The Farmer's Blogger

Hi friends!
I am so serious (or seriously in denial) that it is spring. It got warmer, and it’s been mostly drier, and I am convinced, convinced, its spring time. I know it’s only February, and I know I am going to get blindsided by sudden, wet, February snow at some point, don’t care, it’s spring. I’ll die on this hill.

But no, in seriousness, it’s been sunny and warmer and my entire outlook on life has changed. Literally the first sunny day, I was so happy and productive and I was explaining to my friend what a sudden burst of energy and productivity I had and she goes, “well, duh, you’re solar-powered”. Which, I simultaneously feel like I knew, but I think that’s the first time someone said it to me, instead of just my joking, and I realized it might be a little more true than I had thought. It’s so much easier to do things and think happy thoughts when the sun is out. It just is so hopeful.

Everyone has been thinking I am crazy because I keep trying to justify working outside and it’s still, realistically, too cold and wet to work outside on a laptop, but I keep trying. It’s blowing like crazy outside right now and yet, I was just wondering if it’s too windy for the notebook.

It is.

In other news, we are starting to plan the garden out. I know I want peas, beans, and carrots, and I think I would like to grow pumpkins and watermelon again, even though I haven’t had much luck with those. I really wanna grow potatoes. I had so much fun with them last time and I live in Idaho, it’s necessary. It seriously might be a law. I really want to try corm again but we are two states and three garden plots into failing that crop. I cannot successfully grow corn. But maybe this is the year? what else I should I grow? Maybe eggplant? Can I grow eggplant here?

I also wanna add hollyhocks to the arbor vitae hedges this year, because they are annual but they self-re-plant AND they are super pretty and the deer have done a whole number on the hedge row but apparently don’t like hollyhocks. I also think I want I to plant them along the arena fence for a little privacy but I need to double check if horses can/will eat them. Because Lord knows, my girls will try.

Along with those, I really wanna put sunflowers in the garden beds. We grew those sunflowers a while ago for my cousins for my cousin’s wedding and I loved them so much. But they went bonkers and all my neighbors had sunflowers too, and when we transported them, you could find sunflowers the following year along the route. So, I need to do some research before I let them loose on the valley again.

I also wanna try thyme? Apparently thyme is a really great, safe for animals and good for the environment type ground cover. I am hoping it will clean up and keep my hillside nice, because currently the only thing I am growing up there is tumbleweeds.

Anyways, that’s where my brain is. I have been painting winterscapes occasionally but it’s transitioned to springscapes overnight. I am so ready to be outside all the time.

Its a good thing that the groundhog decided spring is coming early, I think we would have had beef had he said anything else. I would have had to have a conversation with the groundhog, that he needs to get brave and not flee his shadow. I’ll be honest though, I completely forgot to even check and didn’t find out until the Monday after.

See, my parents got married on Groundhog Day, and we were having too much fun celebrating to notice the little guy. My parents wanted to go out on a small “family adventure” and then out to eat with my brother and I. So we did a little window shopping and tourist-ing in Boise, I spent far too much money but solved some fun problems, and we had a lovely meal. They’ve been married 33 year, can you imagine? It’s true love, they are soulmates and they make me believe in fairytales. So sweet.

Until we chat again, my friends!

Hello friends!

Well, we got a decent amount of snow recently, about 18 inches in total, so not as bad as some places, but enough to be enough. It was funny, it managed to snow pretty much only on days where I had to work on outside projects or be out in town. Funny how that is.

It also got down to about -7°. That’s Fahrenheit. For my Celsius using friends, that’s somewhere Around -21°. That is, regardless of how you label it, really freaking cold. 

That’s painfully cold. The ponies’ whiskers froze. Understandably, they hardly left the barn. I really can’t blame them, I hardly left my room unless I was grabbing food or hugging ponies. Watson has exclusively lived under blankets. He grumbles if you get up and move the blanket, grumbles if the heater is turned down, it’s hard to be small when it’s cold. It’s really hard to be small when there’s 18 inches of snow in your backyard. He misjudged how deep it was off the step, jumped in the snow, and just got so mad. Day ruiner. We got him inside all warm and dry, he survived. 

In other news, we’ve had more plumbing shenanigans on the farm. I am so over major repair bills. But it is what it is. I called a different plumber from last time, for those concerned. It was a better experience, but I really hope I just don’t have to call any more plumbers for a while. 

I walked down to the corral on my lunch break, a daily occurrence, and I noticed a river where there wasn’t one before. Curious, since I hadn’t planned to run a river through my arena. A little investigation later, I found where the water was bubbling up from the ground. Turns out the water line from the house to the horse trough gave up the ghost on me. To be honest, I thought it ran a different way, so I was so confused as to the location of the spout. So, that was a learning experience. 

Another thing I learned is that apparently whoever put in all these pipes originally thought shut off valves were optional. So, the only way to turn off the water was to turn off the pump for the whole farm. That obviously wasn’t going to work, especially not in negative degrees, so, well, we built an ice rink instead. Not ideal. 

I felt so bad for the first plumber that came out that evening, he looked at it, quoted the project for me, and set the fix for the next day. Then he spent about an hour trying to get his truck and trailer up my snowy driveway. There were a few moments where I thought he was going to need to leave the trailer here. Or that the trailer was going to drag Him down the bank into my pasture. But he eventually got it.

The next set of guys, the following morning, slid down the driveway with their own trailer, and they broke one of their chains too. Then when the second truck came, also got mildly stuck, and then left. Then the third one came with the excavator, it dropped off the excavator, and then fought to climb back out. 

At this point my incredibly sweet neighbor, realizing that I still haven’t managed to procure a blade of my own, fired up his adorable little backhoe and came and scraped some of the driveway for me. I really appreciated it.

That said, it took them two days to fix the pipe, and unfortunately they still struggled to get up the driveway so the excavator and the utility trailer stayed over until the temps rose enough. 

I am super appreciative that they were able to fix it for me in the snow and everything. Weirdly enough, the pipe didn’t freeze and crack, it didn’t freeze at all, it appears to have just worn through, water pressure or something just wore out a hole. I have no idea. This home ownership shenanigans is hard.

But, otherwise, guys, I’m so excited! My sweet grandma called me up and asked me to stop by one Saturday before bible study. She had something she wanted to give me. Turns out she had purchased a whole cow for butchering and split it up amongst all her family. She gave me about one hundred pounds of meat! She says it’s a christmas gift, she’s being so generous, and I am so grateful! That meat will last us well into summer, and will help tremendously with the grocery bill. It’s always great to have a stocked pantry, such a good feeling. I still want to build a bit of a store room of dry goods over time, but the freezer is stocked for now and I am so pleased!

So that’s been most of what’s new here. Not much due to the weather and the latest repair. As the spring rolls in closer and closer, these updates will hopefully start turning to things like planting and sunshine and flowers and such. I’m really really ready for spring. 

Until we chat again my friends!