Meditation on Drain Cleaner

I went to buy drain cleaner yesterday.

I know, it is not "Call me Ishmael" nor "It was the best of times, it was the worst of time."  It is a farm.  Regardless of what you might have seen on Pintrest, farm life is not all towheaded children on hay rides and destination weddings.  Ninety percent of the time is is a lot of crappy work. When I walked back from watering the garden, I noticed that the drain vent resembled Old Faithful, and I knew I had a problem. So...

 I went to buy drain cleaner. I set it on the counter, and the cashier asked for my driver's license. I thought it was odd, but I gave it to her and she copied it. 

"You need a driver's license to buy drain cleaner," I asked. 

"Yeah, you make meth with it."

"I should have bought two bottle."

"Only one per transaction."

I am now in some sort of drain cleaner database.  Presumably, if I had gone to several other stores and purchased a bottle of drain cleaner at each one, by the time I returned home, the DEA would have been sitting on the porch.

I am OK with that.

In addition to drain cleaner, I need a gun on the farm. Yes, I am one of those people who will tell you that you can have my gun when you pry it out of my cold, dead hand.  Last year we had a rabid raccoon roaming about.  He was tearing up things and killing chickens. He had been quite elusive, but one afternoon, he decided to be aggressive and I walked outside with my rifle and a single shell.  I won. On a farm, you often have to kill things.  This is not a popular hashtag on Pintrest. 

While I love my guns, and while I have hunted since I was a child, and while I believe in the Second Amendment, I have no business owning an AK-47.  It is a military weapon meant to kill people, not raccoons.  And that is what it does kill people, and cops, and school children, and bar patrons, and co-workers.  Watch television. And I don't need an oversized mag to take out a raccoon, either. And I don't care who knows I have guns. 

To buy one bottle of drain cleaner I had to have my driver's license copied.

To buy a half dozen AK-47's all I need is cash.  

Even if I am on the Terror Watch List, which I am not.

Even if I am on a No Fly List, which I am not.

 Even if I am on the Drain Cleaner Buyer List, which I am on.

Think about it.  I need documentation to buy drain clean but not an assault weapon. An that is just stupid. 

Delicata Squash

Delicata squash have become a fall favorite, but still very hard to find in the backwoods of West Virginia.  Last year, we set about seed saving from the delicata we bought in D.C.  We carefully saved the seeds and this summer, we started a tray of plants in the greenhouse. 

They were beautiful plants, but the weather outside was not cooperating.  Finally, we got the plants in the ground.  Many of them died during the very process of planting them!  They went into the ground in one of the worst dry spells we have had in West Virginia.

Undaunted, we watered every day, but watering isn't the same as a nice, gentle rain shower.  Still, a few of the plants thrived. (OK, they didn't exactly "thrive" so much as they survived, but one takes what one can get.)

Just as the fruit started to gain in size, the weather decided to cause more problems. After warm weather, the temperature decided to plummet for two nights.  Just two, in the middle of a mild October.  So we set out covering the squash for two nights to try to save them. 

The leaves got a bit burned from the frost, but I think we might actually get one or two from the effort.  In all of our canning, we made a batch of Blueberry Chipolte Ketchup.  Out favorite way to serve the delicata squash is to cut it into long strips, like fries, and serve them with the ketchup. 

Next year, more seeds earlier in the year!

Last Tomato

Picked the last ripe tomato of the season. As you can tell, there won't be any canning this week.

Labor Day of Love

For the past few days, we have been trying to capture the Guinea pig abandoned at the book lender. He has survived dehydration, predation, motorcycles, and fracking truck, proving to be quite the little warrior.

My friend, Ann, upon seeing his picture decided to name him G-Force. And herein lies the problem...

Ann is basically a ten-year-old trapped in grown-up body. She loved the movie G-Force (as did I, I won't lie) about a group of marauding Guinea pigs who save the world from an evil billionaire. But Ann is a grown-up and not very likely to beg for a pet Guinea pig after seeing the movie.

Actual ten-year olds are not so wise. They see the movie, think in their little reptilian brains that Guinea pigs are really cool little crime fighting ninjas and beg for one from the Walmart.

At home, the Guinea pig sits quietly, eats and defecates. That's it. As a parent, one should explain this to the child, and not give in and get a Guinea pig just to abandon it when it doesn't save America.  (P.S. this holds true for Easter chicks and bunnies, and tea cup pigs who grow up to be 400 pound porkers.  Read up on a living creature before you bring it home!!)

So yesterday we devised an old-fashioned trap to catch G.  Everything went as planned. G. got trapped.  Then he went a bit berserk and frankly a berserk Guinea pig is more than just a little bit scary! Then he escaped through a wide section of the wire basket.  One tends to forget that Guinea pigs are just rats with good hair, so we should have seen the escape coming.

Today, we were prepared. Wire basket was covered in chicken wire, cat carrier was close by, leather gloves were donned and soon, G. was in protective custody. Further proof that during a zombie apocalypse you wan to be in my car, because I could feed you...but I digress.

G. is now sitting in his comfy cage with water and chopped carrots, safe from harm.

Later this week he will head off to a safe shelter where he might just find a family to love him. If not he will be housed, and fed and looked after.

While this a fine end for G. I couldn't help but think that he is in far better circumstances than thousands of Syrian children whose parents, after risking their lives would be thrilled for a roof, some water, and a few chopped carrots. Let's hope they all have a similar outcome as the abandoned Guinea pig.

Notes to a Jackass

Dear Jackass:

What possessed you to abandon a Guinea pig at the book lender?

Are Guinea pigs known to be great foragers and defenders of their territory?

Last time I checked, their territory was the Walmart pet section.  Why didn't you abandon him at Walmart?

If you thought that you were leaving him at the Post Office so that we could mail him back to Walmart -- you didn't leave enough postage!

My friend, Ann, gave you the benefit of the doubt.  She suggested that the Guinea pig escaped and ran away.  (From a cage, in a house, to walk miles to the book lender?)  In all fairness, Ann, was the person who years ago yelled frantically for me at 3 am. Pointing out the window in the ground below she asked if the animals frolicking in the D.C. moonlight were bunnies.  They were rats!

Don't get me wrong...I have no great love for Guinea pigs.  Unlike actual pigs, there is no bacon, there. 

They don't sit in your lap and purr.

They don't fetch a ball.

But then, I didn't buy one.  I didn't buy it a cage and bring it home.  I didn't keep it till I was tired of it and then abandon it at the book lender.  P.S. if you wanted to abandon it, why didn't you abandon the cage, too.  That way, so someone who wanted the  Guinea pig could have it?

I have tried to catch it, but to no avail.

When I first saw it, I thought "circle of life."  But no, he has proven to be quite resilient, evading predators. And evading me.

So everyday I feed your Guinea pig, Jackass. 

Let's hope he will someday let me catch him and get him to safe place.

In the meantime, if you are considering getting an animal, think about the long term responsibilities of such a decision.  Some animal can actually outlive you!

Coo Day Ta

i am taking over this blog.  From now on it will be Teddyville.

 It's coup d'état!  Learn to use spell check!  And you are not taking over.

But i sneeked in under the cover of darkness with my cat-eye-vision because you are not posting...


Teddy should know the reason. Bless his little heart for trying to get me engaged. A blog should be a fun place where you learn things. Not just how cute cats are (they are!) or about your kids or your grand kids or your kitchen or whatever.   Reading a blog should be fun, educational, and interesting.  Not pitiful and sad. So during our pitiful periods, we simply do not post.

Here at Lucindaville we are having a continuation of our sucky year and frankly, you do not want to hear about it. Fine. The entire month of May we had water issues. While I am convinced that nothing would stop me from surviving the zombie apocalypse, I can assure you that not washing my hair would be the end of me.

I can live through hot temperatures.

Cold temperature.

No Internet, though I would be very cranky.

No television, though I would miss Gilmore Girls reruns...and NCIS.

No overhead lighting.

I could even go for days, weeks, months wearing the same jeans and sweatshirt...as long as I could wash my hair.

No shampoo. No conditioner. No life.

It is a pretty tacky thing to state given that hundreds of thousands of people die each year for lack of clean water and I bitch about my hair. So actually, my life could be exponentially worse. However,  in a month without laundry...I was faced the prospect of a closet with one old prom dress, a tattered tutu, and bleach stained Harley shirt. While I would have turned nary a head at ye ole Walmart, the prospect of blogging in a bright orange prom dress with dirty hair was simply inconceivable.

As June dawns, all appears to be working again.  We have water on a consistent basis. The washer (repaired after breaking during a late spring snow) and the new dryer (the old one died the day AFTER the washer was fixed) have us flush with clean clothes.

And, yes, it would be very funny if it wasn't me.  In keeping with that, one last "woe is me tale."

While being without water to properly wash dishes, I managed to drop a nearly full jar of coconut oil.  The good news is the oil was rather solid, so while the glass broke into a hundred pieces, the oil kept the jar close by.  I set it in a bowl and it sat on the counter for weeks.  When I got water, I decided to wash the bowl and dispose of the coconut oil. 

I took my mother's old Tupperware colander that has been around the kitchen since before I was born and dumped the glass and oil in it and set it out in the sun to separate oil from glass. In my excitement over having mounds of clean clothes, I forgot it was outside.  During the night, a raccoon stole my colander.  This colander had survived at least twenty moves, three generations of cooks, and my carelessness in leaving it on a hot stove resulting and lima bean sized hole that had to be plugged with finger when washing lentils.

A raccoon stole my colander!  This is my life.

So, if you see a raccoon running around with an old, green Tupperware colander, it's probably mine. Tell him I want it back!

March Came in Like A Z#%^HVDF%**

Yes, January sucked, February sucked, but March...I was looking forward to a lovely March.  How bad could it be?

February was ending on a high note.  I went South for a conference that I was looking forward to.  I would see my BFF, Beverly.  All would be well.   I had to stop in Tennessee because there was a blizzard in Alabama.  But I got there, got to the conference, and February ended in fine form.

1 March:

Heading back to North Alabama, I had a blow out.  AAA couldn't find my account but finally sent out a truck.  While had managed to get the lug nuts off, I couldn't get the tire loose.  The tow truck guy told me there was a trick for removing stuck tires and I watched carefully as he bent his knee and kicked the tire.  Yes, it popped right off!

2 March:

Got the tire replaced and headed home even though I was planning to stay and leave on the third, but the weather was looking iffy!

3 March:

Arrived home but just in time.  By the late afternoon this was my road:

4 March:

By the morning I was originally scheduled to get home, the bridge was underwater, so it was a good thing I left when I did.  That night it snowed.

And snowed...

And then we lost electricity.  And it continued to snow.

5 March:

This was our second day with no heat, no phones, no water, no lights, no refrigerator.  There was an eerie silence interrupted by generators.   My neighbor, Lynn, made his way over and helped me set up my generator.   I got lights, and a refrigerator, but for some reason, the heater was not on the generator circuit.  And it had been so cold, the water had frozen.  That night it was 36 degrees in the house.  I piled on blankets and the cats came and crawled under with me.

6 March:

I found several animals dead in the yard.   After getting wet and not finding shelter from the blizzard it was too much for several stragglers.  According to the power company, it would be 10 March before power would be restored.

I kept watching for Dr. Zhivago to cross the fields.

7 March:

The sun came out.

It warmed up, but not enough to thaw the water pipes.

I went out for more fuel for the generators.

8 March:

Another trip for gasoline.  A wide-load truck came over a hill going faster than the speed limit without his lead car.  I slammed on the breaks and spilt gasoline in the back of the car.
I delivered gasoline.  At about 6 pm, the electricity was restored.  After an afternoon of sun and rising temperatures, the water finally came back on.  We had heat, water, and telephones!

9 March:

I forgot to close the back of the car as I wanted some of the gasoline to dissipate and my car was dead!  A neighbor found me walking to the Post Office and took me home and jumped my car.

10 March:

Made it to the grocery store for much needed milk and veggies.   Met a neighbor who still had no power!

As I said in my last post like this, hey I am alive, and well, and currently warm!  With everything happening in the world, I am very lucky, but really....So now I am looking forward to April.

I have several recipes, books to tell you about, tunes to recommend and I promise -- no more whining!

Following in my footsteps...

I have been following a worn path through the snow to check on the chickens.   Yesterday I noticed that something else had been following my path.  At first I thought it had simply crossed my path but then I realized it was following in my footsteps.

In fact, it followed them right up to the door.

Fortunately, it was not tall enough to open the door!

Woe is me...

I swore to myself I would not do a  "woe is me" post.  Face it.  Everyone has had suck weather.  It snowed in Florida!  Below zero in Alabama.  Three stories of snow in Boston.  Winter was  is tough.

I was not homeless, nor injured, nor incapacitated.  A lot of small things have happened.  Any one of them would have been a pain. However, there have been so many small things that the pain has become comical.   So here goes.

I got sick right after Christmas and was sick well past New Years.

(I should perhaps mention that Alabama lost to Ohio State in the playoff, but I won't.)

The heat at the store, where I have my office and books, went out.  The weather was so bad, no one could come and fix the heat.

The pipes in the back burst, flooding the back of the store.

There was a thaw, but the building had been so cold that the moisture crystallized then thawed so the interior of store began to literally rain on my books.

I had to go and get painting tarps to cover all the books.  And yes, I lost about 100, but it could have been much worse.

The heat got fixed as did the pipes.  Most of the books were saved.

However, all that moisture made the paint on the ceiling flake off, so every day the floor looks like there has been snow.

There is still a huge pile of wet, now frozen, debris sitting outside the door.

The water at the house froze and we went 3 days, then 4 days, without water.

The washing machine broke -- but not before it filled up with water and wet clothes that sat a week before anyone could come and fix the washer.

It was the worst January on record and I was longing for February to arrive.

The first day of February, my computer crashed.  I spent a week on the phone with experts to no avail.  The first day of February it didn't snow, I headed to Pittsburgh to get the computer fixed. 

The computer was fixed, but the water froze again.

My friend, Ann, came out to spend a weekend.  She brought seafood, which was fun.  She also brought germs.

I was sick, again.   Ann felt bad and sent medicine from Amazon.  But she forgot to change the address so she was getting the medicine.  Undaunted, she bought more medicine and headed to Fedex.

Fedex lost the package. 

Shirley, WV is tiny.  The ONLY thing in town is the Post Office.  I told Fedex, to leave the package at the little building next to the post office.  The one whose door says:  "Leave Fedex here."  They left it somewhere else.

Two days later, someone found my box, read the note on the box and left it -- next to the Post Office at the door that says: "Leave Fedex here."

Of course, I was well by the time the medicine arrived.  Fortunately the box also contained Red Velvet Oreos.

Soon it will be March.  I would say, I am hoping for Spring but I am going to think bigger and hope for 2016!


P.S.  After posting this, I went out to go to the Post Office -- I had a flat tire!  Praying for New Year's Eve!

Our First Snow

A tad undramatic, but still snow!

Florence Nightingale

Several years ago, I wanted to buy a very expensive rug from Britain that bore the 1939 propaganda phrase: "Keep Calm and Carry On."  I am now soooo glad I didn't.  Alas, a perfectly good propaganda statement has been so abused that when I see the words, "Keep Calm" together, I do want to punch someone!

I have recently been thrust into the role of Florence Nightingale.  That and a big deadline have kept me from keeping clam.  But now we are back on the farm, deadline met, patient on the mend, cats happy, and I have a new found respect for Ms. Nightingale and all those men and women who actually choose nursing as a profession.  Bless them.

The Aftermath -- Progress

You know how it is.  You plan for a job.  You start the job.  Chaos ensues.

Once we got the shed jacked up and all the stuff out of it, it became clear there was no saving it.

It needed an entire rebuild, which we didn't need.

So we had a big fire.

 A controlled burn that reflected nicely in the cold house window.

 Truth be told, it looks much nicer now.

Alas, the yard is still littered with a thousand old canning jars that need to be dealt with and an enormous soapstone sink and counter that never got installed.

But we are moving on...

Labor Day

This is for you slackers and procrastinators out there who watched Labor Day come and go.

We were very proactive this year.  In March, we started making lists of things to do so we could hit the ground running once spring got here.

We bought paint and painting supplies to paint the upstairs hall and stairs.

We bought paint to paint the porch.

We bought glue to repair chair rungs.
 
We piled up boards to fix the bridge to the garden. (The bridge I fell through in June.)

We bought sandpaper to sand the smoker and high intensity paint to paint it.

We bought new shelving to put in the kitchen.

We got piles of wood mulch to start a garden compost.

We discussed propping up a sinking building.

We talked about fixing a tiny leak.

A week before Labor Day it was impossible to get into the house because the paint, painting supplies, new shelves, old shelves and who knows what else were still sitting in the mud room.

In August (late August) we did get the mulch moved to the garden.  The new kitchen shelves are up, but the old ones are still waiting to be moved to a new location and the box the new shelving came in has not "went."  The painting supplies are now in the upstairs hall, still in the bag.   The leak has been repaired.

The sander broke in early August, so we just got the new replacement.

The glue is missing.

On Labor Day we watched 9 1/2 hours of Mike and Molly. 9 1/2 hours!  Of Mike and Molly!

Today the last nail went into the bridge.

The small building sinking into the groundhog hole is almost up and level.

We have revised our March estimate and hope to have the hallway painted by Thanksgiving.

We are still smoking in the rusty smoker, but should we decide to paint it, we know where the paint is and the sander now works.

As for the glue... we have it on our shopping list.

Onion Harvest

 It's that time of the year!  We got a nice crop of onions.

A few more days of curing and they will be ready to save for winter.

Hay, Hay, Hay

Finally, all the fields are hayed!

It has been so hot and sticky, and cutting hay is tough work.

I spent hours watching the guys cut my hay and frankly, I need a drink.

Fair to Middling

How are you?  It is one of those questions that is meant to illicit a short response.

Great!

Good.

OK.

Fair to middling.

No one wants to hear about our trials and tribulations.  Needless to say, we have been fair to middling recently.  This accounts for the fact our last three sporadic posts have all been Cocktails At The Burn Pit.  Point of fact, there would have been a couple more but the doctor replaced our alcohol with antibiotics.  We would have rather kept the alcohol.

But we are on the mend and will be posting away very soon.

In the meantime, Teddy tried his hand (or paw) at posting on Facebook, but he just wanted to watch cat videos and listen to tunes by my godchild.

Haint Blue

Recently, someone came to the house and just after, "hello," he asked, "why did you pick that porch color? It's beautiful and you can see it from the road."

 

Well, I picked a lovely haint blue to keep those evil spirits out. And because it is pretty. It also has a practical function. The color gives the impression of sky and discourages birds and bees (or wasps) from nesting.

 

I must confess, I am a rather lousy painter, so I over prepare. I hired my help for three days. We swept, cleaned and power washed. We taped, and taped, and taped. We painted ceilings first. We painted all the white posts and sides. Finally, we painted the floors. It did, indeed, look lovely.

After nearly a week of drying, I stepped out one morning to drink my coffee. As I started back in the house, I lifted my bare foot and the paint came with me. The original paint from years ago was not compatible with the new floor paint. The floor had to be stripped, sanded, and repainted. In stripping the floor, we got blue paint on the white side, so they had to be repainted. My three day job turned I to three weeks.

 

Alas, there were some bits of painter's tape lingering and the screen got smudged, but after a month, I was done. We have since cleaned the screen removed most of the painter's tape.

 

 

The good news is, not one single haint has entered the house. One bold bird did managed to nest on the white trim.

 

Cold House

We are testing out a cold house this winter, hoping to keep some herbs and a few root vegetables going through the snow.  The limp eggplants from early in the season, clearly aren't going to make it, but we are hoping some hardy chard will weather, well the weather.

Watering the area has proven to be the hardest part.   Keep your fingers crossed that we get a carrot or two.

 

New Bridge

Clearly, it is not the Golden Gate,but it is mine. How bad was it before, you might ask? Every day I drove across it, but I would not WALK across it.

Frankly, it was pretty scary to drive across.

I finally found a bridge builder.

After surveying the site and getting the wood we were set to go.

The beginning with most of the old boards gone.

 

Ready for the first drive across.