Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Yep, It's another installment of Lessons learned the hard way.... last year I tried peanuts for the first time. I just planted a couple of nuts in a car tire. A sort of raised bed experiment thing. It worked well and with the pictures from around the internet I'd looked at, I decided to go ahead and plant some in the big garden. Here comes the lesson learned... peanuts don't like hard, compact soil and they despise clay. 8 plants and that's all I got. The roots grew down to the clay and quit. I really thought they were doing good, the tops all looked great! Guess I need to build some garden boxes for the peanuts! LOL At least I have a good crop of seed nuts for next years planting!

Side note, small disaster today.... I've been looking for a mystery water leak that showed up on the water bill this month. couldn't figure out where it was and I had resigned myself to crawling under the trailer in the sloppy mess and cutting the plastic that holds the floor insulation off to locate it when I found it from inside the house. The wash machine has finally flew apart. I don't know why I never heard it leaking until today but there it is, leaking from underneath it and the water was just seeping down thru the wall in the corner behind the washer. I turned the water spigot off and it quit leaking. Yep, something inside the washer is broken. It's 11 years old and has been repaired a half dozen times already, Sears just doesn't make em like they used to. I just can not catch a break this year.

Dismal Day

The last few days have just been "ho-hum" days, piddling around the farm. I finally got a little bit of cash to pick up a couple pieces of plywood for the chicken coop and it starts to rain. It's one of those all day misting rains, no real precipitation but wet enough to ruin your outside plans.

There's been a few emotional drains happen this week. hubster ended up back in the ER and that young ER doc figured out his digestive problem in about 5 minutes. which of course, makes me madder than a wet hen. 7 weeks of no paycheck, 100 different tests, the 3 doc appts a week, the 2 procedures and $17,000.00 to a specialist (harvard grad) who apparently missed the week they taught the gall bladder and gall stones.

The next emotional blow was hearing about a couple old friends of mine having a motorcycle crash. Father/daughter pair and both were seriously injured. It took me a little driving to make a visit to another old friend to find out what happened and the daughter is going to eventually be okay but my friend is in very critical condition and it's not looking good.

I am getting some support from my loving and caring goat pal, Lucky. He ensures my good spirits by amusing me every chance he gets. I've been giving him horse cookies and he really gets excited over them. When I run out, he has to make sure I'm not holding out on him by chewing the hoodie pocket just to make sure it's really empty! Johnboy is in full rut and no one is safe from his unbelievable stink. Billy goats can get really rank. You can smell him all over the farm. The worst part of it he's spoiled and you can't hardly get away from him outside and he begs for attention. Am I ever glad I snipped and clipped Lucky goat!

I watched part of the republican debate the other night. Geez, we've got some real winners in the race, don't we? There is no way on this green earth that I could ever support Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann. My "weasel meter" is just pegged every time either one opens their mouth.

I've turned my thoughts toward next years crops already. Since this year was so dismal, I'm working out some things to possibly prevent a repeat of this years disasters. We'll just have to wait and see how those ideas turn out. I still haven't learned how to grow patience, LOL.

I think today is a good day to just flop on the couch with a good book......

Waiting on Rain

There's my Sia, letting me know he still loves me.

Since I've had some serious trauma to my life and big plans in the past few days, I've been thinking about where the farm is now, where it was, the things that have happened to us the last couple of years, how I've dealt with different things, what my attitude used to be like and what my attitude is now. Wow, lots to ponder, eh?

There's a few things I don't have to think on very hard to remember exactly when they changed. Some other things tho, those seem to have changed more subtly over a period of time.

So, with that in mind, I'm already working on another brilliant (or stupid) plan to supplement our winter food supply. Since Mother Nature showed us her more cruel side this year, I will see a winter menu that is lacking some of the items I have become accustomed to having. I will have to adapt and overcome and wipe the cobwebs off my creative side. Since we have taken some serious blows to our already pitiful financial situation, I didn't even come close to building the greenhouse, killing my big plan to have a 3 season harvest(again, LOL). I refuse to admit defeat and have worked up a plan to once again do some indoor growing. I can't just have buckets of plants laying around when the cold weather comes (lousy windows and serious drafts) so once the plants get to that point, I will create an indoor greenhouse from simple materials that would never withstand life outdoors but will work out just fine inside. Now all I need is for the seeds to germinate!

Okay, Where's The Rainbow??

ROFL! Lucky the Unicorn goat!

That's a corn stalk stuck in his collar, apparently he's been rolling around in the pile....