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Jean's Blog of Life, Farms and Everything

Category Archives: Rural life

Stuff you don’t (usually) see in the city.

January Cure 2016- Plan a Party and catch up

15 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by Jean in General Farm Stuff, Home and other Repairs, Home Decor, January Cure 2016, Rural life

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

DIY, do it yourself, farm, home decor, home organization, January Cure, January Cure 2016

The assignment for today was to plan a get together. Took about 10 seconds to realize the backyard is not going to be ready for entertaining because I have the office to contend with. My end of the Cure party will instead be held sometime in March after the office/guest room/craft room is finished.

My freeloading chickens have finally begun producing 2 eggs a day, so I used the 10 eggs collected this week to make a cheap and easy breakfast casserole to sustain me while I catch up to where I should be on the office and the hall closet. I even ate some of that casserole. I’ve never eaten fresh eggs before and knowing chickens as intimately as I do, especially one of them, this took a bit of courage. The casserole is delicious and I did not die from it.

Just as an aside, a friend told me that chickens are immune to the capsaicin in peppers, so if I feed them lots of hot peppers, their egg yolks will be red and spicy. In a fit of giggles I asked her if sprinkling a lot of Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning on their layer feed would work the same way. I’m thinking that would be a time saver in the kitchen. (Note: This is a joke people. Too much salt can kill a chicken.)

fresheggsLook at those pretty little eggs! They’re still pretty small because my hens just began laying, so it took 10 to make a 9 x 13 casserole.

fresheggbacncasseroleFresh eggs, bacon and biscuit casserole! Heat and eat breakfast all weekend.

I also still have a couple of bowls of zuppa left from last weekend for quick heat and eat lunches and some frozen slices of turkey and ham left from the holidays to cut up on fresh lettuce from my garden for suppers. I can turn all my attention to the bedroom assignment and the office. Well, I can after I pick up a new battery for the tractor.

I completely emptied the hall closet, wiped down shelves, swept the floor, pitched two sets of old place mats that were stained, saved one every day set and one special occasion set, washed the guest linens, emptied two shelves in the office and a drawer in my desk, organized office supplies on a shelf in the hall closet and took pictures of some of the items in my outbox to see if I can sell them online rather than trying to haul them to the corner swap.

Tada! My lovely organized hall closet. The linens will be on the top shelf with the blankets once I finish folding them.

hallcloset

On the office agenda this weekend will be to rearrange the craft items in the office closet so that there is a space for guests to both hang clothes and lay folded clothes. Then I will box up my toy collection and William’s computers so they can all be safely stored while we remove all the furniture. Then the room will need a thorough cleaning and paint. Then, at long last, we can build a bed frame and the wall mounted counter space for crafting and computing.

As for my bedroom project, I just need to wash the curtain and bed linens and give the room a thorough dusting. It’s also time to haul a lot of clothes to the donation bin.

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Memories from a happier time

05 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by Jean in General Farm Stuff, Grief, Rural life, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

MVC-015SThat Facebook app “On this day…” hasn’t been happy lately. I’ve had to try to ignore the posts from this time in 2013. This morning I skipped over the sad memory from that day and landed on this from the year before. We used to have such fun and be able to laugh at the calamities.

So, from November 4, 2012 I give you the Great Pony Escape

The continuing saga of life on Jean and Billiam’s farm. With an unhappy goat constantly bleating for tree trimmings in the background, John dismantled the panels along the west side of the barn. I’d moved all the ponies to the back corral earlier. Billiam cranked up the old Ford tractor and scraped all the stalls down to dirt, then shoved dry dirt piles back into each stall. I chopped up hard packed dirt on the edges where the tractor couldn’t reach and then spread the fresh dirt around in the low spots with John helping. I scrubbed out the water buckets with steel wool while John and Billiam put the panels back up.

The little blind and deaf dog was barking incessantly inside because we were outside, the goat outside was still making our ears bleed with her incessant bleating. I got the leaf blower and blew out all the dirt and dust that had been kicked into the feed bins and Billiam and I came inside for Aleve and a NAP while John put the finishing touches on the panels. I woke up two hours later and my FIRST thought upon waking was “OMG did someone close the corral gate?? DID SOMEONE PUT THE PONIES BACK INTO THAT CORRAL BEFORE CLOSING THAT GATE?”

I grabbed shoes and went outside. All seemed normal. Goat was bleating bloody murder. Then I noticed that this time she was bleating bloody murder at a small herd of horses under the tree next to the goat pen, who were gorging themselves on dried mesquite bean pods. “John!!!!!” “JOHN!!” “SOMEBODY!!!!!!!!” I grabbed a bucket of feed and coerced Desi back into the corral but he kept following me in and out while I tried to attract the attention of the others. “JOHNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

At this point Billiam and John appeared. The village idiot horses, Blondie and her child Poppy, made a break for it and headed toward the barn. THAT gate, unfortunately was closed. They wheeled about and raced out into the open backyard. John decided to try and get them all in the corral gate, while I was trying to get them into the barn aisle. Billiam, thinking John’s plan was THE plan, herded them away from the barn at the same time I was trying to get them to go to the barn and our miscommunication caused ALL the horses but Lucy (still gorging on mesquite bean pods and not giving a hoot about the chaos around her) to charge off through the backyard and around the house into the front yard where one neighbor had JUST passed by riding his stallion and ponying another horse. After sucking all the oxygen out of the desert, I saw that he had safely crossed the dry wash and was on the opposite bank, well away from my rampaging fools.

John tried to herd them between the house and the barn but the ninnies broke out and went careening up the road and across the 5 acres between us and our nearest neighbors’ property. This caused the horses in the neighbors’ back yard to freak out which caused our horses to become even more gleeful in their wild escape. Ours were bucking, cavorting, pawing the air and having a GRAND old time, which convinced the neighbors’ horses that a pack of crazed hyenas was on the loose. The village idiot horses were the leaders in this escapade, with Desi charging along behind them egging them on by biting their butts. Blaze was running along just because she’s Blaze and is more than willing to do whatever the other horses are doing because they must know what they’re doing right?

Lucy finally looked up from her bean pod bonanza and walked over to me. I put a lead rope around her neck, kissed her forehead and led her into the barn. I sat in my wheelchair watching the rest of the hairy goofballs head off across the countryside and thought “Yanno, at this moment, if Desi weren’t among them I might just close all the gates, wave goodbye and go inside.”

John managed to turn them before they got halfway down the street and they came rampaging back around the front yard where they got side tracked by the mesquite pods on the ground by the garage. I planted myself just past the barn gate. John went around the house and surprised the ill behaved children by blocking their access back to the front yard. They stampeded toward me but between my airplane arms and the look on my face they decided to make a sliding 90 degree turn and go into the barn. I’m thinking the look on my face probably reminded them “I DO HAVE A FIRE PIT”.

We closed the gate behind them, had a chance to breathe ONE quick sigh of relief when we realized “OH hell the hay room door is open!” right about the time the village idiots and Blaze tried to cram themselves into a small hay area filled to the brim with 100 bales of hay. John managed to get the village idiots backed out, but Blaze suddenly forgot how to back out or just didn’t want to and leaped up on some of the lower bales. I was waiting for the sound of horse legs breaking as she jumped off the bales onto one of the empty pallets below, but thankfully she managed to extricate herself. She did make one feeble attempt (thank god it was feeble) to squeeze through the not even horse width space between the fence and the stacked hay, but thought better of it and scrambled over the freshly opened bale by the door, scattering it to hell and gone.
After the village idiots stopped gaily sprinting from one end of the barn aisle to the other, they were caught and everyone was locked up early for the evening.

We cooked out, sausages over the mesquite fire again, for supper. It was a peaceful evening, well, except for the little blind and deaf dog barking incessantly inside because we were outside. Billiam said “We could pretend he’s wild life.”

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January “Cure”

05 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by Jean in General Farm Stuff, Home and other Repairs, Home Decor, Rural life, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

cleaning, floors, January Cure

There are several sites I visit every morning in my quest to finish William’s to-do list projects. I found them when I was searching for ways to DIY the backyard furniture. Every day they have articles that help me accomplish at least the things that need to be done before I can tackle an item on the list and often have ideas on ways to do the items on the list.

This year one of the largest items on the list is laying tile in the bedroom. Well, there’s no way to tile the bedroom until said bedroom and closets are organized to the point they can be easily cleared to lay the tile. Apartment Therapy is doing their annual January Cure (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/collection/january-cure-2015-468) and I elected to participate. Lord knows the house needs cleaned and organized, but also, the lack of organization is in the way of completing Billiam’s List.

Of course, the very first thing on the list is FLOORS. Our assignment from Jan. 2 – Jan. 3 was to vacuum and clean floors and rugs. OH, and buy ourselves some flowers first to make ourselves feel better about it. Well, the flowers were supposed to come first, and I bought them, but then had to find space on the cluttered counters to put them, which meant cleaning space on a counter before I could get to the floors.

Manual wheelchairs and upright vacuum cleaners are not happy together. I have bruises, scrapes, and a lump on my head from each time that damned vacuum attacked when I moved the floor attachment so much as 3 feet. I don’t even want to know how high my blood pressure rose while constantly having to disentangle the cord from the wheels and brake handles, and why the hell can’t manual chairs easily roll over a cord no thicker than 1/4 inch?! The floor is my nemesis, the vacuum is possessed by the spirit of Ted Bundy.

In spite of the 6 hour battle with the vacuum, I did manage to get the rugs clean, for a day, and all but the heaviest furniture vacuumed under. It was time to mop/scrub/pray over the floors. Mopping our tile has produced less than pleasant results forever. If I use nothing but clear water, the result is two days of living in a house that smells like a combination of locker room and kennel filled with dirty wet dogs. If I use anything at all to combat odor, I get a sticky film that does not come up no matter how many times I clean rinse it. The end result is always that it looks better and smells better with coffee stains and barn dirt than it does after I spend a day mopping and scrubbing.

Again, please don’t tell me how well vinegar works for this. It doesn’t. I continually believe that vile, smelly liquid will work and all I end up with is vinegar odor added to the kennel/locker room aroma of a sticky, haze covered floor.

Yes, it would be easier to hire someone to come in and clean the floors, but A. I can’t afford to hire this out every week and B. I’d have to have everything organized first so that furniture could be moved out of the way. I live in a puzzle box. If one thing needs to be moved, 4 other things have to be moved first.

So, in the first three days of my January Cure, I managed to place cut flowers, vacuum three rooms, clean rugs, and partially mop/scrub/pray over most of the main room. No. There are no before/after pictures. At this point, I’ve just made a bigger mess.

Our assignment for today is to move through the house, and make notes on things that need to be changed, organized, cleaned, and repaired. I’m afraid my list will be long and arduous. Once the list is completed we then narrow it down to the 3-5 items that will make the most difference in each room. That smaller list will be almost enough to put me in bed the rest of the day just thinking about it. However, I’m fairly brave at home so I intend to see this thing through. I’ll play heroic stuff on the stereo and cowgirl up.

If you’d like to join me in house cleaning and organizing hell, pop over to the Apartment Therapy January Cure (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/collection/january-cure-2015-468) and come commiserate or brag with me. In spite of my struggles and abject failures, the house has GOT to come out of this better than before.

 

 

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DIY Bedspread

09 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Jean in General Farm Stuff, Home and other Repairs, Home Decor, Rural life, Uncategorized

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Tags

DIY, do it yourself, easy bedspread, easy cotton bedspread, home decor, no sew bedspread, tie-dye, tie-dye bedspread

This post is about a happy accident. During the great tie-dyed patio curtain fiasco, I’d dyed the first 9 x 12 cotton drop cloth using Rit dyes. When washed, the colors faded badly. They were extremely muted versions of the original red, orange, yellow, pale blue and dark blue dyes I had used. I folded it up and hid it from myself thinking the ponies would have a colorful “tarp” for the winter.

Today, as I was folding and putting away laundry, and washing my sheets and pillow cases, I made up the bed with fresh sheets. I was about to toss a light blanket on for a spread when I spied the curtain failure. On a whim I tossed it on the bed and discovered that a 9 x 12 cotton drop cloth is the perfect size spread for a king sized bed! The softer muted colors actually look pretty good in my dark bedroom. The curtain which would have been dim outside, actually brightened things up in my room.

For 15.00 (at Harbor Freight) and a few bottles of Rit dye, I have a durable, washable bedspread! I have pets, so “I can’t have nice things”. Anything in this house has to be able to withstand the washer and dryer. This spread will stand up to the punishment Baxter, the cat, will dish out. dropclothbedspreaddropclothbedspread2

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Billiam’s Backyard and Patio Reveal!

01 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Jean in General Farm Stuff, Grief, Home and other Repairs, Rural life, Uncategorized, Wood Crafts

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Tags

DIY, diy chair, do it yourself, garden, garden bed, hanging bed, home decor, home furniture, homemade furniture, how to handle grief, landscaping, outdoor furniture, pallet, patio, patio chair, patio furniture, storage bench, swinging bed, wood chair, wood craft, wood furniture, yard

First of all, I need to thank John. Without his help some of these things could never have been accomplished and the rest would have taken me two years instead of 6 months. Secondly, I want to thank Ana White for the inspiration to Do It Ourselves, and the little family at More Like Home for adjusting some of the plans on Ana’s page so that the projects could be built with 2x4s and for their other 2×4 projects. Thank you to the Apartment Therapy and Houzz sites for their daily decorating inspirations. Thank you to the guys at Articulate Motion for keeping us in pallets, donating a chunk of fabric, and adjusting the metal fire inserts so that they could be used in the dining table. I want to thank the DIYers out there who showed us how to make Beer Bottle Tiki Torches and inspired our hanging bed. Speaking of that hanging bed, I want to thank the wood gurus at Home Depot for putting us on a safe path on that journey. Finally, thanks to all the friends and family who cheered us on and helped us through this traumatic year.

So, here we go! This is what the patio looked like before when we were in the first week of the redo:

patiosouthendbeforepationorthendbeforeBleak wasn’t it?

INSERT FANFARE HERE!

patiotriumphpatioreflectionpatioatnightpatiodiningareapatiogardenconversationareabeerbottletorchespatiobeerbottletorches1patiotablefireinsertshangingbeddressedup

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Current woes, tall tales, and lessons learned

  • Here are the mutts.
  • January Cure 2018- Flowers and Floors and Stuff
  • January Cure 2018 Day 2- Make a list
  • January Cure 2018- Day 1- Clear and Organize a Drawer
  • January Cure 2018: But first a word from our sponsor
  • January Cure Weekend 1- Flowers and Floor
  • Day 3 January Cure 2017- Purge the Pantry vs Cabinet Cleanout
  • Day 2 January Cure 2017- Making a List (humming- checking it twice)
  • January Cure 2017 Day 1
  • Billiam’s List Bedroom Tile: Pat us on the head!

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