If this week were a horse.....

If this week were a horse, we should shoot it and start over. Monday was Monday all day long. Had a conversation with a young woman who is lacking in life experience and approaches clients at a gym in a manner that is confrontational and humiliating. I think every difficult customer we have came into the store. Tuesday, husband's truck broke down almost 5 miles from our friend's, so he and our son had to hike... Truck came home on his buddy's trailer. Did a parts run after I got home from work, but there just wasn't time & energy to get the truck going last night. So the 17 yr old got to get up at 4:45AM to take his dad to work. But at least they HAVE work today, the rest of the week, maybe next week, after months of being laid off. And when I went to the gym, I talked with a couple of people who are supervisors. Sweatpants in July, even in North Idaho, are too hot. I need to find some knit shorts at a thrift store. I HATE knit shorts, but.... I am trying to follow the rules, which aren't posted well at all, and she WAS out of bounds. That helps.

Didn't realize I hadn't written anything in here since March. I've been busy.
The social atmosphere in the junky old trailer park where we've lived for 5 1/2 years continues to deteriorate by leaps and bounds. The trailer's falling apart around us, and not worth doing anything about. It's old enough that the it can't be moved, has to be demolished where it stands. It's a liability, not an asset. And we have an opportunity to do some things we've been wanting to do forever, so we're making progress toward moving out.

We've been working with a friend, "D", on her 20 acres, cooperatively doing all sorts of stuff. We've built a greenhouse and stocked it with tomatoes, squash, peppers, carrots, cabbage, herbs... We have a garden, not big enough for the needs of 8 people, but it's a start. She pounded in T-posts, I wove a windbreak fence of about 120 Ponderosa pine saplings. Her place is timbered, hasn't been managed in who knows how long, needs lots and lots of thinning. I walked around with a forester, made sure I have the right idea about what needs to be done. Found a book on tree identification at the library used book store. I didn't grow up here; some trees are the same, others I have to learn.

Being a goat farmer has never been one of my goals, but D bought 5: a wether, and a 2 month old doe kid from one herd; 2 does and a tiny doe kid from another. One of the does in increasingly pregnant. Her name is Trouble, due to her behavior on the way home. As big as she's getting, she'd better twin, and I hope she has twin does. Steve built a shed, and a milking/grooming stand. Need to buy hay for these critters for winter.

We also have 3 rabbits, 2 does, 1 buck. Steve says we need one more doe and another buck. We should be able to start breeding them in August. Guess who gets to do the butchering? Actually, I think that's the easy part; I don't have to kill them.

We have 2 dozen Rhode Island Red pullets. Right now, they're in a big stock tank in the basement, growing exponentially. When they're big enough, they'll share the rabbits' shed. I think they should start laying late September/early October.

The fact that I'm the only one of the 3 adults and a teenager involved in this enterprise who has a permanent job, gets stressful at times. I've gone back to food banks. The good part of that is that we have 7-8 gallon bags of apples cut up in a freezer that will become apple butter later, when we have time. I have about 12 cups of pitted Bing cherries frozen, and 8 quart bags of sliced plums. The aim of the garden, greenhouse, and animals is self-sufficiency. But we're nowhere near that yet. We may achieve parts of it this winter, but other parts will take 3-15 years. But we've started.

We've also found and moved an 8' X 31' park model travel trailer up to D's for us to live in. Price was right, which means there are some issues with plumbing, electricity. The last person who lived in it was apparently not quite all there, ripped out things. So we have to work on it before we can so much as spend the night in it. It does have a sliding glass door, so there's a good big light source. I get tired of living in the dark. The floor's down to carpet padding. Steve's just going to put 3/8" plywood on top of that, use the pad as insulation. Somewhere between living out in the woods, animals, snow... carpet becomes a liability, not a comfort.
The oh-so-fashionable when this trailer was new dark woodwork is going to become MUCH lighter. Where I'm going to carve out the time to paint is a whole 'nother question. It's better than one RV we looked at that had been painted battleship grey, including the ceiling, grey patterned carpet.... except for the horrendous fuschia walls in the shower!

Steve likes the rag rugs I knit last year. Only problem is that they've been walked on and washed so much that any weak spots in the rags have given way, and 2 of them are just falling apart. I have become used to the little luxuries, too, so I will have to make more. I'm sitting here blogging and tearing apart the first rag rug I made, between customers. Polyester stands up to wear better than cotton flannel sheets. What d'you expect of something that's basically plastic? I think I will try knitting rags strips on a knitting loom, see how that goes. With needles, I only knit garter stitch; the looms knit stockinette. If it's not too thick to work with, it will at least be a different texture. Now I need to get out the little Fuller Brush carpet sweeper and clean the lint off the carpet at work.

I have 2 loom knitted strips in seafoam (more blue than green) that was part of D's mom's stash. I'm putting them together into an empire waist sweater or something. I'm making this up as I go. I was working on this between midnight and 2AM this morning, since I was in too much pain to sleep. I made a triangle shaped 'block' to insert between the strips in back, but I'm not entirely pleased with placement. I think it's too wide, too close to the waist. I intend to put the width at the neckline. Right now, the middle of the night or during a slow day at work is almost the only time I have for crocheting or knitting.

Moving always takes more time than I want it to. There's always stuff that you wonder why you have THAT - except that sometimes you get rid of something only to realize 3-6 months later why you had it. But I know there are things that can go to the dump. My current big push is to get a 7' X 15' travel trailer cleaned out so it can be moved, too. We've owned it for 7 years, and it's become a storage unit since we aren't living in it. We did, all 4 of us and 3 cats, the first 6 months in Idaho. Now it's slated to be somewhat remodeled into Ben's 'room'. For the last 12 years, moving has inevitably meant downsizing our space. But since we're finally moving back out to the country, able to participate in a 'farm', some of the things in that trailer will finally be of use.

And work has changed some, too. I trained a new person. She's still not capable of doing what I do, but I've been at this for 2 years. She may not ever want or need to do what I do, for a lot of reasons. It does get kind of funny that I expect to walk in and have to mop up what she didn't understand. We also got a new industrial printer. It's kind of like saying we have a new, small elephant. As such printers go, it's not one of the big ones. But the printer and its attendant, dedicated, computer take up 4' X 8' at the front of the store. I've been learning how to use a program that makes business cards. I like the design part of it, but it's become obvious that we need a higher priced program. I'm still working on learning how to use the printer to its full capabilities.