It Has Been a Long Time Since My Last Post

It has been a while but it has been quite a while since I last wrote in my blog, I don’t know if any of you missed it but, I did.  It is very therapeutic for me to write and share my feelings.  I have said this before but sometimes life just gets in the way of my writing.  I will try to do better but I am not going to make any promises. 

I don’t know where to start in trying to catch you up on what has been going on around here.  I guess I need to crow a little bit…like ole Peter Jennings our rooster.  I made a prediction based on my grandfather, Pop’s methods of predicting weather. I predicted that the first killing frost would be the week of November 11^th and guess what the old goldenrod theory was true to form.  It was that week.  Now that I am done bragging I can move on.  Wait, Mark Twain once said there is no such thing as bragging.  You are either lying or telling the truth.  And because you can’t see it, there is a big smile on my face.

  

We have had some really cold weather for this time of year.  Last week the temperature at our home in the country fell to 24 degrees F.  That is about 10 or 15 degrees cooler than it should be.  I am not complaining though because that gave me the opportunity to light the first fire of the year in our fireplace.  I had laid the fire a couple of weeks ago and all that was needed was to add flame to the tender in the base of the fireplace and let it go.  Soon after lighting it, the warmth had filled the room and the hearth became the heart of our home again.  You know the real heart of our home is my wife, best friend and partner Dre’ but as inanimate objects go that fireplace hearth and its warmth fills the house physically with what Dre’ adds emotionally.  Now, the weather has warmed a little as it always does here and yesterday I was sweating in the pasture mending a fence the horses had broken.  If you live here in the southern United States like we do you are accustom to the weather changes this time of year.  It never stays cold long here; even in the dead of winter.  So, relatively cold mornings and mild days are pretty much the norm here. 

Since my last post, I have enlarged the hen house and in doing so, cut my hand with a power saw. I needed stitches but I made the decision that I would apply some butterfly bandages to it and keep working.  It has healed well and the hens and rooster have a very warm and dry to spend the cold weather.  I have been working to fatten up the horses and donkey for the winter and that has been a very successful effort.  They are fat and happy and ready for the weather to come. I have some firewood but lots of dry wood on the ground that is ready to be cut to size and stacked.  Ben Franklin said that firewood warms you twice: once when you cut it and again when you burn it.   So, I should have some warm days ahead of me. 

A wet fall means lots of mushrooms....I just
 wish I knew enough about them to tell the
 good from the bad ones.

I have picked the last tomatoes from our garden, put up zucchini, picked peppers and bottled pepper sauce and dried some of them. There are a few greens out there to be picked but I don’t have a winter garden planted.  It has just been too busy to even do that. 

We, as a family, are deep into the soccer season.  Holden played on a recreational team and now is playing on a Division 2 select team and an indoor team.  He is a keeper like his big brother and even bigger half-brother before him.  I know I am his father but he is a really good keeper.  He practices constantly and really eats drinks and even breathes soccer.  He is truly dedicated to the sport.  Logan is playing on the High School Team.  He has seen some playing time in the Varsity games and as a ninth grader is the starting keeper on the JV team.  He too is dedicated to sport.  He is in great shape.  He is about five foot nine inches tall and 170 pounds of muscle.  He is really in good shape and that is what he strives for.  He is also hitting the books a lot harder.  His grades are above average and I think the reason is that he sees that he could possibly see an athletic scholarship coming his way.  Add to that the fact that Dre’ is the president of the soccer booster association and our lives pretty much revolve around our family and their love of a sport.  That explains also why I have not had much time to write in this blog. 

The last of my 2012 mead being bottled.
You can see my home made siphon device
that doesn't siphon the sediment
off the bottom of the carboy.

Last weekend I had big plans to post but we got home from a soccer match on Saturday night and had no water at the house.  It didn’t take very long to figure out that our waterline had a break in it so we, went up to the highway and turned off the water until I could get it repaired.  The next morning I arose, dressed and went for a walk through the woods to where our water meter is.  The waterline is ½ mile long and I walked up there and back four times.  After four miles of walking, searching for the evidence of a leak, I decided to give up and call a plumber but, on my way back to the house I stepped in a wet spot along the driveway and after a little searching I found the source of our problem.  A rood had pine root had grown under the line and snapped a joint right in two.  The hard part was done. All that stood between us and our running water was a small repair.  I dug the whole and assessed my needs.  I went to the building supply and got the pipe and parts I needed and was back working on the pipe in a few minutes.  In all it took about three hours to find and repair the line and have water running at our house again.  Wait, I did tell you about the injury I incurred with this job. All of my jobs around the house have to be accompanied by an injury…or at least that is what Dre’ and my fellow workers say.  In this case they were right. 

The last three bottles being prepared for
the "mead" rack.

The broken line was in the proximity of a fire ant bed.  Fire ants, a dismal unwanted invader in our area, are known for their aggressiveness and nasty, venomous bites.  I, thank goodness, am not allergic to them because I was bitten by over 100 of the satanic little bastards.  On top of that I must have found myself in poison ivy.  I have had a very uncomfortable week enduring small blisters, itching and pain that goes along with the two plagues I encountered.  My arms look as if I have the pox or the plague or something like that.  It has been pretty uncomfortable.

I am hoping that some of the things that have been sort of up in the air will soon settle down so I can spend more time writing.  For now though, I have had four major interruptions since I began typing this.  I started at about noon today and it is 8:05 as I am finishing it. 

Until next time…John