My father once told my husband that if he married me he ought to be warned that his life will never be dull. I can say with confidence that I do not invite mischief. It just somehow seems to always find me. Even here in the backwoods of the Ozarks.
There is very rarely a dull moment and when it does occur, I find a curious thing about me is that my knee-jerk response it to seek to fill it. There is so much I want to do. So many inviting adventures. We have this wonderful, beautiful 30 acre playground around us just begging to be conquered and subdued. It has been a small trial for me to be feeling exhausted, nauseous and having an almost daily headache. I am thankful beyond words for this new little life and relishing the wonder of what it feels like to have a new little life growing inside of me and altering my body and senses. However, I still find it trying to be forced to slow down when there is so much to be done.
I still haven't finished unpacking. There are wall hangings still in boxes. We never did get around to planting all the things we planned on out in the garden. Having a fall garden is slowly slipping out of our plans, too. But we haven't been idle!
Lately we've had a string of mishaps and tribulations. It all began with Jacob falling through the loft of our barn. It's an old barn and the floor was covered with old, moldy hay and you could see that it needed repaired. Now that we have hay, it seemed a good thing to us to repair the barn loft floor so that we could store our hay in the hayloft. Sounds good, right? Until Jacob fell through the floor!
We decided to put that project on hold until we can recruit some help for barn repair. Jacob was a bit banged up and sore for awhile, but no lasting injuries, which is really amazing and we are very thankful!
After that, the string of unfortunate events all begin running together. I've heard stories of little people leaving the water running and been thankful that has never happened in our house yet. Since we moved in we noticed that the bathroom sink didn't drain properly. Drano helped but didn't solve the issue so it was on the list to be taken apart and resolved at the next opportunity but, alas, the little person beat us to it and left the sink running one day. I wasn't more than 20 feet away the entire time, but canning has a way of distracting a body. Molly found it running, and the waterfall and swamp it caused. It was bad. So bad that we have mold in the wall behind the bathroom.
In between gallons of pickles
and quarts and quarts of sweet pickle relish,
we ripped out the carpet, padding and tack strips and dried the floor out. Really, we prefer tile in a bathroom. It's just so much more practical with little ones.
Yes, it really is for the better and we are thankful for the opportunity to be pushed to accomplish what we all agree to be best but probably wouldn't have gotten around to for a long time. This was also the same bathroom that we found to be infested with brown widow spiders and now it is very clean and spider-free.
We bought our push mower and trimmer at a certain convenient big box store.
Neither ended up being a good investment. Actually, we bought two trimmers there. Both not good.
Therefore the garden is surrounded by a wall of weeds. But once you get inside our very own secret garden, it is lovely.
Our peppers did very well this year. The curious Corbaci peppers produced like crazy and we made jars of pickled peppers out of them!
The peppers are turning red
and orange
and the smell of the jalepenos and anaheims as the sun warms them is so deliciously tantalizing! We picked trays and trays of picture perfect garden fresh peppers
and inadvertently chose one of the hottest days of this season to run the oven on broil for hours on end. Oh, but it smelled sooooo good! One of the strangest things we've discovered about Missouri is the sad fact that most people do not know what a roasted pepper is. Oh, how much they miss!
We even had a little late night snack of impromptu rellenos. It is quirky but satisfying to run with a flashlight to the garden and pick a shirt-load-full of fresh peppers in the middle of the night while the cows curiously look on. While helping Steve to cut tiles to fit the odd spots in the bathroom we taught Ethan how to make rellenos. A very important skill to know. The weeds are still waiting for us to take dominion over them,
but we have subdued pockets here and there of this little farm of ours and the return investment is delicious!
We needed to get our propane tank filled and were already a bit dismayed at the price tag of filling the 500 gallon tank all in one go when we were told we had a leak in our line. They locked it down and told us it would cost us a fortune to find the leak and repair it and we'd better just have a new line dug. We called in a second opinion and were very, very thankful to hear our lines pronounced good. The propane man made a few good natured jokes about our lawn and the weeds that had grown up
around the propane tank that stung my pride a bit, but I still could've hugged him for sparing us the very expensive trial he just blew away like old cobwebs with his very appreciated and welcomed opinion. The kids and I got busy with scissors (did I say we enjoyed doing things the hard way?) and got the area trimmed, the mower got up and running around this time and we got it all cleared out and ready for our new tank to be delivered and filled. One problem resolved.
Then we had the brilliant idea of letting Ethan bring one of the kittens from that litter of barn cats inside to be his indoor housecat pet. We treated her with Frontline and thought that would take care of the fleas. Nope. Nasty buggers. We were soon engaged in an all out warfare with them. We did not want to have to resort to poisons so we thoroughly dusted the house with diatomaceous earth. A wee bit too thoroughly. Noah awoke the next morning wheezing for breath. Not good. Steve took him to the nearest urgent care clinic and while they spent the day chasing prescriptions we cleaned the house. I learned a valuable lesson not to run ceiling fans when dusting the house with DE. But, I finally got around to that spring cleaning I always meant to do. Another storm cloud with a silver lining, right?
For now we have won the first round and the fleas are at bay. We have learned that a good soaking in a sink of very soapy water
will do more to rid the cats of fleas and is ever so much more affordable than Frontline. The cats are happy, well, now that the bath is over, at least. They are not constantly scratching and we are happy to have some peace from those little black monsters.
The recent rainstorms have revealed to us we have some roof work to be done. We also learned that graham crackers that plastic toy dragons were manipulated to consume long ago in the arid climate of Colorado can take on a life of their own when transported to the humid climate of Missouri. Imagine our surprise when opening a tub of toys and finding mold growing on them! We were baffled until we noticed it was mostly coming from inside the toys' mouths. It took only a small bit of head scratching from that point to remember a fateful day more than a year ago that the young kids played with this tub of toys and enjoyed a snack at the same time. Sometimes it can be the smallest of things.
One day we discovered that our poor Sweetiebelle was experiencing diarrhea and bleeding from her rectum. Not good at all. We are not sure what is wrong with her. We treated her with some amazingly huge pills
that made those bolus pills from when she was a wee calf seem like candy sprinkles. 7 of them. I saved all 7 for Steve to force down her.
Yes, that is a pricetag still on the pill gun. I know, we're so greenhorn. She is still not herself, but at least the bleeding has stopped. We are still desperately trying to resolve her wart problem. I am happy to report that Brisket has been the healthiest, happiest steer. At least we've had some success in our livestock endeavors. He is getting so big!
So are the children.
Everyone is healthy and happy and growing like the weeds of Missouri.
The chiggers have done a number on all of our calves and ankles. We look a bit like case studies from medical textbooks. But in-between all the itching, weeding-pulling, canning, freezing, accidents, near fires, mold, flea warfare and home improvements life has continued
and I've somehow managed to plan out our school year,
acquired the books and resources and we are in the process of slowly beginning to reintroduce subject by subject while we still work on putting up the fall harvests
and while we watch the season change and our farm begin to change her summer garments for autumn attire.
Our first year here is flying by!
Everyone is healthy and happy and growing like the weeds of Missouri.
The chiggers have done a number on all of our calves and ankles. We look a bit like case studies from medical textbooks. But in-between all the itching, weeding-pulling, canning, freezing, accidents, near fires, mold, flea warfare and home improvements life has continued
No comments:
Post a Comment