Wahsega Valley Farm

Lazy Sunday afternoon

I was in the kitchen preparing the chicken's snack a little while ago and when I glanced into the living room, I saw a couple of sleepy-heads.

That's Mike and Sophie snoozing. Sunday is Mike's only day off, and with the rain we're having, he just slowly melted into the couch while I was up and doing my thing. And I guess it looked like a good spot for Sophie to settle in too.

By the time I got back from feeding the chickens and cleaning off their poop board, Mike was once again sitting upright. Not Sophie though... she's still out like a light.

There is now some coffee brewing and I think it's snack time for us now.

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend. 

Ten years!

Mike and I just had our ten-year anniversary. That's six years of being married and four years of being a couple before that. Ten years might not seem very long for someone as old as I, but for me, it's a miracle! I never thought I'd see the day... really, I didn't. I dated for so long after my divorce that I'd almost given up on a partner in life when I met Mike. So for me it's very special. 

We went out to eat Sunday night and Mike took his camera so the waiter could take a picture of us, but the battery was dead. Dang! So when we got home, we put my camera on a tripod and shot a few pictures to capture our tenth year of being together so happily. Sophie joined in, but was licking Mike's hand at the time of this picture, my favorite:

And yesterday, Mike came home with a ten-year gift for me, a food dehydrator! Yay! It's a Sedona brand, which I had not heard of, but after doing some research, it looks awesome. Now I can dry my herbs and some veggies and lots of other things! I'm in research mode and not quite ready to give it a spin but am so excited. Here it is:

It's a wonderful gift, but the best gift of all is Mike himself! Happy Anniversary, love of my life!

Mike and Clyde

Poor Clyde has been limping around for the past four or five days due to a cut on the bottom of his right foot. We've been cleaning and bandaging it to keep it from getting infected and maybe progressing on to the dreaded bumblefoot. Heaven knows he walks through enough chicken poo during the day to create a horrendous breeding environment for infection to occur in an open wound. We keep their living quarters as clean as possible, but there will always be poo on the ground.

Day before yesterday I took some pictures just to show what a good boy Clyde is - and what a good chicken daddy Mike is. Mike held Clyde while I put on the betadine, neosporine and bandaging. Before we could do that though, we put Clyde's feet in a nice, warm epsom salt bath. Here he is (resting on Mike's lap with his feet dangling in the water while Mike moved it around a bit) getting the soak. He didn't mind it at all... in fact, I think he enjoyed it.

Then, after drying off his foot, he laid back on Mike's lap and almost fell asleep. His eyes are barely open in this picture. I dressed the wound and he wasn't the least bit bothered by it. 

Aw.

Today his limp is a little less pronounced and I have my fingers crossed that one more night of re-bandaging him will be all it takes. Yesterday he was confined to a smaller part of the coop with Betty and Veronica to keep him company - just to give the foot a softer surface and keep him less active. And let the cut heal. It seemed to help, but the chicken yard sure wasn't the same without him. 

Clyde's a good bird. He's a little bossy sometimes, but he takes his girlfriends special treats often and it's the cutest thing. I gave him a big ol' juicy grub the other day that I know he would have loved to eat, but he called Betty over in his nice boyfriend voice and gave it to her. What a guy, huh?

Some men bring flowers...

... mine brings me a bouquet of moss.   

Isn't it perfect and beautiful? I love moss and we have a lot of it around here... all different kinds. Mike was working out in the yard yesterday and appeared with this little mound of moss carefully cupped in his hand... just for me. 

Mike's shop

Mike's tool and equipment rental shop has been open for a little over a week now and he's having a lot of fun with it. It was a lot of work getting it going since he had to first remodel the interior of the place he rented. He put in new bathrooms and sheetrock and trim and lots more. He's got a showroom with all the tools, a nice office in back, plus a workshop for the mechanic he hired. This guy is the best mechanic in the area and blows Mike's talents away! He's doing small engine repairs since lots of people need to have their lawnmowers, chainsaws, etc. repaired.

I've been doing all the newspaper ads each week, which has been fun since I love doing layout and design. We finally got the big sign up on the building and most of the forms I created for Mike have been tweaked and finalized. His credit card approval machine is finally working... that delay was very frustrating since it didn't work at all in the beginning - and that's the way most people pay these days.

Here's the shop storefront.

We want to get some flowers and/or plants of some sort to pretty the place up some, but with autumn in the air, we'll need get something that will last through the winter.

Here's a close-up so you can see the sign a bit better; it's 3D and kinda cool.

 
And here is a shot inside showing part of the showroom. You can see that I finally finished painting the logo on the wall.

 
And a picture of part of the other side of the showroom, with me working on the forms I'd made Mike (on the counter and counter-tops that had not yet been finished).

There are larger tools outside, like a Bobcat and huge chipper-shredder and much more to come as Mike acquires even more. All these tools were his personal tools - and you can't even see all of them in these pictures!

Last week we had the "Great Grill Giveaway" where people signed up to win a nice grill. The garbage man for Mike's building won and here is the picture that went in the local paper.

My contribution to the shop has diminished greatly and I have more time to myself and at home now, but I still create the ads for the paper and help Mike with some of the paperwork. Mike is having fun and so am I!

Still working...

... at Mike's shop; there is just too much to do yet! Our grand opening ad is in the paper this week and fortunately we didn't put a date in it. So we will open next Thursday. We'd hoped to open sooner, but did I mention that there is so much to do? I've finished painting the logo on the wall and today I'm going to paint the rest of Mike's office. Then I need to start engraving all the tools - and there are a lot of tools. And I still need create all the paper forms he needs.

The cool thing is that people have already started bringing equipment in for repair. Mike has hired a mechanic who just breezes through everything - fixing this and that like it's nothin'. He is going to be a wonderful and much-needed asset; he's very talented.

Yesterday we had to go get the computer, printer and fax for the shop and were glad that the hardware for the credit card and check approval system had arrived by the time we got back. All that has to be configured and then Mike needs to learn the approval software. That might be his biggest hurdle because he really doesn't enjoy working on a computer. 

So, I am about to don my raggedy paint attire and head on to the shop. Once it opens next week, I will be "free"!

Retired? ... when? where?

Dang.

Retired my foot. I'm busier now than I was last week! Well, I knew it would be this way this week, so have geared my head for it, but geez Louise, we've been running around getting our corporation set up and tax numbers and new bank accounts and credit card machines for the shop and it all takes sooo much time. I just wanna take a nap. This is for Mike's tool and rental shop, but it's still a joint venture.

And I've been working on the company logo on the wall at the shop. I wanted a kind of old fashioned look to it and designed it with colors I thought would suit. Here is a picture of me painting it today.

 

Only I really wasn't painting it today because we ran out of time after going to the lawyer, bank and newspaper, etc. so I was just faking it. But I've been painting it the last few days and should be able to finish it up on Friday. The guy in the logo is a miner guy. Where we live is kinda famous for the gold rush back in 1828 and the town has a lot of gold miner references. Hey, he's using a tool and we're a tool and equipment rental place, and I like his look, so he adds just the right feel. The logo isn't finished, but you can sort of see how it'll look. Mike really likes it and we've printed it on T-shirts and ball caps and lots of people in town are now wearing them.

Tomorrow I need to lay out two different sized ads for the local newspaper for our grand opening and work on the stationary and website and Facebook page. And I really want to make a big pot of soup to use up a bunch of our veggies before they go bad. With all this running around, I've not had time to cook decent meals and that's driving me bonkers because we have so many veggies!

I'm looking forward to next week when I can hopefully spend more time at home and start doing some things around here. But, we'll see how it goes. It's Mike's business, but I'm talented in some areas where he isn't and vice versa so it just make sense for me to contribute where I can right now.

For now, I just wanna zone out for a few minutes before checking the laundry (that's been in the dryer for three days now) and go down to the garden and see if another melon is ready...

Stand Beside Me

While driving home from work yesterday, I heard an old song from my past. It brought tears to my eyes because I remembered where I was during that time in my life. I'd been dating for years and years and years and had been lied to, among other things, by quite a few men. Not little, white lies, but honking voluminous change-your-life kind of lies. Right before I met Mike, I'd decided to stop dating again for awhile because the heart can only take so much pain y'know? He was the last man I was to meet before hanging it up again. I found in him what this song is talking about. Thank you, Mike, for standing by me and being so different from so many men of my past.

He left me cryin' late one Sunday night outside of Boulder
He said he had to find himself out on the road
I guess when love goes wrong
You've gotta learn to be strong

So I worked two jobs and I moved three times
I ended up south of Memphis, workin' down in Riverside
I may not be so lucky in love
But the one thing I'm sure of

I want a man that stands beside me
Not in front of or behind me
Give me two arms that want to hold me, not own me
And I'll give all the love in my heart

Stand beside me
Be true, don't tell lies to me
I'm not lookin' for a fantasy
I want a man who stands beside me

I didn't expect to see him, one hot July morning
His hair was longer but his eyes were the same old blue
He said, "I've missed you for so long
Oh baby, what can I do?"

I said, "I want a man that stands beside me
Not in front of or behind me
Give me two arms that want to hold me, not own me
And I'll give all the love in my heart"

Oh, it's hard to tell him, "No"
When I want him so bad
But I've got to be true to my heart
This time

I'm not looking for a fantasy
I want a man who stands beside me
I want a man who stands beside me
Stand beside me
Stand beside me

Fresh out of the box

That would be Mike. He's lost so much weight - almost 30 pounds since finding out he is diabetic - that we went clothes shopping for him last Saturday at Horse Town, where there are more cowboy boots than in any other store in the country. They claim to have 30,000 pairs of boots in stock every day! That's a lotta boots! We both needed jeans and boots and other odds and ends and it was fun listening to the country western music while trying on clothes and looking around. Reminded me of the old days when I used to go C/W dancing every Saturday night - doing the two-step, waltz and swing. It was so much fun.

Here is a picture of Mike at home when he was trying on some of his new duds. He said he was "fresh out of the box." He's wearing a new shirt, jeans, belt, hat and boots. The hat is not a regular dandy cowboy hat, it's a work hat with a smaller brim than his fancy hat from Montana.This will keep the sun and rain off his face when he's out in the pastures, etc. It was sure nice to see him in clothes that fit well and weren't stained from years of working on other peoples' houses. If I wasn't married to Mike, I'd sure be checking him out if I saw him out and about... yessirree.

 

It was quite a successful shopping trip. Neither of us had bought clothes in ages, so it was time. Both pairs of my around-the-house and gardening work jeans had worn out completely in the butt area. Too much scootin' around in the dirt I think. I'm going to repair them with one of those iron-on patches, but they don't have a whole lot of life left to them. So I bought some jeans and one pair of overalls... men'soveralls since they never have any women's that are long enough for me. Don't get me going... I'm not even that tall, dagnabbit. But the men's are real nice and they're mainly for doing gardening work and schlepping manure and compost about.

And I got some new work boots for around the farm! We really can't go open-toed outside since there are scorpions and snakes and other creepy crawlies that could surprise us. So I got some short boots that won't be too hot to wear in the summer.

They are called Tony Lama "stars" and have embroidery and little shiny blue sparkles on them. Not that I'm a sparkly kind of girl, 'cause I'm really not, but I do like the blue sparklies on these boots. Mainly though, they're comfortable.

It was a fun day - and one we both needed.

For Mike