Sunday, January 26
We made it to church this morning – yay! It was so good seeing everyone and being able to hear an encouraging message from our pastor.
As soon as we got home I started heating water in the kettle for some hot tea while I was changing for work. CountryBoy made me a PB&J (with our own grape jelly – yum!) to take along with my tea. While shopping yesterday I searched for some tea for the cabin and I happened to find a Salted Caramel tea by Bigelow. Now I love Caramel anything so I had to get some. Today I made it according to the suggestion on the package with some sweetener of choice (which is honey; always raw honey for my tea – mmm!) and a splash of milk. I have to say, I don’t normally add milk to my tea but this… this was delicious and I will be adding the splash of milk at least to my Salted Caramel tea from now on. Oh, and I did find a nice variety pack of black tea by Twinings for the cabin.
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Work was good. My shoulders and back ache a bit from wrastling and folding sheets but some of Young Living’s Deep Relief rubbed onto my shoulders and a pillow behind my back and I’m doing well. I even came home with dinner – some Spinach Lasagna & Braided Rosemary bread. It is warming in the oven as I type this. It’s gonna be so good!
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It’s a BIG night for a local musician… Grammy night! Tyler Childers is nominated for “Best Country Solo Performance” for his song “All Your’n”. He and his wife will be walking the ‘red carpet’ – a far cry from the hills and hollers they’re used to. I hope they have a grand time and fingers crossed he wins!
I’m tellin’ ya… there is a LOT of talented musicians and artists in these parts. It’s incredibly inspiring and humbling to walk and live among them.
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Farm news: NINE eggs again today!
Monday, January 27
Our local musician did not get the Grammy. Instead, Willie Nelson took the Grammy for that category. But, to even be nominated along with the likes of Willie Nelson – WOW! I believe the entire town/county is so proud of Tyler Childers and what he has accomplished. I mean – the GRAMMY’s!!! So cool! Hopefully this is just the beginning of an amazing career for him.
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It was extremely slow at work today. It’s during these slow moments that I can’t help but think there’s GOT to be more to life than this. There are SO many other things I’d rather be doing but none of them would bring in enough money to pay the bills. Some days I feel like the hamster running on the wheel. Running, spinning but going nowhere. How does one step off the wheel once it’s in motion? How does one alter their course once you’ve been traveling down that path for a while? The carefree creative me says just jump off and see where I land. The cautious responsible me says stay put until our finances are more flexible. The practical realistic me says we live in an old farmhouse on a farm and we’ll never be financially flexible. And things are just expensive these days. Farm equipment? ridiculously expensive. Lumber? expensive. Farm animals? expensive. Feed? expensive. Thus, the hamster on the wheel – I go round and round with myself. Then work picks up a bit and I’m 100% back in to the job at hand and putting all such thoughts aside.
I often wonder, though, how DO we get ourselves in these messes? Am I just being discontent or is it OK to want more out of life? And I don’t mean more as in more stuff but more as in more freedom and less stuff. More time to devote to the farm and the animals, to growing and putting up food, to keeping house and being creative and more time to simply ‘just be’.
I find myself wanting to find and read books on simple living; to read about our ancestors and how they lived. I find these types of stories fascinating at how they worked hard just to survive. I’m sure they fell into bed each night totally exhausted yet satisfied. Although, I think the term ‘simple living’ is actually quite misleading and not the correct terminology. It’s more like ‘hard living’ but the actual lifestyle was simple with a lot less distractions. It involved lots of hard work and yet there always seemed to be time to sit on the porch when a neighbor called, or time to tend to someone in the community that needed assistance, or time in the evenings to spend with family. There doesn’t seem to be much time for any of that these days even though we have so many modern conveniences that have freed up a lot of time. Just what have we filled all that time with?
Well that came out of nowhere but these are the types of things that run through my head on the drive into work or during a slow moment or occasionally in the evenings. Will I ever find answers? Who knows but I will always strive to live a slower, simpler life!
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Farm news: four eggs
Tuesday, January 28
We knocked the paper out fairly quick today and I was headed home by 2 p.m. Since the sun was peeking through some clouds and it was warmish I decided it would be a good time to get the cabin ready for the next guests. CountryBoy had already stripped the beds, emptied the trash and cleaned the outhouse on Monday after the guests checked out so this afternoon we went up and made the beds and restocked the coffee items, utensils and paper products. Earlier today he cleaned out the wood stove, restocked the wood and got it prepped for use. The only thing left is dusting, vacuuming & mopping.
While we were up there I took some photos of the secretary/cabinet we recently bought and worked on a bit…
It’s the perfect size for the space and the glass cabinet will help keep the dust off all the coffee stuff (mugs, French press, teapot, tea, coffee grinder, coffee beans & sugar).
I guess I could call it a coffee bar! Even though the cabin is off-grid people gotta have their coffee (or tea) in the mornings so we made sure we had the fixins’ to accommodate that need.
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Farm news: TEN, I say TEN eggs today – yay!!!
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A long hair gray cat recently adopted us. I discovered he had worms after spewing everything he had just eaten and seeing worms in it so today I gave him a dose of dewormer medicine. He took it like a champ. In fourteen days I’ll give him another dose. I’ve named him Smokey. He needs to be neutered. After that I’m hoping that with less testosterone he will get along with the other cats a little better. Well, except for the twins. They don’t get along with anyone. They’ll start hissing & spitting then wonder why they get chased. Silly girls!
Wednesday, January 29
It was a pretty non-eventful day. I’m OK with that!
While I was at work creating a newsletter and ironing CountryBoy dusted, vacuumed & mopped the cabin. We don’t have anyone booked for this weekend but that could change even at the last minute so we always like to have it ready just in case. The only thing we’ll need to take up the day someone checks in are the snacks and some freshly baked banana bread.
I noticed on my way home that I was in need of gas. CountryBoy said the generator (that’s up at the cabin so we can use the big vacuum cleaner to vacuum) ran out just after he finished vacuuming and the side-by-side was in need of refueling so we headed to town to fill the truck and the gas cans. While there we refueled ourselves at the local BBQ joint with a grilled chicken salad (CountryBoy) and me with a sliced turkey platter, garlic mashed taters and a side salad.
Tonight’s low is in the upper 20’s (which means mid to low 20’s here at the farm) so I am sitting in front of the fire and looking forward to a relaxing evening.
I’m trying to decide what I want to do this evening… work on the hexagon afghan, start a knitting project, embroider some bar mop towels, read a magazine, or maybe a little bit of each. I’ll let ya know!
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Farm news: seven eggs
Dream Valley Farmstead 