Is this Chicago?

Holy Tornados, Batman!  What's with all this wind?  We haven't been out to work at the farm this week because it's so windy and dusty right now.  Then there was the fire on the river yesterday.  I didn't get a picture, but it was only a few miles from the farm, blowing our direction so everyone in town smelled like Smokey the Bear.  I still don't know what was burning, but I hope is was all the stinkin' foxtails that are growing knee high around here.

Sorry -- didn't mean to sound like a bummer.  I do love weather, but some weather I particularly enjoy while I'm doing a specific activity.  For example:  It is delightful to quilt when it's raining or windy.  It's fabulous to go to bed at night during a thunderstorm.  Curled up reading when anything wet is coming down outside is great.  However, this Arizona native does NOT enjoy being outside when it's windy or lightening.  I don't mind being in the rain if I'm not on my way somewhere and I need NOT to look like a drowned rat.

Oh right - this is supposed to be a blog about our farmhouse.  Well, since there hasn't been much happen since the Posse came for the Great Muck-Out Weekend (#1).  We've only been back to water, weed and walk.  The photo at the end of this posting is our favorite path.  We have four Lady Banks yellow rose bushes right near the front gate of the Big House, then along the fence in the front yard we have two honeysuckle bushes.  We also have an almond tree I planted last summer and a new little apricot tree that's all by itself in the back yard.  So I try to water twice a week.

Since Hunnyman works so many hours, it has fallen to me to do yard maintenance.  I'm mostly OK with that, but I won't be out there once it gets hot.  Hot makes me grouchy.  So I need to capitalize on this weather (when the wind's not blowing).  I would rather pull weeds than poison them.  My most long time friend Nancy put it very eloquently when she offered one day to come pull the weeds in my front yard when we lived in Tempe.  It was more of a request.  It wasn't that she was a neighbor fearing her property values were shrinking due to the heinous nature of my yard; she really just likes to pull weeds.  She said there is something very gratifying about grabbing a weed right close to the ground, getting a fist full and feeling it slide out roots and all.  She's right -- it is extremely satisfying.  I figure that's why I would rather pull than poison.

A curious thing about the little apricot tree in the back - as I watered it last summer, I turned the hose on and let it run slowly.  When I went out an hour (or maybe six - I might have been quilting) later, an area about five feet square was now about 6 inches lower than it was before I watered.  It was most curious and unsettling.  We had developed sinkhole - a big one.  Then I saw the tail end of a snake slipping down into the chasm.  Yes, besides the newly lower real estate area, it appeared the sinking still may not be done.  I deduced that area of the back yard is basically a shelf about 6" thick and who knows how far back it goes before it becomes solid?  Seriously -- CREEPY.  Half of the well around the apricot tree had sunk, so I had to make it much smaller.  And, I don't leave the water running back there very long any more or walk on the iffy area.

So, back to snakes and weeds.  Well, last weekend while I was watering, I was pulling some weeds.  Hunnyman always kills them with poison but part of the yard is off limits because Sandy (Deuce) wants to put in a big garden in the fall.  I'm pretty sure Hman stays within his allowable kill zone, but the wind does it's own thing with the weed killer.  So, there are plenty of weeds at the farm should ever Nancy run out in Tempe.

On my first blog, I listed all the structures and promised to give more detail later.  So it's a good time to start.  I estimate that the front yard of the Big House is about 60' deep and maybe 100' wide.  With the exception of the plants growing near the fence and a few heirloom hollyhocks in one far corner, it's all Arizona native ground cover (dirt).  Wind + rain + dirt = weeds.  That's the prevailing formula for the farm yard right now.  When we were living out there, I was trying to work in little pockets to prettify the place (that's a Safford word).  But as much time as I spent on it, it's still a big dirt yard with a few things growing at the perimeters.  This picture was taken two summers ago.  I know that because the big tree behind the house is gone.  It had some rather disturbing problems, so, sadly, we had to take it down.  That's another story for another time.  Anyway, if I took a picture today, except for that tree, it would look much the same.  That's Wyatt in the yard.


Oh yeah - The Snake.  I had been out tromping in the tall weeds in the backyard in my shorts and flipflops pulling the tallest weeds.  That's sort of a mind game I play with myself -- I have to pull at least 30 weeds before I can do what I really want to do, which is plant something or paint something or sew something -- and I always pull the tallest ones first.  So I pulled about a 15 gallon bucket full of weeds and walked around to the front of the big house.  I still had a hand full of weeds because I'd filled the bucket (I'm waaaay past my 30 quota at this point).  In the front of the big house, I keyed in on the biggest, greenest weed and thought I would get rid of it.  So I reached down and just before my hand got about 1" from the ground I saw the snake.  SCARED THE *@#! OUTTA ME!  I remember saying, "Holy Crap, that's a snake!" (or something like that).  There was no one there to hear me but I felt the need to vocalize what I saw.  I didn't know what kind of snake it was, but it was coiled and apparently, sleeping.  It didn't move (yeah!).  I dropped my weeds and backed up.  I stared at it from all angles and then went and got my camera phone.  Those suck.  You can't tell what you're really taking a picture of.  I wanted to try and let Hunnyman see the markings.  I didn't want it to be a rattlesnake.  I decided I'd just leave him alone.  So I moved the hose to the next thirsty recipient and went back in the house and did a little more sewing while I continued to water.  I was there for a good 3 hours longer and every time I went outside, I checked and that snake was still there.  Asleep.  (maybe he's dead...)

So when I got home I looked him up on the internet.  It wasn't a king snake or a bull snake.  It wasn't a coral snake or a garter snake.  Yep - it was a rattler.  So, Hunnyman went out before he went to work the next morning and he was gone.  You know what that means?  He wasn't dead after all.

The morale of this long and winding story is that I will no longer pull weeds in my flip flops and dishwashing gloves.  I will have my steel toed rubber boots, my long leather gloves and a shovel close by.  I knew Hman would ask why I didn't kill that snake, but I didn't want to kill a good snake.  A rattlesnake, on the other hand is a different story.  Besides, I don't know if I could drive a shovel down into a snake if he wasn't bothering me.  My favorite sister-in-law Janet can -- she whacks rats and frogs (and snakes) that have the misfortune of getting caught in her back yard.  And she does it in her flip flops.  She's like a superhero.  I should make her a cape.  

I hope you have a groovy weekend full of gentle breezes, maybe a little rain and a lot of whatever toots your horn.

Love to you all!

Posse vs Poop - Part Deux

OK - it's Thursday and I'm just now finishing up on last weekend.  My apologies -- it's been a busy week. 

Yesterday Hunnyman (Roger) had a day off in mid- week, which is rare.  We had the load in this picture ready to go to the landfill from Sunday.  I played hookie from work for the morning and we kicked BUTT on the trash.  It's all gone now!  We took this load  including filling the bed of the Dodge Dominator (it's a U of A thing).  Then we took two more loads!!!  What this picture doesn't show is the HUGE pile of mesquite trimmings to the left of the trash bags.  BTW - those bags may look innocent, but bags of sticks, twigs and Ratatouie (sp) poo ain't light.  Plus, there's all sort of broken glass and things waiting to puncture you.  Can you say tetanus shot?  Hunnyman did step on a rusty nail (everything's rusty out there), but it didn't go through his foot, just his shoe.  I had to go to work at 1 PM just to get some rest!

We hauled off the rest of the old corrals and all the RR ties (old, and termite ridden), 20 foot 2 x 12s (no worries - too rotten to use), and then raked the ground and filled 4 more 40 gal trash cans with sticks.  I think it may be time to invest in a chipper - that's some really good mulch, according to Kevin the Dump Dude.  So, that was all Wednesday.

OK - now jump back a few days with me.  All that trash and trimmings came from the hard work the Posse did on Sunday.  Remember -- Sandy burned up her chainsaw and we had to get Roger's out!  So on Sunday, Sandy, Bob, Deuce, Ace (Barbara S), Karen, Hunnyman and Yours Truly rocked on that shed and surrounding overgrowth.  Sandy had to wrestle bed springs and an entire chicken wire fence out of mesquite trees during the trimming.  There was so much debris out behind the shed that you couldn't even see the bed spring or wire!  It's like we gained 12" of  vertical real estate!  This picture is the before of all the brush.

We were so tired by the time we quit that I'm not sure we have a great picture of the after, but that area next to the shed is where Sandy unearthed the mattress springs and fence.

Now all that stuff you see in the picture is gone except the camper shells and the railroad tressels.  The tressels are a story in themselves.  A friend of my Dad's had a contract with the railroad and they cleaned up and replaced bridges for the trains.  Dad mentioned to him that we could use any spare RR ties he might come across (although I'm not sure why).  So he drags out five friggin pieces that are each 40 ft long and weigh about a million tons!  There's no way we can move them.  Then the guy died so I can't even call him up tell him to come take them back.  (No, he didn't die moving them, but I about did when I saw them.)  So I'm stuck with them.  If we can find someone to dig a trench and drop them down and use them as part of the road I will be happy.  But I won't hold my breath on that one.

So the culmination of the weekend was a fabulous dinner al fresco (I used to think that meant you ate naked but it just means eat outside).   We couldn't get a picture of everyone because Wyatt doesn't have thumbs and he can't operate a camera.  So Sandy took one picture and Karen took the other.  I know Karen.  She would rather I use the picture she took.  We all have full bellies and smiles of satisfaction.  The sore muscles came the next day.  For some reason, I look like Randy Jackson without a tan.

We did have some fun in the evenings, playing Rummikub or Cranium and even managed to get a little quilting in.  That's what we usually do when we get together.  We give Bob and Roger a 'to do' list and the girls sew (and eat).

I am truly blessed to be surrounded (and loved) by extraordinary people.  All of these souls came ready to work because they  knew what we were going to do and they still showed up, respirators and work gloves in hand.  The amount we were able to accomplish was pretty amazing.  It would have taken Roger and I two months of weekends just to get to this point.  And I know they will be back.  I love them all fiercely.  I will try not to  make it two workdays in a row, though.  One day of work and one of fun - that should be the reward.

I can actually see our glass studio coming true....

Posse vs Poop - Part ONE

I have started this post about four times.  It just never went anywhere.  How interesting can you make bags of pack rat poop?  So, I just decided to start and hopefully it will make sense.  It's in 2 parts to accommodate all the photos.

If you've read last week's update, you know that the Farmhouse Posse was riding in to help us start to clear out the big tin shed so we can start to build our first studio, which happens to be glass!  Well, let me tell you that we made a serious dent in the mess.

So, this is where we started.  The shed has two sides and one was full of old business records that packrats had been having their way with for a very long time.  We found cancelled checks and sales receipts from 1969 stuffed inside the drip pans of gas stoves circa 1940 - 1950.  Nests of twigs, pieces of mattress and lots of paperwork stuffed in every nook and cranny in old appliances.  Yum.  Believe it or not, I hope to restore one of these old beauties and put it to use.  Really!

Anyway, we only concentrated on the bigger part of the shed.  Among the more interesting things we found were my Dad's first lighted sign from a business, two car axles, about 25 windows of various sizes and styles and a spider egg sack the size of a golf ball.  I thought Hunnyman was going to shiver right out of his britches when I showed it to him.  Spiders like him.  He does not like spiders.  Most especially BIG spiders.  Thankfully it's inhabitants appear to have grown up and moved away long ago.  Still, it was pretty creepy.

So we decided to start making separate piles as we removed things. We didn't move any of the appliances because those old ones are unbelievably heavy and we don't yet have a plan for them.  We did make a pile of scrap metal that the junk guy will pick up -- mostly rusty stuff.  We are going to try and be as green as we can on re-using, re-purposing and re-cycling all these old found objects.  That being said, don't be surprised if you see my collection of Bullseye frit stored in an old propane refrigerator in the near future!  I credit Deuce (Sandy S) with that suggestion.  Brilliant!  Two camper shells may just become mosaic covered gazebos.  That's white trash art at it's finest.  I suspect some cool treasures in the side we didn't get into yet.

So here are Bob, Sandy R and Barbara all dressed up and ready to rumble.  Which they did, indeed!  Bob and I ended up putting on coveralls but Sandy R and Barbara just braved the piles of poop and spiderwebs, jumped in and got busy.

It was a nice day for shoveling what we were shoveling - overcast at times and breezy.  We were all very careful to wear our masks and even Karen wore hers while she manned the trailer and packed our landfill bound booty.  We pitched and she caught.  Karen and I have been doing that together for over 10 years at Artistry.  I sort of miss that, even though no one really thought unloading glass was fun.  That was because I had not yet shoved, bagged and loaded rat poop.

 

Here's Bob in his Bunny suit.  Sadly, there are no picture of me in mine (it was a lovely shade of cobweb vs. navy blue).   That's Barbara in the back clearing some brush from the old corrals.  Once upon another lifetime, I lived out here and have always loved it.  I had a horse in that old corral and chickens in the coop.  I hate roosters, but we had one.  Until we didn't.  I think he knew I was scared of him.  I don't like things that jump and fly unexpectedly, which is what roosters are prone to do.  That SOB would hide and wait for me to come gather the eggs.  He must have thought my legs didn't have enough texture because he would jump on me and rake those nasty talons down my legs and one day I had just had enough.  I waited for him.  ...With a 2 x 4 that was about 4 feet long.  I figured that was a good length because I wouldn't have to get too close, but I could still have excellent control of my swing and swat.  That's just what I did.  I swatted that rooster like a great big fly.  Then he just disappeared.  I told the other half that the coyotes must have got 'im.  You know what?  Chickens don't need a rooster to lay eggs.  Imagine that.

On Saturday we spent lots of time in the shed just cleaning.  As I said, we didn't move any of the appliances.  We're doing our research on what the best thing to do with them -- I'll keep you posted on that progress in a later entry.  Sandy shoveled, swept and bagged.  Barbara and Karen loaded boxes and bags until the trailer and truck bed were full.  Then Bob, Barbara and I headed off to the landfill and emptied our load.  Roger had to work on Saturday but he made up for it Sunday.

Once the inside was clear of everything except old propane refrigerators and stoves, most of us moved outside and continued clearing brush and trimming or removing trees.  Sandy R brought her own chainsaw.  You gotta love a gal with her own power tools.  She ended up burning that saw up on Saturday.  Luckily, Roger had a backup so there was no time lost! 

Continued on Part Two!

Showdown at the Tin Shed

A hale and hearty hello to you all! This blog will be brief, but hopefully I can convey my excitement about the upcoming weekend !! The Farmhouse Posse is riding in on Friday to help us clear some clutter. Now when I say clutter, I'm talking refrigerator size items that have been holding the same spot of the floor down for 20 - 30 years. When you have stationary items, some of which were once made of paper or fiber in a dark, unused, undisturbed building out in the middle of 100 acres of cotton, with a large water source close by -- what do you suppose you get? CRITTERS! Critters that aren't even cute when they're babies. That many critters over that many years in that big an area means that you can't even see whether the floor is dirt or cement. Soooooo, we're gloving up, doning our coveralls and bandanas (respirators) and will commence to pitching, tossing, shoveling, sweeping and finally, hosing down the big tin shed.

Then it will become the first (of many) studios at the Farm -- Glass Arts -- yeah!! We can finally get set up and start playing with glass again (after 2 long years). I see cutting tables, glass racks, kilns, soldering irons, Tiffany lamps, bandaids.....

This is a great random picture from last summer - just one of the views from behind the houses.  Cotton looks to be about July - August height.

I will take some fresh photos and if we live to tell, I'll post our progress next week. Just by way of introduction, the Posse coming in will be Builder Bob and his lovely bride Sandy (my usual partner in crime), Barbara I, Sandy II (aka Deuce), and Karen (she's the wild one of the bunch). Then, of course, yours truly and Hunnyman.  There's an extra bonus because all next week is free dump days at the local landfill - WAHOO!

So - check back next week!

Easter Weekend at the Farm

Pre-Note:  Our server at work went down (as I was writing this) on Monday about 5:30 and it wasn't repaired until just before 5 on Wednesday.

Well, Guys and Dolls, I'm back after a weekend filled with groans, grunts, dust, mud and (finally) smiles of satisfaction.  OK, most of the grunting and groaning were coming from Sandy and me.  We decided that while Bob and Roger were working on the water heater issue, we would start getting some of the rooms squared away.

For those of you who may not know, Roger and I moved into the Farmhouse in September of 2007.  We moved OUT of the farmhouse in August of 2009 when we decided that the sinking water heater issue was just too dangerous to chance.  Our daughter happened to have an empty house here that was about 3/4 finished and even that sounded good.  We asked if we could move in there and finished it for them (rent free of course).  Sounded like a win-win for everyone, so we are now squatters.  However, everyone seems to be happy.  When we left the Farmhouse, we weren't very nice to it.  We just left it a mess (as my friend BjB says, "Because you could".)  It was August, it was HOT and I had moved more in the past few years than I had in my entire life.  I was DONE.

So I have a huge attack of guilt every time I go back in there.  But even with the mess outside and the mess inside, that old house still feels like home.  Anyway – I digress – I’ll get back to this weekend.

The guys had a lot of work to do.  As I suspected, when they removed the 1" pipe going to the water heater, it only had a pinhole of light showing through it.  The rest of the interior of the pipe was rock hard with what I suspect at one time was the "rust colored oozy matter".

The boys discovered that the foundation of the floors consisted of (going on memory here) 2 x 12 planks laid diagonal to the floor boards with another row of planks (2 x 6?) laid at a 90 degree angle to the floor boards.  As luck would have it, there was a knot in the bottom plank directly under the water heater (where else would one put it?).  The nature of knots is not nice.  It probably started cracking 30 years ago. Anyway, without going into too much detail (Bob's going to tell me where I went wrong describing this), they were in and out of that hole in the floor all day Saturday with drills and hammers and saws-alls trying to get to what they needed.

When they weren't in the hole in the house, they were in the hole outside playing moles and digging further under the house from the back yard to try and get closer to the plumbing in the water heater closet -- which happens to be smack dab in the middle of the house.  So after hours of drilling, sawing, digging and shoveling both inside and out, they came to a stopping place.  It was time to pour some cement.

We had poured a small slab for a new water heater outside last summer when we originally started this repair and that’s when we discovered that we couldn’t go any further with the plumbing until we could get the old one out.  That's when we also discovered there was no crawlspace big enough for a human-type mammal.  Squirrels can run amok under there, but Hunnyman couldn't get under the house far enough to get near the water heater.  So he started digging a crawl space.  Well, after days of digging (like Andy digging out of Shawshank) he finally stopped.  That's where it has been since we just packed up like the Beverly Hillbillies and moved on up the road.

So the slab that we poured last summer just needed to be bigger so we can enclose the water heater.  So that's what Handy Hunny and Builder Bob proceeded to do.  Once it was poured, the weekend was pretty much done and we said 'adios' to the old gal until next weekend.

Thanks for reading this far - and sorry it took until Wednesday to get this blog out.  I included a few pictures of our worker bees from the project.  I didn't include any of the rooms that Sandy and I groaned over because they still need a few little things and then I'll post some before and afters.

Thank you a zillion times to our most faithful sidekicks, Bob and Sandy R.  They always are so generous with their time and talent.  I do not know why we deserve friends like we have.  But I'm sure glad we do.

In closing - Roger and I walked the fields last night but didn't work on the house.  It was windy but nice.  It takes about 40 minutes to go a mile but in our conversation, we went lots farther planning what will happen with the Farm.

Hugs to all!