Fractured Friday

Yesterday was a bit tough and seemed to cover a lot of different emotions. Two main points, though . .

The vet came midafternoon to check Hero. Hero stood very stolidly while being poked prodded, having a blood sample drawn, and also a fecal sample taken. His teeth were checked, and deemed acceptable Horses need dentist visits sometimes, and have trouble eating if their teeth need work - but apparently that's not the issue. We'll have to see what the lab results turn up.

After that, K went down to Home Farm, and called me from the pond to come hang out with them. When I got there, Three young adults and one dog were enjoying the ice, while Rosalie was puttering around close behind K in bafflement. The water is? hard? and the humans are standing on it? I must closely monitor my human? Who is standing on the hard water???

She also decided that anyone who fell on the ice (which was happening frequently, because the kids were engaged in an impromptu pushing and shoving battle), must need a dog snoot right in their face. At one point K fell, and Rosalie rushed over to stick her little dog snoot in her face - while standing right on K's hair. The issue in question required zero dog snoots, but. You know. A dog snoot was offered anyway.

After a while we moved on to the 'sledding' portion of the event. Featuring an abandoned, beat-up kayak that somebody left on the farm years ago, a long tow chain, a Subaru Crosstrek, and a semi-flat pasture. The guys were jubilant about hitting speeds in excess of 40 mph (64 kph). "We'll take it slower for you," my son assured me. You darned well better. It was fun and also scary. Mostly fun.

{Guitar intro}

The kids went "sledding" today. In a kayak. Pulled by a Subaru Crosstrek. At 45 miles per hour. Across a relatively flat pasture.

Shaking my head.

I miss Waylon Jennings. He could have sung a song about this.

Loving Country

Someone who loves me but is also getting dementia got me a book about Farm Life. It was written by a woman who grew up in a big city but moved to Asscrack West Pennsylvania* to raise her family and learn about Living on the Land. Ok.

I was reading this trying to figure out WHY it was making me so uncomfortable. It's not because I'm clearly not the intended audience. The intended audience is other city people, and that's fine. But something else was bothering me, and it took me a while to put my finger on it.

Eventually I realized that most of the chapters were about specific things she learned from the folks in her new neighborhood. Country people. She synthesized all that and wrote a series of articles, then a book. And fiiiinally it clicked for me. If I took someone out and carefully, generously spent time teaching them the ins and outs of, say, foraging elderberries and cooking/preserving the fruit . . and then that person wrote it up and got paid for publishing it . . yeah.

In one sense, I get it. Learn stuff, connect the dots, describe it on words, get published, get paid. There are a LOT of people who could read this book and love it. On the other hand . . if I spent time and effort teaching someone, only to have them turn around and get paid for, effectively, my lessons. Naming me and quoting me extensively. [This DID happen once, in a small way] Hmm. I just don't. Hmm.

'* With all due reverence for the rural regions of West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Where I, too, live.

I love winter walks, when the leaves are down and you can see the shape of the hills. I just don't love

This one, particular

WHACKADOO neighbor. Dude. What ails you??

Medical

This is definitely me sticking my nose into other people's business, but. Last week one day our lane was full of flashing lights and emergency vehicles. I assumed that was for Mr. Neighbor*, because he has a progressive illness and Mrs. Neighbor is in pretty good health. Then, Friday, again with the flashing lights and multiple emergency vehicles. I saw her car leaving after the ambulance left. Should I call her and check in? It would be kind, maybe, to do so, but also possibly bothersome. I don't want to bother someone who's having an awful day. Saturday . . ambulances again. At this point, I'm kinda pissed on their behalf. Why is the hospital sending this guy HOME if he's in such a health crisis? Is it good healthcare to send a guy with a serious, progressive health issue home from the hospital only to turn around and bring him back the next day? Maybe they should, just, keep him there?

I don't know what's going on with these folks, and I don't know how to find out. I'm not plugged into neighborhood gossip, and I don't know how to be. The one neighbor lady I did know who always knew everything about everybody (but in a caring way) passed away herself a few years back. I care, but I don't want to be a bother to anyone. It's a strange situation. I feel like I should make some soup about it.

'* I have known this guy since I was a toddler and he was a teen. We are not fond of each other. The interhousehold vibe is basically 'wary politeness'. His wife is pretty nice.

Wouldn't it be nice to be twelve again? Tubing in a cool creek. Who can make the biggest splash.

Night song

Crickets, katydids, and cicadas; sing the night fantastic.

Fair

Last night the kids (and Roommate) and I went to the county fair for the next county north of us. We wanted to see the livestock barns, watch the rodeo, and then stroll the midway. Unfortunately, the grandstands "fill up" an hour before the event, so in order to find seating at all, let alone together, we had to park our butts on the hard, hard concrete stands an hour early, and we missed our seeing-the-livestock time. I say 'fill up' in quotes because the stands were only half full, but most of the remaining half was covered in seat-saving blankets, cushions, drinks, etc. "You can't sit THERE, that seat's saved!" That is a real nuisance, actually. I think they need a better system.

The other issue is that the grandstand faces due west. The setting sun roasted, broiled, and fried us as we sat FOR AN HOUR on concrete. The actual rodeo was ok. Everybody cheered very hard for the 'mutton-busters', preschoolers attempting, occasionally successfully, to ride sheep. There was way too much flag waving in the opening ceremony, a feeling that the horse the flag-bearer was riding apparently agreed with. He was happy enough to trot around the ring, but when she tried to get him to stand still while the announcer droned on and on and ON about patriotic fervor, he was doing everything but hold still.

The only actual rodeo events amidst the kids stuff and the interminable filler (dad dancing contest? help!) were barrel racing and bull riding. The barrel racing was pretty good, and the two very young riders (thirteenish) made me kinda happy. Most of the horses were really into it, and there were no big wrecks. The bull riding was. Uh. Only ONE guy made it the full 8 seconds to qualify, and a large majority of the others were dumped in 2 seconds or less. Out of the gate, on the ground. It was close to 9:30 when they wrapped it all up, at which point my hip bones had had THREE HOURS to fuse irrevocably to the concrete. Ay-iy-iy. Standing up was a slow and careful event.

The Tilt-a-Whirl was, as always, awesome.

Poke greens; poisonous raw, delicious when cooked properly to remove the poison. I know, not for everbody . . but I do enjoy a mess of poke greens every spring. It's a stronger taste than spinach or lambsquarter, but so good as a side for pork dishes. Hmm. Bacon . . .

Maddening. A fully-loaded gooseberry bush (the tiny berries still have the spent blossom hanging on) that will cast ALL its fruit before they get any bigger than peas. I had a gooseberry bush at my farm twenty years ago, and it set fruit and then lost it every year. I asked a person from the Ag services, and he told me that there was a pathogen (connected to white pine? maybe?) that caused this. To get fruit, I'd have to spray it every two weeks from the flower stage onward. I didn't want to do that, both because it's too much hassle and because I just don't want a food plant around that can't do its job without chemical warfare.

This massive, luxurious bush down at Home Farm made berries one year, about five years ago, and since that time it has just dropped the fruit like mine used to. I'm going to cut it down (grumpily, probably whilst cussing) next winter.

The lovely barn behind it my father built when I was a child. It was the barn for goats. It's been empty since 1992, but it will soon be a mews for a hawk. For a while. Then, who knows?

This (erosion) is a mess, and I don't know what to do about it. Fixing something that big takes large equipment, and also stuff like complicated government permits. (Pinching my nose and looking haggard)

Odd heaps of soil, trash, and beautiful flowers. My father's legacy, in one image.

Screenshot from a realty website for the town nearest me. The housing crisis is very real, but there are also houses sitting unsold in rural areas because more people move away from this county than move in. If I had searched the whole county instead of just the town, I'm guessing the median value would be a bit lower. "Median" btw, is a good measure for this sort of thing, if you ranked the listings from lowest to highest, median is the value right in the middle.

Mist, fog, and dripping branches. Good morning, ya'll!

One of my neighbors has a security light. I can't imagine why, but sometimes it's pretty, shining through the trees.

Brrr, it's go-to-bed-fully-dressed time of year, wear three layers to sit in my work-room time of year, breaking ice out of the stock tank time of year, heat-a-rock-on-the-woodstove time of year.

Our farm house IS insulated, so we're far better off than we were before that. However, below a certain temperature the woodstove in the basement cannot keep up. We have a furnace for 'supplemental' heat, and today we need that. When I woke up this morning, the warmest room was 60F/15C, and the room I was sleeping in was quite a bit below that. If I need to spend any amount of time sitting still in my room, I wrap a flat, hot rock up in denim and put it in front of my chair so I can keep my feet warm. Portable heat; just move it from the woodstove to the computer desk!

Hero and Nutmeg were NOT too enthusiastic about coming out of the barn this morning.

Friday my son and I moved about 4 pickup-loads of cut wood from small trees/large shrubs into a massive bonfire pile. He has worked several hours with the chainsaw down at Home Farm removing dead stuff or things that grew up where they shouldn't have. Today may be more of the same.

Bones

I'm trying to figure out a tactful, reasonable way to call my neighbor and ask him to give me the bones after he butchers the deer a family member got for him yesterday. Because his normal practice is to have someone (he is in a wheelchair) haul them up in the woods behind his house and dump them. Which is, ecologically, a sound thing to do. HOWEVER he really, really doesn't want my dogs crossing the boundary line into his woods. And that area is within a few yards of my barn. So it is next to impossible for the dogs, however good they have been trained to be about the boundary, to resist wonderful, delicious bones right there. If I could just dump them a little further uphill, the dogs could enjoy them without bothering him.

(and how does he know if Lady walks through the woods if he's housebound? He has game cameras up.)

Feels like an awkward thing to ask, though. Please, Sir, may I have some bones?