week 39: there's never nothing going on
this week on the little dream farm
One of my favorite movies and books is Peaceful Warrior and Way of the Peaceful Warrior, the book by Dan Millman and the awesome movie rendition that came after starring Scott Mechlowicz and Nick Nolte.
There’s a part in the movie where the character Socrates grabs onto the main character Dan and a flash of all the little things happening all around them comes into razor sharp view for Dan. Soc says to him, “There’s never nothing going on.”
Well, friends. There’s certainly never nothing going on here on the farm even…even when we have a seemingly normal or mundane week!
I arrived back home midday last Sunday after spending a few days with my younger brother and sister, Mitchell and Jaclyn, my sister-in-law, Jessica, and Mitch and Jess’ son and my baby nephew, Mitchy! We spent an afternoon at an apple orchard picking apples and veggies and eating cider donuts and taking pictures in the pumpkins and really enjoyed getting to hang out on a local farm in my hometown. The Allentown, PA area received a ton of rain from tropical storm Ophelia so we spent much of Saturday cozied up inside and by popular request I cooked everyone this chicken dish I make that they all really love and then we took the apples we picked and I whipped us up some apple galettes, too. It was a short but very sweet trip and it’s wild to think it’s been seven months already since I last saw baby Mitchy.
Back on the farm we’ve got the contractor still fixing up the insulation from the leak in the cold water line under the house. Last weekend he came by to rip out all the insulation and open everything up so we could let it all air out and get nice and dry with a dehumidifier and fan and then this weekend he’s back installing all new insulation, shoring up some spots that could use a little love in the crawl space, and then patching up the guest bathroom that ended up having some water damage from the leak. All in all we came out pretty lucky with being able to get it fixed so fast and not have it break the bank.
I’ve shared via Instagram that I’ve been in the process of working on a professional military education program called Air Command and Staff College or ACSC. It’s a program that every Major has to complete before we’re eligible to promote to the next rank of Lieutenant Colonel. I’ve been working on the program here and there for the past year but this summer I decided to give it a real push and get it done as quickly as I possibly could and I just received the email this week with my certificate of completion—yes! It feels so good to be done with it and have it off my plate! Once I promote to Lieutenant Colonel (that’ll hopefully be in 2025!) then I’ll have to complete what is called Air War College, a similar programming but different coursework. So I suppose I should say it feels good to be done for now.
Our DR Brush Mower—the push bush hogger we use to mow the orchard and the hedgerows—gave out on us a few weeks back and we’ve been unable to find a neighbor or someone nearby that has the time and can help us fix it. Finally I got a hold of a nearby neighbor who owns a small engine repair shop and he’ll be coming to pick it up this weekend to get it back up and running and give it a good tune up for next season. Just like the “Things to Know/Who to Call” list that David gave us when we moved here, we’ve sure been doing a good job creating one of our own! As always, we’re doing our best to learn how to do and fix everything on our own, but thankfully when something exceeds our ability we have lots of good help around us!
Normally our neighbor Ted’s son, Ted Jr., will come by and help us with small things like fixing the bush hog but he’s had much bigger things to tend to since last weekend while Ted (who I call Pop) was out doing a bush hogging job, his back tire on his tractor went flat without him realizing it and he rolled his tractor. Fortunately he came away with nothing more than a bruised rib and a few cuts and bruises but the tractor did two complete rolls (it ended up upright after the second roll) and shattered all the glass in the cab and crushed some of the structure of the cab. Ted has been bush hogging for more than four decades and he’s mowed some of the most hilly, dangerous fields you can think of. He’s always safe, but you can be as safe as humanly possible and accidents can still happen. Thankfully Mary sent me a message on Tuesday morning to let me know, so I got to go over at lunchtime on Tuesday and sit with them both and get all the details and wish Pop speedy healing. I’m so so so beyond thankful that he’s ok!
Chris has been heading up to the old orchard on the hill to pick a ton of apples and he’s been whirling away in the kitchen with the apple peeler my mom got us the year we moved here. He peels and cores all the apples and places them in freezer bags and then we either use them for making applesauce, apple butter, or all kinds of baking throughout the winter months. Additionally, we took a huge bag of apples over to a woman in Vermont who makes scones out of her home and sells them on the weekends. She uses only local ingredients so she was really happy to receive a bag of fresh apples from a nearby farm. We’ll also drop a bag off to our friends who own a bakery in the next town over so we can make sure they’re put to good use instead of rotting off the trees. As bad as the season was for apples because of a late frost in May, we still managed to get decent apples off the trees in the old orchard—we’ve been told it’s because of the elevation. The orchard sits at about 800 feet above sea level, and we’re told that areas that are above 700 feet generally seemed to fare just fine. So, I guess if we ever wanted to go into the orchard business we’d have plenty of nice high hills to do it! Food for thought (as I like to say, my puns are always intended) for another day, perhaps!
I also got into the Cut Flower Patch at the end of this week to begin taking down a few of the rows of spent plants. So far, the sunflowers in rows 1 and 2 can all come down, and it feels so good to have them cleared out! The two rows of dahlias will remain until after the killing frost (which looks like it might be a week from Tuesday) and depending on the weather these next few weeks, Chris and I will likely get out there and take down one or two rows at a time together just to keep it manageable. It looks like it is going to be a lot of work, but I know if we just do it a little bit at a time it’ll be a cinch!
Just as I was thinking in my head, Gosh, it’s been a while since we’ve had any chicken issues, didn’t we find Miss Opal all hunched over in the little sick chicken stance Friday evening. So, we set up the chicken hospital (which many of you know is a dog crate inside the milk house lined with newspaper) and we’ve given her 24 hours of no food or water to see if we can diagnose possible impacted crop, which seems to be the issue at the moment. Seriously, it’s like just thinking it brought about an issue, but regardless I’m thankful it has been so long since we’ve had any problems with the hens and hopefully we caught Opal nice and early so we can get her feeling better as soon as possible. Last night I gave her water with olive oil to massage the clump of grass in her crop and today I’ll give her some papaya enzyme which should help to break that up and we’ll keep after that today to hopefully get it cleared.
And finally on Saturday afternoon our farrier Shawn came by with his young son to trim the donkey’s hooves. Chris fed the boys apple skins to keep them distracted while Shawn worked and I held his tools and helped him rope their back legs. During all of this his son told us about a story he’s currently writing and some of the business ideas he has as well as all kinds of stories about his dad which gave Chris and I such a good laugh. Shawn said the donkeys’ feet are the best they’ve looked since we got them in March 2022 and that we’re in a really good spot with their hoof care. We had their feet done every eight weeks when they first got here, then we went to every ten weeks once the infection in Molly-Max’s hooves fully healed, and now we do about every twelve weeks. In case you’re curious, it runs us $120 each time we have their hooves trimmed. We’re so thankful we found someone like Shawn who has been doing this work almost all his life and has worked on some of the most prestigious horses around the globe. The donkeys sure have come a long way in a relatively short time and I’m always so glad to hear positive feedback about how their doing from both their vet and farrier!
And that, my friends, is a relatively low-key week here on the farm! As Soc said…there’s never nothing going on and that sure is the truth around these parts! That’ll do it for this 39th week of 2023 from here on the Little Dream Farm. From all of us to you and yours we’re wishing you a wonderful week ahead and hope you enjoy your never nothing going on, too!
Phew. That’s a lot going on.
I hope you dry some apple slices. Soaked in water with some lemon juice then dried they are delicious! Like, Make New Friends gift delicious. You can also add whatever spice for fun. If you don't have a dehydrator - cookie sheets in a hot car works a treat.