I wasn’t kidding yesterday when I mentioned that the snowmelt was a thing right now… The Mighty Passumpsic wasn’t far from overflowing its banks yesterday.
And, as you saw, the mud going up and down our hill was quite rutted and nasty. As such, I took the helm when picking Daphne up from school.
Fortunately, today has been quite nice. Sunny and I think we might’ve hit 50° at some point this afternoon.
And, now that the yard has rained and drained a bit, we sprayed Daisy with one last round of Vetericyn on her toes this morning before sending her back outside too. And I’d by lying if I said I wasn’t worried about her…
All in the hope that her feet will heal and she’ll grow into a functioning member of our flock. Fingers crossed.
Okay, see you tomorrow.
j.s.
What a change.
A week ago today, everything looked like this:
As of this morning, it all looks very different out there.
Oh hey! There’s the extension cord!
But when you’re talking about 2.5′ of snow that’s been happily frozen for the last 2 months, that kind of water suddenly thawing all at once can make for a mess…particularly on our dirt roads.
The buses weren’t even attempting to make it up our hill today (we got the call at like 6:40 am that they weren’t running), so I went with Jen to drop Daph off at school, just to ensure they safely made it there and back again. I’ll likely do so when it’s time for pickup today too, since it’s been raining most of the afternoon.
You know, I’m pretty sure I say this every year but between here and mid-April is about as ugly as Vermont gets.
Fortunately the rest of the week looks sunny, warm, and dry so all this should drain/evaporate pretty quickly. Speaking of which, the recent thaw has unceremoniously unveiled my stacks of shame.
So I’ll have to spend time getting those cleaned up once the mud stops trying to swallow my boots.
Okay, see you tomorrow.
j.s.
As we approach another weekend, and also begin our climb out of the doldrums of a long winter, I’m reminded of how generally solitary we are up here.
Now on the one hand, this is a fantastic thing and exactly what we wanted. I mean, a big part of why we came here was to get away from the vapid suburban hamster wheel and to notice time passing as it scrolls by all too fast. And while the day-to-day in the NEK isn’t always a cakewalk, it’s rarely boring. This lends itself to an examined life rather than one that flies by in regurgitated blinks of commute/work/commute.
Also, I’ve only to look at the news for 5 minutes to realize that we’re better off up here than just about anywhere else.
The U.S. appears to be hell-bent on self destruction at the moment and while a younger me would’ve been shouting from city rooftops about it, the nearly 50-year-old special needs dad that I am now mostly just wants to be left alone.
I was reminded of this yesterday as I started to get riled up by the news of the Dept. of Education being shuttered, and became worried (again) about school funding for Daphne’s daily aides, her OT, her speech therapy, etc. All that help that she, and thousands of kids like her, receive every day falls under the heading of “Inclusion” in what’s apparently become a villainous “DEI” label.
And our U.S. Dept. of Education was the organization that enforced proper curriculum and helped fund resources that ensured kids like her got to go to school.
I explain this in case there are folks out there who might not have considered how these policies affect the real people that they know and/or care about, and instead got carried away in the whole “DEI ALL BAD!!” rhetoric.
But last night, long after the girls had gone to bed, I stood in our dining room and looked outside for a while, pondering the best strategy to navigate all this and the chaos still to come. One of my favorite poems, Carl Sandburg’s The People, Yes came to mind.
Here’s a part of it:
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
…
The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
“I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
…
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for
keeps, the people march:
“Where to? what next?”
And this view of the “nourishing earth” where we’ve taken our roothold calmed me.
We are as far removed as we possibly can be from many of the effects (although obviously not all) of the political insanity these days. That was by design.
And with each passing season we become more and more capable of living independently, incrementally needing less and less from outside our little plot. In fact, all this just confirmed that we’re going to plant apple and nut trees out there this year to help ensure we’ve a supply of sugars and proteins.
We continue to get better at this, and we can get by.
And while my heart breaks for the kids and parents out there who are likely going to lose those services, I can only carry so much. I have to take care of my family.
If only I had the time…
Now, conversely, we don’t have much in the way of interaction with people outside of our house. Daphne obviously goes to school every day, and Jen sees other parents in the school drop-off/pick-up area, but aside from that it’s basically just us three.
We occasionally see our neighbors, and I try to make it to a board gaming group that meets in Derby Line once a month. (Actually I’ve missed the last two of those due to illnesses, but I’m hopeful for March.) Outside of that I don’t have any contact that isn’t through a work video call or part of a scripted interaction in a random store’s check-out line.
And while I’m an introvert by nature, that does tend to make things…weird after a while.
Anyway, on that note I think I’m going to head out and ride with Jen to pick up Daphne from school today. I think work has seen enough of me for this week. (And I know I’ve seen enough of it.)
Have a great weekend.
j.s.
I’m happy to say that things have been pretty steady ’round here. Daph’s school days seem to still be going well *knock wood* and the weather has certainly become less extreme this week.
It was 50 on Tuesday, so going out in the sunshine without a coat felt amazing.
Unfortunately we’re struggling with little Daisy at the moment, though. She has a pretty bad case of what we think is bumblefoot…
And so she’s getting Epsom salt foot soaks in an effort to help heal it…
If this doesn’t work our next steps are to actually cut her foot open, drain the infection, then apply antibiotics and keep it bandaged for a few weeks. Yes, we’re really hoping it doesn’t come to that. Because if it doesn’t improve afterward then there’s not a lot else we can do other than put her down. (It would be very painful for her to walk.)
For the time being she’s staying in a cat carrier in the bathroom to help keep her feet clean.
As for everything else, things are okay. We just got what should be our final winter heating oil delivery this week and I’ll tell you my banking account is significantly lighter after that little episode. (Our heating oil comes down from Canada.)
Fortunately Daphne has been good with just hanging around the house for her father to save some coin. In fact, right now her favorite thing to do is jumping around in front of the TV while I (attempt to) play MarioKart.
Important note: it must be the “Squeaky Clean Sprint” track, so she can say “bath,” on her talker. After dinner last night she told me “Play. MarioKart. Bath.” when we sat down on the couch, which was a fantastic sequencing of ideas.
Here, let me get you a view of the “bath, bath, bath…”
There we go.
Okay, see you tomorrow!
j.s.
It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve actually done this (never mind talk about it here) but I have just purchased a pistol.
Like, a real one. Not a squirt gun, or laser tag zapper, or a Nintendo Light gun, or Pistol Pete’s Pizza… No, a thing that fits in your hand and fires real live bullets very fast with the sole intent to kill/maim a living thing that’s on the other end.
And clearly I’m having some issues with this new development in my life.
Because, quite honestly, I don’t like them.
I’m not into the NRA, nor shooting ranges, nor gun shows, nor any of the other activities I have no clue about that are firearm-adjacent. I don’t like the idea of toting a gun around in the car and potentially arming thieves. It’s statistically unlikely that I’ll need one for self-defense. I find their presence alarming whenever I see someone wearing one in public, so I don’t want to be that guy.
And, above all, I don’t want to hurt anyone.
So, why the hell did I just buy one then?
Well the primary reason is the chickens. I talked about this back when we had to put poor Mildred down, and came to the conclusion that I’d need a small-caliber gun to humanely dispatch any of our chicks who were beyond healing. Again, I am not thrilled about this idea. However it’s inappropriate to expect my neighbor to handle that kind of thing for me, and I’m not interested in the many other variations on flock euthanasia.
Also, as unlikely as a home burglary may statistically be (about a 1-in-70 chance in the Lyndonville/St. Johnsbury area according to ChatGPT’s numbers), we’re also not exactly moving in a socioeconomically stable direction as a nation. And, crimes of desperation being what they are, if someone were to enter our house uninvited there isn’t a whole lot I could immediately do to dissuade such activity and/or protect my family other than attempt to dazzle them with flowery and Byzantine circumlocution.
I’ve always held that a big dog is a more valuable resource than a firearm when it comes to home security, and we’re working on that one too (we don’t have any fencing in our yard, which complicates things), but a firearm is certainly another part of an overall protection plan.
I do have a .22 varmint rifle (borrowed from the same neighbor)…
But that’s less for home protection and more for distance plinking of foxes, raccoons, and hawks in an effort to protect our flock.
And while the pistol I’ve purchased is also just a .22, I highly doubt anyone who’s on the business end of it will pause to read the label stating that it’s not a 9mm. (There’s only a tenth-of-an-inch difference in size between the two.)
Obviously there’s more to all of this than just purchasing the thing and clapping my hands together with an, “Okay! Glad I’ve got that whole gun thing taken care of!” sentiment.
Both Jen and I will need to practice how to load, shoot, unload, and store it safely. To that end, I have a biometric safe on its way, which will keep it out of little hands. And once the snow melts there’s a small metal disc that I’ve hung on our property for target practice and general firearm familiarity.
If you’d told me 10 years ago that I’d have guns in my house I would’ve said you absolutely had the wrong guy. As a matter of fact, I’ve pushed back several times when offered them by family.
I guess I’m in a different place now, though. Both geographically and ideologically.
See you tomorrow.
j.s.
Yep. Missed a few days last week. Despite Daphne being back at school for 3 of 5 workdays, I was getting pulled in several directions at once at work and simply didn’t have time to write.
I’ve about 10 minutes before my next meeting, though, so I’ll see how much open field running I can do here.
We spent the majority of the weekend at home (again), like you do when it’s this kind of cold and icy.
It’s not all bad, mind you. It makes for a lot of the weekend spent relaxing on the couch. And Daph’s poor face needed minor recovery after some freezing windburn during school recess on Friday.
Temps were in the teens and winds were gusting at around 25-30mph.
The poor chickens are over it, though. Doris in particular. In fact, it seems she couldn’t take another day spent hanging around the young’ns at the coop, so she bravely trekked through the snow and spent the afternoon in relative quietude, hanging out by herself under the car.
We’ve also just begun pivoting them away from the Purina Chow that they’ve been eating their whole lives, and picked up our first bag of Poulin Grain, which is made just up the road in Newport. The plan is to mix the two feeds together for a while, so it’s an easier transition on their tummies, then go to just straight Poulin feed.
Honestly, nothing would be better for them than to start foraging again. I think once they can start moving around more the egg production will skyrocket with these new girls. That is, as long as we can keep them from being eaten by all the predators who will also awaken once the snow recedes…
Speaking of which, it looks like we’re headed for mid-50’s and sunshine tomorrow, so that should melt a goodly amount of it with a quickness.
And, since we’re staring down the barrel of some consistent spring-like temps, Jen and I felt it would be a good idea to get in what might be our last trip up to Burke for the season.
Okay, see you tomorrow.
j.s.