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.