My arthritic right hip decided to go out on me on Monday, which made work fun. Easy as it was, standing up and walking with my hip shrieking imprecations at me did not make it overly easy. Dinner was leftovers from Saturday, when I made chicken teriyaki. Yummy. Then I got most of the dishes done, which is fine, other than my hip making it so I couldn't do all of them without wanting to scream.
I got all the way through Pinetree's catalog for veggies today, and oh dear me, but that's around $190 in seeds just for basics, never mind herbs and such. Yeah, I have a big list going. Can't bear to pare it down further than it is already, but it means getting things in small batches. If I don't get a garden in this year again, it won't be for lack of seeds for once. And I really want to get seeds and at least store them, with the news out of the EU saying that they're considering banning heirloom seeds there. That makes for some seriously bad stuff, folks. Hybrids don't breed true, and heirloom and open-pollinated varities do. I personally don't like hybrids at all, and the only one I knowingly grow is for acorn squash, which I love. Plus once I'm done with the basics for seeds, I want to start in on other things that we may not eat ourselves but which would make for good market produce. I still need to get my hip to shut up long enough to get the laundry put away, especially since it's two baskets full of clothes.
But I've been doing that in bits and pieces as my hip would let me, a few minutes here and there, filling in between with work on the granny afghan and the knitted log cabin style one. So there's things getting done, but boy does it ever ache today. Also, I should note that yesterday, hubby went and took down a couple more mangled trees out of the mess on the hill. They were marked in the fall as needing to come down. One was dead and the other was so twisted out of shape we both felt it was better to take it down and leave the nicer and more mature trees standing.
Tuesday was boring as all heck. They pulled me off my line to do nothing more than literally stand and stare at a light all day long to mkae sure it didn't go out or something. I never did get find out exactly what it was I was supposed to be watching for with the light. But hey, they want to pay me $11 an hour to stand and do nothing, I'm game. And when I got home, I found Scheeper's catalog waiting for me. Oh dear, more temptations.
Oh yeah, and this is what I looked like all day, staring at that stupid light.
Wednesday was better. Back to my usual job, and the day just zipped by, so even though my hip is still acting up, I felt some better. Now, with my hip acting up, we have had to make a critical decision that we'll be revamping our plans and skipping the hoofstock. This does mean some good things for our farm-to-be budget. We can go with as little as 2 acres instead of having to have 5 or more. We won't have to worry about my arthritis upending things even if he's still working by me not being able to do all that needs doing with hoofstock, and I'll get a bit of a break during the winter months because nothing really needs to be tended during the cold weather.
We'll likely still be able to have chickens and rabbits, due to the generally easy care they have, but with our ages (mid-40s for me and almost 40 for him), developing medical issues like arthritis, and time considerations, we're leaning very heavily toward losing the hoofstock off the future plans. I can still have a big garden, lots of fruits and nuts and herbs, and even flowers, to keep busy and have things to sell at the farmer's market (and seed online), plus plenty of time yet for things I like to do to relax. That means time to read and craft, but it would also mean that things like my craft sales plus the hunting down things to resell on Amazon like books, CDs, DVDs, and games would end up being a replacement income stream for the farmstead over the hoofstock.
Plus I've discovered there's several other small farmers around here who sell meat that is grass-fed, plus I took a look through a small local business in Green Forest called Das Butcher Haus, which does small meat production. They're the local abattoir, basically, and do butchering for locals who don't want to do it themselves as well as some animals they buy themselves for butchering and sale of the meat cuts. This gives us local meat production, I have local suppliers for wool for spinning as well, and this helps us out a lot with making changes to our future plans for the farm. And honestly, it leaves me feeling a bit less stressed out with plans, because I can take time to revamp the farm business plan and strategy, and have more fun with things. Homesteading, I think, should be fun and not a major stressor. With all we wanted to do to be as self-sufficient as possible, we were terribly stressed out with the plans.
These changes allow us to relax, work on what we absolutely HAVE to get done to make our lives more comfortable, and go from there. I like that. (Though I'm not so sure I'm going to like having to take and make time to revamp the business plan. It took me nearly 40 hours to put it together in the first place!) So here it is Wednesday evening and I'm going to stop all this, eat some supper, work on the afghans (four rows on the granny plus the border, and a third done on the knitted log-cabin style one), some reading (Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett), and an overall quiet, comfy evening. Oh yeah, and looking at my Burpee catalog that came today, too.
And the weather Thursday kept up the crazy. All week, temps went up and down, up and down, like a yoyo. And then Thursday, we added in lovely gusting winds up to 30mph on top of the crazy, bouncing temperatures. Yippee. Just what I wanted, an evening spent working on my needlework, while listening to the wind moaning around the house. Yeah. Just a good time all the way around.
But I've gotten eight full rows done on the granny afghan, which is great, and a lot of work done on the log cabin style thing, so that's great, too. We've made a decision on the satellite internet as well. We'd love to have it ASAP, and I'm just that close to having the darn deposit for it together, but with Quentin needing to get through probation at work, and possibly having to take a day off to help the satellite guy get the thing installed, it's a good idea to wait until after February. This is not fun, folks. I really want the internet like NOW, but there's a lot of good reasons to wait other than the possibility of Quentin needing to help the installer. The weather will be better and the ground softer, so getting the pole for the dish put in will be much easier. There's also the fact that if trees need to be thinned or trimmed or whatever to get better signal, Quentin's got to be able to be home in order to haul out the chainsaw and deal with that. But that's on schedule, work is going okay for the most part, and I'm pretty happy that the days are getting longer. Another month or so, about the same time that the internet gets installed, it will be light long enough after I get home from work to where I can get some work done outside before supper. Whee!
Not so whee, we got our forms for the state tax return already, and we haven't gotten our W2s yet. I will be glad to get that task out of the way when the time comes. I love doing taxes and bookkeeping, as that is my background, but sometimes, I just wish I could spend my days crafting and doing things on the computer without having to go work somewhere else. One day, I know it will happen, but it's a ways off, and for some reason, with all the wind today, that knowledge is a bit depressing.
Friday was a good day despite the chills. The weather is cold again, and clear, which left the living room a bit too cold for my taste, and the kitchen pretty frigid. Now, we're not talking so cold in the kitchen as to see my breath, just rather a bit more chilly than I'd like for fixing dinner. As for the living room, it's not that it's so much frigid there, either, it's still just a bit chilly after all of yesterday's winds to make it comfortable for listening to the idiot box while doing some needlework, or hunting through catalogs, or what have you, to keep my evening busy.
So I took the expedient route and hauled dinner, the computer, my needlework, and a couple of seed catalogs down to the bedroom so I could spend a quiet evening in reasonable comfort. Momma didn't raise no fools when it comes to surviving winter in good condition, that's for sure. Speaking of Mom, Friday the 17th was her birthday. Sixty-six years old, my goodness! It's hard to believe. I remember being a kid and thinking she'd never get old, and that I'd never be the age she was (whether it was thirty or forty). Now, here I am, forty-five and closing fast on forty-six, and wondering where the years have flown off to. I sure don't feel my age most days.
Well, except for Friday morning. I woke up a bit before the alarm and went to stretch under the blankets before getting up, and thought I was going to scream. I got a really bad Charlie Horse in my left calf, and surprisingly enough, despite all my moaning and banging into the walls because I couldn't walk normal for a while, Quentin slept through the whole thing. Either he was sleeping, or he was snoring awake. I slapped on some muscle rub (yeah, I'm getting old enough that that stuff is normal in the medicine chest), and had a lovely time driving my five-speed standard transmission car to work, up and down hill pretty much all the way. Oh yeah, and then being on my feet for eight hours, walking and standing.
Except for about an hour or so in the morning. One of the families at our plant had a horrible house fire the day before Christmas Eve, and lost everything. There was a bake sale to benefit them today, and nobody wanted to help man the thing. I volunteered solely because nobody else would, and that made me kind of mad. One of the things you learn in orientation is how Tyson employees are a family, and we take care of our own. Then something like this happens, and while folks are willing to donate food, or buy stuff, or whatever, they rarely want to help with setup, sales or cleanup. So I spent an hour manning the sale, which was fun.
After lunch, the one gal grabbed me and said they were continuing the thing all afternoon (which is unusual), and I needed to stay there and run it. I said, ok, but you better let Ann (my lead) know, because I'm not getting in trouble for not being back to work on time over this. Oh, she told Ann, all right, who came out to the break room and said, I kid you not, "Hey, hon, what's going on here?" (There is something inherently WRONG when your boss calls you "hon" and you've got at least a decade on her in age. But it's funny.) So I told her.
She got this steely look in her eyes and said, "We'll see about that." Off she went, back a few minutes later with a cover like we usually throw over the big totes for storage or breaktime cleanup (that way at break, the high pressure chlorinated water doesn't contaminate the meat), and told me to break it down, pack it up, and cover the leftovers I couldn't put away with the cover. One of the supervisors said there was NO WAY we were running a bake sale all afternoon. So about half an hour later, I was back to work. I was kind of glad, really. I don't mind helping out like that, but it was awful boring. Even considering that I work in the cold and wet, and the breakroom was warm and dry, I'd rather be at my job than watching that bake sale because I'd be busy and time would pass. Honestly, I saw a repeat of Tuesday happening if I couldn't get out of manning the bake sale for the afternoon. (As in, the blankish stare thing going on again. No thanks.)
Of course, Saturday was the busy day it usually is, with a ton of running around. It was a lot of fun getting so much done, and we picked up a few cheapo movies from the dollar store and Wally World to keep us busy for date night tonight, while also getting the truck paid down as of today to a mere $370. This means in a few more weeks, that's $65 a week I can put towards back bills or seed orders or whatever instead of a vehicle payment. Mind, by fall, we'll have to find a 4x4 to get me back and forth to work in bad weather next winter, but that's several months off and we'll worry about that at that point.
We both got offered some overtime this weekend, for both Saturday and Sunday in F.P., which is Further Processing, where the cooked products are made. The extra money would have been nice, but we always have so much that has to get done, that we really need the weekends off in order to get them done. So, naturally, we both said, oh heck, no. Instead, it was truck payment, laundry, groceries, smoke shop for Quentin, lunch, and a lot more that I've lost track of, but man, we spent about seven hours between driving and the other stuff. Mostly driving, because country living means you drive a half hour or more one way to the grocery store. It's awful fun though.
Like this weekend, on the way down the mountain road, the resident red-tailed hawk was flying around and swooped right down across the road in front of us, then soared up and up and around on the thermals, astounding us with his flight. Gosh, that's a gorgeous sight to see around here, that hawk. I know, I know, it's just a bird, doing bird things, but he's a very pretty bird. And then there's burning trash, getting it together and out to the burn pit or barrel, lighting it off and watching it go up in flames, while standing there nearby and feeling the warmth of the fire.
I should note, too, that while my buy order from Pinetree is a mere $190, the actual want list from all the seed catalogs is a heck of a lot more. I told Quentin I need to get a 20-gallon tote, order seeds and store them away for when we do get the blasted land cleared or bought or whatever. Things is, I figure even if I get seeds for things WE wouldn't eat ourselves, that stuff can go to market and be sold, or if it doesn't sell, it can come home, seeds can be saved, and the stuff itself composted. And that mess of seeds is sure going to be big and expensive over time. Yeah, it's big, and it sure will be expensive to get it all to at least store it away. I just hope Quentin doesn't realize just exactly how MUCH I spend on this stuff to hold onto until there's a place to put it all, lol. He'd probably figuratively strangle me, lol. But then again, once the van's paid off, that money could go for seeds, right?
Oh yeah, in other news, I picked out my new laptop for when I have saved enough for that. This one's older, slower, doesn't have the RAM I need, and is small screened, being a netbook. I really like one laptop Wal-Mart has that's a 17" screen and 8GB of RAM, but it's nearly $600. For half that, I can get one they also have that's a slightly smaller screen (15.6"), half the RAM, and 2/3 of the hard drive space (500GB instead of 750GB). But it would do all that I need, let me play my computer games when I'm REALLY bored, and have more than enough space for all the things I store on it.
Shoot, this little netbook only has a 250GB hard drive, and I haven't even half filled it, despite all the ebooks I have on it for my Kindle for PC, lol. But it's got to be replaced. It's old enough that it doesn't handle some of the things it needs to anymore, like Flash (it crashes regularly), and some of the keys are pretty worn so it's hard to get them to type properly without hitting them really hard. So it's time to save up after getting internet here, and replace the poor thing so it can go to a new home. What I may do is clean it up a bit, reset everything to the original settings, and see what the pawn shop down in Harrison would give me for it. Not a lot, I know, but it would give it a chance at a new life with someone else who doesn't need a lot of oomph, but does want a good little laptop to travel with. Mostly, I think it needs a good cleaning for the sticky keys, as I have a bad habit of eating while I'm on the thing, and that's not a good idea, really.
So, anyhow, it's time for the obligatory book list for the week. Have fun!
FREE KINDLE BOOKS FOR THE WEEK - and why do I keep trying to type "Kidnle" ?????
HOMESTEADING BOOKS
COOKBOOKS
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