Christopher and I got to walk around an abandoned, condemned old schoolhouse. I haven’t been able to find a lot of information on it, but I know it’s on it’s way out because of safety concerns, so I am glad we got to document it.
Please note that Christopher and I had permission to be in there and on property, please get your proper consents before traipsing into old buildings.
Hello Friends!
(A Quick Disclaimer: This was written about a week in advance because I have company coming and didn’t want to miss a post, I’ll touch on festival stuff for this year (and, of course, any other shenanigans, in our next catchup)
Are you finally getting all the lovely warmth of summer time? We are having a bit of a weird one, but I am not complaining. Since moving here, usually by this time it’s been in the mid nineties, sometimes ranging up into the triple digits already, and it gets to where all the outdoor chores need to happen in the morning. But this year we’ve had mostly eighties at the time of writing this, and I have been absolutely loving it. It’s been quite pleasant because while I still do my chores in the morning, it’s not wholly unpleasant if something needs my attention outside in the afternoon. It’s only strayed into the nineties a few times and they feel more like the exception than the rule. The less fortunate component to that though is that it’s been a weirdly wet season for us, which I have mentioned, but it continues, lots of rainy days, lots of humidity, lots of storms. The storms aren’t out of the norm necessarily, but the moisture content sure is.
As I am sure you noticed in the video snippets, Nellie is starting to wear her fly mask! It’s slow going, and we’ve had some setbacks, including a couple injuries to yours truly, but she’s slowly understanding that this is a part of life. She doesn’t seem to mind the mask, but the putting on and taking off is potential meltdown territory. But I am proud of her for trying, and she does try her little heart out for me. Just a recap, in case this is your first post here (hi!) Nellie needs to start wearing a mask (and probably a fly sheet eventually) as a way to block out the sun because she has a really sensitive patch of skin on her eye that is at risk of melanoma. I want to sunscreen her little pink nose too, but that’s still full on panicking, melting down, losing faith in the human race territory for that little mare, so baby steps. Oh the joys of taking on an abused pony, excuse me whilst I go rant at a family member about all the things I would do to Nellie’s previous owners if I ever got my hands on them.
Unfortunately, we’ve already chalked up a couple fun injuries for our mask project, the most annoying one being a very inconsiderately placed set of deep rope burns on my right hand. It wasn’t Nellie’s fault at all, for the record, she just got spooked and I wasn’t going to let her gallop off trailing a lead rope and potentially breaking her neck, so I skied across the arena and incurred some lovely burns on my index, middle, and ring fingers, and across my palm. Luckily, because I am mostly mixed handed, I was able to work around it, but I write predominantly with my right hand out of cultural norm, and I obviously use both hands to type, so that was rough. Even today, we’re about two and a half weeks from the inciting incident, and I managed to re-open part of my index finger again. Word of warning, learn from me, wear the bandages longer than you think you need to, they’ll help if you’re a fool who keeps re-injuring themselves.
(also, if you use the fingerprint scanner on any of your devices, add both index fingers, trust me, one day you’ll temporarily and accidentally alter your fingerprints too).
Ro’s settling into her work patterns slowly, seems like the anti-inflammatories are working because most days she’s pretty keen to start working, which is super sweet. She doesn’t like how close the research tents are this year (they lease my neighbors land and rotate where they pitch the tents each year, so next year they should be super far on the other side again, I think) and has been pretty spooky about it, because she can hear machines and workers and tools and things she’s used to, but she can’t find them so she gets antsy. We are working on being brave and our stamina at the same time. Both of those things mean I am gonna have some killer leg muscles this summer (too bad I’m wholly unfashionable and frugal or I’d be rocking some super cute short sets).
The farrier came out recently too, and has been working on making Nellie’s hoof a better angle for her special leg. He wants to ensure she doesn’t wear through her heel and I really appreciate his taking extra care to work on her. We won’t be able to correct the limp and stomp obviously, but if it’s more comfy and safe for her I am all for it.
I got to meet some other ponies recently too, and some doggos, a cat, and a couple cows, as well as some baby chicks! I didn’t get pictures because I didn’t have the owner’s permission to do so, and I would want to have some say in where my animals were posted, but it was fun helping out a little with their care and keeping and seeing how others maintain their critters. Christopher was house sitting out on the flats for a friend so I went out a few times to help and keep him company. Funnily enough, every time I went out, it started storming. It was a bit of a wild weekend for that, and the thunder was all sorts of rumbly. It’s funny, and a little sad, because my mom is allergic to literally every animal that lives on the farm, so it’s very much second nature to keep the community spaces of our house allergen free. We try to really manage animal allergens so that the house is pretty safe. We also make a point to keep hay and grass and dust out of the house as much as we can too. But, not everyone keeps a potentially unsustainable level of allergen management in their homes, not everyone needs to, and poor Christopher was quickly reminded that weekend that he is actually quite allergic to most dogs, cats, and horses. He is for sure allergic to hay, maybe to cows, and definitely to chickens. I think we spent just as much time working out his allergy meds as he did housesitting. I may have enjoyed the weekend way more than he did, although he was getting paid haha.
Oh gosh, what other things of note happened recently? As you probably saw in the video, we got most of the irrigation working now! Pasture sprinklers are still plugging up some, but that’s to be expected pretty much all summer long. The boys melted a pipe over the winter because they didn’t realize they had buried it in the pile, and that launched water all over. To their credit, I didn’t know that pipe was there either, and who knew there was no shut off valve between the garden and the pasture? The schematics show one, but we’ve been slowly debunking those plans with each passing year. I appreciate the previous owners setting that up for us though, even if they are a little different in practice, they are invaluable. The house sprinklers are a whole other story, the valves need replacing, the computer is confused, and I truly don’t understand the zones sometimes. The house sprinklers are a mystery all their own.I am super excited, because by the time this goes up, a dear friend of mine is coming to town to visit and work remotely with me. We are going to have fun at the festival, help my cousin with the parade float, and hopefully do a lot of garage sale-ing. We also might try some low key crafting while she’s here, it’s going to be such a fun stay-cation for me and vacation for her, even if we are vacationing around work schedules.
Until we chat again my friends!
Hello friends!
I’ve mentioned this a lot on the blog before, but if you’re new here, hi, I’m Amanda, and while I spent summers on my uncles farm, I did my growing up mostly in the suburbs and only moved full time to a hobby farm about 5 years ago. The area I grew up in was really lovely for most of my childhood, but as I grew up, it turned into an overgrown city that was lacking good government and good infrastructure, and was part of the Puget Sound area. Some of you familiar with that area have probably conjured a name, and you’re probably right haha.
Anyways, all that to say, when I moved headlong into Small Town America, I came barreling into rural life with all the self preservation and paranoia that comes from a doors locked, alarms on, don’t walk around outside at night lifestyle, and it showed. I’ve relaxed on a lot of things, but some will never change. And some small town idiosyncrasies just absolutely blow my mind still. I thought I’d share the ones that still confuse, confound, and sometimes, crack me up the most.
First one, and the one that prompted this whole rant: small town stores keep whatever hours they want. This isn’t a bad thing, we love a flexible schedule in this house, but when it differs from day to day it’s a little hard to keep the plot. Recently I walked into a store that had, up till then, been open until 5 pm, google said so, Facebook said so, I’d been in there at 4:45 before. Other than the occasional time I’d found it closed for the day with a note on the door (always for adorable reasons like “out for the day with my husband”), it had been fairly consistent. So, you can imagine my absolute mortification at walking into their staff meeting with the air of uneasy, keyed-up confidence only someone who’s hiding some serious social anxiety can conjure (we’ll discuss my “fake it till you make it” non-coping methods another time) only to hear “excuse me? We’re closed, you’re not supposed to be here”. Now, to her credit, they were truly lovely, and still helped me, AND two more people walked in after me, but I still feel all sorts of cringe about it and, more importantly, this is not even remotely the first time that’s happened! I get sweaty palms now even recalling it. But shops run on rural time.
Beyond needing a crystal ball to see if a shop is open, “rural time”, as I’ve taken to calling it at work, is a persistent source of confusion for me, even 5 years in. Some things make total sense, for example, anyone who works with horses knows that scheduling with the Farrier is a loose event, because your appointment depends entirely on how well-behaved the clients before you are. I’ve gotten calls from my farrier before that go something like “just finishing up at urgent care, last horse broke my arm, I’m gonna be late” and I totally get being late because of that (I shoo them off anyway, I’m not going to let them aggravate an injury on my account, geez). But I’ve also had irrigation guys show up three days late because they “finally got around to” us. I can’t be mad, they’re honest, but I’ve learned to just not to get too invested in times. My pest guys (I saw one mouse, once, never again) regularly call me to set a time window, and are almost ALWAYS 2-4 hours late, unless I have a meeting early, then they show up during that meeting. Without fail. Time just moves differently out here, it’s like everyone took training from the cable installers. My morning check ins at work now often include “…and if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise, at some point today I might need to step away for a tradesperson…maybe”, because I can’t accurately give any more info than that.
A funnier one, that I get teased for but I don’t think I’ll ever change, is locking points of entry. Whether it’s my car doors or house doors and windows, I lock up. I almost always lock my car up, and while I’ll leave the house back door unlocked during the day, it’s only if others are home. I’m much more willing to leave doors and windows open, since moving here, in parts of the house I’m frequenting, but I won’t, for example, leave the back door unlocked if I’m in my office up front. This leads to family members often calling me to let them in, or someone offering to grab something from my car only to wait while I fish my keys from my bag (or unclip them from my belt). My great aunt and uncle, who live farther out on the farm/ranch I spent summers on, haven’t locked a car or the house up since I’ve been alive. I regularly walk into their kitchen to find no one is home, which IS convenient because I can leave treats or paperwork or whatever on their counter as needed, but it’s a weird thing to just let yourself into someone’s empty house without a key. I could easily “borrow” a vehicle if I wanted and I’ll be honest, I don’t even know if their garage door works if there’s not snow on the ground. It might be a prerequisite. It’s the only place in the world I’ll leave my keys in my vehicle while I visit… out of reverence.
My uncle, who lives in town (and on a main street too) regularly leaves his door unlocked. We regularly end up accidentally swapping dishes at family events, and so many times I’ve stopped by after work, gone in, gotten my dish and returned his, without any of them being home. I can maybe see it farther out, like at the ranch, but in town? So trusting.
Some people take it even further and leave their keys unlocked in their running vehicles when it’s very hot or very cold. I know it’s for AC or engine warmth purposes, but, like, it’d be so easy to steal a car in the grocery store parking lot. Shockingly easy. Not that I would, but I could, is my point. Especially little old people, they just trust that God and the Sheriff will do their jobs, and the thing is, it’s worked so far. I simply could never. I still wake up in the night when I hear a car that sounds too similar to my car driving by up on the road. I don’t think I’ll ever outgrow that.
For those of you who’ve had a huge lifestyle change like this, what’s the thing that got you the most? Grocery store stock? Price of gas? Level of friendliness? Did you move to a small town? A big city? A whole new country? Tell me all about it!
Until we chat again my friends!
The Farmer's Blogger 