October 26, 2017
It’s Thursday and I will attempt to update my journal. It seems that last week was full of tidbits
that I wanted to remember, but so far, this week has seemed pretty
typical. That’s not a bad thing, but it
just doesn’t leave much interesting about which to write. That’s ok, though. A comfortable, settled week is a good
thing. So much of the week is repetitive
or previous weeks and doesn’t lend itself to interesting journaling: Sunday we traveled and the interstate was
horrible, Monday I kept the kids and they were wild, Tuesday was a rush to run
errands and then get back to watch the kids for four and a half hours that evening,
and Wednesday was an effort to get things packed and ready to return to
Southwest Virginia where again, Interstate 81 was challenging. I do think that we are falling into more of a
routine back in Staunton and that everyone is adjusting to the communal
living. The little girls are so cute but
definitely know how to manage the four adults in the house to get as much
attention and playtime with us as possible.
Rory has two teeth that have popped out and she is very interested in
eating. Analia nursed exclusively until
she was about nine months old and was content.
Rory has been a different story.
Now that we have started her on some solid food and she has begun
drinking out of a sippy cup, she is a little more content when momma is
gone. Alissa has been working with
Analia for a good while teaching her letter sounds and recognition. She is starting to try to sound out words
and she loves “doing school” like mommy.
She does not like to write however, and I think that may be an issue
when she starts kindergarten. She has
difficulty with some things and finger dexterity is one of them. The pediatricians feel that she may have a
Sensory Processing disorder as well.
This is something that Alissa and I have been aware of for quite some
time. She is highly sensitive to sound
and activity. Hudson and Ella were with
us on Monday and that is always a busy time with all four of the grands. We had the best day that we have had since I
started having all four of them together on Mondays when Alissa went back to
work after Rory was born. Rory actually
took a long nap and the older kids had long periods of interactive play without
arguments. Monday evening, I put in some
extra time helping with the girls after supper because Alissa was behind on her
papers for her Masters due to Analia being sick over the weekend and Rory being
so fussy cutting teeth.
Mike got his soy beans harvested last week and got them to market. He was pretty pleased with the yield and with
the price he received for them. (The prices
fluctuate with the stock market and a farmer has to take what he is given. He didn’t get them in when they were at their
highest but they have steadily come down a bit after his beans were
contracted.) Folks are starting to think
about winter and getting hay for their horses.
A lot of the hay Mike makes and most of what he sells goes to equine
owners and he has a good reputation with his customers for making quality horse
hay. A number of his customers are in a
panic because they have heard that we are moving south and they are afraid they
won’t be able to get hay from him and they don’t want to get it from anyone
else. We are starting to get frost in
the valley but Mike was able to harvest a few more tomatoes and pulled some
green that we can let ripen in the windows.
There was also a good bit of volunteer lettuce and some beets and
potatoes to be harvested. He got the
last of the potatoes out of the ground.
We had a very poor year with our potatoes and for the first time in 30
years did not sell to the public. We
will probably have enough to get our family through the winter. We typically use 4-5 bushels.
One little tidbit I have been meaning to get down in my journal is the
encounter Mike had with a neighbor who stopped in the driveway and introduced
himself two weeks ago. He told Mike that
he was interested in buying a lot at the top of our property where we have
views of Buffalo Mountain. He said his
wife had been coveting a spot where she can build a new home with views of The
Buffalo. I have to laugh now but that
was not my reaction when Mike told me.
My response was “I hope you told him we are not interested in selling
ANY of our property and especially not my hiking spot where I can see The
Buffalo.” Mike replied, “Well, I told
him I would think about it” and he grinned.
That of course pushed my buttons and I went into a long retort about how
there was no way I would ever sell and it’s a good thing that it was him and
not me talking to the man because I would have made sure he recognized the
facts and I wouldn’t have wasted an hour of my time talking to him. My extroverted husband just grinned and said
something about being nice to the neighbors.
Later I just thought to myself that it proved my point to my Shenandoah
Valley raised third generation farmer who sees value in the flat bottom land
but has a hard time seeing the value that this Mountain girl sees in the steep
hills and rougher terrain. The value is
there to those seeking a homesite on a few acres but this stubborn farm girl is
determined that her Jerseys will graze on that spot and for as long as I am
able, I will continue to seek out those views when I hike to the top of our
“hill”.
Mike and I were both really excited when we pulled onto our SW Virginia
property just before sunset and saw that the crew did indeed start work on the
barn this week. We were not here Monday
but heard that there were torrential rains (several inches of heavy rain) that
kept the workers away on Monday. I’m not
sure if it dried out enough for them to start Tuesday but they had definitely
worked Wednesday putting board and batting on our old barn. Even though the process has just started,
it’s easy to see that the transformation is going to be amazing. Mike was pleased with the quality of their
work and with the lumber that was used.
They are supposed to return today and tomorrow, weather permitting. I am eager to see how much they can get done. Mike intends to go out and start tearing all
the old metal off the shed attached to the back of the barn. That will be replaced with lumber and tie the
whole thing together giving it a fresh look and providing a warm shelter for
the cattle during the mountain winters.
October 27, 2017
Today is my brother’s (Jimmy) birthday.
I have two brothers and a sister.
My brother Jimmy is 3 and a half years younger and I was not the typical
child who feels displaced when they have been an only child for a while and get
a new baby brother or sister. In fact,
my family enjoyed telling the story that I prayed often for a baby brother
before he was born. It has been told to
me that my mother was fearful of how I would react should I end up with a baby
sister instead of a brother, because my prayers were so specific. If there was every any jealousy on my part
directed toward Jimmy, I don’t remember it nor have I been told of it. My other two siblings came much later, a brother
(Shane) and a sister (Elizabeth). I am
fourteen years older than Shane and 16 years older than Elizabeth and I
actually left home when Elizabeth was just two years old attending a year of
college in Florida and then moving to Alaska where I attended the University of
Alaska for a while, worked at Ft. Greely army base and for the State of Alaska
Legislative Information Office. I had my
nineteenth birthday enroute to Alaska .
Life sure moves fast and never would I have dreamed then that I would be
a grandmother, fifty years old, and keeping house in rural Virginia.
Yesterday was a really busy day and a good bit was accomplished,
although Mike feels that the crew working on the barn is slow. Barn is such an aggressive worker and there
are very few who can meet his expectations when it comes to quantity of
work. Guess that’s why I consider it a
real compliment when I overhear that he has told others that I am a hard
worker. I’m afraid both of us tend to
have the type of personality that makes us pretty focused on accomplishing
goals. But, the barn is looking good and
it is requiring a lot of work to restore it.
The crew has half the barn (front and one side) covered with new board
and batting. There is a large shed
attached to the back of the barn that is covered in metal. Mike worked last night on getting all that
metal off so that the men could start working on enclosing it with lumber
today. Mike is trying to do as much as
he can do personally to save us some money.
It was a chilly morning when the men started yesterday with temps around
32 degrees. It warmed up during the day
and the sun shone, but it remained cool.
I woke up around 3 am yesterday morning and got my day started
early. I unpacked a few fall decorations
and got them up. For the last few years,
I have decorated quite a bit for fall but I realized yesterday that most of
what I used to decorate with were things we were selling at our produce stand
like pumpkins, gourds and mums. Since we
didn’t have the bins of fall pumpkins and gourds that we bought in bulk to sell
to our produce customers for me to sort through and use the “extras”, my
decorating was minimal this year. We
didn’t grow any pumpkins or gourds ourselves this year and the only pumpkins I
ended up with were the half a dozen a friend gave to us after gleaning a
farmer’s field and picking up seconds to feed his hogs. I fixed eggs, toast, fried potatoes and eggs
for breakfast but about the time I was ready to eat, Mike came inside and said
he was leaving to go to the lumber yard with the contractor. I ended up putting his breakfast away and eating
mine alone before I got started working.
I cleaned the house pretty thoroughly from top to bottom and washed and
hung clothes out on the line to dry.
About the time I finished up with my cleaning and was getting ready to
go for a hike to the back part of our property, Mike came in and said that a
neighbor who owns three acres of adjoining property wanted us to walk up and
talk to them. They are older than us and
have used their property as a campsite for about four years. They have a fifth wheel trailer sitting there
and a little shed. They wanted to see if
we were interested in buying their piece of property as they stated “they had
started too late in life” with their dream of owning it and building a home. The lady has some health issues and is also
caring for her elderly mother whom I think she said is bed ridden. They live three hours away and about all they
can get done is to get down every other week to mow and keep the place up. The three acres would be nice for us to own,
but currently they want more for it than what it’s worth to us. Probably half (or more) of the land is a
steep wooded bank that joins our property on one side and has road frontage (a
very rural, dirt road) on the other side.
There are two streams running through the property and a lot of the
property is “wetlands”. We are pretty
sure from previous research that the property at one time was part of the 250-acre
Jackson Farm, of which we own a portion.
The couple said there had been a tenant house on the property they own
that was in shambles and they had cleaned up the lot, hauling away the garbage
and crumbling house piece by piece.
There is no question that they have done a tremendous amount of work and
the lot looks like the perfect campground, but a little wet for a permanent
home site, although I have no doubt there would be those who would attempt a
home there. I would love to have the three-acre
lot, but I am doubting they will be able to let it go for a price we feel
comfortable paying as it would probably end up just being additional grazing
land for us.
Last night we had the last of the beets from the garden. I like to peel and slice them and then lay
them in an oven proof dish with butter and salt, cover them and bake until
tender. It seems cooking them this way
makes them even more tasty as they don’t lose any of the color or flavor that
one loses when boiling them. We also had
some tomatoes that Mike found that had been safe from the frosts. I have some ripe tomatoes in the refrigerator
now and a window full of green tomatoes.
They won’t be quite as good as the vine ripened but they will taste
better than the hot house variety one buys in the grocery store and there’s a
satisfaction from knowing that we raised them.
We also had some volunteer lettuce from the garden and I made a salad
with vinegar and oil dressing. I used
our grass finished sirloin steak and cut it in strips and fried it with the
onions, bell peppers, and potatoes we got from our garden. The only thing on the table we didn’t produce
ourselves was the fried apples and those were from a local, mountain
orchard. It was such a simple but
delicious meal.
October 29, 2017
We left our SW Virginia property really late this weekend and I am
sitting in the truck with my computer across my knees trying to catch up on my
journal. It’s 9:30 pm, the wind is
blowing 25 to 30 miles per hour and it was spitting snow when we left our
mountain home. Neither of us ever want
to leave and that was true especially tonight.
We had a good weekend with our house full of people that we love. I had invited a good number of family and
friends but I knew most of them would not be able to make it because of the three-hour
drive from Staunton. Mike’s sister and
her son and his family who only live an hour away in Christiansburg were able
to come to our fall get together. Alissa
and her two girls made it as well. It
was cloudy and cold, so we decided to stay indoors instead of eat in the picnic
shelter like I had originally planned. I
did use the fire pit to cook the burgers and hot dogs. Cathy brought potato salad that she made and
JoAnna made her delicious broccoli salad.
I had sliced tomatoes, lettuce and onions from the garden. We had homemade sweet pickles and homemade
ketchup. I made BBQ meatballs, baked
beans and macaroni and cheese. We had a
variety of homemade cookies that I had made up ahead of time and pulled out of
the freezer: snicker doodles, chocolate
chip, oatmeal, shorbread, and sugar cookies.
The best thing about when we all get together is there is no stress or
pressure. Cathy and JoAnna are fantastic
about bringing food and helping to clean up.
We all laugh a lot, talk a lot, and the time together goes by too
quickly.
Alissa and the girls were not feeling the best this morning. The girls both of colds. So, we decided to
forgo trying to go to church this morning and just stay home with them. Analia was very concerned that we might go
without her and I didn’t want to take her and expose the elderly people to
anything contagious she might have.
Alissa left earlier than us to head back to Staunton but turned around
and came back when she thought her care was acting up. Mike checked it out and it seemed to be all
right, so she took off again about an hour and a half after her initial
departure. She said traffic wasn’t too
terrible until she got almost to Staunton and then the interstate shut
down. So far, the traffic for us has
been better than most weekends and I am thinking that traveling this late might
be a bit better as far as traffic is concerned.
This was supposed to be a “short” week for me with the grands and I had
planned on only keeping them tomorrow (Monday) and then heading back to Laurel
Fork on Tuesday. However, Alissa has to
present at a conference in Washington DC on Friday and I had offered to keep
Analia for her. I didn’t want Analia to
miss out on Halloween with her family and then she has dance lessons on Wednesday
morning. So, it looks like we won’t be
leaving until after her dance class on Wednesday. She will stay with us until we return to
Staunton the following Sunday. Alissa is
taking Rory with her as she nurses her and she doesn’t take a bottle very well,
nor does she like to be away from mom.
We were happy to get some things accomplished this week at the SW
Virginia property but things didn’t progress as well as we would have
liked. However, I am going to focus on
the what we did accomplish. A lot of
work was done to the barn and the work that was done was quality work. The guys are getting paid by the hour and are
slower than we had hoped they would be, but the quality of work is great. We are only going to be able to pay them for
another couple days work and then we will have them stop and try to complete
the back shed by ourselves to save money.
We are not having much luck with getting anyone to do the roof. The “snake handler” seems to have worked on a
few areas and made them better but possibly made the roof worse in other areas and
he isn’t allowed to return. (He came by
to get a few tools he left and it was obvious he had already been drinking
heavily and we don’t want him on the roof where he can injure himself.) The second man we had lined up to work on the
roof (the one who worked on our gutters and then our chimney that Mike and I
both held in high regard and were sure would come through for us) failed to
show up or get in contact with us this weekend, so it looks like that one isn’t
going to work out either. Mike is going
to try to contact someone else tomorrow and see if we can get any response from
him and if we can, we will just go ahead
and put on a new roof and be done with trying to find someone to repair the old
roof.
The crew did show up to begin the process for the whole house
generator. There were four of them and
they worked for about eight hours.
Everything is in place and now we have to wait for the propane company
to come and run the lines into the house.
After that is completed, the Generac crew will return to get the
generator up and running. I will feel
much better when that is operational because if we are away and the electricity
goes out, we won’t have to worry about pipes freezing up or losing what we have
stored in our freezers. ( I didn’t plan very well when the crew came to install
the generator. It never occurred to me
that they would have the electricity turned off for most of the day. I had to find things to do that didn’t
involve electricity and that put me a little behind on getting things ready for
our get together on Saturday, but it all worked out.)
I was excited on Friday evening when the draft mules who live in the
meadow across the road from us (I like to refer to the mules as our nearest
neighbor) were returned from being temporarily housed at the resort down the
road. Their owner has a big event with the Shriners
in July every year and they use the mules to pull carriages and wagons for that
event as well as others. I love to observe the mules, the deer, the
wild turkey and the occasional bear in the meadow in front of our house. The more we stay at our SW Virginia home, the
more contrast we see with the busy lifestyle of the Shenandoah Valley. When I first moved to the valley 13 years ago
and looked around at the view from our house sitting on top of the knoll, I
observed all the houses and the busy “rural” road and had a twinge of longing
for the remote places that I have lived in Alaska and out west. There was so much culture shock for me when I
moved from the remote areas to the Lynchburg/Bedford area of Virginia back in
2001 and then to the Valley in 2005.
While the Valley is nothing like Northern Virginia or a busy metropolis,
it certainly remains faster paced and more congested than what I had been use
to for most of my adult life up until that point. However, I have been happy in the Valley with
the farm and my family for these years and had grown accustomed to it. But, with more and more time spent in the
mountains in South West Virginia, I am beginning to feel more at home than I
have since leaving Alaska and Montana.
What thrills my heart is that Mike is so happy there too. Having never lived anywhere but the Valley, I
find contentment in hearing him say how much he loves our new home, our new
farm, and how content he is when we are there.
The more I contemplate life and the more I grow, the more I realize that
everything is temporary and that we are to enjoy each day as it comes for
everything can change in the blink of an eye.
I try not to hold on too tightly to what we have in the Valley or in the
Mountains, but enjoy each day and the blessings it brings.