Geese on the wing

Last week, when Don and I were engaged in rocking in the corral, I heard the distinct sound of geese flying overhead. (Can you see the flocks?)

These weren't Canada geese, which make a distinct sound. Instead, the black wing tips identified them as snow geese.

Snow geese undergo spectacular migrations, something on the order of 3000+ miles twice a year.

The flocks can be huge, with hundreds or thousands of birds in each one.

And there below, in our humble muddy little corral, we were lucky enough to see them overhead. How cool is that?

Blueberry tally

Phew! I was able to boot my manuscript out the door this afternoon (Thursday) around 12:30, plenty of time for my East Coast editor to acknowledge receipt. After getting up at 3 am all week to write, tomorrow I plan to sleep in.

In the meantime, though, I thought you might be interested in our final blueberry tally.

Last year, I harvested a bit over 57 lbs. of blueberries. That was an overwhelming quantity, especially since I still had blueberries left over from the previous year, so I canned up the entire amount and gave a lot of it away to folks in our church.

This year, I knew I was on track to harvest a whole lot more blueberries. While I didn't think I would quite double the harvest, I thought I might be getting close. I started picking on June 27, and picked the last fruit of the season on September 2. At the height of the harvest, sometimes I was picking for four hours at a time. Our old craft-booth umbrella really helped during these marathons, since I was able to use it for movable shade.

But this year we made a change. Rather than saving up all the fruit and then canning it, it occurred to us that the blueberries could be a cash crop. Accordingly we did a little bit of modest local advertising ("Organic, freshly frozen, local"), and sold quite a bit.

I kept a tally of how many pounds I sold. Sales happened in dribs and drabs; a few pounds here, a few pounds there. When that petered out, I removed the advertising and just sat on the frozen berries.

About a week ago, we heard from a couple who was interested in purchasing a decent amount, and I knew it was time to tally the remaining fruit I had on hand. Besides, I didn't know what the weight of the final harvest was anyway, so I was curious to find out.

This tub was filled with about two-thirds of the harvest (photo was taken August 10).

I tallied the amount of berries we sold, then weighed the remaining amount of fruit in the freezer.

Are you ready for this? I harvested 92.5 lbs. of blueberries! Of this, we sold 60 lbs. and we still have 32.5 lbs. in the freezer.

For visual impact, Don made a bar graph showing the nearly exponential increase in fruit over the past four years. (Note the bars are in BLUE, ha ha.)

Blueberries can produce for something like 25 years, and I don't believe ours are anywhere near mature yet. I have a feeling we'll be selling a lot of freshly frozen blueberries in the future.

I'm writing as fast as I can...!

I have a manuscript due on Friday. It's not quiiite finished yet. Yes, I'm writing as fast as I can.

I got behind in my writing schedule for this manuscript, in part because of my fast trip to California (although I did get a fair bit written during travel time, thanks to my AlphaSmart) and in part because I had other demands on my time after I got home.

However I haven't missed a deadline yet, and I don't intend to do so now. As I post this, I have half a chapter left to write, as well as a short epilogue, and I'll be finished. Thankfully my first drafts are generally clean and require very little rewriting (the advantage of working off a detailed chapter outline). Therefore I'm confident that I'll be able to turn this manuscript in no later than Friday morning, right on deadline.

And then maybe I'll take the opportunity to sleep later than 3 am without getting up early to write.....

Sunsets and rainbows

We walked Darcy the other evening when the sun was behind some clouds. Just as we got home, the sun broke through and looked intriguingly bleary.

As the sun set, it started lighting up the clouds above it.

Some rain began to fall, and Don called me out to the porch to see the results: A stunning rainbow in a full arc. (It was actually a double rainbow, but the second rainbow isn't really visible in the photograph.)

The colors, especially at the ends, were brilliant.

The last shafts of sunlight also lit up some clouds overhead, which lent an orange-y glow to the entire landscape.

A couple of evenings later, long after we had returned from our evening dog walk, I glanced out the window and saw this surprising development.

A few minutes later, it got even more dramatic.

Sunsets and rainbows.

Thank a veteran today

Today is Veteran's Day. Please remember to thank a vet for your freedom.

We can't forget the brave men and women who have served our country.

Nor will we forget the ones who won't be coming back.

Thank you to our veterans.

It is the Soldier, not the minister
Who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet
Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer
Who has given us freedom to protest.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer
Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, not the politician
Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

For an amazing photo tour of Ardennes American Cemetery in Liege, Belgium, where Don's uncle is buried, see this post.

Funding the "American dream"

Recently I saw an article entitled "Visualizing The Cost Of The American Dream In 2025."

The opening paragraph reads: "The American Dream isn’t cheap. Owning a home, raising a family, and retiring comfortably now total over $5 million across a lifetime for a household. This milestone has grown increasingly out of reach as the median age of a U.S. homebuyer has risen to 56, up from 31 in 1981. Meanwhile, U.S. fertility rates have hit record lows amid rising unaffordability."

The article breaks down the cost of the American dream as follows:

I'm astounded by some of these costs.

Some figures are quite accurate. Owning a home is, indeed, increasingly unaffordable for many people, in large part because there are so few inexpensive starter homes to give young couples a foothold in the real estate market. Healthcare costs are similarly expensive.

Beyond that, however, are these figures accurate? Do people honestly spend nearly $40,000 on their pets? Over $38,000 for a wedding? Nearly $900,000 raising two kids, and even more than that on cars?

I have a feeling the Lewis family is working on a completely different scale of economy than what these figures illustrate.....

Rocking in the mud

Last winter was the first winter here in our new home during which we had livestock. Before this, we had never "tested" the corral behind the barn on how things would hold up during winter conditions coupled with livestock use.

What we learned is the back corral gets muddy. Very very sink-down-deep muddy. We mitigated it as best we could be laying down a heavy layer of gravel, but that only went so far.

Part of the problem is the barn is built downhill from a small slope, which means water drains right to the opening of the barn doors and makes a muddy soup when it's churned up by bovine hooves.

The mud right outside the barn door was so deep, in fact, that moving a heavy wheelbarrow full of barn waste was very difficult. Immediately outside the door, the wheel of the wheelbarrow would instantly sink several inches down, plus I was pushing it uphill to boot. No fun.

To this end, we often laid down boards to bridge the worst of the mud, then take the boards back up after the barn was cleaned. The barn waste is dumped in a pile in the corral. (A couple times a year, Don uses the tractor to transport the waste to a more permanent compost pile.)

Don is in the process of correcting the drainage issue with a two-pronged approach. One, he wants to build an awning that would offer the animals a bit more shelter during adverse weather conditions. And two, he wants to trench and lay a French drain that would divert water from the slope and direct it over the hillside immediately outside the corral fence.

But, this being autumn, the weather caught up with us. After several days of unrelenting rain, the corral transitioned rapidly from damp to soupy, making it impossible to dig trenches. The skeletal infrastructure outside the barn is the support posts for the not-yet-built awning. (Note the outside water tank on the right.)

So, as a stopgap measure, we decided to lay down more rock. Thankfully we have a generous supply on hand of this vital homestead resource.

Don started by building a "road" of rock so the tractor wouldn't sink into the mud and get stuck. He did this by driving the tractor in until muddy conditions prevailed, then dumped the rock and scraped it flat. With the next load, he was able to advance another five feet and dump another load and scrape it flat. By this method, he was able to bring the machine to where he needed it to go.

The first section we tackled was a tight corner where the water tap and water tank are located. Roof runoff renders this area extremely muddy. (Yeah, the barn has no gutters. Go figure.) To the right, where the horse panels fence off the edge of the corral, is a fairly steep dropoff. I started by using a hose to siphon out and empty the water tank, which needed a good scrubbing anyway. I also wanted to level the tank, which was leaning a bit.

Unlike last year when we laid down rock, however, this time we used weed cloth to make a barrier in hopes the rock wouldn't just sink down and get enveloped by the mud.

First load of gravel.

Load by load, sheet by sheet of weed cloth, we rocked in this section.

Finally we were able to pull the rocked area to the front of the water tap, which was as far as we planned to go for this section.

We raked everything flat and leveled a pad for the water tank. Then, while Don started working on the pad in front of the barn, I scrubbed and cleaned the water tank, got it set up, and refilled it.

Much better!

The next spot to tackle was the mud pit right in front of the barn door, through which I needed to push heavy wheelbarrows full of waste up to the waste pile. Don started by scraping a path backward with the tractor bucket.

Oddly enough, he didn't have to scrape very deep before he hit the layer of gravel we laid down last fall, so that was good. Then, while he went to fetch a load of gravel, I laid down the first section of weed cloth.

Dumping the first load of rock.

This is a much finer grade of gravel, the kind that packs down. Coupled with the underlying layer of larger gravel from last year, as well as the weed cloth, we have hopes the area outside the barn door won't become a morass of soupy mud over the winter.

We only graveled to just where the awning will end, where the downhill slope levels off. In other words, we made a graveled ramp. At the end of this ramp, hopefully soon, we'll be able to trench and lay down the drain pipe so water gets diverted away from the barn.

When all the gravel was in place, we raked it flat, then linked arms and waltzed around the pad, compressing the gravel. In country parlance, this is known as a "hot date."

There are still deeply muddy spots between the ramp (left) and the water tank (right), but at least the rocked areas are dry. The cows can either stay in the barn, or farther out in the corral, to find dry spots during wet weather.

Since the tractor was in the corral already, the last thing Don did was to pile and consolidate the barn waste. Come spring, we'll move this waste onto the compost pile, while moving the older compost onto the garden beds.

We have a dry spell coming up next week, and Don hopes to finish building the awning and French drain during that interim.

Meanwhile, another autumn project is done.

Fast trip to California

Sorry for the silence, dear readers! I just returned from a fast trip to Southern California to visit my parents.

This trip was paid for courtesy of Younger Daughter. She had some leave from her European duty station. For the last few years, every time she asks if she should visit us, I encourage her to visit her grandparents instead, since they won't be around forever. This time she talked me into meeting her down in California and even paid for my ticket. How could I refuse?

It was a lot of hopping from flight to flight to get to my destination. Here we're landing in Seattle.

Unfortunately I have no way of knowing what lake this is. It's in California somewhere, that's all I know.

Sunset over the ocean.

Well as you can imagine, seeing my family was wonderful. My youngest brother picked me up at the airport. My oldest brother was visiting my dad. My middle brother called at one point, and we were able to catch up over the phone.

I wondered if my mom (who is now in a nursing home) would recognize me since I haven't seen her since last April. And she did! She lit up and started crying with happiness when she caught sight of me. It was lovely.

Younger Daughter arrived about 36 hours after I did. Needless to say, she had severe jet lag. Nonetheless, we took ourselves off to the beach to see the sights.

The snowy plover nesting season was over, though we found what we presumed was a plover egg shell.

All the birds were actively foraging on the shore.

Younger Daughter is fascinated by kelp.

With good reason. It's fascinating stuff.

As we walked back to the car, I noticed this graffiti spraypainted on the back of the beach signs.

Except for the beach expedition, the rest of the time was spent visiting my mom and helping my dad, including some medical appointments. On my final evening, my youngest brother (who is an excellent cook) brought dinner and we had something of a party.

Then I said my goodbyes, my youngest brother brought me back to his house, and early yesterday morning I caught the first of three flights to come home again.

Volcanic mountains dot the Cascades in Oregon. This is two of the Three Sisters.

I think this is Mt. Jefferson, but I'm not sure.

And, since we were approaching Portland, I'm assuming this is Mt. Hood.

On the second leg of the trip, I had an aisle seat, so no photos. The third leg passed over some rugged landscapes in central Idaho.

After landing, it was another 2.5 hour drive from the airport to home, so a total of 12 hours of traveling. Whew, I'm wiped! Nonetheless, it was a wonderful trip.

And that, dear readers, explains my silence.