hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

[frustratedearthmother]

Sounds like you had a pretty productive weekend! Sorry about those allergies - they sure can wear a body down. Sorry about the A/C - but like you said - a new unit will probably save you money in the long run!

 

[baymule]

I've seen water in the gutters run yellow from all the pollen. Nothing like a good rain to clean up the air! At least this is a seasonal thing and all the pollen will finally go away.

 

[hqueen13]

@baymule you're right... and we're getting a good rain!

Tuesday night we had some crazy storms roll through and it dumped 1.5" of rain on us overnight. Yesterday during the day we got more steady gentle rain, and that dropped another 1/4" of rain. Last night the steady rain continued, and we got another 1.5". It's STILL raining today, with a heavy chance (along with a chance of more storms) tomorrow and Saturday. Which figures that I have my lesson on Saturday. It's our annual late May monsoon, which always falls on the weekend that KN is here.

Not much change otherwise. Money is still crazy tight, and we still don't have a resolution on the a/c. I did realize that the other thing we need to get fixed to sell is the chicken coop. That's worth probably $500 at least. I told the BF that we need to pull some cash out of the stash that we have and go order another ridgecap to replace the one that got so bent in the wind and then get it sold. It needs to be gone off my realtor's property. We also need to work on selling the wood stove, but that's a little trickier, and I'd love to find someone who knows antiques to help with that, but I haven't found the right person yet.

So not much to update... other than the fact that we really need to be building an ark right now....

 

[baymule]

If you build an ark, then you need lots of animal feed. LOL If you build it, they will come........

 

[Britesea]

we've been getting thunderbumpers and hail here...

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Hail no! We could use some off the wet stuff but I prefer it to not be solid!

 

[hqueen13]

LOL @baymule That is hilarious!!!
Thankfully, we didn't get any hail, nor did the veggie farm even though he is around the corner from where my horse is and they got hail over there. The H word is terror to a veggie farmer!
We ended up with 4.5" from the storms. I'm so glad it's over. Of course, just 3 days later we're getting more rain. At least right now it's quiet and gentle. It's been cool enough that having the windows open isn't uncomfortable.

We managed to manifest dinner on Saturday night. It was late and we were trying to figure out what to do. We hadn't been to the store in a while, and had half the ingredients needed for about 4 different dinners. We were debating and getting frustrated and the BF's dad called to invite us to dinner, and informed us that he was paying. On most other normal nights we would have already had a plan in motion when he called at 6:30, but amazingly we were just trying to figure it out. I was happy because they took us to our favorite tex mex place and we hadn't been in a while. I was irritated at the end of the evening, though, because his parents only tipped $10.00 on a $125.00 bill (there were 4 margaritas between all of us, and they're huge so they're expensive). The BF and I talked about it and we just need to make sure that when we go out with them that we take some extra money for additional tip since they are so freaking stingy they can't tip decently, especially because his dad ALWAYS gives the servers a hard time. He was nice, and mostly funny this time, but sometimes he can be down right obnoxious. Anyway, I was really glad to have the meal and not have to clean up, plus a strawberry margarita!

Not much change on anything else. Still no A/C, still trying to get money together to get it funded. I'm grateful my check is going to be a bit bigger this pay period because I need to make up some ground. I've been barely hanging on, and it isn't fun at all. I don't really want to work more hours in the office job (I'm fudging enough as it is...) and I want to focus on my business, but things are just keeping up. Hopefully something will shift soon. I really should talk to my boss again about a raise, we haven't had our annual meeting that I normally schedule due to the crazy office move and everything.

I did get to help yesterday with a farm tour of the 4th grade classes from a local elementary school. They came to the veggie farm to see things. SR had injured himself and wasn't feeling well, but he managed to tough it out dealing with 4th graders for over 2 hours. They came in 2 groups of about 60, and we split them into classes. He talked about the laying hens, and I showed them the broilers. That was fun! Watching these kids come into the awareness of exactly what it looks like before it gets to your plate was pretty cool. Some of them had a hard time, and some of them really processed what was happening. It was really neat. We also had a batch of chicks, so they got to see them, too. Then once they had been to both SR and I, we brought them back together and walked them through the veggie plants, and let them taste a few things, like the mint plants (we've got like 6 varieties) adn the sorrel, which is really different. Then VM, SR's partner showed them the bee hives. She was suited up and opened the hives and pulled out a frame so the kids could see. The bees were a bit funky and excited because it was the first sunny beautiful weather day in over a week with all the rain, and one of the hives had swarmed the day before. So the kids couldn't get quite as close as we had hoped, but they seemed to really enjoy it. Then we let them taste honey before they got back on the bus. They all seemed to have fun, and I've seen a spike in the facebook page likes since the morning, LOL. I enjoy that kind of work because I think it is so important. I don't really want kids, but that kind of thing really makes me happy to help share how the world works with kids.

So that's about it from this (still wet) corner of the world...

 

[Britesea]

It is so great that both you and the school is working on educating children as to where food comes from. Most people are so divorced from the whole thing that I'm not sure they would recognize a watermelon if it was on the vine instead of a big box at the grocery store. You get kids (and adults!) asking if THESE are the cows that chocolate milk comes from, or the lady that felt that hunters should buy their meat from the grocery store, where no animals have been harmed. Or the woman that told her family that the turkey she had cooked for Thanksgiving came already stuffed (she was talking about the bag of giblets). Yeah.

 

[hqueen13]

@Britesea you are SO right. And that's exactly why I love doing that kind of work. Seeing the recognition on the kid's faces when they connect the dots is awesome. There were some kids that struggled with the meat birds, which I expected. The funniest part was that SR said that many of the kids kept asking "What do you do with eggs??" He was really baffled that they couldn't make the connection between all the eggs in the nesting boxes and a carton of eggs from the store! He kept saying, well, you EAT them! They were still confused!!

The other funny thing that a couple of the kids struggled with was when SR was explaining bees and he said that the drones don't work a whole lot, they only have one job, and once the job is done they don't do anything else but eat the honey that is produced in the hive. So he explained that when fall comes around the drones would all be escorted out of the hive by the worker bees, and that he drones are all male, and the workers are all female. There was one little boy that just couldn't wrap his head around the fact that the females run the entire hive, and send the males out to their death every fall. "But what if they fight back???" he kept asking. SR was like "They don't. They can't. They don't have stingers, and there are too many female workers in the hive, so they control everything." The little boy was very upset by this.

It was a perfect age for kids to come to a farm and really begin seeing things like this, so I hope that we can work on replicating it through several schools, or other groups.

Not much else happening around here. I'm worried about traffic tomorrow with the funeral for the police officer that was killed here. They're closing major roads, and the highway will have some serious delays because of it. I might have to get creative to work around some things. And in terms of getting creative and driving a lot, what the heck is up with gas going up???? I'm NOT pleased in my gas guzzling SUV. I drive is super carefully, so I'm getting the most out of it that I can, but dang, that stinks!

The weather is beautiful, hitting low 80's during the day, and down to 60 at night. We've been really comfortable in the house with the windows open. I think it's supposed to rain this weekend, which will be fine with me because it'll knock the pollen back down a bit. It's not bothering me nearly as bad, but I still don't want to get back to that point, either. I'm helping SR on the farm since he's still injured, and I've got barn chores to do on Sunday. Monday should be fairly quiet, we might get together with the BF's brother and girlfriend, but we'll see what happens.

 

[NH Homesteader]

Gas is insane right now!! My new car uses premium gas too... I paid like $3.53 a gallon the other day and it was awful !

So awesome what you're doing with the kiddos. My daughter educated her cousin (who's 3 years older than her) about meat animals.... He was horrified, lol. He had no idea people ate animals (yeah... City kid, I know) I can't wait to see what he thinks when I show him how to milk a goat!