Dispatches From The Farm

Grand Opening!

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Today we have gone ahead and opened up the firewood stand!

I elected not to put too much firewood in there to start out with. For one, I don’t want to come out and find someone under a fallen stack of wood. Also, I don’t know if theft will be a problem. It seems like it is for others on YouTube who open a stand, so I would like to keep that down a little by not putting a lot out to go at once. Honestly, things could be just fine, I don’t know. So, we’ll ease into it.

I think it is plenty obvious where the honor box is with this new sign up on the side. I plan on one more sign in the stand that says to pay the honor box around back of the structure. That sure is a lot of letters to have to cut! That needs to be shortened! Then I can post a bill on the back in the sense I can advertise other offerings to someone who is there to pay. I’d be happy to run a community bulletin board on the side, too. But honestly, I don’t know if many people will be stopping by anytime soon. Now THAT would be the thing to have right next to an LFL whenever I can get around to making one for Missus.

For now, we are offering to our neighbors! Hopefully it will help to open a gateway into our community.

All firewood on offer at any size is $1 per piece! You get to choose your own pieces! I try to maintain larger pieces than you could get at any gas station or store. Most of the wood is poplar.

Taking Time Off Work to Live

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

The most time-consuming thing on the farm is earning a traditional income to cover all the bills that we are responsible for. I have been using DoorDash to try to keep up on them, but even when I work my butt off it does not produce enough to get ahead. The nature of working my butt off means there is not enough time to do anything else to help make up further distance on any of it. Then there are the car maintenance costs and time, problems and maintenance that all take from the pittance I earn.

My birthday arrived last week, and because Idaho Driver’s Licences last eight years, I didn’t even think to check it, so it quietly expired. I was off that day, but when I went in to work the next, I was prompted by the app to verify my identity. I thought that was weird because I had only done it the week before. So, I tried and tried, but every time, it only showed a black screen when I took the photo of my license. I gave up and went home, where my wife pointed out to me that the license was expired, and proposed that was the reason I was getting a black screen. I don’t know. Awfully clever if that is true. Means it is reading it before I even upload it. Either way, I went down to the DMV and got it updated, they voided the old one, and said a new one would arrive in ten business days, which is just a less bad sounding way of saying two weeks. Then they gave me a paper temp. I tried that, then DoorDash suspended my account for using a paper license, which they can terminate you for doing. That was something they make you aware of when you first sign up but leave you to forget a year or more later when you happen to have an expired license. So, now I am under threat while I wait for the new plastic card to show up. Pleasant. Real nice.

So, I am on a forced vacation!

So what am I doing with the time off and the money gone and the lack of money coming in?

Well, we are looking at all the ways we could be earning on side-gigs that we have not been able to do anything about because I have not had the time. For example, today I photographed some new pictures of beeswax candles to list online. I have been finishing up on the roadside firewood stand, too. It is nearly ready to fill up and start selling from! I’ll need to spend some time on splitting, probably tomorrow. It needs the steel put on the roof, but for now, it should do. I need to get some roofing screws first. Next, I need to get my photography and portraiture business listed and try to get some traffic to the website.

While all this is going on, I have had time to clean up the shop for summer work and get moved back in there. I have also had the time to help Missus get some cleaning up done in the house, and get her big loom photographed and listed. She is just unable to put the time and work into warping that monster. Getting too old, and all that!

So, summer will be along before you know it, and with our winter having virtually vanished this year, I think summer will be here by the time Spring starts in a couple of days. I don’t know if it is safe to plant anything. We have had such late frosts here. But I will be cleaning up in the barn and the yard before long, and hopefully will have that done before the new ID comes in, and I can get back to work, because I have a lot of financial catch-up to do.

I put the wires back together in the battery charger and managed to get it working again and able to charge car batteries. I’ll do the one on the sawmill soon and see how it does at starting up. I have a couple of projects that need doing, like a roadside market stand, and a little shed for the potter’s wheel. I will dual use that as a firewood shed for the shop for winters. That’s the plan, anyhow.

Keep up here and see when all this gets done!

November 2025 Update

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

This summer has been the busiest ever for me. That is both good, and bad.

It is good because I have been feeling up to it. I have had such joint pains for something like 45 years that I have been affected by it for what seems like forever, and however bad it has been, it has progressively gotten worse and worse. It has never quite made it to a full disability. But it has always been a low-grade pain that has certainly slowed me down severely. When I was a kit, I would wonder how others could run the whole mile. As an adult, I was finally getting to the point that I wanted to look into getting a proper diagnosis from a doctor and consider getting a placard. I made every step count, because I only had so many in a day before I had to be down because of the accumulated pain.

I never had a visible disability. And you know the stigma that goes for people like that who park in the handicapped parking. Someone chasing them down yelling at them that they don’t belong there. It was that kind of stigma that kept me from ever perusing medical help in the first place. How do I deal with something invisible? Neverminded what others see. I don’t even see it. And you know the other stigmas of being weak. All these things compounded.

Then last summer came along, and the doctor I saw about an unrelated issue suggested I needed to lose weight and gave me a proper diet to follow to do that. That is what made me remove gluten from my diet. Basically, I figured out that I have had a lifetime of pain because of stupid breads and pastas.

Big changes happened. I was called upon to work to keep our family. I needed to do a job that I could balance time on my feet and time in a seat and really experiment with what I was now capable of. My body improved, a lot. I spent the next several months DoorDashing. It was an easy line of work to get into, and I could chose for myself when I worked and when I didn’t. That gave me time to keep the kids going on their school runs, and I could confidently stop for the day if I was fatigued by any more joint pains and the like. But I have not had that problem in 10 months now. I know I could not spend the whole day on my feet at this point. There is no way. Maybe there is lingering issues. Maybe it is to do with never having been able to do work up to it. I remember in my high school at the grocery store, wondering how the checkers could spend the day stood in one spot like they did. I took walking as relief because I was at least distributing time on my feet between steps. One place like that? When I tried, it killed me.

So now I know I can at least work out some time on my feet, and I am working to increase that without being overwhelmed by pain. Meanwhile I keep DoorDashing, and that is the bad part of this busy summer. The pay is awful. I have to do it a lot in order to have enough money to get us through each week of a relatively inexpensive lifestyle. Working takes all my time. I have found little to do other things. I am always trying to get to town to drive so we will have enough money. I also have to put about 25% back into the gas tank. So I am working a lot of hours just to afford to work a lot of hours. It is stupid.

I am trying to round up some time to work on putting more of my photography site together so I can attract clients. I would very much like to start shooting for real. I seriously could do three to five jobs a week on average to offset the entire time I am spending DoorDashing.

Kelsey Bacon Photography

Please have a look!

Meanwhile, there is the farm. Now, you don’t think with the schedule I have just mentioned that I have been able to keep up with things like mowing the lawn? I have not. The place is a mess. I have so much to catch up on. I have hardly been able to apply myself to getting any firewood sorted for this year. That is the worst mistake a man can make! I am lucky that where we go to get it, they have whole massive tree trunks that have lain around and dried out over years, and we are able to find plenty. Lots of people go there and pick up branches. I set up early on to get whole trunks up to 10 feet long at a time. While my electric winch is out of service at the moment, I am still able to take four foot sections and put them on the trailer deck. I prefer to do as much of my chainsaw work at home as possible. Safety thing.

Yesterday I gave up for the week and came home a few hours early. Rain was incoming, and I got to work under some of the most amazing skies. I got most of the smaller rounds split and the larger ones piled up ready to cut down and split. I hope to get at that on Tuesday. I do try to take one day a week off Dashing to get at least my laundry done. Oh! And Tuesday is tomorrow! So that is exciting! Noting like a restful day off to rejuvenate the body, right?

Thanksgiving is almost here. Christmas will soon follow. I am ready for neither. Missus is trying to make it as inexpensive as possible for us. Well, we will take it how it comes, I guess.

Meanwhile, Missus just came up to let me know that the power is out. I had not even realized it went out while I was typing away at this laptop at 5:30. I need to get up soon and get dressed and ready for my day. Looks like I am going to do it the old fashioned way in the candlelight. It also looks like I will be publishing this over my phone’s hotspot. Away I go!

Seasons of Change

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Our farm and business are not yet profitable, and I have spent the summer working off the farm doing DoorDashing down in the local city, which is a university town in northern Utah called Logan. So a lot of what I would want to be posting here has not materialized this summer, especially where it seems to take me seven days a week earning enough to pay most of our bills. Well, that is what it is.

Autumn is upon us, and although the weather has only just begun to change a little, there is something in the air that feels it is here. I can’t quite identify it, but something hits the primordial senses and tells me that it is most definitely time to get ready to batten down for the winter. Is it to do with the pollen in the air, or that ever so imperceptible change in temperature? Our walnut trees know, and so do we all. Everyone I have spoken to about this so far has said they feel it too. Apart from the days shortening a little, I cannot think of anything obvious that gives it away.

One of the kids is borrowing the logging trailer to haul stuff to the dump in this week and says that next week we can dump it on Monday morning then he will go with me to get a long overdue load of firewood after. I will be taking at least that morning off work and going for it. I am going to be checking the weather forecast leading up to it, too. At this moment it suggests that I can expect 84°F for that day’s high.

It doesn’t look like it is going to get anywhere near that today. There are clouds and wind, and the temperature outside right now is 66.7°F. Promises to be a good day today for a day to rest up some. I will be working tonight. But enough about that right now as I have 4 and a half hours to rest up right now! I should also mention that there was a lightning storm last night, and it was bloody marvelous! Well, I barely woke up to notice it, but it was lovely that we had one. It has been so calm here this summer. Maybe winter will make up for it!

So, things are tight right now, and a little difficult. I hear on the news that the whole economy is on the fritz. It looks that way from the prices I see in the stores and at the pump. But then, I don’t spend a lot in the stores. Not because we are as self-sufficient as I would like us to be, but because I just cannot even afford to window shop at the moment. Well, thigs are what they are, and I have no control over any of that. So, we just keep plodding along. That’s all we can do!

Even though optimism is a seemingly vanishing point of view, spring and autumn are seasons of change, and they always bring me a bit of excitement as those changes occur. Spring brings new growth and everything else you know about. Autumn closes in, and then the first snow falls, and the fire in the hearth invites us to gather round and be close. With me out working so much, I think that has an extra appeal to it this year. I really look forward to spending time with my family, enjoying the gathering time as a period of bonding and joy.

We have a few months to rethink the businesses and get them going forward. Maybe this season of change will change our thinking and get us on our way!

My Daughter’s Bread Loaves

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

My darling almost 17-year-old daughter made a couple of loaves of bread today. I want to publicly announce that I took a slice despite my joint problems that come of eating bread, and it was the best tasting, textured, and firmness of any bread I think I have ever eaten. If bread can have a definition as perfect, these loaves are it. I am really, really impressed. Well done! It was an Amish recipe, but her skills brought it together perfectly.

Meanderings On Summer

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

All work in the shop has been on pause the last few weeks as I have been putting in the time working for money and coming home beat. I want to change that. I need to change it. But getting the time in with my family is also a priority, and when the quality of that is at a minimum because I am so tired, then there is certainly no time to work in the shop, too.

Seeing the sights of the city has been amazing. Logan has been very busy this weekend with yard sales, people in the parks, walkers, runners, cyclists, the protests, the market, and other things. It is beautiful to see all the activity. Motorcyclist weave carefree through the traffic, while pickup trucks go about with canoes and other floatation apparatuses loaded up. My wife’s sister will be out in July, and she is a good friend to all the family, so that is exciting. It will be, surprisingly, her third trip to America in recent years. Everyone has ideas of activities planned. When she was last here, she was getting a feel for the lathe and really enjoying it. I should prepare some blanks for her, or maybe just get things ready to show her how to make her own from one of the logs on the pile out back.

My day off is upon me tomorrow. My plan is to get the trailer ready to get firewood logs and sawlogs with. I need to get those rolling, even if it is a trip down in the mornings before working, then work all day after. That’s two trips to Logan in two different vehicles per day. Oh joy. Then come home in the evening and unload and get ready for a trip again as soon as I can manage it. Just one a week would be sufficient to make a massive improvement upon what I am doing now! And we sure need the firewood! Okay, that is me speculating on what to do. Tomorrow, I need to mill up some replacement boards for the trailer. I need to do one of the stakes to replace a broken one and would like to do some thicker ones all the way around but will have to see how I can fit it in time-wise tomorrow. There is more to it than just cutting the boards. Especially where I don’t want to replace the bolts and will have to use the existing lengths. A bit of drilling required for that. Not troublesome. Just more involved. If I redo the stakes at the front, I can rely on them for the weight of the logs on the pulley I have to mount on top for the winch because of the weird place I have to put the winch to get it to work on the trailer. It gets hitch mounted, but to do that, I had to get a double receiver that is meant to hold a trailer and a bike rack simultaneously. Madness! All of it, really! But using the pulley allows me to move it up and down and adjust the travel of the line when needed to load the logs. That can be good as they seem to approach around eight hundred or more pounds each. It is a messy business.

Well, the battery is getting low on the computer, and I have llamas and goats waiting on their food. It is summer, so I daily scythe fresh grass and load it into their feeder with the tractor. I am working my way along the roadside across the street at the moment. It is good to have that grass getting used, and honestly, so much easier than trying to stake any of these animals out. But first, another coffee, and some time with Missus.

Lately…

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

There has not been a lot of time for writing in the blog lately, or for farming on the farm, to be honest! I have been trying to earn a few pennies DoorDashing the last few months to keep some food in our bellies and some bills paid.

But…

I have done a couple of things. I scythe daily now, to put food in for the goats and two of the llamas. If those llamas were not escape artists, they would be across the street, but I have no idea how they got out for sure, and nobody else does, so they stay in the pen over here with the goats. Scything some grass and putting it into the feeder in the pen using the tractor to move and lift it is a daily chore.

I have been working on the glue up and planing of the top for the kitchen island. That is not the highest priority, so it gets done as and when. I was well proud a few weeks ago that I had got the boards glued up and started on their planing, but it has sat by for a bit now, and I need to get out there and do some more. There are a couple of low spots that I need to plane the entire top down to, so that is a little discouraging, but after a break, I will get at it with the scallop, or scrub plane. I love that plane. It can make a cut that is smooth enough to not require sanding, and if I could get all the cuts to go with the grain and not blow any of the wood out, I think I could do a finished scalloped surface. I will try it one day when I get a cooperative board, then use it on a trunk or something. But for now, it is just a good way of quickly blowing through surface material and getting down in thickness. I am building a top that is the size of a house door. So, it is a bit of work. I’ll get at it soon.

In addition to this, I have done most of the construction on a little shack to sell firewood from out front. I have to build it a roof, put on an honor box, and add a sign, and I am ready to go. I need to get some logs up to the house and get them cut into rounds for splitting. That is also kind of a big thing. Once that is done, I will start selling wood ready to burn. I need some help from my business partner on this, but he is limited on what he can do, and when. I am going to have to get to work somehow without him, I think. So that is a thing. Right now his life is consumed in the oilfields of North Dakota. He is trying to find a trailer he can haul wood with, and I need to get two tires replace on my trailer, apparently! It was quite disappointing to find that both of the ones on the right side have huge gashes in them on the inside sidewalls. Did someone come back and slash them? I doubt it. But it is weird that they both have the same kind of gash, so maybe? I don’t know. Weird entertainment if they did.

I was informed by my oldest daughter the other day that there was a leak under the kitchen sink. I got back to it in two days. I decided the best thing for me to do was to wash the dishes and see what she was experiencing. Seems she was right. I looked under, and absolutely everything was leaking. The sprayer, the taps, the drains, the drain baskets. Well, one of the drain baskets, anyway. It was the newer one I put on when we removed the garbage disposal. Anyhow, my day off work was cancelled and replaced with a trip down to do some shopping, and to earn some money to cover the costs of it as best I could. I earned about half of it, but the days since have been low earning days, so that is a problem. Anyway, I bought some new seals for under the sink, and two new baskets. The old basket was a bear to get off and required me putting apart the nut with some wire cutters, which was time under the sink. I remember my stepdad doing the same thing when I was a kid. He included a lot more swearing. I thought it was going fairly well, so I did not feel so inclined. But there are times.

I got a whole new tap and sprayer. It was my chance to do as I promised myself I would the last time I replaced in the same spot. I got a taller one that we can stand the coffee reservoirs under, so nobody has to stand there and hold it at an angle while it fills anymore. Little things that improve productivity. Now the reservoirs get filled all the way, too. Meanwhile I can do other things, like grad my cup down from the cupboard. Little things that make the difference. It’s amazing how fresh the whole sink looks now.

So, that’s the kinds of things going on here lately. It is not as productive on the farm side as I would like it to be. But I am getting at more things now with the pain subsided from the joint inflammation I have suffered from for so many years. It has made such a difference. Now I have to fight the old habits of not being active because of the pain that is no longer there. But doing things like laying under the sink in a way that I know would have killed me a year ago, and not suffering for it is sure helping to lift my spirits.

Time Versus Money

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Since starting to do food delivery jobs for DoorDash, my time has become fairly limited for my projects. But ain’t that typical? A fella has a list of things that he should be bothered to do, then something interferes with his time, and he cannot get to them because of the new interference? So, I am going to have to stick those projects in where I can now, rather than having time to do them all, all the time. Why does one never have time to do them then? It’s some motivational thing, I think. But anyway, here we are. Working to come up with enough money to keep the bills paid is keeping me busy, and doing projects never was my strong suit. As I do my lucrative work, I am trying to find the balance between making enough money and finding the time I need free to do some things like sort out the wood area for firewood, and look at changing oil on the machinery to get the things like the sawmill going. I got a chain sharpener sorted on the workbench to put a pile of chains back into service, and it is working lovely, and I am getting caught up on bringing logs down to rounds, ready to split. Other opportunities have presented themselves, too, and I am doing what I can to take advantage of them. This recently came in the form of a free lawnmower!

One of the kids has a woodstove in his house, and he fired it up and saw that it does a great job of keeping his whole house warm. So he wants to get wood going for himself, and he wants to sell some, too. With that in mind, I decided that it was time to invest in a chain sharpener to keep my chains going for as long as possible, and so they are efficient at cutting. I have seven chains laying around for the big saw, and I have never mastered filing for a couple of reasons. One silly problem I have had, for example, is that the files seem to go dull very quickly. With just that problem alone, I am out of service in my efforts. I was never quite sure of the angles, either. Funny enough, now that I am using an electric grinder, I have that all worked out. It takes seconds to do what took minutes, and It does it well. So I am much happier. I have several of the chains sharp now, and ready on the wall for days out in the log yard down at the dump.

I started cleaning up the Service Yard and getting it ready to finish my woodshed, and lay it out to work from logs out of the trailer to cut rounds for wither log splitting, or to store for later on. Shorter rounds will start the drying process, and I have theorized that I keep seeing people store their wood in that format because the rounds are not too dissimilar to hay, and round bales shed water and don’t catch fire like square bales do. Because they shed the water, they don’t rot. So, I think I will store loads of rounds on their sides and split them as and when. Logs that are split will go one of two places. One will be into the woodshed for our family to use over winter. Efficiency is key here as the first logs gathered in spring will have to go here right away. After that, I can go at whatever pace I can to make wood to sell. That will go into a rack out front, and can be sold on an honor system. I know our oldest son will want to work for cords to sell from his place. I’ll let him work out those logistics.

The nicest logs will go to the sawmill. From there, they will have to dry, then be made suitable for woodworking. With a lathe in the shop, I can make use of almost anything. So preference comes into it when choosing what to burn, and what to put into the shop for making. My biggest accomplishment will come when I have drying organized out by the mill. That can result in lumber to use for myself, or to sell.

Once all this is sorted out, and I can do it among earning a living, maybe I can begin to transition from making money on DoorDash to making money from the wood. Maybe the jobs can both be done depending on the season, too. Or time of day. After all, an air conditioned car in the day and a cool shop in the mornings and evenings may work out better than trying to hand plane boards in the heat of the day.

While I was out the other day with one of the girls tagging along, we have made almost all the money I had wanted to for the week then we came across a house up on the bench over Logan where a bunch of stuff was in the drive like a yard sale. There was a big sign that read FREE on it. There was a high grade John Deere lawnmower there, too. So I gathered it and a few other things and we decided that was had made my weekly income goal and went home. This mower was a self-propelled walk behind. But I think with the 6.75 HP motor and the swiveling front wheels, it would have cost me somewhere close to $2K new. It was not new. But it was in good shape. I sprayed starter fluid in the carb after getting it home and finding it not starting. It would run. So, I am pretty sure I need to repair the carb to get it going. I could buy a new one for what it would save me versus buying a new mower! So, I am counting it as a win for now. It seems fine all around considering.

The mower presented itself because I was doing deliveries. I would have never seen it otherwise. We needed a new mower of some sort. As it turns out, both of our battery mowers are on recall. I’ll get the carb sorted one way or another and see how the JD does as soon as I can.

I have done some cleaning in the shop. I need to do a little more. I need to get the timbers out for the woodshed, and that will free up a big piece of the floor in there and make it more comfortable to work! I also need to get to the barn and sort out space to store wood ready for making with in the shop. I have large swaths of the shop interfered with because of what is set aside for making.

All of these opportunities are there, but it is the work-a-day life that is keeping my time diverted. While I am complaining about this, it is the first time in years and years since I have been able to work a whole day and then find myself in the physical health to come home and not fall over dead from it. I have come home feeling as good as I did when I woke up that morning. That has definitely never been a part of my life experience before. Taking breads out of my diet and not experiencing the inflammation in my joints has been life changing for me. I feel so fortunate every day. Finding out milk was causing problems too has made as big a difference, but for other reasons to do with frequency. But that influenced how often I ducked into the loo, where the joint inflammation issue has been a total quality of life and ability to work issue.

I have a busy spring and summer ahead of me. I feel like I can try to get at it, and with a little balance, I can do some things to change the way we are working for a living and hopefully get us going in the right direction. Missus is working her way along, too, and it is wonderful to see her making strides. She has developed a product that is selling, and we may see a way forward with similar ones, too.

Our oldest is looking at getting chickens this week. AS I set up the Service Yard to process wood, I need to set up a sawing area where we can gather sawing chips to put on the floor of his soon to be chicken coop. We should also saw him the boards he will need to make the coop. I will also be saving shavings from the shop, I am sure, to send home with him to put on the floor of the coop. There are ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. Everything is integrated with each other. I like that. My money making at the moment can keep working, if there is balance. So that will be a goal to work out soon.

Keeping Up with the Jones’s Neighbours

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Monday morning. I am sat in front of the fire with a fresh coffee to hand, the lights off, and only the soft glow of the fire and the blue hues of morning light gently slipping through the windows to light me. Oh, and the harsh glow of the computer on my lap, of course. Under the circumstances, putting it down to under half brightness, cures that problem, and allows the other lights to rule. Much better.

So, I have been working the delivery services to make a little money to pay the bills and feed the family. It is not great money, but since the debts are relatively minimal, I cannot complain. Since getting my earnings up, I put the first of the money to work on filling up the cupboards. Our lifestyle is such that it is not as expensive to us as the people who like to send bills would like it to be.

I am fond of working the weekends, three days with our Idaho school district, and taking the kids to and from the school bus on the weekdays. A person would be hard pressed to convince me that there is anything more valuable to do with my time that be with them. I feel unbelievable fortunate to have found work that allows it. So, I spend my days working here on the farm and making in the shop. The weekends I drive my butt off working the deliveries in the city. So, Monday morning is a restful time. And here we are.

I have set some goals for today, including sorting out the big chainsaw so it runs properly and cuts better. It requires cleaning and sharpening, and I need to clean the air filter. That old saw has never seen a proper service and yet has always been very reliable. But it has started to cut very poorly, and I am not sure if it is a lack of power full stop, or too much muck down by the sprocket, or more likely, both. Simple solution is to sort it out. Then sharpen the chain good and proper. Another goal is to get fuel for the tractor. I don’t need much. Just enough would be just enough. A can or two to fill the tank up ought to do it. If all this works out, then we could do with some more firewood prepped for burning. There are a couple of nice logs set out by the log splitter that could do the trick! Finally, I also want to put the bird’s nest bowl back on the lathe and open the bottom up some on it. I like the concept of it well enough, but it wants to have separation between the contents and the lip of the lid that comes down into the shallow bowl. Then, frankly, I think the handle on the lid would look best with some proper gold leafing. I think the color is the only one appropriate to go with the walnut wood to maintain its richness. A kit can be had on Amazon for less than $20. I wonder if that would be enough to do the whole handle. Probably.

It’s warming up now. There is snow on the ground from last week. It’s been a short season for the white stuff this year. The forecasted temperatures this week will put us back into mud season already. We have already had plenty of that this year. I have been doing my level best to stay out of it. I have also been doing my best to keep the tractor out of it. It’s no 4×4 for joying about it. It gets stuck as can be at the sight of deep mud, and that stuff is where it wants to be. There is no joy in calling a neighbor to bring his tractor down to lift, yes, I said lift, my little tractor out of the mud, then watch him get his stuck in it too, then have to go bring his backhoe down to unstuck all of that. (Don’t forget that the hoe’s wheels are not its only source of mobility.)

With warmer temperatures I won’t need as much firewood. I may also soon find myself back to the woodshed build. I know I don’t want that to take all spring to get started back up on because the heat of summer is a crap time to work outdoors. I’ll be giving serious consideration to working through the nights if it is going to be as hot as I expect it will. There is also the threat of visitors this summer, and they will need tending to. Or I could put them to work!

So, overall, I will say life is pretty good right now. We might be repiloting into a new direction, or at least under sail in the old one. Whatever the case, we are moving along. We are excited to have seen some sales through Etsy, and on Missus’s website of the hairpin lace looms. She spotted a hole in the market and had me make some of these things up to fill it, and they are selling. And for once, I can do this cheaper than the Chinese. I need to make up some more this coming week. I also want to turn some more bowls and mallets on the lathe and have them all ready for the Market coming up the end of next week.

So, there’s an update on the season, and where we are at. I think things will start to slowly get moving here soon as we have significantly warmer temps in the forecast, and a way of funding basic necessities of life. I am not toto stressed at the moment because it’s not too difficult at the moment. Largely that comes of feeling so much better after the change in diet. I have even finally decided to start trying a few days off the joint pain and stomach acid tablets I have been taking. Today is the first day. But before anything gets going, I have been awake since three in the morning. A quick bit of kip ought to help the rest of the day be more productive.

Snow Finally Fell & Weaving Tools Sold

Posted on by The Lord of The Manor

Fresh and changed are two of the first words that come to mind for me when I think of what makes a new snow so curious to look out at. There is nothing quite like that feeling of seeing a new blanket of snow on the ground outside. It brings a sense of excitement that must harken back to the more primitive days of humanity. It is easier to see where something has walked through, which would have made food easier to track, or predators easier to be aware of when they are in the area. There is such a change to how the world looks, and everything is so different, yet our sense is that it is the same world under the white fluffy blanket. Everything we know is hidden. The world looks anew, and everything we know is suddenly changed.

I still love the appearance of it, in spite of the many years now when it has been a big pain in the butt. It seems easier on this man this year because there just has not been much of it. We never got a true ground covering of snow till this morning. I woke at 4:30 and had to answer nature when I looked out and saw that there was a strong six inches of snow down.

The forecast indicates there is more snow to come both by the ten-day, and by the radar map. Our winter has been so dry that it is actually kind of exciting to see, though I have always thought in terms of what I call Springtime in the Rockies, which is punctuated with heavy snowfalls, and by heavy and punctuated, I am talking about something more like exclamation points. 2017 was a memorable year with its snow piling up high in front of the windows of the house. Nothing like those old photographs where the power poles are sticking up as tall as a man rather than high over his head, or the train or cars were in a canyon high over them, and a person could not even safely jump down to them. But it was a harder year than others. Still, those others were not without, either. It would be normal to have head high fences here barely taller than my elbow as I walk past, come this time of year. There was that year that stood out for being warm enough that the snow melted in the days to form ice overnight, and I walked out back and on one step put my boot down, and the next instant later it had already gone well over my head along with the other one, with my feet still in them, and my head had delivered a massive blow to the ice under me. I think I saw the afterlife that day. Ha! There was no health insurance there, either!

I may actually have to start the tractor this morning and put the snow away from the mailbox. Don’t like getting those little complaint letters from the mail carrier, who seems to have them pre-printed and with her every day, just in case. They want us to have seventy-feet of snow cleared on either side of the box, and our box is kept away from the road so the low does not knock the hell out of it when it throws snow as it goes by at a hundred miles per hour. Turns out our frontage is a lot of work to clear by hand, so those little complaints were one of the reasons I felt obligated to have a tractor on our little farm. But I doubt there are many people anywhere who have a tractor for only one use! And ours has many others.

I have a parcel to mail out today for Missus. It is exciting to see s a few things sell, and this will be the second one this week. A busy week for us! Sad, isn’t it? I’d like to be mailing multiple per day. But two a week is a step in that direction, so it’ll do. One was laser cut weaving tools, and the other was a hairpin lace loom that she had me make for her shop. It will be the second one of those to sell, and I am kind of excited that things I have made are making their way around the country. It is something when one’s own craftsmanship is getting into the hands of other people. There are plenty more out in the shop still, but I am already thinking ahead to the next batch I will make, and what I will do different, if anything. The current ones were pretty easy to make once I set up the tools and got at it. I finished them with hand planes and such, so they are truly hand finished. There is no point in hand tooling the cuts and drilling. Especially since the holes the downs are inserted into have to align with each other. If they don’t, it will be sloppy in fit and finish, so a drill press makes for a better tool for consistency aligning, and getting the dept the same. I wonder though, should I do a few with a fancy finish, for the kind of buyer who would pay extra for a classier looking tool? I should at least try it! What could it hurt?