March 5, 2009
HighButtonShoe
The farm Update
and other sometimes non-relevants
Good morning,
....first off, this is
obviously NOT the first of the month, although it is close. I penned a
letter to you ON the first, and just as
I was preparing to send it
off, my computer froze up. It hasn't done that in years. After a
frustrating talk to it, with my razzle-frazzle words, which apparently it
paid NO attention to, I finally manually shut it off, in the manner that
the computer guides all say NOT to do. However, it was the only way.
Turning it back on, my letter was no where to be found, it simply
vanished...my punishment for misbehaving in the turnoff, or perhaps it did
hear my razzle frazzle words and figured I deserved the missing letter. At
any rate, after that I wasn't in the most pleasant of moods and decided to
clean a cupboard instead. Now 5 days later, I can scarcely remember what I
had written to you. So we start over.
We are still in the grips of
winter. While the snow is significantly less on the ground, it still
covers the ground, nevertheless. Where the ground was plowed but snow
remained, the downpour of rain a week ago coated those areas in a solid
thick sheet of ice, which is still there. VERY shiny, treacherous and
slippery. Our country road is the same. The paper reported a couple weeks
ago that we have had 207 inches of snow this winter, breaking the records
of recorded snowfall. I do believe every inch has fallen here on the
farm! The paved roads are now clear, but getting to a paved road is a
challenge to say the least. My truck balks at the attempts and I balk
right along with it. Somewhere in the snow, I have managed to lose my one
ice gripper for my arctic packs, so my tracks have a lop sided look of
boot print and the other print shows the pattern of the gripper. Along
with Beu's missing camera lens cover, it will show up when the snow melts.
Which I am thinking may be about mid May. To say it has been a long winter
is a mild understatement!
The seed catalogs began coming
the first of January and they have eased my discontent of winter, only
slightly. I often look at
my pictures of my gardens last
summer just to remind myself that indeed we did have life BEFORE winter. I
am even looking forward to mud !!! and I never do that. Isn't it odd how 6
months of winter can change one's perspective on things?
In my annual self diagnosed
self-destruct mode of January and February, similar to the brief case of
the old Mission Impossible TV series, while the brief case hissed and blew
up, I only hiss, mutter, frown and in the end...cut my hair. Not having a
hair cut since August 2007, it was 1/2 way down my back. And needed some
attention. Seeing a friend in her shop with the coolest haircut, and
learning she also had baby fine hair, I made an appointment with her hair
dresser at an upscale saloon, paid a weeks salary, got cut, shaped,
eyebrows trimmed (who KNEW about that?....I didn't), 'glazed' with a light
color to blend in with my blond, and was out the door 2 hours later, with
hair just below my ears. I think this is not me. Struggling for two weeks,
I went back in for some help. I am now shorter yet. And with this inverted
wedge, (this is a hairdo name, lest you are thinking what it sounds like)
she 'buzzed' me up the back. I am now really short!! As I often give
Ronnie ample opportunity to tell me " I told you so", he didn't this time,
until about day 18 of the new me. Still struggling, my biggest problem is
literally when somebody walks within a foot of me, my hair, unless
plastered down with 1/2 can of hairspray that would glue a feather to the
wall, jumps out in one huge screech, to greet the person, like I had stuck
my finger in a light socket. So..I may be wearing a baseball cap until my
hair grows out. I have canceled my end of the month appointment for
'shaping'. The upside? I really like my eyebrows.
I really think I should just
skip January and February.
Did you get the Country
Sampler House Tour edition yet? It was supposed to be on newsstands by
3/3. Of course, in Cadillac, I suspect Walmart only got maybe 6, so they
may be hard to find. It was last year for me. Anyway, our farmhouse is
featured in it. I mailed you via email the interview I had sent to the
interviewer, as due to space constraints, (or lack of interest...), they
didn't use a great deal of the interview. We are offering the Country
Sampler magazine, our farmhouse collection CD with about 300 photographs
on it of the farm since we moved in in June 2007 for $16.50 post paid. If
you need just the magazine, it is $8.50 post paid, and if just the CD,
which shows so much more of the farmhouse, that is $8.00 post paid. We
send the interview via email, unless specifically asked for in written
print. The interview from me, tells much more about the house and its
history. It reveals the sunlight and shadows that so please me and make
sitting with steaming coffee watching them cross for brief moments such a
joy.
The other half of the
farmhouse, the farmer, does not drink, smoke, do drugs, play golf, chase
women or gamble. His vise? Tools and he buys tractors. Thinking perhaps
(my thinking) that we had sufficient tractors for the farm, I find I was
wrong. We don't. Sunday we went to two farm implement places and checked
out the tractors. Un-huh. Serious business checking. The dealer was here
yesterday, as we will be trading one, possibly two in on this much bigger
horse power tractor WITH a cab, (with air conditioning, windshield wipers,
a radio and such). One to trade is the Massey, which is MY tractor. I love
that tractor. It is massive and sometimes temperamental, but I do know how
to drive it. And he is upgrading the NewHolland for this much larger
NewHolland. So I suppose part of my summer, will be in lessons to drive
the new tractor. The upside? If Fritz the Anaconda, resident farm/barnyard
snake, slithers out in front of me, I can run him over with those huge
wheels. Or if I can figure out how to lower the loader, I can whack him.
This comes from the person who had trouble putting my new vacuum cleaner
back together yesterday after cleaning the bagless cylinder. Perhaps Fritz
the Anaconda, may be spared for a while.
LemonPoppySeeds and
SimplyPrimitives released new issues on the 1st as does
ThePrimitiveGthering. Our links are below for the updates. Please kindly
check out the works of goodest friends Miss Elspeth (Wendy of
www.pineberrylane.com ) on
PrimitiveGathering and also Bittersweet Susan on SimplyPrimitives.
If you haven't looked yet, I
would also encourage you to read daughter Robin's (Beulah to the
newsletter readers) blog.
We are going in other
directions with our work. Folk-art, my work of choice for many years, is
not selling and I am no longer making much of it. Time consuming in the
manner that good artists work, I find it filling up large containers in
storage as it goes unsold. So I will be showing more antique smalls and
not making folk art. I don't know where my sales will take me. I think
perhaps my summer months will be tending the gardens and I work at the
Gundrum (
www.BevinsCrossing.com)
2-3 days a week and that is keeping me occupied. I need to do some serious
work in the many many storage boxes stacked in the barns from our move. So
I will be, as they say in the South.....off or shut. This is not a
direction I thought I would be taking, but then many of the directions I
am going in were not my choice. Accept or not, that is the only choice.
Sometimes we 'accept', but with clenched teeth, a deep frown, and toes
digging in the dirt. I cannot afford one more wrinkle of a frown, so I
will accept.
Thanks for asking to be a part
of the farm.
Should you choose not to,
merely reply with remove and it will be kindly done.
in fondest of thoughts and
regard,
Tilda
unruly hair,
magnificent growing Rosemary
(I am thinking of naming her, as friend Glory did hers...)
totally weary of winter snow
and ice,
wet boots and gloves,
stumbling along on the journey