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Hi Everyone,
Have you ever dreamed? I mean day dreamed over something that you really wanted but never thought it would really become a reality? For years I have dreamed over the house on the corner. It is an old house built in 1915. When we first moved to our farm a little old lady resided there. Some days you would see her taking a nap in the sun on her front porch in order to get warm. As the years passed by the old lady and her porch ceased to exist. People get old and pass on into eternity, and buildings get old and begin to fall apart. The last tenants of the house removed the old porch and all that is left is one of the post to the steps. The azaleas that once lined the front porch are now tall enough to completely hide the front of the house. A man who recently bought the house didn’t even know it had a front door. While the face of the house is hidden by oversized bushes—the inside of the house, the old barn, and the grounds are filled with trash—broken furniture, broken glass, old books, empty coffee cans, beer cans, and so much more. There are a few treasures to be found here and there—but the word “Junk” is a perfect description of everything else. Portions of the outside of the house are grey and the color seems to fit the houses mood. I dreamed of what fun it would be to bring life back to that old house. A few years ago I started to voice my dreams out loud, and found out that I was not the only one dreaming over that house—my Mother was too. When 2022 started I tried to contact the person who owned the house. I wanted to bring this dream to a reality. The phone number was no longer valid, and then we got sick with Covid and dreams came to a standstill. Last fall that dream began to surface again and I teasingly said that all I wanted for my birthday was the old house on the corner. Then in early 2023 Mom and I were driving by the house where the owners of the old house lived and we saw them outside and we decided to stop and ask questions. The man’s mother had died, and his brother had died and now he was responsible to figure out what to do with all the houses and land—there was 20 acres with 2 mobile homes, one brick house and the 1915 old house). The man said that he would be selling, but that it would probably be a year or two. We gave him our card and told him to call us when he was ready to sell the old house because we were interested. Then Memorial Day rolled around and we were driving around looking for a stray dog and saw a For Sale sign in the yard of the old house on the corner. The next day we called the realtor and she said that she was expecting a call from us—and we were the first ones to call her. That Wednesday we met her at the house and got a tour of the yard and the inside of the house. If the outside of the house was a little gray—the inside was definitely dark and dreary for a remodeling had happened sometime many years ago and the walls were covered with dark brown paneling. The floors were still the real deal with its skinny tongue and grooved wood slats. Some places the floor was worn with traffic and one place a knot had fallen out leaving a hole in the floor that allowed you to see the ground below. The smell of the place was not very pleasant to the nose, but it was a relief to know that rats had not taken up residence and the roof did not leak. There was a lot of work to be done to restore the house to its original beauty—but first we would have to do a major de-junking of the place. Cleaning out the inside of the house really didn’t seem too overwhelming—I guess because there was a wood floor for a base and four walls for a boundary. Cleaning up the outside was a different story for layers of dirt, leaves and fallen down trees hid many buried un-treasure, and the piles of junk were scattered here a little, there a little and everywhere a little-little. The house has sat vacant for four years, and the last tenants did not take pride in their surroundings. Clean up wasn’t the main problem though—the remodeling was. We didn’t have the knowledge, or the health to demo walls and ceilings and restore and rebuild. So in the end we called the realtor and told her that we would pass. Our neighbor who is a contractor, and whose wife has lived on this road her whole life and knew the old lady who used to live there—also wanted the house in order to return it to its original glory. They had some fund issues though, and they asked us if we would like to partner with them on the house. The idea sounded great to us—but by the time they called the realtor she told them that she had just signed a contract on the house. All we could hope for was that the person that bought it would want to clean up the place and restore the house. Then two weeks ago our neighbors called us on a Friday afternoon and asked if we were still interested in the old house. The person that had bought it had a change of mind and wanted to sell it. Mom and I went down to the house and looked around and dreamed—but in the end we decided to pass. It would be nice to own, but do we really have the time and money to spend on the place? So we told our neighbor that we would pass. The following Monday he showed up and said that he would be signing a contract on the house that day—but that he was short some funds and could we help him out? We talked it over as a family and decided that as many times as this house kept coming back to us we thought that it was time for us to say “Yes” to our dreams. We asked our neighbor if he was still open to going halves and he said that they were. Both of our families have the same vision for this house—to see it restored to its old glory. We can help with funds and cleaning and decorating—but since he is a contractor he and his crew can take care of the demo and remodeling/restoring (and it will only take a few months). We are excited to be able to close on the house this week. The best part of the story is that we are paying the same price that the first owner was asking for it—but the second owner paid for a property survey, he paid to get the septic tank cleaned and checked out, and he paid two men to come in and clean out the house, the barn, and the land. While the clean-up job wasn’t perfect, there is 75% less trash and junk that we have to handle. So that is the biggest news of late on the farm. Mom took a video of the outside of the house and barn and we are uploading it to YouTube now and it should be loaded by morning “Dreams Really Do Come True”. Once we sign the papers and get a key we shall do a tour of the inside of the house and then we plan on taking you along as the changes are made.
While much time last week was spent walking around the old house, talking with our neighbors, doing research on the house and the family that built it—we still spent the majority of our week being farmers. The milk cows are not giving us as much milk as we would like—because the eight little calves are growing bigger every day and some of them are old enough to drink their mamas dry. I would love to be able to separate the calves at night, but alas the center lane is still out of commission since the water pipes are exposed from a bad rain storm a month ago that washed the dirt downhill. Friday afternoon the bulldozer and the big roller arrived and the plans are for the crew to show up tomorrow and start dumping load after load of dirt in the lane to build it back up to ground level and then to top it off with load after load of asphalt millings so that it doesn’t wash out again. Then once the lane is fixed we shall be able to separate the calves at night so that we can have more milk. The calves do not know how to share but the mama cows do. If you leave the calf on the mama then it will drink the mama dry, but if you separate the calf from the mama at night then the mama will give us half of the milk and save the other half for her calf—well, most of the mama cows do that. Sally just loves to be milked and she is known to let down all her milk and then her calf ends up going over to a friend’s house to eat breakfast. I will have to make sure to either not milk Sally all the way out, or leave a teat just for her calf—which is Bullfrog.
Another reason we are lacking in milk is because our cow Emma was bit by a rattlesnake and just for precautions we have not been keeping her milk—which is a gallon a day, which adds up to be seven gallons a week. Emma was bit right above her left front hoof. She is swollen from her knee down and her foot looks more like an elephants than a cows. She hobbles around on three legs—for she will put no weight on her sore foot. Every day we soak her foot in warm water with Epson salt and charcoal powder. The wound is slowly healing and every day more and more skin is pink instead of raw, but time is running out for Emma to recover. The vet said to give her one month. In that time Emma must be walking on her foot. He said that the swelling might not ever go down, but that the joint would solidify and the pain would go away and Emma would start walking on her foot. If she doesn’t start walking on her foot that means that it will never heal and she will always be in pain—so the best thing to do would be to put her down. She has one week left before we are to call the vet and report her progress—our prayer is that Emma will start walking on her foot this week. After losing two cows to lightning, we really do not want to lose another cow.
My sewing machine has been giving me some problems of late, and my friend Lydia said that I could send it home with her because a man that lives near them (2 hours south of me) could come to their house and fix it. Since I have been in a sewing mood I didn’t exactly want to lose the use of my sewing machine for a few months—so I thought that I would use Mom’s sewing machine for it is identical to mine, but alas Mom’s has not been used for many years and it was very sluggish and had a bad case of “I don’t think I can, I don’t think I can.” So that meant that both sewing machines needed to be sent off to be fixed. So I decided to spend as much time Wednesday and Thursday sewing before I had to turn over my sewing machine on Friday. On Wednesday I got three dresses half way made (if I had focused on just one I might have had a new outfit). I hoped to sew more on Thursday but alas the day did not go as planned. Since Penny was off at her Mother’s that meant that Mom and I had to help wash up the equipment, which meant that I didn’t get to the garden as early as I wanted to. After lunch I started to head to the garden but Mom got stung by a wasp, so I headed back to the house with her to doctor the sting. We applied Lavender essential oil and some of my Soothing Salve. The pain was not subsiding, and the hand was beginning to swell. Papa suggested something that would draw—so we put some Black Drawing Salve on it. The pain was still intense and the swelling was now creeping up her arm. We soaked her finger (where she was stung) in plantain tea, we put on more lavender, more Soothing salve and more Black Drawing Salve. To our dismay nothing was working. The lavender oil and the Soothing Salve worked when I got stung on my neck a few years ago—but it wasn’t helping Mom. Poor Mom was suffering, and I felt so helpless to help her. Her body never responds the way it should—and she is very sensitive to drugs so it can be very scary at times. For two days Mom suffered in pain—but at least by today the swelling was gone out of her arm and hand, even though her finger is still swollen. It took an hour or so to get some of the pain subsided to where we could go back to work and I headed to the garden to transplant some bell pepper plants, basil plants and a few tomato plants. I also planted some zinnia and lettuce seeds. It was a hot day and when I came inside it was 98 degrees outside with a heat index of 118. I spent the next hour cooling off. I was planning on sewing after dinner, but our neighbors showed up to talk about the house down the road. They left a little after 8:00 and we still hadn’t eaten any dinner. By the time dinner was cooked and eaten, and the dishes were done—it was bedtime.
Friday sewing was out of the question because we had chickens to butcher. I refused to let Mom help because using her hand made it hurt real bad, and she had already taxed it milking the cows. Thankfully the Tavernari’s still come to help and there were only 45 chickens to process. We were done by 2:35 and then it was time for Mom and me to deliver the sewing machines to Emily’s house (where Lydia, Emily’s sister, and her family would be for a birthday party). So I guess my three new dresses shall have to wait a month before I can finish them, and that is okay.
Have you ever been so tired that you were so ready to crash into bed when bedtime rolled around—but as soon as your head hit the pillow you were all of a sudden wide awake? That is what happened to me last night, but I took advantage of it and got up and went and met Zorro face to face. A couple of weeks ago I found the bag of cat food on the ground in the garage. Papa usually keeps it up on the saw table to keep it out of the reach of opossums, and I had no idea how it got on the ground. Then another day when Steve showed up to work the bag of doggie biscuits was torn into and strewn all over the floor—while piles of crumbs from those that had been eaten. Last week Papa went outside in the morning to feed the cats and found the lid off of the cat food—which is kept inside one of those large holiday popcorn tins. So the next night Papa put the cat food inside the dog food container which has a twist tight lid and two handles that lock up over the lid. The next morning when he went into the garage he found the lid was off of the dog food container too! He said that he guessed the critter was just sitting inside the container eating dog food to its hearts content. When the critter got into the cat food container he left a few hand prints behind, and Mom found a hand print in the bottom of a five gallon bucket that had a little bit of water in it. We were pretty sure that we had a masked bandit on our hands, so Papa set up the trail camera. Sure enough, at 10:25 that night the masked bandit was spotted loitering in our garage looking for free food—but Papa had brought all the food into the house. Last night when I found myself unable to fall asleep I looked at the clock and saw that it was close to 10:25 so I decided to go see if Zorro had come for a visit. As I reached the garage door I could hear some movement in the garage. I slowly unlocked the door, and then I turned on the light and opened the door—and to my delight Zorro was checking out the empty cat food bowls. The raccoon took a look at me and started to walk toward the garage door, but it crossed paths with Catapus, one of our cats. Catapus was growling at the raccoon something fiercely—it was a low, deep growl. The raccoon stopped just about a foot away from Catapus and they were almost nose to nose. The raccoon would look at me, then back at Catapus, and then it would look at me some more. Finally is decided to move on—without any dinner that night.
Speaking of dinner I think that it is time for a bedtime snack.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare