Tag: Life on the Farm

Suessian Wiring

Posted on by Farmers Blogger

Hello Friends!
Goodness. It’s been a month. I’m tempted to do a rapid fire recap, but maybe it’s easier to take the major points one by one.
To start, my little Ro is so so soooo done. She is really tired of being babied due to her arthritis and random back injuries. My normally level headed little mare full on tantrumed a few days ago and I have been on a mission to create new and fun experiences and completely shake up her routine ever since. I am also on the lookout for some tack and equipment based solutions, but the long and short of it is I’ve been trying to be so careful of her legs (vets recommendation) that I forgot how much this girl just likes to go. So, I’ll keep you posted on how that goes, I have spontaneously tested gravity once already this fall (my fault). I really don’t know what the rest of our season looks like, it’s all very up in the air.It’s officially “goathead coming out of my ears” season. I am fighting hard to keep this crazy weed under control, I am firmly convinced it is of the devil. I am not terribly excited for fall yet, but it would be nice to get past the burn ban so I can take fire to the little suckers. Does anyone have any goathead tips? I’m all out. It’s dangerous to walk barefoot in my home right now because these little guys come in on clothes and shoes and then lie in wait to stick you in the middle of the night.
Those are not the only concerns we’ve had on the farm this month, Watson got to take an unexpected trip to the vet and scared the ever living tar out of his mother. He decided chewing was optional on the little treat he got and it ended up lodged in his throat. I tried to help him out myself but it was more than I knew how to deal with so off to the vet we went. Luckily the treat had mostly dissolved and Watson was over it by the time we arrived, but I still had the vet double check for damage and we were under intense supervision at home for the next couple days just in case. This happened at the beginning of the month and I’ll be real with you, he only this week got a cookie again, and only because Joe and my dad lobbied hard on his behalf. I was not sure how ready we all were to try that again, and I still won’t be giving him cookies when I don’t have backup at home.
Now, I know what you are wondering, Amanda, what was up with your power situation, why did you miss a week and where did the Tuesday posts go? All super good questions and the answer is, dude, I don’t even know.
So, basically, I walked into my room one afternoon after a day out on the farm, and I went to wake up my computer to find it unresponsive. A small panic and large assortment of sear words later, I realized my desk lamp and phone charger weren’t working either. So, I tried popping breakers and resetting surge protectors and the like, and realized two things, that the wiring in the wall of my cloffice outlet was dead, and my house was wired by Dr Suess. I had my cousin, the electrician, come out to look at it, and she spent three or four days chasing the wiring through the house, literally that wall, and a wall on the complete other side of the house, and the back porch are all on one breaker, even though all three were constructed and wired in at different points in time. My cousin walked out at one point holding the bridge of her nose and muttering, “This is the most ghetto wiring”, so ya know, that made me trust my house so much. We then had to punch a bunch of holes in my cloffice, and closet proper, which meant my work and living spaces were all a massive disaster, half packed away, half stacked on my bed, all smelling like spackle and spray texture. Luckily my other cousin is a general contractor and expert drywallist , so he was able to come out and patch up my wall for me too. But all in all, between the hunt, the rewire, the patch up, and the re-organize, I was about three weeks without my office, or really my room at all with the amount of stuff all moved, and I couldn’t even work at the dining table because the power for that part of the house had to be off. I was a total basket case. I’ve been back in my space for a minute and I am still not caught back up. Between work, adulting type stuffs, blog stuffs, and other things that need my attention, I might just be back on track by… Halloween? Oof.
The kicker? The porch lights (same breaker, remember?) went out a couple days ago, and it’s not a bulb problem…. But I am not quite ready for more holes.
From me and my questionable wiring,
Until we chat again, my friends!

Creepin’ Toward Fall

Posted on by Farmers Blogger

Hello friends!What happened to August! Things have started to calm down a little here, but that doesn’t mean time has slowed down at all. My goodness if this year isn’t just flying by. It’s going to be Christmas before I am ready!We had Christopher’s birthday this month, twenty four years around the sun for that boy. He requested a lazy day, where he could play games, watch baseball, and eat his favorite foods. He couldn’t get the day off work so I snuck into his home office space and set up his birthday gifts for when he got home (He got a much needed new desk chair and a couple video games). We then went grocery shopping and got all his favorite foods (or at least the ones I can make). So there was warm mac and cheese, poutine, and cookies for lunch, pizza and nachos for dinner. Plus a really cute cookie monster cake my mom picked out for him because he is, in fact, a cookie monster, and my parents raised us to always keep a little bit of childishness to us, otherwise life loses its joy.

It was a good thing too, that we had all that warm food on hand because it absolutely poured with rain for a good portion of his birthday. It was part of a bigger storm system that took about a week to roll through, storms constantly, and enough rain to cause some issues. Nothing crazy like the rest of the country, thank goodness, but I did have to push part of my driveway back up the hill. I tried to take some video of it, but it didn’t really turn out. We have enough forecasted storms in the future though that I doubt that will be my last chance to catch the thunder and lightning.It’s all part of moving into the fall season I guess, those late summer storms. I am surprised how early it is starting to feel vaguely like fall. I have mentioned several times how August 20th always seems to be the switch around here, and you could definitely tell a difference that morning, but it was getting a little chillier in the mornings and a little darker a little earlier already. I haven’t seen any changing leaves yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s just around the corner.It’s not been cold enough to give up on air conditioning yet, but our air conditioner sure wants to give up on us. The system is just tired, there’s no parts for it, and we’re in a bit of a quandary because the only place out here that does air conditioning work wants to do a full system upgrade to the tune of five figures. I am not as keen so we are investigating our options. It’s way too warm here to not have some sort of cooling system. But I don’t really want to dump my life savings into an air conditioning unit, ya know?In other news, we’ve had some small progress with Nellie and her mask wearing. She was able and willing to put on the new, modified mask, which was so great! But… because there’s always a snag, she is unwilling to take the mask off. She wants to take it off, but she wont let me undo either of the velcros. After being fine with it for months, she’s decided to develop a fear of the velcro noise. This horse, my sweet, beautiful, disney princess of a horse, is the most high maintenance critter ever. Holy smokes, everything is a seven act drama with her. She’s loved unconditionally, which is good because she is a patience tester for sure. It has forced me to think about prototyping a second halter style mask, a version two if you will, that maybe doesn’t use velcro (which would honestly make me happy too because velcro is a pain in the rear to clean and not the easiest to work with on a moving horse). But, considering how quickly Ro keeps destroying masks, I don’t know if I am going to have an extra mask lying around to prototype on anytime soon.Speaking of Miss Ro, as I sit here typing to you, she has antibiotic wound clay all over her cheek. Why, you ask? Because I came down to the barn to catch her for a morning ride today, only to find another torn up mask and her with a big all scrape on her face. Of course, it’s right where the halter and bridle would both sit and very clearly not very comfortable, so that got her out of work. I packed it full of stuff to help keep it safe and let it heal, and now I am left to attempt sewing up the mask and waiting patiently for her face to not hurt. She, on the other hand, is absolutely milking it for all the love and attention, and relishing in her bonus day off. Silly girl.Anyways, I think that’s been most of the big things here on the farm. It’s been kinda low key for me because work has been creepin’ up there in hours again and I don’t have much free time. Hoping for a calm down in the fall.Until we chat again, my friends!

Good Grief, Where’d July Go?!

Posted on by Farmers Blogger

Hello friends!

Oh my goodness, what a whirlwind few weeks! I haven’t been home on the farm a whole lot, so now I’m more than a little behind. Lots to do, lots to do!

Well, to start, we had the Fiddle Fest and Parade. It was a hoot, my friend was visiting and we were at the park almost every night listening to music. There were some really great acts! We also went to this lemonade stand that had watermelon lemonade and I’m still thinking about it. It was so tasty we went back almost every night. It was a smaller fest again this year, but bigger than the last couple years, so I’m hopeful we are headed back in the right direction. The parade was pretty fantastic, you could tell that’s where a lot of the effort went, they had lots of different organizations and community groups, as well as some bigger corporations involved. It was a lot of fun! I helped with the float this year, but mostly kept out of the planning, letting my cousin take the reins. She absolutely nailed it, it was so adorable. The theme was “coming home” so, being the float for a Christian organization, she chose to make a stairway to heaven showing the “pathway home”. It was a pretty big hit. Of course, the candy throwing always helps too.

Here is an “In Progress” shot, most of my finished shots have little ones in them, so they aren’t really shareable

While my friend was here, we did a bunch of other things too. We found an army/navy surplus store in Boise that was really cool. My friend got an incredible deal on a backpack, and I found this cute little Belgium surplus shoulder bag…  or, at least, I’m using it as a shoulder bag. It’s technically a claymore satchel, or so I’m told. It’s kinda a black hole inside, I need to make or buy a little bag organizer, but it was a great little garage sale-ing bag, and for $12 I can’t complain at all.

We did a ton of garage sale-ing too! I got some neat stamps, a couple books, a few video games for Christopher, and a monitor for $3. I have to buy a power cord for it, and it may be junk, but I thought the gamble was worth it. I’ll keep you posted when I find the right cord.

I got totally lucky, the Fourth of July, or Independence Day, fell on a Tuesday this year, and my company let us have it off. I had a little pto squirreled away to dip into, so I took Monday as well, combined with the fact that I currently work 4 10s and usually get Friday off as well, yours truly finagled herself a 5 day weekend using only one pto day. I’ve honestly never been so proud, and it was much needed, because between visiting friends, helping family, the festival, and one very injury heavy day helping to pull a buddy’s landscaping company out of an oops (it’s a long story), I was jonesing for some time off. Of course, my boss found it hilarious that I managed a 5 day weekend approximately 2 weeks before my actual preplanned week long vacation. It’s been a pretty fantastic July for yours truly.

The Fourth itself was pretty low key, we don’t launch fireworks because of the animals and the high fire risk being butted up against rangeland. Being up on the hill though means I have a great view of just about every legal fireworks show in 20 miles, and several of the not so legal ones too. So, I mostly eat picnic foods, dress in red white and blue, and watch the valley paint itself in colors when the sun sets. We did make toaster oven smores which made my mom exceedingly happy and still respected the burn ban.

I’ve also had that vacation from work, which was much needed. Funnily enough, it meant falling way behind on blog admin-y type stuff because I had no desire whatsoever to be at my desk, and I completely forgot the concept of filming things. Honestly, it was a nice little break even if it means some of the posts upcoming might be a little lean. 

I’ve loved my little week off of work, I like my job a lot but like anything, after about 50 hours of it every week, one tends to want a break. It doesn’t help that I am currently heading a particularly nebulous project and its driving me a little mad. But hey, that’s life.
I spent most of my vacation just relaxing. I worked on some projects here and there but I am learning about the idea of rest as productivity and am treating myself to actual breaks instead of “I’m off work so lets shove as many catch up projects as possible into the space” when I can because I don’t really want to be worn out and over whatever breaks I get by the time I get back to work. The repairs, renovations, and improvements were all still there when I got back to it, and to be honest, some are still rolling over on the to-do list each day. It’ll all get done eventually. Or it won’t and then clearly it wasn’t that important anyway, ya know?
Anyways, I know this ones a little shorter, but since I am kinda buried in work catchup and blog catchup and life catchup, there’s not been much to write about, unless you’d like a detailed list of all the laundry that has personally offended me as of late. But I am so grateful I can occasionally take some “drop everything” days that the every growing todo list is 100% worth it.
Until we chat again my friends!