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unicorndukeI still feel like I'm settling in, or I'm in a weird limbo of life. Like I'm waiting for reality to come get me, I'm having a really nice time working on the farm. It's deeply weird. Not helped by my messed up sleep schedule, staying up late reading and not getting up as early as I mean to but lots of long hours and hard work. And the world is out there on fire.
I got my new drivers license tuesday, getting a bunch of farm work done including catching up with some things that have been typically neglected. As I'm spending more time here, I'm more and more baffled on how the farm is still running with how much time my dad spends on his computer work. How did he do it?
Today was weeding and spreading woodchips with the mill creek mulcher, a delightful machine that spreads mulch in a 18 inch wide swath on a 400ft row of blueberries in about five minutes with more time spent loading the dang thing and driving to the rows than actual spreading. Then I spent a lot of time on the bobcat skidsteer moving woodchips from one place to another. First was consolidating the pile currently being dropped off. Dad has a local tree guy empty his trailer in two or three different places and it's hard to get good piles with dump trailers, so the chips end up in piles of around 5 feet high across a 100 ft by 50 ft area. So I spent two hours or so taking those piles, creating a ramp up and making a 40x40ft pile that is 12 or 15 feet high. Good fun. Then I took the bobcat and loaded our dump trailer with the aged chips from the other pile and brought two loads down to the blueberries to be spread tomorrow.
One deeply weird thing I'm encountering is that I'm now much stronger than my dad. He's always been incredibly strong but between getting older and his back issues, he no longer can carry the stuff he used to, or muscle the equipment in the same way. And I'm back on the farm full time, so getting stronk as fuck plus the testosterone is making things go faster, plus I think the hormonal birth control I was on before was causing issues. We carried trash out of the church basement late last night and I took two bags up that he couldn't lift and one of them wasn't all that heavy in my opinion. But maybe I've changed too.
I'm doing a hybrid garden, growing some things I want in with the PYO farm stuff, like paste tomatoes and jalapenos and some stuff will be in a separate garden for just me, like the 7.5 lbs potato seed that shipped today. I'm hoping to have the garden field rototilled by the end of the weekend so I can seed peas and some other spring things. We have been having weather whiplash with some days barely reaching 40F with some strong winds and saturday is supposed to be 70F. The peppers finally germinated, the little jerks, and I seeded tomatoes today. Farm raspberries are coming next week, strawberries the week after.
Monday I made so much mac and cheese that it required two cassarole dishes (my nice 9x13 glass baking dishes are in storage. somewhere) and I should have enough to last me through sunday night even when eating some of it for lunches. Having access to my chest freezer and bulk goods is helping immensely with eating enough food. Monday, I also repaired my Unihertz Tank Mini of its bricked screen, which I broke back in December. I was so pleased with myself at fixing it, worked great except....the MMS receiving problem. It didn't have this issue back in December but it does now so I'm still using my backup phone since I can't get group texts at all. I've tried some stuff but so far nothing has fixed it. Deeply annoying.
I'm going to a trans meetup group on saturday hopefully to start meeting people. I like my parents but honestly, I need to spent time with people that aren't them or employees. Crafting night has been deeply helpful with this as well
I got my new drivers license tuesday, getting a bunch of farm work done including catching up with some things that have been typically neglected. As I'm spending more time here, I'm more and more baffled on how the farm is still running with how much time my dad spends on his computer work. How did he do it?
Today was weeding and spreading woodchips with the mill creek mulcher, a delightful machine that spreads mulch in a 18 inch wide swath on a 400ft row of blueberries in about five minutes with more time spent loading the dang thing and driving to the rows than actual spreading. Then I spent a lot of time on the bobcat skidsteer moving woodchips from one place to another. First was consolidating the pile currently being dropped off. Dad has a local tree guy empty his trailer in two or three different places and it's hard to get good piles with dump trailers, so the chips end up in piles of around 5 feet high across a 100 ft by 50 ft area. So I spent two hours or so taking those piles, creating a ramp up and making a 40x40ft pile that is 12 or 15 feet high. Good fun. Then I took the bobcat and loaded our dump trailer with the aged chips from the other pile and brought two loads down to the blueberries to be spread tomorrow.
One deeply weird thing I'm encountering is that I'm now much stronger than my dad. He's always been incredibly strong but between getting older and his back issues, he no longer can carry the stuff he used to, or muscle the equipment in the same way. And I'm back on the farm full time, so getting stronk as fuck plus the testosterone is making things go faster, plus I think the hormonal birth control I was on before was causing issues. We carried trash out of the church basement late last night and I took two bags up that he couldn't lift and one of them wasn't all that heavy in my opinion. But maybe I've changed too.
I'm doing a hybrid garden, growing some things I want in with the PYO farm stuff, like paste tomatoes and jalapenos and some stuff will be in a separate garden for just me, like the 7.5 lbs potato seed that shipped today. I'm hoping to have the garden field rototilled by the end of the weekend so I can seed peas and some other spring things. We have been having weather whiplash with some days barely reaching 40F with some strong winds and saturday is supposed to be 70F. The peppers finally germinated, the little jerks, and I seeded tomatoes today. Farm raspberries are coming next week, strawberries the week after.
Monday I made so much mac and cheese that it required two cassarole dishes (my nice 9x13 glass baking dishes are in storage. somewhere) and I should have enough to last me through sunday night even when eating some of it for lunches. Having access to my chest freezer and bulk goods is helping immensely with eating enough food. Monday, I also repaired my Unihertz Tank Mini of its bricked screen, which I broke back in December. I was so pleased with myself at fixing it, worked great except....the MMS receiving problem. It didn't have this issue back in December but it does now so I'm still using my backup phone since I can't get group texts at all. I've tried some stuff but so far nothing has fixed it. Deeply annoying.
I'm going to a trans meetup group on saturday hopefully to start meeting people. I like my parents but honestly, I need to spent time with people that aren't them or employees. Crafting night has been deeply helpful with this as well
