It is a mystery

*we have four group outings this week but I suspect that Thursday's two outings will cancel given the rain on the forecast.

I'm basically free of the fall. We are officially closed to the public for the season. This past weekend was pretty quiet, so I started cleanup of the things I could start on including having my workers pack up all the tarps and row covers before it rains, which is awesome. Although I need to fork those row covers under a canopy before thurs. I spent a portion of yesterday consolidating glue bottles which is as boring as you'd suspect. Slowly watching the glue flow into another container. Dull. I couldn't listen to anything either because I had to listen for customers. Got some reading done though. 

I don't feel terrible??? this is deeply weird. I was absolutely trashed at the end of last year, I spent most of november in a daze and not getting things done. But as I sit this morning, I'm looking around the house planning things. Today's big tasks are getting the inside wood stove pipe cleaned out and get that fired up, plus fetching more wood for the outdoor burner out of the pile, getting the baseboards cleaned and turning on that heat. Heat would be nice. It's currently 58 in the house. My fingers are chilly which is the main reason I'm doing it, if my hands are cold I can't craft and that's unacceptable. My dad cleaned the indoor stove chimney out in March so it probably won't need a scrubbing again until next fall. 

I suspect my absolute giving up on all house tasks helped with not feeling terrible, I just didn't do a whole huge chunk of things that normally I would. The level of grime is not ideal but so be it. I am going to tackle things over this coming week, deep clean everything. 

now we move into the season of wood splitting. And some other stuff like cleanup from the fall, spreading straw, maintenance and building organizing. But mostly cutting and splitting wood. We go through an estimated 20 cords of wood with all the stuff we do. It's probably more than that to be honest, especially with the outdoor burner. Hang on, math. 5 cords for fall firewood, 8-10 cords for maple syrup, a dump trailer (a cord? ish?) of wood every two weeks for the outdoor burner. Yeah, that's like, 25-30 cords of wood because of the indoor wood stove and other misc stuff. Good news is that some folks in down took down an absolutely massive maple in their backyard and offered us the wood if we hauled it away, so that was...July? August? that my dad picked it all up and it's laying down at west waiting for cutting and splitting. The base of the tree was probably 3 feet in diameter. It was massive. Here's a video of unloading the base. I won't be able to use the skidsteer splitter on most of the wood so it'll be slower but it's nice to have that much wood waiting. My dad wants to get more on the ground too, lots of birches in the maple stand he wants to bring down. 

wrangler rip stop work pants – I bought a pair two weeks ago on C, crafting night friend’s, recommendation. My pants don’t fit right anymore in women’s sizes, so I switched to men’s sizes and I’m very pleased. The first pair I bought, they were much too large, so I bought a pair two and three sizes smaller and both fit me. The larger size fits well normally and is just big enough to fit a pair of long johns underneath. The smaller size is just a smidge too tight in the waistband but otherwise fits really good. I may figure out some way to adjust it or just plan to wear it during the summer when I’m at my lowest weight. The pants have so many pockets and I like the fabric.

Factor meal delivery – this is a service for (in my mind), tech workers and folks who make a lot of money and sit at desks all day. The meals were delicious, to be completely fair. They were extremely tasty and I ate them! However, they are expensive and very expensive for the quantity of food they provide. I wondered when I saw the calorie counts on the website and this is the quantity of meat and sides I would eat for dinner with a huge heap of rice or pasta or some kind of carb. If I have to make a carb alongside these meals, they’re useless. The whole point is that I wouldn’t need to make food at all. It wasn’t enough food for the days when I was out picking pumpkins but it was just enough when I was not hungry after a really long day in the selling area when stress gets rid of my appetite. I’d be better off ordering a huge order of takeout from a local restaurant or something and the cross contamination issues would be similar, which I also noticed as a problem. I’ve already canceled the service. And the second delivery yesterday came with two extra meals for some baffling reason which I won’t like. Ugh.

I am planning to buy some extra convenience food like minute rice or something plus some frozen stuff to get me through the end of the season. As demonstrated by last week, I can usually manage to make a real food (roasted delicata squash, potatoes and chickepeas, so good), but cleaning the kitchen and dishes is beyond my energy and time levels. The selling area is across the road from the house and I literally pack my lunches to take with me because I won’t have time to run back over to put a pita bread together.

Talking Clock app – I set this up to give me an audible notice every 30 minutes. No ads on it that I’ve seen and it just works. You have to dig into the menu to get a schedule set up to do round numbers on the hour and half hour but this has been so helpful for keeping track of time as I’m doing things.

did the math because we need to buy pumpkins at auction tomorrow and we need 2300 pumpkins for just the group outings that come to the farm for the rest of the season. so that's just field trips and scheduled groups not even the general public. augh so many fucking pumpkins. that's just the small pumpkins included in the outings. listen. people go nuts over pumpkins and the fall, I truly don't understand it. I don't hate it because it's my livelihood but also 

what

this is the only time of year I contemplate picking up drinking caffeine of some sort. I won't do it, but I think about it.

Crafting link is the post before this one

I have found the perfect kitchen island. It is $700. jesus. 

It is the correct height, it has shelves on one side and room for tall stools on the other. It isn't too big for the kitchen space I have but nice amount of countertop for putting baking sheets. It doesn't have a fold out panel but I think that's okay. Wood top. I wish it wasn't black but that's not world ending. But ugh 700 dollars is a lot. I suspect I'll think about it for a while and then get it in december or something. It's a trip to get to the nearest ikea anyway, the closest one is at the base of the turnpike, so a nice easy 2 hour drive. 

Today I made pita bread, chocolate chip cookies and jalapeno corn muffins. Tried a new chocolate chip recipe and it made amazingly puffy cookies, which has always been my gripe with gluten free cookies is how flat they end up. Plus they have a lot of chocolate. 

I've been contemplating the fact that I might be able to actually get all my baking supplies back in the kitchen soon? Like, in the next week!? I might be able to find my cutting boards and cookie dough scoop which are the things I've been missing a lot. We are probably moving my parents bedroom over to the new place in the next two or three days, then I asked my mom to focus on kitchen cabinets. I think the washer and dryer will go over, apparently the dryer that is over there is broken, so I told them to just get rid of it and if a dryer comes up on facebook cheap, great and if not, I have a clothesline. Do I know where my clothespins are? no clue. 

My sister's friends came into town this weekend and they were a delight, we did a campfire cookout saturday night which was great and a good time. But I had been doing late night/early morning spraying for several days in a row and then yesterday had to do early morning and late night spraying so I skipped the campfire cookout at my uncle's orchard which is normally a great time. But I was so tired and annoyed that I just stayed home. I did chat with my aunt and uncle at the stand when I ran down for corn this morning, so that was something. And I'll see some of them at the party for an hour tonight before crafting. This is too much parties. why have we crammed them all in one weekend augh. something something holiday - my family is a lot of self employed or retired people, we don't need to do this.

The good news is that I'm mostly done spraying for the season, I'll have to hit the fall raspberries with an insecticide a couple of times (swd are a curse) but otherwise, we're done with spraying thank goodness. I'm still not good at it. We are harvesting pumpkins already but focusing on the white pumpkins specifically. When the leaf cover of the plants die, the white pumpkins are exposed to the sun and they will turn yellowish if they are left in the field. thankfully, we have a lot of pumpkins, I'm so glad. I think we are finally wrangling the staffing under control, the admin and event work is hard for me to keep up with. someday I will hire someone for this. 

Yesterday at the end of the day, we just about emptied the neighbors accursed trailer of hay bales. that sucked so bad. never ever store haybales in a tractor trailer trailer for an unknown amount of years. the ones left after yesterday are bad (got wet from trailer wall leaking), bad strings broke, one small stack that had a bird nest on the top but also a snake that wasn't running away while I was working near it and one small stack that had a wasp nest in the top bale. this was mostly a favor to the neighbor. my dad arranged all this but me and the workers did the actual work. it sucked shit. no ventilation or cross wind so I worked in the very back throwing bales from the stack to an employee who tossed onto the trailer, stacked by the teenage employee. We did 115 bales in about an hour with four breaks to let the dust settle and to rinse our mouths out. nasty. the bales we took are in good shape, we'll sell them or use them especially since we aren't baling our own these days. but also fucking ew. 

I finished a big spinning project this morning, super pleased with it and I need to do some ~*weaving math*~ because it will be singles for weaving! I need to get pictures and make a post about it too. 

Hooray! 

I had been storing all of my cold things in the fridge over at the church and just, driving over there 2-3 times a day to get my food. The urge to not do that was very strong, be proud of me, I have been eating adequately anyway. I had been keeping an eye on FB marketplace for several days, waiting for my dad to be free, which was after all his buddies finally left. I was being very patient. 

Once he said he was free yesterday, I messaged one person on FB who had a decent looking fridge for $150 in the town 15 mins away. He messaged back right away, we went over at 6pm. A very nice college age woman met us there and she jumped in to help us load which went well. She was nice and we chatted a bit, then headed home. Had to take the doors off to get it in and it needed another little cleaning before use. I plugged it in before pulling the old one out because I have been burned before, but it was down below 40F within two hours or something. Fantastic. 

This morning, I got the stuff out of the freezer of the old one, yanked it out, got the new one in place and then fetched my breakfast and all my food from the church and I'm now eating food in my house like a normal person. 

I'll admit, the fridge is huge for my needs but it's an old maytag, it's simple, it works, I'm happy with it. 

Now if only my mother would actually pack the fucking kitchen up. On Sunday, I asked her to start working on it since they have a perfectly acceptable kitchen at the other house. I fetched her a folding table so she could put things on it. Zero boxes have been packed so far, but don't worry it's on her list for today supposedly. And Wed, she tried to convince me to buy a new fridge instead of a used one and apparently had spent time browsing labor day sales. sigh. deeply unhelpful. I understand she wants to be helpful, but she is not being helpful in a way that I want or have asked for. This is a running theme. 

Last Sunday, we moved the dishwasher and fridge from my house over to my parents house. This went mostly fine. We have a dolly and a forkable metal platform that freaking rules for moving appliances since you can set it right at the level of the porch and pull the dolly right on. We had to remove both the kitchen door and the doors from the fridge to get theirs out and also we made a nice wet mess unhooking the dishwasher. Oh well. 

In the transfer, my dad accidentally took a part along with the dishwasher that hooked up to the drain pipe that he shouldn't have, we hooked it up at their place, which was a little odd but seemed fine and didn't leak and then pushed the dishwasher in place which was a big pain. Those new floors. But then we came back and tried to hook up my dishwasher and realized we didn't have the right connectors and that one connector end must be under the difficult to remove dishwasher. Oh well I said. No biggie, I probably won't use it much except if I have guests. Plenty of time to get a part. 

Then we moved their fridge over no problem, brought mine in and hooked it up. Now my dad had plugged it in while it was in the pole barn and said it felt cold. And it does. But only to 45-50 degrees. Freezer works fine. But this was Monday morning, I was so tired that I said fuck it and gave up. My dad clearly felt bad and offered to bring the fridge from the church over but that would require getting it up 8 big stairs out of the church basement and then putting it back later after I got a new fridge. No. I just shoved all of my cold stuff into the fridge at the church, baked blueberry bars during crafting to take with me and hit the road tuesday afternoon. 

Except. Part of the reason I felt so tired and like trash is that I had a UTI. Thankfully, my mom offered to cover the register Tuesday morning since my normal employee wasn't available and I took myself to urgent care. She offered so I could get on the road earlier, but I was so grateful that I could make the trip to the nice urgent care and got seen immediately. (weirdest part of the whole visit was the PA came in and asked me if I was male or female right off the bat. weird but fine I guess????)

Got my drugs, finished packing and hit the road for real this time and arrived to the friend's farm just as they were sitting down to eat pizza dinner. B had texted to get my order and they had gluten free pizza, yay. Plus watermelon. Thinking how much watermelon I ate this trip now definitely did well for helping with the UTI. It was so lovely, there was a big group of the farmworkers sitting around and chatting and I got to reconnect with some folks I knew before and met some new and interesting people. Then I set up my tent near B's cabin, we chatted for a bit and then I went to sleep. 

Wed was a day of rest for me. B had work still, so she did her thing, but I laid around, napped, drank water, read books and fanfic and did a lot of nothing. At this point, my appetite was so shot from stress from the last few weeks that I ate a blueberry biscuit for breakfast at 10am which is normally when I eat my second snack of the day and wasn't super interested in it. I did have to check work emails, update picking conditions etc but it was a half hour of work at most. It was so nice to just hang out with people as they came in and out, took breaks, ate slow lunch of two small slices of leftover pizza that I wasnt at all interested in, waved to them in passing, talked shit about farming. B made tacos that night which I sorta helped with and they were delicious. 

Thursday, I was already feeling better, I was eating more, I was more relaxed and more cheerful, most of the day was me laying around more. I went and picked up arepas from town for dinner. We went that night to Tanglewood in Western MA, the drive was easy and not too long and saw the Silksong Ensemble featuring Rhiannon Giddens. It was incredible. The music was freaking amazing and the musicians were incredible. It was very much an ensemble mostly not focused on her even though the advertising said Rhiannon Giddens featuring Silksong Ensemble. I feel this is good marketing to get people to come. I don't even care, it was so good. I'd say music genre was folk music but enhanced by all the different instruments they had in the ensemble. Really really good. Highly recommend if you can see them. Didn't even have to wear earplugs! We were back by 11. 

Friday I hit the road mid morning. I had time to pack all my stuff up including drying my tent out since it had rained a little the night before. I stopped by the co-op to buy fancy cheese as a gift and then went and visited C about an hour west. It was so good to see her again and she fed me tacos. We walked around the farm, chatted all the work things that had changed since I left and I gave some advice on a project that they didn't know how to handle since the person in charge had left but I had done all the work on it. I got to snuggle her little weirdo dogs. She gave me a large quantity of sweet corn that I need to process tomorrow and I hit the road. 

I got home around 6:30pm, helped my parents with a bunch of stuff that night and went to bed early. While I was gone, my parents made a ton of progress on their house and the first of my dad's guests arrived yesterday midday. My mom didn't want to be around their silly nonsense so she's back at my place while they're there. Not that they moved their bedroom over anyway. Sat morning I also helped them do a bunch of stuff to get ready since they needed help.

My house is a fucking disaster zone but I'm much refreshed, all out of fucks to give and browsing facebook marketplace for a nice cheap fridge, of which there are many. I might be able to wrangle things cleaner tomorrow but who's to say. My mom has just piled shit all over the place in here and I don't care. It is so not my problem right now. I've given up and am using paper plates and plastic utensils like I'm in the middle of a move. My trash can is the trash bag tied to a shelf. I do have the brain capacity to start compiling a list of all the things I will need to buy in the next few weeks so things will be happening. 

It was such a good trip though and I super needed it. Next year, I need to do this at the end of July because this was too long to wait for a break. B wanted to pay me back for the tickets to the concert but I asked her to visit this winter instead which she promised to do. It was so nice to see and chat with friends. Ugh, so good. I missed them all so much. 

I got some spraying done in the pumpkins last night, stayed up late so we don't murder the bees. In the middle, one of my eyes got itchy, I had stopped driving the tractor to make sure it wasn't spray drift in my eyes, it didn't seem to be and my eye stopped itching, so I moved on. This morning when I got up, my eye felt fine until I was on register. Then it felt like there was an eyelash in it. Once I got off register, I took a look and my eye had a red spot to the side of my pupil enough that it was right where my eyelids connect. Itching itching itching. So I called an eye doctor and got an appointment. 

That was at 1pm, so right in the middle of the day. I got a lot of computer work done, emailing customers, texting people about fall availability, making up spray sheets. Went to the appointment, the doctor was super nice and super cheerful. She asked all the questions, looked at my eyeball for several minutes and told me there probably had been something stuck in it, but it was out. Hell yeah. I have a full body shiver kind of horror of eye injury or things in my eyes, so this was very good. I now have medicated eye drops and I've got work to do this afternoon.

My laptop keyboard has been failing for a while, first the number keys and last weekend, the s key started failing but erratically, sometimes it would fail to type and sometimes it would type twice. Made it hard to play video games. So I finally caved and got a new bluetooth keyboard which I like quite a bit. I can hold it on my lap and type which I like a lot. It means I can wiggle my chair around while I type. 

I have switched from testosterone injections to a gel that I apply once a day and omg it is so much better. I like it way way better. One of my great strengths is consistency and I love doing something everyday. It's easy to apply and it is a alcohol based gel so it smells intensely but isn't a terrible texture. The injections, I struggled with doing them when I was stressed, I'd skip them instead which is not ideal. So I'm pleased with this. I can't tell if the current ravenous hunger is related or something to do with the weather. In the last few months, I have been bouncing between absolutely starving all the time and fully not hungry at all. There doesn't seem to be a pattern but a smart person would write things down to see. Hmm, no smart people around here. 

My parents have ordered a stove which is coming tomorrow. No clue really what that means for moving order, apparently the kitchen wasn't actually done being painted? I have no idea. But I told them I could help an hour a day with moving stuff so that's the plan there. Getting my bed dug out didn't take that long thankfully and now I have even more space than expected in my bedroom because there was an extra bedframe and mattress under and next to my bed. Apparently my dad was trying to empty the bookshelf in my room because they specifically want the shelf for something. Another "big priority" is digging the ping pong table out of the shed. You know, the shed that still contains a lot of my belongings that are stacked in front of the pingpong table. I'm sure I will need to be involved with that but honestly, this is reaping what we've sown here. I reiterated that I am here to carry heavy things and I will not have any opinions on where things go or anything like that. 

Okay, off I go

I got in at 6:45pm having worked from 7:30am to then with only a quick 30 min break in the house for lunch (to be fair, a big chunk of my day was working the register so it wasn't exactly a strenuous day) and went upstairs to shower to discover that one of my parents had gone into my room and started packing their books that have lived on the shelf in my room for a year and a half now

milk crates of books in my doorway so I couldn't close my door

I did not know this was happening, a couple of my things had to be moved out of the way to access the shelf.

am I pleased they are finally fucking moving? yes. but I told them both: do not go in my room without asking first

because what the fuck. what the fuck! 

my dad has rented a sander for today, so the floors at their house must be sanded today. and then the finish and seal must be applied pretty quickly. 

it might be happening!!!