Posts Tagged ‘friends’
Grand Day
It was a beautiful summer day yesterday for us to showcase our place for friends. Delilah got loads of attention, and was a charm the whole day. I walked our trails several times, guiding tours. I noshed and nibbled all afternoon, to my heart’s delight. Unfortunately, I didn’t pull the camera out more than once or twice, because I was so occupied with having a wonderful time that I kept forgetting to capture all the fun in pictures. Here’s a collage that samples some of the atmosphere of our grand day.
Having Company
Our many friends, coworkers, and acquaintances have been listening to us gush about our new place throughout the 10-months that we’ve been here, and only a portion of them have been able to make the trip out for a visit. For most of those who did, it was back in snowy December when we hosted an initial open house.
Cyndie and I have long hoped to host another event to welcome visitors, initially targeting June, envisioning live music in the barn, and combining celebrations of multiple family birthdays which fall during the month. That event didn’t happen. Another month slipped by, and we weren’t able to pull anything off. By August, I started to worry that, unless we just picked a day and did it, we would completely miss the summer opportunity to invite people to come enjoy a first-hand experience of this place.
A couple of weeks ago I convinced Cyndie to let me choose today’s date for a subdued “open house” event that wouldn’t require a lot of preparation from us. Then I sent out a few email invitations, mostly to folks who haven’t been here yet,
Initially, many of the responses reported conflicts, which didn’t surprise me at all. Now that the date is upon us, we are thrilled to find that more people than we expected have responded that they are intending to come. Of course, Cyndie and I can’t help but want to try to tidy things up a bit before visitors arrive, so that feeling of a “subdued” event is fading fast. I am getting the feeling that it could be a real wing-ding of a day.
There are just two things missing from the vision Cyndie had in mind for the June version of our party: a live band playing tunes, and horses in the paddocks, but I don’t think that will be a problem.
As a matter of fact, it presents an opportunity to invite them back again at another time, when things are in full swing around here.
Great Surprise
Yesterday, it being Saturday – in which neither Cyndie nor I needed to depart for our day-jobs – we set a larger than possible list of goals for chores we wanted to accomplish. We decided to start in the barn, because the 
crew had arrived there to work on putting rafters on the planned hay shed. We cleaned two of the four stables, and leveled the dirt floor in them so we could place thick stall mats that Cyndie recently purchased. She also brought home lumber for raising the walls, but we postponed that for another time, to allow us to get on to other goals we had in mind. (The previous owners had mini-horses, so their stalls and fences were all undersized for our plans.)
After a brief lunch snack, we moved on to the second project from our list, deep in the woods, clearing our trails of the downfall still remaining from the May 2nd snow storm that snapped limbs on so many trees here. We had the chainsaw, a pole saw, our new Stihl trimmer with a saw blade on the end, (like the one of Ian’s I used when we were in Portugal), a pry bar, rope, shovel and rake, along with a can of gas packed in the trailer behind the lawn tractor.
I had just cut a very large branch that was broken 12 feet farther up, and the bent-over portion was caught in the branches of several other trees. We tossed the rope over it and Cyndie and I were well into the tangle of growth nearby, tugging to pull the branch over and off the others. Suddenly we heard voices calling and wondered who it could possibly be.
I hollered an acknowledgement and hiked out of the woods and up the hill to find that our good friends, Rogie & Kris, had made a surprise visit! What a treat. I coerced them to hike back down with me to surprise Cyndie, and see the complexity of our clearing project underway.
We had a wonderful visit, walking them around to show off all the progress we have made since they last saw the place. We paused for refreshments and later, captured the moment with a picture, using the self-timer on Cyndie’s camera.
What a great treat it is to have friends stop by to see us. With the good energy of their visit, we headed down to finish what we could of the lumberjack work on the trail. The task becomes all-consuming and, as we often do, we lose sight of how long we have worked. In a blink, the sun is getting low, and we have worked right through the dinner hour.
Cyndie spent a loooong time afterward, brushing burrs out of Delilah, before we let her back in the house.
Without a doubt, these days are a lot more work than the comparative hours spent at our day-jobs. It was a real blessing to have the surprise break in the middle, and to reconnect with friends.
Thanks, Roeglins!
Not Food
Time appears to be assuaging the angst, and moods are lifting for all the inhabitants of our household. Yesterday, for the first time since we brought her home, we let Delilah spend some time in the yard with us, off leash. She did wonderful. Since she was focused on the play, it’s not entirely clear that she even noticed that she was free of the leash.
Before untethering her, Cyndie was tossing the squeaking tennis ball for Delilah to help her practice catching it in mid-air
We continue to work on training her to respond to our commands, and she is showing continuous improvement, thus far.
There was also significant advancement in the process of acclimatizing the dog and cats to sharing house space. The cats are both showing clear behaviors of decreasing the distance they have been maintaining from Delilah, and the dog has actually had moments of calm, or at least, semi-calm, in their presence.
Last night Cyndie was coaxing the cats closer with some treats, and then decided to share the treats with Delilah, too, for behaving civil with the cats in plain sight, and within close proximity. It seemed like a moment of family bliss, and a hint of possibilities for the future.
A bit later, when Lilah was straining on her leash to get after Mozyr, she didn’t even realize that Pequenita had come to sit on the stool just over her head. The dog made a loop around to the other side of the kitchen island, searching for a better look at Moz, and then came back, suddenly appearing surprised to find Nita just sitting there overhead, inches away.
We were pleased to see Nita hold her ground, and even swing to tap away Lilah’s nose when she felt it was getting too close for comfort.
The phrase, “friends, not food” is being repeated often around here lately. I think we are getting the message across.
Just missed.
Ball is hard to spot; in line with the truck front bumper.
Memorable Weekend
Returning to work can really increase the feelings of longing for the pleasures recently enjoyed over a holiday weekend. Since I had Monday off, that made yesterday my first day back after the long break. Yikes, what a contrast. The day-job doesn’t have nearly the appeal of a long weekend at the lake place.
What a great time we had this year, with our annual batch of games, followed by dinner at the lodge and fireworks shot from the beach after dark.
I was in something of a hurry to get home and pick up where we left off with projects at Wintervale, but after arriving back to chores, the allure of the lake just became more enticing. Add to that, a dose of the day-job, and thoughts of returning to the lake become all-encompassing.
It says a lot when people in a community like that influence you so deeply, after just a brief visit, that all you can think about is finding a way to return to be with them again.
It’s too bad I don’t have a job that involves hanging out with friends and family for days on end. I think I would be well-suited for a position like that.
Mud Management
Through the thick and thin of challenges we have faced since we moved to this beautiful place in the country, the one thing that remains solid for us is our foundation of friends and family, near and far. Yesterday was a priceless coincidence of hearing from many of them, all in a very short span of time –primarily because Cyndie happened to check her email, and found messages from both Portugal and Guatemala. We also enjoyed phone calls from family in Boston and on the road home from Hayward, from my friends on the bike trip, and we were blessed by a weekend visit of our son, Julian, and his girlfriend, Allison.
The folks on the bike trip did indeed get wet yesterday. That is one part of the trip that I don’t mind missing at all. I was able to enjoy the rain that fell at our place, in perfect amounts to water our freshly planted grass. Unfortunately, the rain also contributed to keeping the wet spots by the barn, extremely wet.
On Friday, when Cyndie was doing some mowing along the driveway, she got herself stuck, and called me to help get her out. When I arrived, she said the front wheel dropped into a hole. Sure enough, it did. To my surprise, when we backed the tractor out of the hole, I discovered the hole was full of water! It might be hard to discern from the picture on the right, but the spot where this hole full of water is located, is uphill from the barn.
It seems really strange to me how the ground at high spots around here, holds water which logic tells me should be draining downhill to the lowest areas. How can we expect the ground around the barn to dry out, if the areas uphill from there are still saturated?
Out of frustration for waiting to be able to make progress down by the barn, I decided to see if I could advance the project, working by hand. There is just no way they can bring any heavy equipment in to work on this new drive, that doesn’t end up just making it worse. While Julian mowed some of the extremely tall grass by the new driveway loop we are trying to create, I began to fill in the ruts left by the skid loader the last time the crew was here.
We figure that when this area finally begins to dry out, we’d rather have it drying in the condition we want to see, not the rutted mess it has been thus far. After I got about a third of it smoothed out with a rake, Julian and I tapped it down with our shoes. It was so spongy, we couldn’t use anything else. We tested running the garden tractor over it, but that was too much.
The best way to describe the condition of the dirt in the wettest spots is that it is like freshly poured concrete. I was basically troweling it with the rake. I could support my weight with one foot on a spot that was a bit firmer, and then just tap the surface with my other foot, to erase the rake marks.
When it gets dry enough, I’ll go to the next level by driving the garden tractor over it. With any luck, by the time the water is completely gone, we’ll have a foundation of driveway that is as hard as concrete.
Consolation Prizes
I still sort of want to tantrum, but not quite as much as yesterday. By the time I am writing this, my friends have probably already ridden double-digit miles, on the first leg of a week of cycling. There is some consolation for my not making the trip, in which I will attempt to find solace. I got to sleep in my bed last night. I was able to “sleep in” this morning. I will have a week with my wife that I didn’t expect, and it’s a week that is completely open and unscheduled –except for that pesky work thing that is the whole point of my needing to miss the trip in the first place.
Lately, the previously shy and reserved Mozyr has taken to hanging out with me when I’m not in the bedroom. If you recall, he is virtually banished from the bedroom by his sister, Pequenita. Now Mozyr likes to pace around and through my legs, rubbing as much as possible, when I am in the kitchen or bathroom. He has taken to sitting beside me on the couch when I settle in for a while there. He stands on the edge of the tub when I shower.
In the last few days, he has even jumped up on the counter when I am at the mirror in the bathroom. This is a surprise, because it is so out of character for him, from what we know since we brought him home last fall. In fact, it is very Pequenita-like behavior. But, maybe just to out-do her, he decides to take it one step further. He not only gets up on the counter under the mirror, he settles into the sink, making himself comfortable while keeping me company.
It makes it rather complicated when I’m trying to brush my teeth, but it’s great to have him as my new buddy in the evening bathroom routine.
Now, if I could just get him to make me laugh as much as all my cycling friends do…
Intermediate States
We have arrived at the U.S. holiday weekend of “Memorial Day.” For us, this usually means a trip to the vacation getaway of Cyndie’s family, in Hayward, WI, for “Work Weekend.” This is the time when the property gets a major cleaning, the beach gets raked, toys and floatation devices pulled from storage, and boats get scrubbed and hauled down to the lake. The work culminates in a spectacular community feast at the main lodge.
We aren’t there this year. It feels strange.
We have our new property to tend to this spring, and have been granted a pass from contributing our labor to the lake place.
It feels as though everything at our place is hanging in an intermediate state right now. The two biggest projects, the hay shed and paddock fencing, have been stuck in limbo for weeks, waiting for conditions to dry.
I think the geothermal furnace installation looks complete, but I don’t know the status of whether or not it is fully operational. Almost all the work of installation occurred while we weren’t home. Each day last week, I would check progress when I arrived home from the day-job, trying to discern what had been done, and why, and how. As of last night, it looks like everything is wired and plumbed, but we found no indication of the status, nor instructions on operation. They did leave manuals out. I suppose I could do some reading.
We finished digging up the drain line from the septic tank. It looks like the distribution box is disintegrating. It also looks like there are a lot of illogical twists and turns in the plumbing. I have no idea why they originally chose to do it the way they did, but it did work fine, as far as we can tell, for almost 25 years, so we won’t redo the whole thing. The septic professional I have been consulting has located a replacement distribution box, and will also replace the section of cast iron pipe originally used. It being a holiday weekend, that work will not happen until next week some time, weather permitting.
We need to do a lot of cutting of grass, as the growth is so rapid this time of year, it gets long on one end of the property before you finish cutting the other. Julian helped us greatly last weekend, by doing the first cut of the season, but he wasn’t able to mow the back hill, due to geothermal installation that was in process. It had time to grow doubly long, and we knew rain was coming, so we jumped on that chore late yesterday, before it could get any worse. I am happy to report that Cyndie was eager to have a lesson on the operation of the tractor, and then looked to be having so much fun, I might get away with doing a lot less of the grass cutting around here than I previously anticipated.
In a classic demonstration of our different modes of operation, Cyndie took off with glee, mowing around a tree and then wheeling off in any direction, haphazardly picking off areas of long grass wherever it appeared in her view. I am inclined to mow in a line, back and forth, very methodically. I am a bit more timid. She boldly devoured areas that deserved to be cut, but that I would have been hesitant to try with that mower. I was thinking it would require the brush hog attached to the large tractor. She demonstrated otherwise.
Cyndie and I are a great combination. She spotted some mushrooms growing under a dead pine tree in our front yard. I told her they tasted funny and she got all riled up, exclaiming that I shouldn’t eat them until I know what they are. I was teasing her, of course. Comparing images we found online, we are very confident that these are the very popular and definitely edible morel mushrooms.
We started tending to our little landscape pond with waterfall, but finally came to the full realization that they didn’t leave a pump behind when they moved out, so that project is awaiting a purchase. One more thing hanging in limbo. We also may try to test drive a pickup truck this weekend, a task we have been talking about accomplishing for months.
One last thing that has us feeling unsettled is how much we miss our friends, Alane, Dunia, and Marco. Cyndie has been working with Alane and Dunia for much of her Epona apprenticeship training. I met them and Marco last weekend, and in that short time, developed a deep feeling of connection with all of them. We feel a deep longing to have them here with us, and, in turn, they have indicated a desire to have us visit them in Guatemala and Australia. Long distance relationships can be hard, but we truly hope to make these connections flourish.
Our projects may hang in an intermediate state, but our friendships are definitely established.
New Friends
We have arrived back home at Wintervale, and the cats seem pretty happy to see us. In fact, Pequenita doesn’t seem to want me to get this post typed, because she is on top of me, between my hands and the keyboard, insisting on being scratched enough to make up for the days we have been absent.
It looks like there was some heavy rain in recent days, because it seems like it is wetter than before I left, five days ago. If you have been reading along, the geothermal guys like the soil wet, for drilling the lines underground. As a result, the geothermal plumbing installation is complete, up to the furnace room in the basement. As for the fence project, no progress whatsoever.
I have already had an opportunity to put some of what I learned over the weekend at the Epona leadership workshop, into practice. Just as I was picking up my car at the airport parking lot, I received a call about a problem situation that had arisen at the day-job, yesterday. I had to kick into “leadership” mode and deal with a sticky issue.
It really upset me, because I was trying to reflect on the wonderful weekend and many learning experiences I enjoyed. This issue commanded my full attention long before I was interested in changing modes. Cyndie quickly pointed out I had a choice about how to respond to this interruption, and, using a skill gained from her training, helped guide me to a place that we refer to as “getting back to grazing.”
It is a reflection of the behavior of horses, after they are involved in a conflict. Whatever happens is dealt with in the moment, and then it is done. Return to the calm mode of grazing.
It helped. I made some calls, and got back to remembering the great events of the weekend.
We already dearly miss the friends we left behind. Sunday night there was a graduation ceremony, and I tried to get a couple of pictures. Monday morning we had breakfast together, and then went our separate ways. Last night we felt a void, in not being able to check in with them about how the rest of their day went.
It is a great indicator of the bond we are feeling for these special souls who have become new threads in the fabric of our lives.
Embarrassingly Easy
I have now successfully edited my posts going all the way back to November 30, to fix the missing links that allow viewing the images in their full-size. I find it a bit embarrassing to admit that the solution was always available in the form of a button to click, which creates the link. I guess the link was previously a default situation when I uploaded my images, and became a selectable option when the software was updated.
I let myself think I was too busy to pay attention to this level of detail. Funny how the mind works when it comes to things like this.
Not as embarrassing, but unquestionably easy, was our decision to purchase a share in Walker Farms CSA yesterday. They are our neighbors, and represent many of the philosophies that appeal to us. We came home with eggs, chicken, ground beef, ground pork, ham, and even some lamb weenies, from free-range, grass-fed animals that are not fed systemic antibiotics or any type of hormone, and are raised in a sustainable environment. 
That isn’t all we came home with… They loaned us the book, “The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer,” by Joel Salatin. I recognized having seen at least one of the documentary movies that are referenced on the back cover of the book, featuring Joel and his family farm. After reading just the introduction of the book, I am enthralled by it.
It immediately brought to my mind, the friend I consider a mentor, Ian Rowcliffe, in Portugal. Ian, you are so not alone in your visions and energies to improve our fates by altering the direction of so many aspects of the ways of the modern world. Visiting with our neighbors at Walker Farms, and discovering the writings of Joel Salatin from his Polyface Farms, has expanded my understanding of my own reasons this adventure that Cyndie and I are undertaking feels so right. Ian’s Forest Garden Estate fits right in with it all, and remains one of my primary inspirations.
It really is about more than just the horses, even though that is the primary focus I have been referencing for our reason for moving here. We are trying to figure out fences right now, for the horses, but fences lead to, and are connected with, all aspects of our future operation here. Managing manure is leading to reasons we might want to have chickens. Testimony from the Walkers offered good evidence of the value of chickens, and the introduction of Joel’s book pretty much cements it for us.
There are an amazing number of things for us to discover related to accomplishing all the things we hope to achieve here. As difficult as that seems to be sometimes, it is also surprisingly easy. You could say, embarrassingly easy… because we tend to embarrass ourselves over and over with each lesson we encounter.
Unfortunately, none of them are as simple as finding out the solution is just a click of a button.
Relative Something 