December 2, 2017
Sitting in Laurel Fork, hot coffee in hand, the smell of the muffins I
just made wafting through the air and a fire in the gas fireplace. To see me right now, one would think it has
been an ideal week as I sit warm and comfortable enjoying so many
luxuries. Truth is, the week has been
less than ideal, but isn’t that life? I
recently coined the phrase “recovering idealist” because one of the things I
have finally learned as I age is that so many of us (myself especially) cling
to idealism and it keeps us from relaxing and really appreciating life. So, as I sit here and contemplate this past
week (only now getting a chance to write down some of my thoughts and memories
in my journal) I realize things were not perfect, did not go exactly as
planned, and did not unfold exactly as I might have chosen, but each day
provided opportunities to grow, build relationships, love and be loved. Looking at things through that lens, I
suppose it was pretty “ideal”. In fact,
thinking of things that way, I suppose the most difficult circumstances are
probably the most ideal circumstances for growth. I am thankful though for these moments with
coffee in hand and warm fires that allow me to have a few moments to reflect.
We returned to Staunton early Monday morning this past week and I kept
the girls having had only about three hours of solid sleep (although I took
some fitful catnaps in the car as Mike drove back after midnight which put us
in Staunton at 3 am). The day went well
with Rory taking a good nap and Analia being fairly content. Rory has been standing and taking baby steps
for a month or more but having just turned 8 months of age on the 22nd,
she has graduated to walking everywhere and with great skill. I remember Alissa starting to walk between 7
and 8 months of age and her style was to take off at almost a run and get as
far as she could get before falling.
Rory takes deliberate, contemplated steps and almost never falls. When she does go down, she goes down with
skill and precision and almost never gets hurt.
Alissa and I wondered if the way a child approaches walking is an
indication as to how they will approach life.
If that is the case, I would say Rory will do just fine. One thing I have never had to worry too much
about with either of my children or with Analia is them putting objects in
their mouth that should not go there.
Not the case with Rory. She is
going to explore the taste and texture of everything small she can find to pop
into her mouth. Perhaps part of the
problem is that having a four-year-old sister means a lot of little things get
dropped or left on the floor for Rory to explore. At any rate, it’s a constant worry that she
will get something in her mouth she shouldn’t have and choke. I was sitting on the floor reading to Analia
and watching Rory out of the corner of my eye when I saw her put into her mouth
what I assumed was a small piece of plastic or paper. She never cooperates when one tries to remove
an object from her mouth and this time was no exception. She promptly clamped her mouth down tight and
moved the object towards the back of her tongue. I reached in and finally got my finger behind
it and managed to get it out. Boy was
she angry and my heart stopped when I opened my hand to expose a jagged piece
of glass about the size of a dime! I
could not determine what it was or where it had come from, but I am thankful
that it did not cut her and that she did not swallow it. I joke often that taking care of “the
triplets” (the twins and Analia who is
11 weeks younger) for four years was a piece of cake compared to Rory. Monday evening, I made supper for everyone,
cleaned up the kitchen, got grandma’s nightly call in and then fell in bed.
Tuesday was a day to run errands and while I always think I am going to
have so much time to do things I want to do around the house, it seems I never
do. I got the watering trough cleaned
out for the mini horses, the dogs all replenished with food and water, and fed
the Jersey heifers. Mike brought three
beef heifers from down the road where his mom lives and where we have kept our
beef cattle for years. (We rented that
150 acre farm until this past year when we subleased it to Mike’s nephew, but
we still keep our beef cattle there, make some hay, and grow our garden
there.) Two of the heifers are Hereford
and the other is a black baldie. (Angus
and Hereford cross). They are absolutely
gorgeous animals and all three will be calving soon. We intend on bringing these three beauties
with us to Laurel Fork when we move the Jersey girls next summer. I love having them there at the house where I
can see them and I am excited for the babies to be born. They are in a different lot than the Jerseys
right now. The other thing I did Tuesday
was go through a mountain of books I have been collecting and pick out 25 a
piece for each of the grandkids. I have
been buying gently used books from auctions and thrift stores and libraries all
year in anticipation of advent. Every
year since the grandkids were born, I give them each a book a day for the first
25 days of December. They open the
wrapped book each night to count down the days until Christmas. It has become an Advent tradition for our
family. The children receive a lot of
material gifts from other family members throughout the holidays but we put a
good portion of what we would give them into the books. I believe that we, along with their parents
who are all wonderful about encouraging reading, are instilling in them the joy
of reading and the quest for learning. Twenty-five
books per child and four grandchildren means 100 books! Tuesday evening, I kept the girls while
Alissa went to class. Both girls were
struggling some. Analia is having a hard
time recently and I think a lot of it is the busy schedules of the adults and
all of us running in and out so much.
Her caregivers are constant and on schedule, but she has three different
babysitters that alternate, plus her dad and then of course myself to care for
them while Alissa is working and going to school. I am glad Alissa has this opportunity and I
think it is important, or I would not make the sacrifice to drive six hours round
trip every week to take care of the girls.
However, I will be thankful when she finishes her last semester and they
can settle down into more of a manageable routine. When Alissa got home from class around 8:30pm,
Mike and I threw our things in the rented car (our car is still at the shop
from the encounter with the deer last week) and headed for Laurel Fork. We had to be there first thing Wednesday
morning as contractors were coming to work at the house.
We were up and ready to go when the crew got here early Wednesday
morning to replace our archaic, oil furnace with a new propane furnace that
will tie right into our hot water baseboard heating system in this 1930’s Cape
Cod style farmhouse. Mike really likes
the owner of the company and had felt very confident with about him but began
having doubts about the whole process when the workers showed up. They immediately went to work tearing out the
old furnace but once they got it out (and our best source of heat was no longer
in service), then they stalled. They
seemed to be at a loss with exactly how to put the new furnace in and poured
over the instruction manual. Then, they
took inventory and realized they didn’t have all the pipe and other fittings
they needed to make the installation.
That’s all well and good, but it would have been nice if they had done
that BEFORE ripping out the other furnace.
So, after half a day, they left and said they wouldn’t be back until the
day after because they had to get the parts.
That left us with one little propane fireplace and some electric heaters
to keep the house warm with temps going down to freezing or below at
night. Fortunately, it was not any colder.
During the day, the temps were pleasant enough with highs in the upper
fifties. We were able to keep the main
areas of the house around 65 degrees in the evenings until going to bed. We didn’t feel comfortable leaving the heater
or the gas fireplace burning while we were sleeping, so we just put extra
blankets on the bed and snuggled real close!
It wasn’t too bad with the temp only going down to about 55 degrees in
the house. It could have been so much
worse!
During the day, Mike worked on the barn. I am just so incredibly proud of all the work
he is doing there. It’s going to be so
nice. I have dreamed of a real barn for
my Jerseys for a long time. I was
blessed to have multiple, three sided, run-in sheds for them in Staunton and
one, small stable. I had a small area to
store just a few square bales of hay there and we had converted an old box
trailer into a space for milking. There
was enough room for a stanchion, some storage for the grain, and a place for me
to sit with the milking machine. The
biggest draw back to that arrangement was that metal box trailer was like an
oven in the summer and a freezer in the winter.
If it was 90 degrees outside, then it was 115 in that trailer in the
summer. This barn will provide six
stanchions for milking, four large stalls for the Jersey girls when they calve,
a whole loft to store hay and a huge, enclosed, lounging and feeding area to the
back for those times when the weather is too bad for them to stay in the
pasture. Mike is making the inside just
as nice as the outside as he works on the barn.
It’s not just the joy of seeing the barn take shape but also the pleasure
of seeing Mike get so much enjoyment out of his project. When we had to cut the contractors out
(because we were paying them by the hour and our budget for the barn was being
spent up fast), it ended up being a blessing.
The work will take longer, but I think it is therapeutic and healing for
both of us.
I spent a lot of time wrapping those 100 books for the kids. I thought I would get through it fairly fast,
but it seemed like the task that would never end. Mike thinks I am crazy to wrap so many books,
but part of the joy for the kids is opening the books each night in
anticipation of Christmas. Grandma’s
don’t mind spending a little extra time to make their grandchildren happy and
it’s such a simple thing. It’s well
worth my time. There wasn’t much use to
try to clean house with so many workers in and out this week. I did put clean sheets on the beds that had
been used by company and I washed and hung clothes on the line. Cooking a good breakfast and a good supper is
always a priority for me. Occasionally I
assisted Mike at the barn. He built some
barn doors that work on rollers and needed assistance getting those up. We also had to get the door he made for the
loft attached. I joked that we didn’t
follow OSHA approved methods but we got it done. He parked the truck in front of the barn,
using some boards under the tire to make it level, and then crawled on top of
the cab with the door while I went to the barn loft and stood in the opening to
center and balance the door while he attached the hardware. It went fairly smoothly, but it did cross my
mind how easy it would be for Mike to slip and fall off the cab of the truck,
or for me to get the door to close to the edge and drop it causing damage to
the truck, the door, or injuring Mike.
Fortunately, all went well and having the doors on the front gave the
barn more of a finished look. Mike also
made a huge, ten-foot-wide, sliding barn door out of lumber that will attach to
the side of the shed. We have no idea
how much the door weighs, (being made out of rough cut, unseasoned lumber). We
will have to bring our loader or tractor down to Laurel Fork to move and lift
the door before we can install it. (We have needed the tractors in Staunton and
haven’t moved one down yet and our nephew has been using the loader at his
place as he builds commercial chicken houses from the ground up and tries to
get them operational in the near future.) However, we wanted to set it up so that the
rain or snow would not just stand on the door until we can get it
installed. It was far too big and heavy
for us to pick up and move, so we worked out a system of lifting it a bit and
moving the sawhorses underneath it, a few feet at a time, until we got it close
enough to the barn that we could lean it against the wall. My mind always goes to what could happen if
something goes wrong and I thought of a hundred ways we could be injured while
doing this, but my husband having had to take risks his entire life as a
farmer, just forges ahead. and we got it done without injury and without damaging
the door.
Friday was supposed to be the day when all the contractors worked
together and finalized a lot of projects but that didn’t happen. The furnace men came back but still didn’t
have all the parts. The propane company
came to hook up the lines and install a 500-gallon propane tank, but they only
sent one man to do the job of three and it wasn’t possible for him to
finish. The Generac man was supposed to
come and finalize the installation of the whole house generator, but without
the propane lines in place, he couldn’t finish his job. So, everyone left here on Friday with none of
the jobs completed and us without heat except for the gas logs and electric
heaters. (Mike is reluctant to put a
wood stove in the house because he says he has cut wood for 50 years and
doesn’t want to cut wood anymore, but a project for my near future is a
woodstove installed in the house so we don’t have this problem again.) We are fortunate that all of this happened
this week when the temps are warmer instead of next week when the temps are
supposed to drop considerably. Mike
won’t be able to return to Staunton with me this weekend as he will have to be
here to keep the house warm and let the contractors back in to work on
Monday. I told him that the up side is I
will get two more days of work out of him on the barn this coming week. Neither of us want to be apart though, even
for just a couple of days.
December 3, 2017
I’m sure it must have been some kind of record for Mike because we
arrived at our house in Laurel Fork on Tuesday night and he didn’t leave the
place until Saturday morning. I had
offered to go to an evening auction with him but we are attending auctions less
and less here recently. We have built up
enough inventory for now in the antique booths that we don’t have to go to
auctions and we are both more content to just stay at home mostly. I’m the one who doesn’t care if I go leave
the property for days a time but Mike has always been such a “people
person”. I was thinking about it and
realized that as a child, he went “down the road” from the house his dad had
built for his family, to the dairy at
his grandparent’s house (and where his mother lives now). He helped with the chores there as a kid and
eventually his responsibilities came to include milking the cows and eventually
taking over the dairy. At the farm, he
was sure to see people on a regular basis whether it was the milk truck coming
in to get the milk, a veterinarian coming to do something with the cattle,
neighbors stopping in to borrow a tool, farm hands coming in to help with the
crops or to milk the cows, and so forth.
Being on the farm definitely was not an isolating experience for Mike and
loving to socialize as he does, it’s a good thing. Or perhaps, because he worked routine, hard
jobs on the farm for all of his life, that in itself might be the reason he
enjoys the interaction with other people.
At any rate, after three full days of staying home here in Laurel Fork,
I knew Mike needed to get out and about on Saturday. He wanted to go to auction at our favorite
spot and I needed to get a few things at Walmart. I seriously try to avoid that place and
manage to only go about once every four months or longer but it was time I had
to go. The estate auction was not the
kind of things, for the most part, that we buy for the antique booths and bids
went pretty high. We walked away with
minimal and we left early, but it was fun to see some of the regulars and get
out for a bit. We somehow made it
through the crowd at Walmart and got most of what we needed but when I realized
I had not got a loaf of bread, I did not make my way back to the bread department
as I was almost to the check out and didn’t want to fight the crowds to get
back across the store again. Mostly
people were kind and courteous but we did encounter one lady that was extremely
hateful and made a scene. I was glad to
get out of the Walmart crowd. I do have
to say that the sales associates at the Galax Walmart are by far some of the
friendliest and most helpful that I have ever encountered. We then had to make a trip to Lowes to get
some stain for the barn. We just got 10
gallons because we want to try it first before we invest in more. While we were there, I looked at their
Christmas trees. I plan on getting a
live, cut tree from one of the local tree farms, but I wanted to see what their
prices were on potted trees with root balls.
They had nothing that I would have bought but it gave me an idea of what
kind of price and size I would get for the price. I am hoping to get two trees this year and
put the cut tree indoors and the one with the root ball outside as a tree to
decorate for the birds. That’s going to
be a project for the grandkids and I next week when they are all here with
us. If I can’t find the size of tree I
want that we can eventually replant, then I will have to come up with a
different plan. We didn’t get back to
the house until right at dark. As we
were driving west on Highway 58, the moon was bright in the sky, just one day
away from being a full moon. It was
gorgeous. It was the type of moon that
begs you to take a picture but I have learned that my pictures of the moon
don’t begin to reflect its true beauty and I was content to just look at it and
savor it in my memory instead. Once
home, I put together three pounds of our grass finished burger for
meatballs. We are having a meal after
church today and I thought I would take a dish of meatballs to church and then
take one back to Staunton with me for a quick meal for the family there. I just got the meat prepared and will shape
the meatballs and stick them in the oven in a bit, once I am through writing,
so that we can have them hot and fresh for the meal at church today. I will probably also take a dish of our corn
that we grew and I cut off the cob and froze.
It’s so good. I didn’t use to
like frozen corn and would only eat it fresh but have learned not to cook it
when I thaw it out. The corn has been
blanched for three minutes before I cut it off the cob and when I thaw it out,
I simply warm it and season it with a little salt and butter in a skillet. I don’t add water or cook it and the flavor
is there, sweet and fresh tasting.
December 4, 2017
I arrived in Staunton before dark.
Mike joked with me before I left and asked if I could find my way back
to Staunton. He knows that I typically
don’t pay much attention when I am in the passenger’s seat and I have not made
that trip solo. The trip was uneventful,
thank God. The traffic was not an issue
at all until I got about 20 miles from Staunton and then it got thick. I hated to leave Mike in Laurel Fork and he
really didn’t want me to leave, but I did not want to leave Alissa with no
babysitter for Monday and Tuesday. She
has enough stress on her right now trying to get papers written for her
Master’s classes and wrapping up the classes she is teaching at Blue Ridge
Community College. I just really feel
the little ones need the stability of knowing I am going to be there as
well. It looks like last week’s
opportunities will transfer to this week and we will get the chance to see how we react to disappointment and life
events that don’t follow our plan. One
of the beautiful, Hereford heifers calves at some point over the weekend and
Alissa called me when I was about 45 minutes from Staunton to tell me that the
calf was on the ground but was not moving and appeared dead. Alissa had Rory with her and I didn’t want to
take a chance on the cow being aggressive towards her, although I doubted that
she would be as she has a very calm temperament. I questioned Alissa thoroughly until I was
satisfied that going in would not help matters but Alissa was sure the calf was
dead and in fact, the buzzard were already there. Alissa was very upset but there’s nothing to
be done after the fact. I hated to call
Mike and tell him, as he takes such stock in his Herefords and was looking
forward to a calf from this particular cow.
Gabino works 12 hour days over the weekend and Mike didn’t want me to
have to try to get the calf out of the field and dispose of it, so he called
his nephew who was only a few minutes away at the other farm, and had him come
and pick up the calf. It was thoughtful
of both of them to not leave it for me to deal with when I arrived home. When I got home, I checked on all the animals,
checked the fire in the outdoor boiler (the only source of heat for the
Staunton home and one of the reasons why it was so important to get Alissa and
Gab moved into our residence here before the cold of winter set in. They have to keep the fires going so the
house doesn’t freeze up). Analia had
gone with one of her sitters, a high school girl, and her family to ice skate
in Charlottesville. They texted Alissa
to tell her that Analia had fallen pretty hard and hit the back of her head but
got up (after a good cry) and wanted to go back out to skate again. When Analia got home, she was exhausted but
seemed fine. Alissa woke me up around
midnight and said that Analia was vomiting and wanted to know if I thought she
had a concussion and needed to go to the hospital. I hate making those kinds of calls. It’s hard enough with your kids but even
harder with your grandkids. I looked her
over, checked her eyes, talked to her and she seemed ok other than
vomiting. With a nasty stomach virus
going around and knowing that the kids had been indirectly exposed to it
through contact with another family that has it, I really thought it was the
virus making her sick. I am really
hoping the rest of the family escapes the upset stomach routine. We have a big weekend planned and I will have
to call it off if we all are contagious.
So, guess we will take it one step at a time and see what unfolds this
week. In a few minutes Rory and Analia
will be up and our Monday will begin.