the year of 2015

New Year’s Eve

What I did right last year? 

           So instead of New Year’s resolutions I am going to reflect back on last year and what I did right or tried to do.  As I sit here and reflect on this , this is much tougher for me to do as I have to remember just what it was I was trying to do last year at this time, so I am going to do some research and go back through my blog and see if I can come up with some old resolutions and see how I moved forward with those. Anyhow this will give me some background on what I was trying to accomplish as well as my resolutions for this year.

        First I want to reflect on what I have heard tonight already. Why even do resolutions? My answer to that is, it is a conscious modification of behavior, regardless whether you follow through or not, just admitting that you may have a flaw in your character you would like to work on or even a plan for a better life is something you can consciously project on your subconscious if you take the time to think about it. Planting those seeds of thought will project them and manifest its way to fruition eventually. If not this year, then maybe next, as each year you say to yourself, as an example, I am going to lose weight and be more active. If you don’t do it this year and knowingly add on ten pounds it will become a more pressing issue with you next year. If you do nothing, nothing gets done and the problem manifests itself much to your detriment in a negative way. Weight doesn’t come off if you do nothing. 

 

the rat pack (then)

 

now 12-31-15

    But even a slight modification of your normal routine will result in some change or at least allow you to maintain at the present level. If you know you need to be more active and eat less, eventually if you keep thinking about the problem and making yourself aware, you will eventually do something about it.

    Weight is a common problem, much like smoking or quitting cussing, or writing more as is often my case. I know the more I write the better my style is and develops itself. And the more interesting I am to the reader. What am I going to do with it? I really don’t know, but just enjoy the moment when I am writing and typing and letting my mind run freely as I go along formulating sentences and coming to conclusions. Some people need to lay it all out, and I do that in some ways in my mind as I go along. The more I write the better I get at it, practice makes perfect, or so they say.

       I went back and looked for any resolutions I might have had from last year and I found one on 1-3-2015 where I kind of went on about building the addition on my current house. To that end I think I finished the year with a bang. Today I managed to bring home 2 huge logs that are hickory from a tree taken down at the neighbors. These are a couple of beautiful logs and I hope to get at least 1000 board foot of 1x6 or even 1x8 plank flooring sawed out of for the second floor of my cabin floor. I just have them home now and after I am able to get plates on the dump truck will take to my friend Willy’s house in Cambridge, (shhhhh don’t tell him , he  doesn’t know yet) , and saw these logs and a couple of cherry logs I have into board lumber to use on my cabin. Will load it back on the truck and bring home and stick it to air dry in the shed to use about a year from now. Willy has a band saw mill and although I plan on ripping logs with my chainsaw, the flooring would be much easier to plane if it was band sawed, and would probably be truer in size and shape. He offered to let me bring it up and use it but I think I would rather take down to him unless I get crazy and build my own band saw instead which I would like to do but I am restricted by time to get everything done.

      I still have masonry and have to get enough logs for the side of the cabin cut and drying. I have accumulated a pretty good size pile and also have gathered up some huge cornerstones for the lower side of the cabin. Also I have a large hearthstone of sandstone, if I so want to use it for a fireplace or even as an entry for my cabin. I also have numerous beams from another cabin that i have acquired as result of carving a couple of frogs for and have those to use also if I can incorporate them into my design.

     So in some respects considering the foundation work I have done so far and materials I have acquired and that I am slowly getting together here on the farm, I would say I am moving ahead with my goals I set for myself last year as my goals was simple considering all I had really set for myself was to start to build. I have done that, and much more.

      I also finished the carving for my friend who has yet to pick it up. I also had my 3^rd greenhouse open house and made hay and started a raspberry patch for pick your own raspberries. Wrote numerous postings on my blog and was able to draw up plans for the addition to my house. I have lost weight and though some of these goals and accomplishments were not stated as resolutions to you the public. It was something I had to do for myself and as a result of doing the house addition, some of what I accomplished on the side is a result of that instance. Some of it is stuff I have been accumulating with no real goal in mind till I decided to build an addition.

        In the end it has not been a major effort on my part but instead slow steady progress with a goal in mind. A lofty goal no less and it will be a long undertaking with hopefully the results I am hoping to achieve. If I had no goals then I am just coasting. Coasting leads to an empty life. At least for me it does , I have always felt driven just that sometimes I just never knew where I was headed to. But with my advancing age and knowing my back will someday give me more problems than I have now I know I have to do all I can now to hopefully circumvent that process and in the end make my life easier and better for my overall general health allowing me to live a long life.

      I never figured I would make it this far. 60 is an age I never anticipated or desired , yet now that I am faced with it , I know that I am capable of much more as I still feel young at heart and never defeated , and instead coming into my own. Hopefully I can take all of my readers along for a ride as I start on my next decade of self-improvement. Who knows maybe someday I might be perfect. Well if I live long enough that is, and I am not too old to appreciate it. Doubt if I will ever be perfect, instead I will be me.

1-03 2015

Cold and Rainy

still working on it 

       Was supposed to be freezing rain but instead I believe we have the just plain rain, kind of day when you want to roll over and say what the heck , a couple more hours sleep won’t hurt me. Instead something inside says well maybe if I get up and try to get a few things done inside maybe I can still make something out of the day. I guess it is official that 2014 went down as being the warmest on record. It didn’t get a reprieve up until the last minute was so out of character in terms of temperature and overall mood. This leaving us less hopeful that days of snowy weather and of winter memories we had as a kid will soon disappear along with the cold as we become one of those states like Missouri and Kentucky who get occasional bouts of freezing rain and black ice to signal a winter of their memory and type as no snow just miserable bouts of orneriness to test our resolve. Not quite cold enough to be pretty with snowcapped pine trees, layer the ground in a blanket of white and still be able to kill the bugs, instead we forced to reside under an umbrella and view out upon shades of brown bleak gray days, followed by long periods of darkness and dreariness. What have we as humans done to ourselves? We can figure out most anything as a species except when enough is enough and try and fix our wrongs.
      The cold when it does come to January seems to be punctuated by a numbing pain inducing cold to all extremities not protected as it was the last couple of days. Although the temperature climbed above freezing, my fingers were still cold as grabbed the grip of my chainsaw and worked a few hours outside. On the first or New Year’s Eve, a friend visited for a few hours.  As well I loaded a large round bale for a steady buyer of the hay produced here on the farm. Not a bad way to finish the year and begin a new one. I know this year that I need to house more of my round bales one way or another to protect them as the hay is quite good and a shame to see me lose the top layer to the elements. I tried the plastic wraps but wasn’t too impressed with them. At first I thought they were a whole bag where you slip the whole bale in there, instead it leaves both ends open, and without tying bricks on the corner of the plastic to weigh it down, and keep it from flapping , the bags are useless and may contribute more to loss of hat due to moisture damage then without on the bale.
    I thought that losing the cattle would be tough , tough is spending a lot of money  and working just as hard to keep a few, when it is much easier to do a hundred and make some money and be able to afford to live. There again one hundred takes a lot more pasture and fences and time, as well as feed. Al of which was doable but unfortunately not in my lifetime and for what?  I only have red beef only on rare occasions when I feel I need it to ward off a vitamin deficiency. Besides they were pets and it would be like me doing something to one of my pets.  Feeding isn’t much of a problem with the large hay bales and the cows do clean them up as well, if they are on pasture will pick around and find a bit to forage on here and there if you have some good winter pasture. For me I would rather spend a few minutes loading someone else’s truck than worry about my cows welfare and other variables of whether I can keep my costs down and maybe try and make a buck for the farm.
      Now instead, in the winter I can take my time getting out on these cold gray miserable days as only Ohio can make them and instead spend time worrying about my new project that I have spoken of before on here. That is making me a new house with what I have available to me. As I said before I really don’t see myself going anywhere and if I did I would always need a place to land and here is about a nice a place in this maddening world where everywhere we turn the country is being eaten up by developers. It just seems strange that we can’t work with what we have and replace those run down shacks and repurpose those eyesores before making any new land available to rape pillage an plunder. I doubt if you see this blatant land grab anywhere else in the world except here in the USA or in other new world countries. Old world countries where land is limited they see their way to reinvent old properties and understand the value of making every square foot count as land becomes scarcer.
     I intend to do the same thing as I build on to the existing structure and reinvent the same old place, some of it including the older part I intend to save dates back to the early forties when grandpa needed a house for Grandma, my Mom and Aunt Fran to live in, while he remodeled the old log cabin which is mom’s house today. That cabin was built in the early 1800’s and still exists today hidden under a skin of shingles just like it was years ago when grandpa and grandma finished it. Not much has changed except the overall look of things outside from the day I first saw it.
     The old part of my house was a block structure upon which Grandpa slid a Sears chicken house , that someone had bought and Grandpa bought it off them and refitted it for use as the top part of the house we called the little house. It was never used as a chicken house except to raise some young ones under lights in. It was said about the chicken house, as that is what Sears sold these hoop shaped buildings as, was available through the mail order portion of the catalog, where you could buy one and they would send the parts pieces to your house through freight companies. As well they also sold a lot of houses this same way and you would be surprised how many still exist today, and this was around the time of the end of the war when suddenly materials became more available, a little house or tiny house in itself. Anyone that follows me on Facebook would surely understand I have a fascination with tiny houses, but mainly as a place to get away for a few days. Long term and senior wise, I could design something that would be unique, and still have a small footprint, it’s just that making beds or upstairs accessible requires more first floor space and you really end up with what I am designing anyhow.
    Why not incorporate the little house part into my main house making them one and the same. Because Grandpa was short and in order for me to raise the second floor high enough for me to be comfortable walking under requires the need to have another row of block on the foundation. I will use it for my greenhouse below, and art studio and office above. Keep that part of the house as it is, will make changes on the exterior as needed to make it different. At one time it had doors on both ends and I would like to eventually have that again along with decks on both ends allowing me to walk from one end to the other on a second level as well access the first from a bridge, trellis, greenhouse and ramp arrangement tying he two structures together, and increasing my greenhouse space in the process of this whole thing. So a good part of my free time has went to trying and see how I may be able to take what I have make something grand out of this whole thing. If only in my imagination, if then  that at least I will have a roof over my head and a place to sleep,  and knowledge I have tried to do the right thing.

one hand washes the other

Not Too Bad a Day Considering

        While perusing through Craigslist under the free section I noticed an ad for a free pine tree log in my area, in fact I thought I had recognized exactly where it was at and I knew who owned it. Well my guess was correct and I was the only one to respond to the ad and boy did I make out. Or at least I will when I manage to get it all home and cut up. I not only was able to get one good sized pine log , but I also was able to get another bigger log , though dead was in good shape to carve. I like carving in the pine although a soft wood does hold an edge good and is easy to cut and carve and shape into the carved pieces everyone enjoys. It is hard to find any pines of any size to do anything with. Around here most people will give them away just to get rid of them. Well these logs are nice if you can just handle them. It doesn’t pay to move the tractor too far to just pick the logs up and I need to limit my trips.

      So when you find them practically in your back yard or front yard as the case may be then it is all good. In fact I will be able to take the wagon and the tractor with the forks and load it all on the wagon and still be able to get the rest of what he gave me. Yes you heard me right as I said the rest of what he gave me. he gave me a hickory log at least 20 feet long and it is in great shape with no imperfections and should make a beautiful log to cut up for flooring for my second floor of my cabin addition. A friend of mine offered me access to his band saw, and I may just take him up on it as I seem to be accumulating logs and saw logs for flooring for my cabin addition quite quickly. faster than I ever thought , and I am really not trying just yet , instead I am just cleaning up around the farm all those tree tops from the black walnut Mom took out last fall.

      Also along with the log will be some white birch to make some end tables out of, along with some hickory branches to make walking sticks I can carve heads into. As we were talking and he was telling me what he was doing and the equipment he accumulated and he said he had a chipper that chips 12 inch logs and that he had just hired a tree guy and that he was going full swing into tree trimming . I had noticed he had a pile of wood chips and I kind of put one and one together and asked if he had wood chips for sale as I was looking for wood chips to mulch my raspberries with. My best red raspberries were grown in the old wood chips I had from where I made a deal with Asplundh tree service to bring me in some chips when they were doing the line clearing.

     Anyhow he goes on to tell me that where he was dumping his chips, that they stopped him from dumping anymore. And again the lights went off in my head as I am not that much farther away from his house and have40 acres he can dump all the chips he ever wants to dump and I will always have a plentiful supply for a variety of projects including my raspberries.  This will help him and help me at same time.  This also works well with another neighbor who provides me with horse manure and I get possibly 2 loads every two months from him. The wood chips and the horse manure will heat up my compost piles like you won’t believe assuring a good pathogen kill and creating great organic compost in very short time. What would normally take anywhere from a year to rot down normally can now be sped up to rot down in as little as 3 months. The hay and wood chips and manure will turn into rich dark compost that I can use to expand my raspberry crops.

      I used to work for a company in Cleveland called Kurtz brothers, and they sold a multitude of products and at the same time they would bring in revenue from services they performed. What they did cost big money and millions of dollars was invested and changed hands yearly with operations as far south as Columbus and with most of it centered in the Cleveland area. One hand would wash the other and out of respect to them and their family I won’t delve into all their secrets and I was in the position to understand how a lot of the family business was run.

 

       They would dig soil out of one property and bring in sand from another waste stream and then mix with a compost product they were paid to produce at another site, helping alleviate a waste stream from filling up a landfill somewhere, and with it they made a synthetic topsoil sold all over northeast Ohio. In fact they were not only the largest topsoil dealer in northeast Ohio selling to landscaping companies and nurseries but they also sold a colored mulch made from recyclable wood , specifically hardwoods pallets, and sold the dickens out of that also. The land where they removed the soil was filled with sand from a foundry operation they were paid to dispose of, and the pallets people would pay them to dispose of, also as well as wood waste that was turned into mulch. The land was sold as commercial property and a multiplex theater sits on top of one fill area in the city of Independence, Oh. . Land I had major part in developing as far as bringing to grade and overseeing the fill operations.

      One hand would wash the other handing back and forth making money at every step as they would turn waste streams into cash. This is something you don’t just fall into but is a deliberate plan designed to make money for the corporation on the whole. It is a nice business plan for anyone. Anytime you can take nothing and make something out of it. This is what I am trying to do, and whether I have enough time in my lifetime to achieve it still stands to be seen.

     At least I have some more logs for my cabin right now. I will take that and go from there.  

another babe story

Christmas Past 

 

rolling pin Santa

      Or it will be by the time I finish this blog. The dreaded Christmas day is past and all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding it is done, littered on the floor like the wrapping surrounding the presents.   For me it is a moment of solitude and quiet time surrounding me.  It’s  knowing that I can’t go up the road and stop at my favorite haunts like the Save-A-Lot store or maybe Mc Donalds and grab a sandwich. Whether or not they were open was inconsequential to me and in reality hope they were not and their workers had a chance to be home with their loved ones. I imagine the gas stations are open but then again I had no need for gas and instead stayed home and kept to myself and my thoughts. The internet was working and I thumbed through it wishing everyone I could remember a merry Christmas.

      A few friends wrote personal e-mails to me wishing me a merry Christmas and spending some time chatting about this or that in their lives allowing me a chance to catch up on their lives. Some unexpected people stopped in with quick hello’s that surprised me. All in all it was a good day to touch base with friends in my life. Some I had talked to just a few days before when I had my birthday and they wished me a happy 60^th birthday as I head into my 6^th decade of my life turning a new page in a lot of regards. I guess I am kind of numb to the whole thing of life in some ways.  

 

babe w/ a stick

      Christmas has always been a big letdown for me and in some ways I can’t say this one was any better or worse than Christmas pasts. It is what you make it , and in my own little way I tried to make it good taking care of those and giving to some strangers. I didn’t have much to give but in a little way I hoped I was able to help someone else have a better Christmas and to me that was what it was all about. Still without any kind of social interaction it was numb as usual. I could have gone down the hill and spent it with Mom and Sherry, but instead stayed to myself as I was prepared to do. I tried to lay a plan as to where I was headed in the next year thinking resolutions. But in some ways I have already made my plans.

     So instead I took advantage of the good weather and continued some brush hogging work over the hill listening to my stupid dog bark and bark and paw the ground and do her stupid rituals that make me wonder if she is retarded. At one point while the brush hog was running, meathead decide she was going to save her stick from the whirling blades of death as I turned around to see her trying to pull a stick out from under the brush hog while it was running. I yelled at her but soon she was back at it. So I stopped the brush hog and picked it up of the ground with the hydraulics and allowed her to wrench the tree out, as I now saw it as it was about 10 feet long and about 2 and half inches in diameter she readjusted her tree in her mouth and proudly headed up over the hill as if she was showing off a fresh kill. She dropped it in the open field and looked at me. At this point of dealing with stupid girl I just decided I had enough for the day and besides I had picked up a log to carve and needed to head for the house as it was getting dark.

    As I went Babe would pick up her stick trying to balance it with her mouth and get it up off the ground so she could keep up with me. She would get ahead and then drop it, and then pick it up again. She never ceases to amaze with her energy and how much she wastes on stupid things like barking at me. Even with headphones on and music turned up she still was annoying. Humorous and made me smile but still annoying. She won’t listen to me when I tell her to quit or do this or that. Instead she has a mind of her own. Somehow she knows though when she has pushed me too far and will usually cease her crap. But it wasn’t today or yesterday and is rare when she does. I guess I created the monster. Still she was there beside me and shows more what a real friend is. Someone who don’t take your crap, tells you like it is and makes you smile, but most of all she is always by my side. She is sleeping now after a big bowl of chicken and noodles over her dog food, and she is a tired and full gal. I really would be at a loss without her.

      It was her that made my Christmas  even though she gave me nothing but a hard time and left her tree in the open field so that next spring if I don’t go back and make her move it, I will hit it with the haybine and probably bust a knife and make me mad. But I will probably go back before then. Still she made me smile on an otherwise dreary day. Better than any other friend could. I am sure one of these days i will find time to look at Christmas in more favorable terms but still today was one Christmas I will remember for a while, if not for its simplicity, then for its unexpected treasures from an unexpected source that has been close to home for me.

     

you do what you have to,

Zoey and my Doughnut Bag

 i see mc donalds is encouraging you to grow your own, never noticed this till i enlarged the pic. this might account for the dog's need to satisfy a few munchies. 

      Zoey was a German shepherd dog I had that I was able to get off my brother Jim. Zoey had a bit of a tough life and was a handful to begin with, and at different times she had bit me not once, but twice. Once when she thought I was threatening her pup and one other time because it was her nature at the time. Lacking any type of interaction with humans and penned in a small fenced in enclosure, Zoey would run the fences and was very intimidating at times. I have seen her climb the side of a six foot high wood fence trying to get at me at times.

      At some point though, Zoey and I reached more than an understanding and she became one of the crowd of dogs , mainly her pups I let inside my house on a particularly cold winter as well as my regular dog Bud. Soon Zoey settled down and was one of the best dogs I ever had as she showed me a devotion I could never let go of. In fact although she was my brother’s dog I asked him if I could take her when I moved away from the farm for a while and I kept her with me as well as Bud my other German shepherd, who I had since he was a puppy and who died a few years ago and he along with Zoey are buried at the top of the hill overlooking the farm. 

 

zoey on left , babe , and bud 

      Zoey, Bud, and Babe and any other dog I ever had just love the wind in their face or maybe it’s the thought of driving down the road and with a dog’s keen sense of smell be able to scent the butts of all those dogs  my truck would pass and revile in the thought that they knew they were free, unlike those dogs confined to chains and dog boxes along the way. They would lean over against the passenger door and just let their head drift out the window smelling and occasionally glance at me with, the home chauffeur look.

      After all that is what we are. We are slaves to our animals. We feed them, open the door so they can go outside. , clean the crap up in the yard , water them then run to the door again to let them out again, as well as in the middle of the night or if the neighbor’s dog barks. To occasionally be able to have a dinner we eat without feeling guilty, or slipping them the last bite , even though it was really good. As in the case of the doughnuts I happened to pick up at Mineral City at Steineck’s bakery where the owner Mary makes some of the best doughnuts around. As much as I like Mary I have had to reduce the frequency I stop there for obvious reasons I could easily have shown you had you had watched me try and button my pants. The doughnuts were good and the company was friendly and for some reason I felt compelled to make a daily sojourn to Miserable City to partake of the doughnuts she offered there. 

 

zoey playing with her sticks. this is how babe learned all her bad habits

 

    Zoey happened to be with me and for some reason I didn’t really touch my doughnuts right away instead left the neatly folded bag in clear sight of Zoey as I stopped at Cross Roads gas station to get me some gas whereupon I jumped out of the truck and ran into the gas station to pay for the gas. I came out and pumped the gas and noticed Zoey sitting in the passenger seat looking out the passenger window, not really paying attention to me which was unusual for her. I jumped into the truck and it was then I noticed my doughnut bag tightly stuck around her muzzle where she had tried to get the doughnuts in the bag but instead had stuck the bag on her nose and couldn’t get it off. Instead of trying to paw it off as  I am sure she had tried till I came out to pump the gas , she instead sat nonchalantly in the passenger seat hoping I wouldn’t notice the bright white bag stuck on her nose. I looked at her and started in laughing and then I asked her what happened to my doughnuts she just looked at me with those sorrowful, but not really that much eyes and I laughed some more. Assuming the doughnuts was history or would be after I got the bag off. I instead savored the moment and started the truck and headed home. Still she never tried taking the bag off, but before I exited the parking lot I pulled over out of the road and helped her get the bag off laughing all the time. I fed her what was left of the doughnuts and she seemed real happy that I didn’t go berserk on her. But how could I . 

 

the original camera hog, she was always jumping in the shots, and now i know why , so i would never forget her and even without pictures doubt i would have

     Seeing the dog with Mc Donald’s bag flooded back memories of Zoey and her doughnut bag, she was something else and if nothing else a touching reminder of how precious life is.  How easily it can be gone, and there you are, still left behind holding the bag.