in the world??

Ah...something to do with the new dock.

Ah, the plot thickens...

Hokey Smokes Bullwinkle...They forked over 20 Samollions for 160 gold fish.

The question is WHY?

Because they were there!

Three weeks later. They've doubled in size and only three have gone to the big pond in the sky. I'm training them to come to the surface when I ring the previously mentioned cow bell. We watch the fish, the bullfrogs watch the pen, the cat watches the bullfrogs. Stay tuned.

Saturday Thankies
Freckles
Googleing
Dust that makes dirt that makes gardens that make round zucchini, Yum!

Goofball Tally

Updating this golf ball tally post with what I picked last week.

116 balls including 4 brights, 3 sliced open and 3 interesting ones;

A Pinnacle Ribbon 3 carrying the Susan B Komen cure logo
A Nike Swoop one with a pretty green Karma imprint
A Lucky Eagle Casino.
If I weren't trying to downsize by half, I could build a pretty interesting oddball collection.

On the dementia home front this week's interesting factoid; FIL had Rob build an extension for the hayrack on the hay wagon. Last weekend he insisted it was too high and had Rob saw off 18". Today he wants Rob to raise the rack because it is too short. Rob has been working out of town all week and I haven't had the heart or nerve to bring him up to date :) It would be a moot point if the lady who cuts and bales the hay would just get here and get the job done.

Friday Thankies
Vacuum cleaners
Cell phones
Generous and loving clients

More Repurposing

Back when AOL sent CD's out by the kabillions there were any number of websites that offered crafty ideas for CD reuse. My FIL was cutting the bottoms out of food tins and hanging them up as flighty scarecrows. I gave him a hand full of old CD's and he was in love. He has them everywhere and you know what? I think they work. We had deer in the orchard eating our three new apple trees so that night he hung them all the way around and the deer haven't been in since. He also closed the gates...not that I think that had anything to do with his success.

We've had some mental gymnastic successes this week. Rob needed a ball hitch for the hay wagon, FIL couldn't remember where they were, and wasn't even too clear on what they were. Then his brain gave a little burp after two days of thinking and he knew what they were and that he could see them in his mind hanging somewhere, and he'd make a shape the size of a loaf of bread. Well that did narrow it down and about 2 hours later I had a string of 'em in hand.

Last year when he was still brightly lit he told me the story of his cow and goat bells and horse shoes. The other day I asked him if I could borrow a cow bell to train my fish (yes...) and he really had to think on that one. About 4 hours later he said "they are behind your head". Yes they were, even though I'd looked over the wall stuff 3 or 4 times.

That is two wins for our side and that leaves a really big cow bell which I told him I was going to ring every time we remembered something...because I live in a fog too. The search is now on for the plumb bob and string that he has used for 19 years to measure the well water. Yes, we could make another one...but we want That one.

Obviously I'm not getting any quilting done, but that's ok, my fabric isn't going anywhere without me.

Tuesday Thankies
A new flag
good doggies
clean dishes

Farmer's Friend

In my old persona as a lady in a dress and pantyhose, if someone had asked what a farmer's most often called upon tool was I might have said barn, or tractor, but in my persona as Deva Farmer I've ferreted out the truth. The farmers best friend is baler or baling twine. Sometimes 3 to the bale but more often 2, in a winter of feeding stock a farmer ends up with hundreds or thousands of these strands.

In feeding the cattle and horsing around these bales last winter I learned fairly quickly that the knots are on one side and you cut the bale open at a knot. Then on a snowy day you sit around the wood stove in the workshop and make long ropes of this twine. Out of curiosity the other day I walked around the farm collecting images of all the places we use the stuff.

One of last summer's CD Scarecrows

Parts of an irrigation system, and a spare roll
Ladder hangers

Temporary pull-back hose hanger to keep them out of the way of a project. Since set free as we are cleaning up this Centennial year ('52 or '53) Ford tractor to sell.

Keeping spare light bulbs from going walk-about.

Axe hanger.

Twine central. These are the bare naked nails the twine is gathered on as we open the bales.

I think this is FIL's welding dealiebob. Or something.

FIL couldn't remember what this was for at all. I finally figured out the only thing this long we might need to cover was the tomato growing area. Yes! This is twine in it's natural state, on a bale.

Twine that has lost it's way.

Ah...I spy some screening for another secret project....

hoses anyone?

or chain?

or wiring?

Keeping the baby chicken nursery warm.

Keeping the lids on the garbage pails when going to the dump. Currently housing chicken feed.

Anyone ever watch Red Green? Their duct tape episodes have nothing on my FIL. We took this off a broken faucet the other day, there is about 40 layers of tape and many many wraps of twine here.

In the cow's trough.

And you thought it was staples and wire that held up fences.

On the grapes.

Hey...another backup roll.

How to garrote your DIL...FIL has put this strand across the path between the strawberries and the blueberries to keep the bird netting off the blueberries. You think after running into it 2-3 times I'd remember it was there.

A back up supply to the back up supply

Some kind of past project.

Another past project remnant.

Last year's string bean effort. He thought he could out wit our goats. Not hardly.

This lilac has a near death experience a few months ago. With the help of twine patient is doing well.

A rutabaga (?) tied up for seed.

Garden tools tied up to keep DIL out of them, and lo and behold, another back up to the back ups.

Pretty sure these dishes must have tried to get away at some point.

Yikes...a back up in our pump house. This is spreading faster than swine flu.

Lining out the garden rows.

Tying up the lilies

My orange doorstop.

Temporary leash material.

This one I'll talk about another day. It's a tear-jerker.I'm sure there are more twine incidences but these will have given you an idea of why I think baler twine is the farmer's best friend. And if you've ever uploaded multiple images to google blogger you know what a pain this post was to make. Anything for you guys...

Saturday Thankies

My Rob is home!

Baskin and Robbins

Swiss Chard