unicornduke | Entries tagged with family

the raspberries are ripe a week or so early. I was hoping for a break between strawberry and raspberry picking but uhh. nope. the early blueberries are just about ready too, I ate the first one today. this is way way early. we have raspberries ready to pick.

this morning first thing (on the tractor and in the field by 6am) I finished the between-plastic-mulch spray that took me three tries because I broke the sprayer twice in two different ways that were easily fixed but if the fix takes more than an hour, I have to delay until the next morning or evening since it needs to be dead calm. my to-spray list is four items long. much to do. my afternoon break has been sending the email newsletter, facebook page, website, answering machine update about the raspberries and figuring out what the schedule for the rest of the summer will look like. we are going to be open part of sunday but I'll be able to get to pride after we close. I have to spray again tonight to finish the 3 acres of pumpkins on mulch if the wind dies down although it's pretty breezy right this minute.

it's fine. my sister was in town visiting for the last few days and what a gosh darn delight to see her again. She took some of the pressure off me by spending time with my mom and helping her around the house and also made us food.

She also did some lovely support for me as well, by listening to me rant about the parents for 45 mins and also her and her partner came with me to home depot and the grocery store monday to help me not have a mental breakdown in the store which helped so much. there was one point in the grocery where I was covering my face with my hands while they found the stuff they needed for chili but we got out of there pretty quickly after that so it was fine. home depot was fine, I had no issues there. why are grocery stores so terrible. surely someone has done the science on this. they're the worst. actually walmart is the worst but grocery stores are a close second.

apparently Z's support was all I needed to get me through the week because I haven't felt this calm or focused in about two months and I've been tackling my to do list this week and it's going well. support? helping??? wild. I think I haven't been ranting to friends or on the crafting zoom because there's only so many times that I want to complain and I'm sure listening to me complain about the same stuff over and over gets dull. so I type it all in here and you can respond if you want or tell me sister who has heard it before but not for a couple months.

anyway, I need to go fill the sprayer and put out cones to mark ripe raspberry rows and maybe take a quick nap

my parents just got home from their 5 days away and my mom said she was bored and didn't have much fun and from what she's said, she didn't make the effort to try and have fun

OKAY

there's no winning is there

successes is a terrible word to type out.

Thursday, I planted tomatoes and peppers into our vegetable beds by myself. Black biodegradable mulch. Fantastic stuff. At the end of the season, we simply plow it under and it degrades. It's made of corn or something. I love it so much. All the benefits of black plastic mulch with so much less of the downsides of having to pull it up at the end of the season. Certified organic farms can't use it, so sucks to be them and it is thinner than conventional black plastic so it'll rip more. But it's amazing. Anyway.

I ordered trays of plants from KubePak, a greenhouse in NJ. We don't have the starting space for the number of trays we need for all the plants, so we order from them. (I have a someday dream of building a 20x20 greenhouse because it could be heated by our woodburning stove. But the only good spot would be near the road where we park our rolling selling thingy, so it would be nice if it had a little selling area attached and it could be a year round little store....anyway, we don't have a lot of seed starting space) It can be pricey, but their plant quality is top tier and they have decent options for commercial growers. In case the gardeners are curious about our mix of plants, I ordered:

6 50count trays of Mariana (plum/paste tomato)
2 50 count trays of La Roma (plum/paste tomato)
1 50 count tray of Biltmore (slicer tomato)
1 50 count tray of Amish paste (big paste tomato, experiment)
3 50 count trays of Revolution II (green bell pepper)
1 50 count tray of Jalapenos
1 50 count tray of Carmen (Italian stuffing pepper)
1 105 count tray of Barbarella (Italian eggplant)

Plus, I had four trays of tomatoes and peppers that I seeded in smaller amounts (5-15 plants) and a tray of herbs. I started typing it all out but it's a lot of different varieties. The reasoning is that some folks like to use the other varieties since they have much better flavor for more fresh use. It's nice to have a bunch of different colors of tomato and also some weird varieties like Costoluto Genovese and Black Krim. For peppers, I seed some extra hot peppers and a bunch of different shape sweet peppers. I tried two more eggplant varieties and some tomatillos. Herbs are basil, dill, cilantro and parsley.

I planted the tomatoes all in before lunch and the peppers, eggplants and herbs after lunch, plus using the plastic push planter to seed one bed of green beans, 20 ft sections of purple and yellow wax beans and shell and snap peas. We ended up with about 120 extra feet in the tomato block so I might seed in some more for funsies. I've got more herbs to seed in as well since I'm doing a couple plantings of those.

In total, around 1000 plants. I was extremely sore by the end of the day and the next morning, but my little stretching routines seems to help a lot.

Friday, I organized a cookout. Jade is away tonight, so my original plan was to do it tonight, but given the weather today, I'm glad I changed it. On Monday, I texted the extended local family that we were having a cookout Friday night, 5:30ish, I'd have hot dogs, buns and smores fixings and they should all bring something if they wanted. We set up in the pavilion behind the church, I forked picnic tables out around the firepits that we set up. I brought over all the food and camp chairs around 4:45, got the fire going at 5 and was cooking my first cheese kielbasa over the fire by 5:30.

It was solid, everyone brought a ton of food including gluten free snickerdoodles which were delicious! I think my great aunt brought they specially for me which was very nice. My aunt brought her gluten free brownie recipe which is not very good but I eat one anyway and regret it. It has almond flour in it and you can tell. The grocery store now carries gluten free graham crackers so I finally had proper smores instead of my usual which is two pieces of chocolate sandwiching a marshmallow.

I ate so much food, hung out and then cleaned up and was out of there and back to the house by 10pm. Solid. Very good party, very pleased with how it went. Currently basking in "I'm a good party host" and I have lots of food to eat including so much fruit.

This morning I slept in so hard. It was so nice. The rain started overnight, so not much tractor work to be done. I'm somewhat working today, doing some computer work research and then drywall in the upstairs bathroom. I think I'm finally going to start spackling!

My mom was going to an estate sale and invited me along which was good because she would have bailed without me. Estate sales in this area are packed, so many people go to them. We picked up lots of useful tool stuff, snow shovels, jumper cables, hammers and other small things for a total of $36. Excellent.

I got some plying of old samples done over the last few days since I need to free up storage bobbins, so that's been going well. I finally remembered to make center pull balls instead of winding plying bracelets so I don't need to be attached to the yarn for so long. But it takes longer to wind, so sometimes I still do the plying bracelet. I don't own a center pull ball winder, so I just use a tube and wind it on that.

The farm has abruptly moved from winter to summer mode and my to-do list is long and complicated. I have moved into pruning raspberries which is way more unpleasant than blueberry pruning in that the raspberries will try and stab me in the face a lot. A baseball hat helps protect my face but my arms take a beating even with long sleeves. But I'm making good progress. I need to contact all of our workers from last year and figure out scheduling. I have started plowing. I'm currently digging up old drip tape. Doing cleanup of things we didn't get done in the fall.

We are t minus 3 weeks to strawberry planting so there's a ton to do. Technically we are ahead of where we were last year but also ack.

The bobcat was down longer than anticipated but all the parts were found and it only took an hour to fix. Ha. It took five hours to take the damn cylinder apart which was a process that we ended up using an eight foot breaker bar attached to a chain around the hitch of the truck via a come along to crack the nut holding things together. Like, human power was simply useless even with the 8 foot bar. But the actual seal replacement and putting it all back together took about an hour. But since I was working with my dad on it, that was a whole day of work that I was set back. I'm trying not to resent it because it was extremely valuable time for learning mechanical skills and spending time with him but also I know how much shit needs to get done and a whole day is a ton of time.

I have a lot of sidejob work built up that I'm struggling to get through without a lot of time off work. My evenings are pretty busy between crafting, game night and the farm meetings we keep having late at night because that's when we have time to meet.

I went up to the pottery studio to see if my stuff had been fired but apparently that was happening today despite being assured it would happen within two weeks when I was there a month ago. But the person who owns the studio had done a bulk buy with Azure so I got to ask her a bunch of questions and assured me it was easy to sign up and do. and I know

ranunculus has used them before, so I've committed and I'm going to buy a bunch of bulk goods because I've been needing bulk baking supplies.

I nearly had a meltdown in the grocery store today, I knew going was a bad idea but I needed food and timing wise, I needed to be there later than I would like to be. I'm just tired and not handling things well.

I have been trying to write up my feelings on the house situation so I stop being mad but honestly my dad used my toothpaste last night because he "couldn't find any other toothpaste" and that is just icing on the annoying cake. The worst part is that they aren't deliberately using my stuff or piling things in front of my stuff or moving my stuff to piss me off. They literally just cannot imagine something in their house not being theirs to use or move around as they want.

Seriously the most inconsiderate roommates I've ever had and that includes the ones that got busted for smoking pot in the dorm room at college. Part of the problem is that my previous roommates all had schedules that were offset somewhat from mine, so they would be up and using the common spaces slightly offset. They also had social lives and would leave me the fuck alone. Previous roommates also didn't sleep in the living room constantly or if they did, they didn't expect me to be quiet about what I was doing. At least 2 hours, probably closer to 4 hours a day either one of my parents is sleeping in the living room. It's nuts. They had two whole ass bedrooms to use in two different houses, but no, they have to sleep in the room that is joined to the two rooms I use the most (crafting room, my office). Probably I've never just had very inconsiderate roommates? I don't know but my autistic ass is not handling this well. The week while they were away was so lovely.

I'll admit, I am not exactly coping well with current work stress, parents and also the wider world although I have to say, trump beefing with the pope is just making me laugh so much. Fuck the catholic church but also shoutout to the pope for getting his ass. other than that, fucking stressful.

we were supposed to go camping last weekend but the weather was going to be bad, so we switched to staying at my brother's place, I took off work thurs and fri. my brother got covid so we switched to this week, so I took off work thurs and fri again. My sister caught a stomach bug this weekend but is mostly better and mom my just texted to cancel the whole thing because "everyone wasn't feeling well" which I'm pretty sure actually means that she's worried about getting farm work done (inferred from other texts about getting stuff done) and didn't actually ask someone to cover the farm stand for this week, so they couldn't possibly leave the farm.

it's so fucking infuriating. especially to have plans change at the last minute

it feels like they aren't willing to make the effort to come and see us. or that the farm comes before anything ever including spending time with their family. I go to the farm all the time, but I'm making the effort. and neither of my siblings go to the farm like I do because they have other stuff they're doing and it isn't as easy to get there for them.

And I get that the farm takes up a ton of time and effort, but they don't have livestock. they simply cannot manage to make time to take three whole days away from the farm the whole season.

I'm now fully out of vacation time since I already planned to take two days off at the end of the month to go to a friend's wedding. I usually bank a bunch up over the winter, but I used most of that in April for women's worlds.

I'm just annoyed and disappointed because their solution is to meet up in November. when we already see each other a bunch around the holidays. I'm already scheduling stuff for November on the weekends and I know I won't have any more vacation days to take off work because I normally use all those days in October for farm stuff.

arg. I'm going to sleep on it before I respond to the text.

It was chilly cold the last few days at home (not now here at my parents), so I bundled up in the afternoons and did some workshop work. I got a ramp built for Mara to handle the stairs at my parents, which was two 9 foot rough cut 2x4s with 3 10 inch connector 2x4s in between them. I then took mostly rough cut plank but also some smooth scrap pieces and screwed them down. Put together a quick 2x4 railing. When I got here, I cut a notch for the stair to rest in and attached the railing.

A rough narrow ramp up some stairs.

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Life is interesting. But Mom bought me four boxes of gluten free cookies at the store, so I'm happy.

Christmas gift shopping is complete.

Well. Almost.

The main things are all purchased but I've got a few extra little things to get, wire strippers to go with a solder kit, candy to go in a bag, that sort of thing.

The only thing I'm not 100% sure on is my brother's girlfriend. She doesn't always come up and my parents usually get her a gift card (they get all the girlfriends gift cards, including Jade, who more or less is on the same level at this point). I don't know her super well so I don't really know what to get her. My brother is basically useless when it comes to christmas gifts, he prefers to give the steam wishlist pick which is getting silly at this point. He also never communicates so shrug

I might be able to give her an extra mug I ordered from Effin' Birds (delightful swearing birds) but I also don't remember if she's the type to laugh at that sort of thing. I dunno.

Either way, I think all the gifts that I need to personally handle right now have arrived, the one I placed an order from today I sent directly to my parents because I was afraid it wouldn't get here in time and Jade's gift can be opened by her when it gets here. That's a commission so it will be a couple of weeks and I won't be in town at that point.

I am feeling good though, because I think all my gifts are pretty good this year. Some I talked directly to the person and some I made a good guess.