Monday it felt so good to get back to work. Funny, but I thought off and on during the day that once things get to where I can quit and work just from home, how much I'll miss the place in some ways. Ok, so I work with some incredibly stupid people, and some of what we have to do and the way we have to do it make absolutely no sense whatsoever. But it's a bit of a social life during the week, and there are rather few places in rural America where you are going to find this high a pay, excellent benefits (I could go on for a while with that list) ... oh yeah, and let's not forget the pretty much guaranteed forty hours a week, every single week of the year unless you take time off. That is some awesome stuff, folks. If you live an hour or so from a Tyson's plant and need a job, go to the Tyson's employment website and put in an application. (OK, enough blathering about how great my job is.)
Now, Monday wasn't that bad, overall. My buddy Christine is on light duty for a few days because she sprained her hand over the weekend, so she's out of the department. Her hand's got to be kept wrapped and iced, and you can't wash the wrap, so she can't wash up before going into production, and thus is on light duty somewhere. I really wish she'd been able to be there. The moment I walked into the department, I could tell it would be a rough start. For some reason, the gates to dump boobs into the x-ray hoppers weren't working right, and they were all going into the middle hopper. It was a nightmare. Five people standing there, with one of them (me) doing their level best to hold the birds in the hopper so they didn't fall on the floor, while helping the other four to throw them into the hoppers on either side to lighten the load.
Then hopper belts were sticking, x-rays weren't kicking off birds with bones like they were supposed to, and the newer shoulder cutters (the folks who make the cuts to separate the breast meat and wings from the collarbones on the whole birds) were leaving a lot of bits and pieces of bones, so the trimming tables were swamped. It was a horrifically busy day, but it made the day go zipping by!
I did get a surprise at the end of the day. Bobbi's mom and aunt had gotten their 4x4 Explorer stuck this morning, and I passed by them on my walk down to the car this morning. They only had one set of ice cleats between them, so I held their hands for a bit of extra steadying and helped them get off the ice and into dirt tire tracks so they could walk back up to their house while waiting for the wrecker. Bobbi's mom said it would be 3-4 hours before the wrecker could get there, and it was about 7AM then.
But that was good for all of us, because the family is on very good terms with the county judge, who also happens to be the head of the road maintenance department. One thing you do find in rural living, is that many folks in the county wear multiple hats. So if a 4x4 can't get down the road safely, you know there is an issue that will mean a call to the road crews! Sometime just before lunch, Quentin told me, the grader came by and scraped the ice and slush off the road some more, as well as dumping some large pea gravel to help with melting. With all the trees along the sides of the road keeping the sun from making a full solar dump on the ice except where it's clear (cow pasture and easements), gravel instead of rock salt often works better on the dirt roads here. This is because the gravel absorbs what heat there is and releases it slowly over time, no matter how cold it is. Rock salt generally doesn't work too well below freezing, and as cold as it is lately, it's not doing a lot of good for anybody.
So with that news, I took a chance on the way home. I got to the road in plenty of time to have some daylight left to check things out before committing to driving up. This way, I figured if it still looked bad past the second cattle guard, I could get backed up to the cow pasture and still walk. Lo and behold, it didn't look great, especially with the first incline right after the cattle guard, but there were tire tracks down to the dirt in enough spots that I took a quick deep breath and gunned it. Upsy-daisy I went, heart in my throat the whole time. I made it up fine, with only a teeny bit of slippage on the second incline where I got stuck in the mud right after we moved here. (Boy, do I remember that day well ... sliding backwards downhill at speed and no traction for braking to work, so my only hope was to steer onto one of the gravel grading ridges instead of hitting a tree or going off into a culvert. I felt lucky to "just" hit a ridge and high-center the car!) Not enough slippage to worry about or slow me down, just a bit of tire skitter on a bit of ice. Otherwise, it was up and at 'em all the way.
The hardest part was it's been too cold to get out and clear the front of the drive where the snow got plowed in, so instead of my usual slow down and pussyfoot my way in due to the way the end of the drive is with low spots, it was keep it in second gear and floor the bugger to plow through it. Gulp. Made it but it was a bit spooky. Nice to be able to drive up tonight though. Now the fun will be getting OUT in the morning, haha, because I have to back out and I hate backing up, and then I get to inch down the mountain road with the little bit of icy stuff that's still on it. Joy of joys. If I could afford to take points and hibernate till spring, or at least full road thaw, trust me, I would.
Tuesday was nicer, other than having to still get up freaking early to shovel out the front of the drive because someone else with more time on their hands on Monday didn't do it. I was on short sleep to begin with, because said same "someone else" got home shortly after 3AM and woke me up out of a sound sleep to let me know he was home by putting cold hands on my face. Truth be told, it's not that I don't care if he's home safe, I just care about getting my full amount of needed sleep more, so that I'm not exhausted like I am at 815PM Tuesday night, yawning as I write and take a short break from doing chores.
I got a new magazine that day on trial, called Garden Gate. I'm not overly impressed with it. It was a freebie thing of send in this card and we'll give you a free issue to our magazine kind of thing, but it's not all that great. Ok, if your thing is flowers, great. It's all about that kind of thing. Not so much about the veggies, barring one little paragraph about Indigo tomatoes. Sadly, it's not getting subbed to, the bill will be marked cancel and returned. I don't want to know about growing a lovely flower garden, I want to know about veggies and herbs, and in the old days, those grew just over the garden gate, too.
Wednesday, I got dragged off my usual spot toward the end of the day to fill in a hole on the line left by someone having to go home. Oh joy ... I haven't done that for a while now, and good grief but it hurts. It was fun, but it huuuurts. My buddy Christine, who injured herself over the weekend (sprained wrist) is off this week due to that, and she texted me a bit, telling me, among other things, that she's going nuts. She's got a husband who's gone a lot (truck driver) and three kids, ranging from twelve to seventeen in age, so I really don't envy her.
The weather is finally clearing up some, so I was able to get a bit of the backlog of trash burned when I got home. I figure a bag or two a day and by the weekend, it might just be reasonably caught up. I'm just sleepy enough from work and all that, to where after I finished my dinner, I took a bit of a nap. It was pretty nice to just snuggle down in bed and snooze for an hour until Quentin called on his break. I got a lot done on various small projects, but I really needed that nap.
Thursday was about average, barring a couple of surprises. The first was that I was still sleepy enough on the way to work that I didn't think and automatically reached down to turn on the heater. Lo and behold, it works again! The only thing we can guess is that the weather was just so cold, and my car has such a small engine, that it couldn't thaw out the blower motor or whatever enough to let the juice flow to power the heater. But I have heat again when I need it, thank goodness!
The other surprise was in the mail. Quentin forgot to get it for once on his way out, and there was a tiny package in there for him from the Red Cross. I kind of knew what it had to be. Every single time he sees a bloodmobile, he's going in and sticking out his arm. He's O+, so they really like him. The plant has the bloodmobile come in three to four times a year, and employees go out whenever they can to get stuck. (I don't, but I'm a big sissy when it comes to needles. I am just not brave about getting stuck.) Quentin's donated enough times that they sent him his gallon pin.
My granddad had his gallon pin, but he was in the Navy in WWII, so no wonder there. But these days, it's rare to hear of someone who donates enough to get there. With Quentin being O+, he's quite welcome as a donor. I remember one time last summer, a few weeks after he'd donated, he got a letter from the Red Cross. The blood he'd donated had helped a car accident victim in Little Rock who was in bad shape. And I think we all know that while they are typing someone's blood in an emergency situation, the first type doctors go for is O+, because it's the universal donor. I'm A+, and carry a medical card in my wallet with that information, along with allergies, so if something happens, it's pretty easy to know what I'm taking (if anything), and what might cause issues. So Quentin is a welcome, and frequent, visitor to the bloodmobiles.
Saturday was a normal weekend errands day. Weather has finallys started thawing out, and we're supposed to get a nice week of much warmer temps, so it will be pleasant. Add in the days getting longer, and when we got home, I had enough energy to actually get laundry put up as well as the usual stuff, and then grabbed my little chainsaw and went out to cut up some of those small trees that have been sitting and seasoning all winter long. I only managed about half an hour of cutting before the dark started setting in, but it was still nice to get out and do something.
And with weather clearing up and days getting longer, and knowing that we don't intend on fixing the sewage pipes (because that would mean hauling in water to flush with - a LOT of water, or fixing the pump and water lines to the house - EXPENSIVE), we're likely going to clear out the brush on a path to the old sewage lagoon and use it to bury a bunch of the non-burnable and non-recyclable trash in. Fill it up and then some, and have a truckload of dirt brought in and dumped on top. It will make the place look a lot nicer, and if someone down the road wants to use the lagoon, well, they'll have a chore ahead of them, I guess. There's several deepish depressions around here that can be used to dump the seriously junk trash into and bury it, and clean the place up at the same time, all while making firewood out of the scrub brush, or burning it.
Going through seed catalogs is time-consuming, but a lot of fun, as long as you don't get into the catalogs that essentially don't have anything in the way of food gardening seeds, or that don't list whether something is hybrid or not, or that list that rather erratically, or don't list how many seeds are in a packet ... such as Farmer's, Burgess, Exciting Gardens, Four Seasons Nursery and House of Wesley. All have their merits as far as what they carry. However, when they all carry more or less exactly the same things for more or less exactly the same prices, and don't meet the criteria mentioned above, I rather tend to pass them up. Now, when I can get things like lilacs and forsythia and spirea and such for driveway hedging and the like, they'll be perfect to browse and buy. For the food garden, not so much. Oh, also mustn't forget, they all have limited selection for the food garden, not so good if you want variety.
I've been asked by a few people if, once things are well-established on the homestead/farm, if I'd be offering a seed catalog. The answer is no. I'll put packets up for sale on the farm website eventually, but there will be no print or even online version of a catalog. I know, it's pretty silly to enjoy going through a catalog when I don't plan on putting one together myself, but I can't honestly see going to all that work when I'd have to do most of it myself, and there's a lot of things I can spend my time on that will make the homestead sustainable other than that. On the other hand, between the website, a few online venues to sell some of the seed that will be available, and the farmer's market, along with seed swaps, I don't think I'll have all that much trouble getting the seeds I will have available out the door.
I grant, we'll never be as big as say, Territorial or Shumway or Burpee or the like, but a small following through the internet and locals will be enough for me. I don't need seed sales to become the be-all, end-all of life. Especially when there are so many other plans in the works for income-producing, like my patterns, and finished crafts, and excess produce at the farmer's markets, and online things ... it's not like I won't be super-busy as it is! And that's going to help me stay balanced and happy.
Which leads me to another question folks have asked, and I've answered a few privately. How can I possibly have so many plans and know that they will work, that I will accomplish my goals, especially with all the setbacks that have happened in the last year or so? I won't say it's easy, but it's quite do-able by anybody. In college, I had to take a study skills class as a required "core" class. It was intended for folks who hadn't really learned to study in high school or had been out of school long enough to forget. I still learned a few things that still come in handy, like how to stay focused on task when there are a lot of distractions. Just ask my boss at work when they need me to stop sending chicken boobs through the x-ray machine so it can be regularly calibrated. I'm often so in the zone, so focused, that it's a joke that "Heather's not ignoring us telling her to stop, she's just REALLY focused on her work." Usually, I am just exactly THAT focused, to where sounds just become background noise that I have tuned out, to the exclusion of doing my job.
But the most important skill I learned in there wasn't a study skill so much as a life skill. I still say that class should have been life skills and not study skills because of this. The life skill that I'm using for all the things that I want to do for at-home income and homestead sustainability are all in a long-term plan that I have written down. How does that help? We had to do something similar for the class, and it goes simply like this. Get a three-ring binder and a bunch of notebook paper. Possibly some sheet protectors, because you're going to be in and out of this thing daily for a good long time, and I think we all know what happens to paper when it's handled that often!
Now ask yourself where you want to be in ten years. Write it down. Now figure out where you have to be at the end of nine years to make that ten-year goal happen. Then where you have to be at the end of eight years to make the nine-year goal happen, and so on. Once you have the years broken down, take a good look at your year-end goals for year one. Break those goals down into eleven months, ten months, and so on, like you did for the year-by-year goals. Then break each month down to week by week, and then day by day.
Each day becomes a checklist of things to get done that day. Using me as an example, maybe it's just strip and change the bed so the sheets can be washed with the laundry that week, and put the groceries and laundry away when we get home from errands. Maybe I've got some other goals I've added in as I've gone on, for projects I've started, like when I did the sweater and booties for Jamie. Those got written in so I'd know how many rows a day on the sweater HAD to be accomplished. If I missed on those goals, they got added to the next day's goals, which meant it would build and build if I didn't get my act in gear to get things done.
Same thing right now with going through my seed catalogs. I've got it written in to go through at least ten pages of the next catalog in line every day. More if I have the time and energy, but that's my minimum. It doesn't take that long to reach that goal. And that's the thing with breaking down this ten-year goal. By the time you get to each day's goals, they become very small and easily done, so instead of looking at it as, oh gosh, I have this huge goal and so long to get it done, then before you realize it, the time is gone and you have nothing accomplished, you manage to break it down to manageable chunks and can show yourself on your checked-off lists of things to do every week just how much you got done. By the time you reach the time to accomplish that end goal, it becomes a matter of finishing up a last few things and checking them off, and you're done. Trust me, when I'm working on a big project (like that knitted log cabin afghan), saying I'll do ten rows a day on it is not that bad. I can whip that out in an hour or two, depending on the size of the row. When it's a small block, it's easy and takes minutes. When it's bigger, like now, and the rows are about 150 stitches each, it takes longer, but it's still not too bad. By the way, it's about a third done, so with luck, by the time spring is half over, I might have it finished and ready for cool summer nights on the couch! (And the blessing is, it's using up a ton of smaller scraps of yarn I have sitting around that I really don't have any other use for!)
Finally, I got some photos taken this weekend for you guys!
Remember the cowls I said I made for Quentin and myself? Here is Quentin's:
This is Mom's afghan that I made for her, that she is getting as a very late Christmas present.
And this is the northwest window in the bedroom, where the cats have a shelf just below the window, so they can curl up in the sunshine there. You can see how I got the insulation to stay up so as to cut off the drafts from the window over the winter. Nailed it up to the wall and taped the seams. It looks awful funky but it works!
Until next time, here are this week's selections of free Kindle books. Remember that they are free when I post them. They may not be free when you get to them!
FREE KINDLE BOOKS
Homesteading books
Cookbooks
And now I'm running out of time for this week, so I'm quitting for now. See you net time!
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