It is a mystery

Strawberry season is a sprint. It comes early in the season, it's intense, it's constant. 

I have a cold. 

My mom got sick early this week and spent the first part of the week sanitizing every surface but also just continuing to sit downstairs and breathe in the same room as the rest of us. Probably she got me sick even before that but who knows. I know she doesn't mask at the stores. Her cold manifested as incredible coughing and she went to the doctor about it yesterday. My cold so far is sore throat and vague tiredness. 

I'm still working the register because I can't not. No one else can do the setup right now. Or that's not technically true, but my mom is involuntarily coughing and my dad is frantically planting pumpkins. I don't have any masks either. I've been running low and forgot to order more. I desperately wish I had some of the light medical masks but I haven't left the farm since Monday - before I felt sick. I've got all the windows and doors open on the RST and I'm sanitizing my hands...maybe my mom has some somewhere...

Thankfully, I have a new employee for the register. She's fantastic. She's a neighbor's teenage kid and she picked up the register work very quickly and is reliable. I'm so happy about it. We've got her working five hours a day, 4-5 days a week which frees me up to do farmwork. Or this week, probably go sleep. 

*adds this to the irritation pile* mostly I'm too tired to be irritated to be honest. ha, my mom texted back, she does have light medical masks and will bring my some. just need to figure out if I'll be open tomorrow with the rain we've got coming

ETA: I feel way better about working now that I've got a mask, my N95s would be way to hard to talk through, my throat is not standing up well to all this talking

I actually took a nap today which is not a thing I normally do. 

We opened for strawberry picking today for a half day from 8am to 12pm. This meant I was down at the field setting up at 6:45am because there was much to do. Me and dad had moved the RST (rolling selling thingy which is a prototype ice fishing house they got ten years ago now) and plopped it down at the west farm late last night but didn't finish setup because it was already 8pm. I had trouble falling asleep because I ate dinner almost at 9pm.

First customer got there at 7:15am. Sigh. We had lots of pickers and everything ripe pretty much got picked. It's light picking currently, we only have a few early varieties and so they ripen ahead of the main season. We warn people picking is light and they simply don't listen. 

I was On Register the whole time. It's exhausting doing retail stuff. I understand why my mom doesn't want to do it anymore but my god I absolutely 100% don't want to do it. We're getting a worker for half of the days and she's starting next week, so I have to suffer through this weekend. I need to find a farm partner/worker who really likes that shit because it's terrible. I don't mind doing it for a little bit but ugh. Exhausting

While chatting with a customer, I got the idea to make pancakes for lunch with strawberries and whipped cream. So I did that. And then I had a 30 min nap on the couch. 

I successfully did a new thing this afternoon: fertigating! Irrigation + fertilizer, it has a whole complicated setup. 

One thing I've been trying to figure out how to manage is my garden. I haven't worked on it at all. Once I'm done for the day, I'm tired enough that I don't want to go back out and do more stuff out there. Part of it is that I thought about my work hours (6 days a week, 8am to 7pm with an hour lunch = 60 hours a week), well duh I'm tired a lot. So I think I'm just going to give it up for now and figure out something for next year. I've got peas and potatoes in the ground and I'll be happy to eat them when they're ready. I think I need to narrow my focus a bunch to maybe some small flowers around the house and then see if I can manage something else at some point. 

I started watching The Repair Shop again and boy howdy it's a delight as always. I also have realized I want to be like Jay, the host. He's so dapper and also a furniture restorer. And I started the next season of Taskmaster which has been a gosh darn delight. 

Thank goodness it won't be as hot for a couple of days coming up. Full body sweating. Ick. 

oops #1 - Sunday, I took the bobcat down the road to my grandpa's partner's farm so we can pick rocks. We will be planting pumpkins in that field, need to plow and there's some big frickin rocks. Dad told me to take it the back way, down across the back of the neighbor's field and across a small creek to get to the field. It is possible to just go down the road, but the bobcat has a top speed of around 1.5mph. I took my chainsaw and safety gear and cleared a tree out from in front of the creek which was easy. The creek is lined with rocks in that spot and it used to be a 4 wheeler riding path until the tree blocked it. It's been raining so much here lately, but the creek wasn't high, only three feet across and shallow. 

I got the bobcat stuck in the bank out of the creek which was quite steep. Sigh. Thankfully, the tractor was already at the farm hooked up to the dump trailer, so I unhooked it, called my employee and had him bring a chain down and he pulled me out. I left some eight inch deep ruts, so that wasn't ideal. 

oops #2 - yesterday, I spent some time mowing the tops of the weeds that are in the strawberry field. This is a thing we do when we've lost control of the weed situation and it isn't going to be done by hand before we open. Plus that section is not super healthy due to last year's lack of weed control. We've been hand weeding the good sections but it takes a very long time because the weeds are large and often curly dock, which we use a shovel to slice through the root and then remove the top of the plant. Huge pain. I was mowing along in the tractor we call the little stinker. It's  a cute little narrow tractor that has fantastic visibility because it's a tiny little thing with a short and narrow cab. Not very tall. I had dropped the deer fence so I could turn around, my tires went into the dip at the edge of the field and I didn't pick up the mower high enough and caught the deer fence in the mower. Spent an hour getting it out of the mower. 

During the rock picking Sunday, my steel toed boots gave up the ghost. They were probably 10 years old and I didn't use them much for my previous job, so they sat and the rubber soles started to disintegrate. One of the soles disconnected from the boot so it was only hanging on by the toe. So I got new boots this morning. Composite toe, so not steel toed, but still safety rated. Steel toe boots are useful but they are quite cold in the winter to work in. I'm using the chainsaw this afternoon, so I wanted new boots ASAP. I'm putting water proofing on them right now. Red wing brand which came recommended by my dad for good waterproofing and durability, so I'm hoping they last.

I also got a new-to-me phone. Unihertz help desk gave up on me. I did receive two groups texts from a random group chat at one point, so they figured it was Verizon's end and said I was beyond help. So I picked up a somewhat rugged verizon phone on ebay for $40, popped the sim card in and that is now my call and text phone with my tank mini doing everything else. I can set aside the motorola power g that has suffered so much at my hands. Disappointing end to that, but pretty clearly verizon is the problem. Really frustrating. My dad has been thinking about switching to US mobile and thought maybe switching carriers might help, but I dunno. I'm not on their plan, so I don't have to and it is cheaper, but I want to say those services that piggyback off of verizon or other big carriers can be a bit more unreliable. 

My potatoes have finally sprouted! Took them long enough. I haven't had a chance to plant more things because of work and non-spot rain, so I'm hoping to seed some things in the next week or so. 

I typed up a whole thing but deleted it because it became tedious to type, let alone read.

Highlights of the wedding weekend: delicious food, seeing many of my relatives, dancing, dog wrangling, the entire afterparty

Lowlights: staying up very late each night and waking up at 7am, a girlfriend of one of my brother's friends getting very drunk and being weirdly obsessed with my dad and then asking invasive questions about each of the family members

I'm still recovering from the absolute messing up of my sleep schedule. I was the only sober person at various points, so I drove S and L over to the hotel where we hung out after the wedding and then home, so sleep time that night was at 1am. They did ditch a lot of the traditional wedding nonsense like groomsmen and bridal party, the traditional dances, speeches, all that stuff, so the ceremony and reception were very streamlined and nice. Lots of socializing time plus the food was amazing. I got to take care of the dogs and walk one down the aisle and then take them home, which was a nice little break and I got back in time for the reception.

The afterparty was a lot more fun, some absolutely delicious BBQ and lots of sitting around chatting, then I played volleyball and then we all hung out by the bonfire. We cleaned up all the party stuff Sunday relatively quickly, which surprised me. My brother was up until 7am that morning and woke up extremely hungover around 2pm, which was about the time we had wrapped up cleaning up everything.

Written last night: 

I went and got the rest of my stuff today. it was supposed to be a doctors appointment too but I just canceled that. It was my endo at the trans clinic in ny but I just need to find a provider down here and I couldn't bear to deal with the complications of insurance/lack of that is my life right now. I got the big truck, supplies and hit the road early.

Got to the house around 11am, loaded all my stuff up and hit the road around 3pm, stopping at the grocery store for cheese and crackers. the only things left are the 12 ft boards and the cut up fencing which F said was fine to leave. She's unsure if she's going to be able to keep the house in the end, there's lots of fuckery with the bank, so I committed to getting the boards and fencing by June.

I had to stop only once to adjust straps on the load, which was great considering I didn't pack it particularly well by my standards. Lots of oddly shaped things. Two rocking chairs, three rolls of fencing, chop saw. Things like that. Awkward. Tarped everything.

Thankfully mostly missed the absolute whopper of a thunderstorm that was rotating north west through the area I was driving, only five minutes of downpour where I had windshield wipers on full blast and I slowed down. south of me, that storm was popping up flood warnings behind it, so I really wanted to get through it. There is no cover at the farm when I got home with all the equipment we had stored, so I left the truck out but tarp on, parked on a small slope. Nothing in there should be super ruined by rain, it's mostly stuff from the shed with a few exceptions.

I think one piece of china might have cracked from the potholes and those rode in the passenger seat so they were as cushioned as they could be. I also got the giant hunk of lard from the freezer, that's living in the church fridge for now and I'll have to process it in the next two weeks or so. But I can do it in the church so I don't stink up the house.

I'm so tired. The antibiotics are kicking my ass and I almost didn't make the run to get my stuff. Bedtime now.

This morning writing:

Feeling much refreshed from a long sleep. Busy day today, unloading the truck into the barn, getting my next rabies shot. I got a call from someone at the hospital on monday about billing and she said I was likely to be covered and to bring some paperwork with me and she would help with the application for health care and all that jazz. Then farming. Always more farming.

Everything is so wet right now

Monday was a delightful day. I went to local down T instead of slightly larger town D because I wanted to get a library card there too. I wandered through the grocery store and since the library didn't open until 10, wandered around the downtown looking at the shops. Found a restaurant I want to try that said they have gluten free options which is very cool. Made a couple of phone calls and then headed into the library. The librarian at the desk was extremely helpful and immediately pinged me as trans, asking if I had a preferred name and pronouns which I was pleased with. She emphasized I could use any bathroom I wanted and if anyone gave me trouble to come to them. Fantastic, really pleased. Then she gave me a tour! I haven't been to that library since like, 2005 or something so she took me around. They have a little bookstore in the back that you can buy books from all the time as well.

Then we really got chatting, turns out she's been to our farm, she has a farm with her siblings and they sell beef and chicken and honey. And then we started talking about fiber arts and all sorts of things. So that was a delight. She had some recommendations for places to find fun things in the area, books we chatted about and some other things. It was a delight. We connected on facebook so we can chat.

I made a maple banana custard pie with a oat flour shortbread crust which turned out incredible. The oat flour crust was in place of a graham cracker crust and I highly recommend it. I used oat flour that I made with my little flour mill, so it still had some texture (I think also a food processor would work) and it absorbed all the maple goo but also stayed a little bit crunchy. So good. Also made blueberry bars and bread. And tacos that night for dinner.

This whole rest of the week has been preparing for strawberry planting. Both of the tractors that can pull the plows developed leaks in the rear tires last week, so Tuesday I ran the second tire down to a tire place to be fixed and check in about the first tractor that went down. These are both the tires that had issues last year and were replaced with tubed tires. They suck. If they break again, we're buying new tubeless tires since those seem just fine given literally every other tractor tire last forever. This is second or third repair on both of those tubed tires. Did some other stuff tuesday like weed and take off seedheads in the rhubarb. We'll open those for picking next week after we mow around them. 

Wednesday, I worked on irrigation setup and then picked the tractor tires up. That night, dad and I put them on using the bobcat skidsteer which was pretty quick in comparison to normal efforts.

Thursday I plowed. It went pretty quick, we have a four bottom plow and the hardest part of getting the starting rows straight since you put your tire into the track of the previous plow pass. Then. More irrigation work. Dad put our worker on disking which went decently while dad worked on fertilizer.

Friday we realized that the forecast was looking dire, with at least three days of all rain starting saturday night. Given we usually do a saturday/sunday planting, this was bad. So we kicked into high gear. I did more irrigation work (ugh!) which is tedious and difficult. But I got the water running and the lines flushed and then had to reconfigure the setup at the start of the strawberry field. Then I trenched the supply line using the middle buster, laid out the distance flags for dad to aim at (every five rows and you align on the tractor tracks for the rest of the rows), and did something else.

We got planting around 4pm in the end, which was fine. After 12 rows, we turned the irrigation line on and absolutely blew the pressure way too high whoops. So we turned on some of the strawberry blocks from last year and also turned the power down on the pump. Learned where all the leaks were in last year's block and ignored them. There's always a lot of leaks, mostly from animals chewing the lines since we didn't renovate those berries. They desperately need to be weeded. On the list.

Mom and I were on the planter, dad was driving and our worker followed along and made sure the berries were fully in the ground. Worker left around 7pm, the rest of us kept planting until 8.

To do after I finish eating breakfast/typing this: finish trench down at west, plant until extra competent worker arrives, go do trenching, irrigation setup in the field next to the house including moving the pump (ugh) since we only have one running pump right now. The other two were at the shop being fixed and I got the text yesterday that they were done. Looks like almost a quarter inch of rain coming overnight but between all the workers and the effort, we might get most of it all done. The planter is so slow (.83mph) and there's a lot of rows to do, so my dad said we usually manage an acre a day. A half acre got done yesterday (a quarter of the plants), so we'll see what we can do.

Saturday was a working day with employees here working. It was hot hot hot and sunny. There was a breeze but it only helped so much.

We got half of the required blueberries pulled. Those blueberries are the wrong variety that the nursery sent us and they are mixed into a block that is called the "early riskies". Those are early producing blueberries that taste good. The wrong plants are not early, they are mid to late season and they are mediocre taste. So we got ahold of the nursery and let them know and they are sending replacements this week. But the 4 year old plants need to be pulled out. I put one worker on the tractor (Kubota 7040 orchard tractor. It's tiny but mighty) and I was on the ground. I used a tire strap loop, wrapped around the base of the plant and had him pull the tractor forward, around half of the time, it tightened up and caught on the middle of the bush and pulled it out. I figured out it helped to jam a shovel into the ground a couple of times to loosen the plant up. If it still slipped, I would tighten the strap as tight as possible and cinch it with fencing wire that I had in the back of my truck. that got almost all of the plants. There were a few that still slipped, so those got more shovel stabbing of roots. So one row is down, around 25 plants.

The other employee was doing the thankless job of pulling the dead johnsongrass out of the spartan blueberry rows, so we can get sprays and woodchips down better, so after lunch I switched her to pruning blackberries. We're pretty sure only one variety of blackberries survived the winter, they aren't winter hardy to our temperatures generally, so we lose half of the crop pretty regularly. The problem is that they're the thornless varieties, much less hardy than thorned ones. But I don't know that people will want to pick the thorned ones. Something to work on. There's training the thornless ones onto a folding trellis and stuff, not sure we have the capacity to get it done. I swapped the guy working with me to pulling more johnsongrass and I went and starting moving woodchips.

We are mulching all of the raspberries with woodchips this year, changing it up from straw since the chips are easier. I got the raspberries on this side of the road all mulched this week and now I need to do the spartan blueberries and the raspberries across the road. I got a couple loads dumped that afternoon and then stopped to send the employees off at 4pm, quick chat about schedules for the week and checked the radar. Big storm blob approached, so I wanted to get one more load done. Ran over with the tractor, got it loaded, the sky started sprinking as I headed across the road. Got the load dumped, no problem. As I headed back to the house, I could see the mountains in the distance start to disappear. That's generally bad if you want to stay dry. I crossed the road, parked the tractor, closed my truck bed cover and sprinted to the house because the skies opened up. It was a half hour thunderstorm complete with the power going out briefly.

Everything was soggy after that, so I gave up on working and showered and got ready for the support group. It was decent. Small group and at the beginning the facilitator had made a comment about how the group had been quite large in it's first session in January, but gotten smaller since then, and around halfway through, someone came in late and then I understood why. The person who came in was one of those people who have something to say about everything else other people are talking about and also it was all about her. The facilitator did her best, but I get why a lot of people would have bailed. It was a decent chat though and I'm glad I went. I also got to see the downtown, which I haven't been down there in ages. It looked like there were some decent restaurants and stuff in the area, so I'll have to go and explore.

Yesterday was a lazy day. Dad and I chatted about schedules and plans and since everything was still wet, we couldn't do a ton of stuff. Oh terrible. I got my contribution to easter dinner baked (blueberry fruit bars) and then started working on the rototiller. It's a Howard, which is pretty indestructible which is good because we have a lot of rocks. We take the center tines off to renovate the strawberries and when I want to use it to prep a field, I need to put tines back on. It's a pain. But I like the rototiller for smaller plots. The potatoes still haven't arrived which is baffling, the shipping notice says they haven't given it to USPS yet. So it's somewhere. I'll get the rototilling done today and plant some peas.

Dad and I did a quick scouting and then headed up to the family party. It was a little quieter than some years, but it was a nice time. My cousin made some roasted lamb that was incredible. Lots of mashed potatoes. Yum. I caught up with family and then wandered out to the porch in my socks to watch the volleyball game. After 20 minutes or so, my uncle called me out and said if I was laughing, I should put my mouth where my money is. So I hopped down in my socks and we played valleyball until it got dark. Incredible fun. Ate some more dessert and then headed home and right to bed.

I ran for groceries this morning and also got a library card! Now I've got yogurt on the stove and then rototilling and crafting on the agenda for the rest of the day. Plus laundry.

Wednesday night, I took the big truck and myself and a fuckload of tarps and ratchet straps up to NY. I was determined. I was Getting Everything.

lol no

But I got up there Wed night and chatted with F about what the plan was, all the stuff I was taking and what was going to happen. During this conversation, she said "oh I wasn't sure if you were taking the fencing, so I figured I could give it to Farm BIL". me: wtf. I absolutely said multiple times that I was taking the fencing. I understand she's stressed. She didn't contemplate much of how the mortgage thing was going to work until like, beginning of March, but she said she was going to handle it, so I am letting her handle it. So she's finally scheduled her refinancing which will be June 2. And the bear came by and rummaged through many things and also pulled down a light fixture because it thought it was a bird feeder. But also, whatever.

I got up in the morning and ran over to the uhaul place and picked up a trailer. It's one of the 5x9's with a ramp and it's a nice solid little high sided trailer. I took it back and unhitched it in the driveway and started loading my truck. I laid a tarp down in the bed and then tucked another one just under the front of that one and flopped it over the top of the cab while I packed. I had a couple bins and boxes but the main thing was all of my spinning wheels and my skein reel. They are large, hard to stack and delicate antiques.

So I used the bins and boxes as my base and then set the great wheel laid down first, padded with dog beds. Then I put blankets on top of it and the boxes and foam and laid the two CPW wheels on top of those plus B's tiny wheel. My flax wheel rode shotgun in the cab. Then I took the bases of the wheels and put some on top of the extra foam and then added some more flat bins and set them on there.

I paused packing and went to my doctors appointment. F offered to let me use her car, which I did borrow and it was very helpful, so I didn't need to strap down the truck mid packing and drive around with it more than necessary. This was another teach appointment for my testosterone shots. I successfully did do the thing! Hated it so much omg. Took me three tries. I am apparently facing many things I fear (stabbing myself, ladders). I got my prescriptions renewed and some supplies yay! This appointment did start 20 mins late and also ran pretty long. I then dropped the spare shearing clippers J had lent me at a farm he'll be shearing at soon (with their permission) and headed home.

Then I tried to get my reel and desk chair up in the back of the truck. And accidentally knocked the base of my reel off the tailgate of the truck and it hit a small table on the way down and broke. The table has split straight down the middle clean, so I should be able to glue it back together pretty easily. This is also around the time I got angry, hungry and dehydrated probably so I was not having a good time. I packed more stuff in the bed of the truck, as much as I could manage, with the desk chair laying facedown on the boxes and the reel laying on it's side on the back of the chair since it was soft and that was the best I could do. I flipped the top tarp down over the whole load of stuff, strapped everything down, jammed the tarp edges down between the stuff and the bed and tied down the back.

Then I hooked the trailer back up and loaded that. First in was the small chest freezer full of frozen things. I brought a dolly with me and it was remarkably easy to get it into the trailer, way easier than I thought it would be by myself. Then I put the snowblower behind it and some cabinets. I got F's help to load up my workbench, which I decided I was going to take because it's a nice workbench. This was another object that F was like, oh I wasn't sure if you were taking that. I packed things under the bench and behind the bench. I absolutely could have packed more things on the trailer if I had more time, but it was getting to 3:30pm with last leave time of 4pm and I still had to tarp and strap and talk to F.

The tarping and strapping went quickly and easily, the talking to F because incredibly annoying very quickly. The things I left in the house were: a lamp, weights and one display board. I left some more stuff outside and in the shed and she pointed at everything I left asking if I was taking all of those things. After the fifth or sixth thing, I snapped that I was taking all of the things that I hadn't explicitly said I was leaving behind and I would be back for them in May or June. I deliberately prioritized getting the stuff out of the house so she could have that space to use, but apparently she just was going to try and keep more of my stuff or give it away???? I was pissed at her and me at this point and thinking about the weather and sunset and the long fucking drive I had. I just told her I'd be back for my stuff and feel free to move it around, but I'd get it out of her hair.

Then I hit the road. I headed to the pharmacy 20 mins away and got my prescriptions (except for the actual needles, so I need to figure out how I'm going to pick those up. I have four that the RN gave me, so I have some starting point but idek), checked all my straps and tightened them down and adjusted the mirror that was out of wack and hit the actual road. Leave time 5pm with a 4 hour drive. I stopped once to add more straps to the trailer because the tarp was flapping too much.

There was a hairy 45 minutes around 8:00pm where the sun had set and it was pouring rain and I had just gotten off the highway and the road they laid in the last two years as very shiny in the rain and I couldn't see shit including if the trailer was still okay behind me. And then it started snowing. I stopped in a tiny town to refuel and update my parents, stretch my legs and after that it was smooth sailing. Five minutes down the road, the snow pretty much stopped, there was very little traffic and I got home around 9:15. Dad helped me find a place to park everything under cover and then I went inside and tried to relax. It was pretty chilly, so I wasn't worried about the frozen stuff, so I literally brought in my backpack and the bag of food that ended up on the trailer and went to bed.

This morning I got up, ravenous because I didn't actually eat dinner, just driving snacks. Ate, showered, felt like a real person again. Then I had to unload everything. I had only put a few things behind the chest freezer, so it was pretty simple to get it out and into the house along with my bulk food bin. Then everything else from the trailer went into the barn (workbench which I just dragged out, snowblower, lawnmower, AC unit (might go to shed), some cabinets), and I dropped the trailer. Then took the truck over to the shed and unloaded almost everything else. A few things went back to the house once I uncovered them. There's still space open in the shed, but that's because I'm great at packing.

The spinning wheels all made it intact thankfully and the tarps on the truck kept everything nice and dry. The tarp on the trailer did less good of a job but I didn't put anything back there that couldn't take a little wet or I didn't care much about.

I got the trailer to the rental place around 10am.

And then I worked on raspberry pruning all afternoon. I'm tired and sore today and grumpy about how the trip went. I knew that was a possibility that I'd run short on time, so I know better for next time I guess.

Yesterday was busy. I asked my mom to spend a little time cleaning out my room so I could get my dresser in. First thing I did was take the big truck over and start unloading my stuff out of it. Turns out it was the fish run, where the state releases fish in to the creek, so there was five vehicles parked over by the church. So I had to chat with the neighbors. I was waiting on dad to help with the two big items in the truck, but the neighbors ended up coming over and helping which was really nice of them. I went and pruned blueberries after that.

Came back to the house and omg my mom got the room so cleaned! There's still two big shelves and some boxes, but I can fit a lot more stuff in there. I exchanged the mattress of the bed for mine and discovered why the old bed had a bunky board instead of a box spring with that bed frame. My bed is So Tall. I unloaded my truck into the house and sorted out the less important things that could be stored in the shed.

By mid afternoon, everyone had left the church (I guess fish aren't interesting in the afternoon?) and dad pulled the trailer over and I took my truck and unloaded almost everything by myself. The only thing I needed help with was the desk. Turns out I can lift a lot more stuff than I expected. Got it all neatly jammed into the shed, with a lot more space available, so I need to actually move my box stacks onto and below the table and move some things over to where they are.

I got my dresser into my room, yay! and just left everything in piles. Then went out to split wood. I love the skidsteer wood processor. It's so cool. Chugged through a bunch of that since dad said he had one more tote of sap to boil (he boiled all day), and I finished up my splitting, headed across the road and dad said omg why didn't you see my phone call, we're almost out of sap and you can't let the pans get too low. He needed the bobcat to lift the new sap tote up that high and I'd been using it. He ran off to get the bobcat and the new tote while I fed the boiler and watched the water level.

Turns out the sap was no good, smelled like vinegar and my phone had been trying to connect to the wifi and didn't allow me to get the calls. In the end, dad hooked up the water and made it in time. But that's the end of the maple syrup season, the buds are finally pushing here. It was 75F yesterday, very hot. The boiler was incredibly hot when it was time to load, so much that my bare arms were pinkish the rest of the night like a light sunburn.

I ate tamales and went to bed.

This morning, I spent time working on the farm website, which we switched to wordpress since it's easy enough. I also organized my room a bit, so I could actually find my sheets and I can sleep with my blankets tonight instead of my sleeping bag. Then I helped mom and dad carry all of the syrup over to the church for bottling. 13 gallons plus another 3 that still needed to be filtered which is pretty solid for one boiling.

Then dad and I went into the church belfry. This requires going up a 20 ft ladder placed against the wall of the church up into a trap door. I am scared of high ladders. Absolutely terrified. It took me two tries but I got up there and I'm glad I did. It was really neat! The stained glass is pretty and there's an actual bell up there that can be rung even if the bells that ring on a regular basis are electrical with speakers. We're going to try and date the bell and find out who made it, there's a mostly readable imprint that says "name" Bell Foundry Co. We also got some measurements for the louvers because currently the birds come in them were the screens are broken and have nests on the ones that aren't broken. I did successfully climb back down the ladder but I was so terrified that I was involuntarily whimpering the whole time and made my dad uncomfortable.



The bell still can be rung, there's a manual ringer in the bottom left of the corner and the rope still passes into the stairwell below it. The plywood ring behind the bell is a modification since the rope would apparently jump off the wheel when pulled.

After that, I went and pruned another two rows of blueberries, the last in the big block and scouted the farm fields to get a sense of what needs to be done in the next week or two.

Dad needed help with unloading the flooring into the house, so I helped with that after a brief break to hang out with my mom as she cleaned up from bottling and before my dad came over with the trailer of flooring. It took us a bit to figure out where to stack all the flooring because there's quite a bit of it but we did it with lots of breaks for dad's back.

My mom finished up her stuff and went to make dinner, which she threw some french fries in the oven for me (they got fishsticks) and I made cream dried beef which I poured over french fries and was absolutely stick to the ribs delicious. I'm off farm work tomorrow since Mondays will be my day off plus it's raining tomorrow. I have Plans. Risotto Plans.

they're very good at the chaos and subsequent wrangling!

They got the call this morning that their flooring is all done and can be picked up! The lumber place is five minutes around the corner from me and it's now up to 70% chance of rain saturday through monday.

So my parents will be driving up friday to get lumber and then we'll load their truck as full as we can, plus my truck and take it all down. I'm sure I'm going to leave things behind but hopefully it will be all outdoor or shed things which will be easy to pick up when I come up in april for a doctors appointment.

now I really need to get the last few things packed up and get cleaning

eta: the leftovers will be too much for just my truck I suspect, so I will plan to bring the big truck and maybe my uncle's little trailer up or just the big truck next week when it isn't raining and get the rest of it. the two trucks friday will have the largest stuff and the most important stuff