Happy Things This Week

 While I may not have taken any days off, or gone anywhere that would be considered fun this week (I do not consider the grocery store fun), and I was incredibly busy all week, that doesn't mean it was a bad, draining, unhappy week.

Am I exhausted, sitting here typing this on Friday evening?  Oh heck yes, I'm ready for a twelve hour snooze (as if that ever happens, even on the rare vacation).  The heat and humidity are ramping back up, and I certainly feel that pressure on my body.  But, as tired as I am, I can still see things that made me happy.

For one,--and don't judge me for the first picture, which is partly a before and partly an in-progress photo--I got the master bath shower scrubbed.  It hadn't had a good scouring in about a year (and, honestly, not even a half-assed one in six months or more) and was looking pretty skanky. Gotta love well water, especially iron-rich well water (and yes, we do have a water softener but it can only accomplish so much. . . )  

Part of the lapse was because I was out of my go-to wonderful shower cleaner, and found out several months later that it had been taken off the market (it was pretty potent stuff, so probably not the greatest environmental- or health-wise, but dang it did a good job with hard water stains.)  A different brand was finally recommended to me by someone else who has very hard water, and I was able to get ahold of some of that to try.

Before/During

The after picture looks much more appetizing.  'New' brand did the trick, although it says no scrubbing needed, just spray on and wipe away and I most definitely had to scrub, even with a scrub brush in some areas. Now to keep it this way. Perhaps a monthly cleaning will only require a spray on and wipe away. . . 

After

 I didn't, technically, enjoy scrubbing out that nasty shower, but I am loving how bright, clean, shiny and generally more pleasant it is now!  (Do you think I can give myself a cash bonus equal to what it would have cost to pay someone to do this unpleasant task?)

Much more fun than taking a mineral deposited shower back to pristine brightness (or as close as it gets after almost 22 years of use), was cutting a bunch of black eyed Susans from the front flower bed and bringing them inside to beautify the dining room table.  

The 'vase' is actually an antique blue glass Ball canning jar that previously belonged to DH's paternal grandmother. When she died about 20 years ago her daughters divided up her canning jars and, since they knew I was the only one of this generation (the grandchildren) who cans and preserves food like they do, they shared some with me.  The blue ones I don't use for canning, but use them for display instead.

I have been trying to get DH (and myself) to eat salad of some type--not counting pasta salads-- at least three times a week all summer.  We had an especially colorful one with our dinner the other night (along with marinated and grilled chicken breast from one of our freshly butchered broilers).

After not being home enough the last three weeks to work on anything in the Finish The Tack Room category, DH installed the light fixture I'd bought for it.  It's LED and SO BRIGHT!  But I wanted bright, like full sun daylight bright, because 1) it's a 12' ceiling and 2) there's going to be a 18" or 24" wide shelf around three of the four walls at approximately 6-7' from the floor for storing totes of out of season or otherwise not used daily/weekly horse-related stuff and that shelf is going to kinda block light coming from above.

This is the light I got, with two moveable panels so that I can kind of aim the light 'under' the future shelf, which is where the saddles and bridles will be stored.

Last Sunday evening, DH and I had a small campfire (really to burn some brush and paper garbage we'd accumulated), and while sitting out there watching the fire, I was able to do some knitting.  

Back in March, when we'd taken K3 and Toad to Sedona on Spring Break for a hiking trip, I had started working on a new pair of socks.  It pretty much got a few inches knit on that trip, and then I didn't touch it on a regular basis after Easter.  However, it was to a point that two hours of knitting on Sunday brought me to the needed foot length for beginning the toe decreases. And once you start the toe decreases, well, you get kind of obsessed about just finishing the dang sock already!

I finished the toe and grafted it closed last night while DH was watching TV.  So now I have one sock knit this entire year! Woo Hoo! I'm hoping to at least find a half hour someday soon to cast on and get the cuff knit for it's mate; maybe by Christmas I'll have a pair I can wear.  The yarn is some Trekking XXL that I've had in my stash for probably 10 years.  So if I make it into socks, does that count as decluttering my house?

What 'simple' joys did you find in your week this week?

Maybe This Was a Sign

 You know how, back in June, I posted about my struggle to get ahold of broiler chicks to raise this year?  If now, take a sec and read this.

Well, turns out procuring chicks was not the end of the difficulties in raising my own meat birds.  For five years now, I have used a wonderful processor that is about a 40 minute drive from me.  They do a great job, very nice facility, very nice people, and have been very easy to work with.  Unlike the closer to me processor, they do not require me to book my butcher date before I even have chicks in hand! (Growing time being 6-8 weeks, the closest processor is so busy they require you to book your date at least two months out, preferably three. . . )

I have been very happy with the further processor, until I tried calling them in mid-July to get on their list for last week of July processing.  Typically they only book 1-2 weeks out and don't take reservations further out than that. I've never had an issue with them not being available in the date range I need. Imagine my utter panic at having 4.5 week old birds and finding out that my beloved processor has sold their business!!  The new owners are almost another hour further from me, and they aren't set up yet.

OH NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who am I going to find to process these birds in 2 or at most 3 weeks?!?  I googled.  I left phone messages.  I emailed.  I prayed, and I faced the fact that very likely it was going to be me processing these 16 birds when they were 6-7 weeks old.

I can do it.  I have done it before.  It's not fun, and I don't have the ideal equipment (no plucker for one, and last time I processed my own it was a smaller batch and I skinned them rather than plucking). 5-6 of the 16 are going to family members, so skinning wasn't going to work for those.

When the closest to me processor called me back two days after I'd left a message, and said they could squeeze my birds in the first week of August (at which point they'd be 8 weeks old), I jumped on the opportunity.  They charge $3 a bird more than what I'd planned on paying (for the other processor), and they individually bag & shrink wrap and toss all the birds into their walk in fridge(s) to await pickup at the end of the day (rather than tossing them into large bags if I so choose, calling me to come get as soon as my batch is finished, and storing them in coolers on ice provided by me). 

But you know what?  Beggars can't be choosers and nobody else I'd contacted could do them in the needed timeframe, and I sure didn't want to have to process them myself.  Too busy right now to spend more than half a day slaughtering chickens, cutting them for the freezer, and cleaning up the mess.  Cutting them up after they've been processed and then packaging for the freezer myself is way faster and easier than doing the deed from start to finish.

Loaded up to go to the processor.

Home again, looking like dinner.

The local processor that I used this time, despite being almost twice as much per bird for processing as the further away processor, really was a great experience all the way around.  And I am super thankful they were willing to squeeze me in instead of saying "No can do, you didn't book at the proper time to get on our schedule."  If I do decide to keep raising my own in future years, I'll budget in the extra $$ for using them and I'll try to book a butchering date as soon as I order my chicks.

But, back to my thoughts on this year's meat chicken experience as a whole. . . 

So, it was not only difficult to get chicks to raise, it had also been difficult (and stressful, very stressful) getting someone to process them for me in the needed date range.  Strike One.  Strike Two.

Raising them was mostly uneventful until the last week and a half of their lives.  At which point I had raccoon trouble.  The coons have been avoiding the live trap that I've constantly had baited and set next to the grow out pen since moving chicks outside from the brooder.  Instead, they've been trying to break into the pen, and it's only been divine intervention keeping my broilers alive.  The coons have yanked off the wire in one spot, but thankfully didn't realize they had a hole large enough to squeeze through.  They've pulled off a chunk of board on one side where the side meets the roof--ironically climbing on top of the live trap in order to reach that high, and again, thankfully it wasn't a gaping enough hole that they climbed in.  They've pulled small chunks of wood off a lower section of that same side.  Each morning that the destruction is discovered, DH has patched my grow out pen back together, but it is obviously on it's last legs and it's useful life is being shortened by the coons.  

I'm thinking that's Strike Three.  Rather than building a whole new pen for next year's birds, and trying to reserve birds in January for May/June delivery, and reserving a butchering date in advance of the chicks even hatching, it might be better to just look into who grows pasture raised broilers and order what I need from them.  Maybe I'm just not supposed to raise my own any more; maybe this was a sign.

Hey, What, It's August?!?

 For the last several weeks, most days if you asked me what day it was I would tell you the wrong one.  Usually a day or two ahead of what it actually was.  This week, for example, Tuesday felt like Thursday all ready to me.  So on Thursday I was sure it was Saturday, and yesterday I almost put horses out an hour early so I could change my clothes and get ready for church.  Except it was Friday, not Sunday, and thank goodness I realized it in time before I got myself all gussied up. (Which, honestly isn't very gussied but does usually involve a dress or skirt, earrings, and not having my hair in a ponytail. LOL)

While yesterday may not have been Sunday, it was the first day of August.  All ready!  

Well, no wonder I'm starting to feel a) burnt out on gardening and b) like my house needs to be gutted and thoroughly cleaned and c) like I need to run away and go somewhere relaxing!  

As the sole caretaker of the animals and the garden as well as the person in charge of all things food at this little place here, summer is not a time when I laze around, take vacations, and generally wonder what to do with my time.  Summer is like full speed ahead, balls to the wall, hit the ground running every morning and don't sit down until dark every night.  Not that I don't hit the ground running every morning all year long (I suspect this is a habit I really should change to be a bit more relaxing and warm up to the new day kind of lifestyle), but in summer with it's long hours of daylight that's 14+ hours a day 7 days a week of not sitting down with the exception of eating meals (and church on Sunday).  And, like the hit the ground running morning ritual, meals typically are not a long time of sitting, more like the minimum seat time necessary for refueling and then I'm squealing tires out of pit row and back into the race.

You know, the fact that DH doesn't adhere to the same seasonal extra-work-can't-leave-home schedule and has been gone (*ahem* playing in the name of taking various family members on canoe and kayak float trips) most weekends since the middle of June probably doesn't help with my glut of work that keeps me from sitting and relaxing.  Or taking even a day off to recharge myself somewhere that I'm not responsible for making sure 36 mouths have enough to eat (20 young chickens, 9 adult chickens, 4 horses, 1 cat, DH and myself)  and that the garden isn't shriveling up from lack of rain/watering or getting overrun in weeds that smother my veggie crops and that the dishes get washed and laundry gets done and put away and bills are paid and the floors aren't too gritty or the furniture too dusty or the trash too stinky before it gets taken out to the bin. . .

I'm all for making hay while the sun shines, but you know, I need to include down time for enjoying while the sun shines, not months from now when it's chilly and damp and icky outside.  I like sunshine. I love sunshine.  That's part of why I practically live outside in the summer months; I can't pull myself indoors away from the sunshine so I go whole hog on outdoor work.  Do I need to raise our own meat birds?  Perhaps I could, in coming years, buy them from a local person raising them.  Do I need to grow as much as possible in a quarter-acre garden and tend it by myself?  And then be the only one harvesting and preserving the bounty?  While some of that is a yes because of my dietary needs (ie avoiding a lot of additives in food from the stores), maybe we should do some budget shuffling to procure the same good food from someone else.

And then there's the whole point b) gut the house thing. . . Housekeeping is not my favorite task.  And, when I'm outside all day, housekeeping is reduced to the bare minimums.  Which, by this time in the summer, means that the inside of my house is driving me nuts because no one else here takes care of it (lookin' at you, DH, who's idea of tidying is to every few weeks stack things in piles for me to take care of).  When the weather changes and I'm forced indoors in a few months, I really don't want to be in a cluttered mess of a place.  Housekeeping fairy, where are you? I could use a visit from your magic wand. . .

Which leads me to c) wanting to run away.  The urge to take a day trip is getting stronger.  I need to wait until after this week--broiler chickens are meeting their doom going to freezer camp--and find a farm care person who is willing to not just do feeding and turnouts but also clean stalls (DH adamantly refuses to help with stalls) and then I think I going to run a few hours away and do some beachside rockhounding.  Still outdoors, but no garden weeds or chores in sight, and while it's still August, i.e. summer, i.e. sun shining!

Meanwhile, let me offer you a sampling of photos of things going on at this little place here lately.  If it weren't for the fact that phones these days are practically never separate from our bodies, and that phones have cameras, I probably wouldn't have any pictures of my life to remember summers by.  Hence, this collection of things that caught my eye, or I thought about sharing as I've gone about my busy days.

the tomato patch, with grape arbor in the background

friendly neighborhood cat (not my cat, therefore not a mouth I feed)

visiting me while I was checking for pickle-sized cucumbers

the wild blackberries on the edge of the woods are getting ripe;

this was enough to enjoy with my yogurt and granola breakfast the next morning

Faline helping me hang laundry the day DD1 needed me to watch her for a while after VBS

blue swallowtail

reddish day lilies

little green frog

a brown garter? snake

(not sure, as I don't know if they come in brown; first brown one I've seen)

running some errands in Sweet Madame Blue and she rolled 3100 miles

(that lady lives a life of luxury and goes out in good weather only)

K3 having a riding lesson/helping me train the LBM

(owner wants 'anyone to be able to jump on and ride')