I felt like I was part of an Amish community today. Now you probably have heard me joke before that since I’m on the farm all day – that I’ve turned Amish. Well today I decided that it was laundry day. (hummmm…. ) Anyway, I was doing laundry after I bedded down the chickens and was thinking about something Daryl said. He’s gone to a meeting and took the car and told me that if I needed to take the truck to go somewhere, that it was half full of gas. I asked him – ‘Where did I need to go?’ But the kicker to this story is that the last time that Daryl was gone – we lost power for the night and then tonight all of a sudden the power went out again when I was talking to him. Yea, it’s a good thing he doesn’t have to meetings often in the winter! We heard that the power was out for a quiet a way up north and we figured that we wouldn’t have any power tonight at all. OK – so it sounds like a good time to start the gas fireplace and grab a glass of wine. William was playing solitaire and I was looking at old pictures when the lights came back on. Now I’m not saying that we were disappointed that our power went back on, but we were ready for the long haul with this tonight. The house was quiet and I were going through some old family stories and pictures with a small lantern beside me. I’m thinking that maybe we should have an Amish night every so often? Well, only if we can keep the internet working.
The chicken nests were looking a little bit thin with the amount of bedding they had in them, so I took some loose straw from the barn and made it much better for them this morning. I thought I did such a good job on putting up the plastic on their window in the coop, but looking at it today, it was all pulled down except for one side. Back to the milk house I went to get the stapler and this time that plastic has got a lot of staples in it. We’ll see if it comes down again. It must be keeping it warmer inside because the eggs haven’t been froze for a couple of days now and the dogs are enjoying their morning fresh eggs again when I’m doing chores. I decided that it’s too cold to cut Reno off from getting a couple. So … she’s getting a little thicker around the middle lately. Who isn’t?
None of these girls enjoying the new bedding!
On the weekends Daryl does the chores and it’s not that I’m not greatfull for him doing them – but I don’t think Rion likes it too well. Daryl said that when he opened up the barn door to put corn in their trough in the cow yard yesterday, out of the corner of his eye he could see something just running around the barn and coming towards him. Just as the cow got close to him it slammed on his brakes and stopped right in front of him. Well yea, I said – it was Rion. Daryl said the cow just stood there and looked at him. When I asked him if he knew that this meant that Rion wanted to get petted and talked to, Daryl said that there was NO WAY he was going to stand in the cow yard and pet a cow. So this morning, Rion was a little slower coming to great me, but once he saw it was me – he came up to me and he got petted and had his morning pep talk. I locked them up on the cattle yard also. I didn’t want to run the risk of them getting out while Daryl was gone.
When I was working in the house today, all of a sudden a couple of snowmobiles pulled into our yard. A younger kid came to the door and said that they ran out of gas for one of their friends that was down the road. They were wondering if we had any, and I didn’t think we did so I asked them if they had enough to get them to town to fill up a gas can? They said that they did and off they went. But I was thinking – I wonder if they had anything to eat. WHAT? I must have this gene in me to think that everyone you meet has to eat. I think this comes from my mother because she always has really good food at her house and you end up eating there when you didn’t even know that you were hungry! So I had some chocolate chip cookies that I baked at our house and I could have given them to them. But all of a sudden I thought that if it was our kid going to a strange farm house and and even stranger lady (who was looking a little rough around the edges – you know what I mean…) offers them some food, they would think… Crazy unemployed lady! So I decided not to say anything to them and just gave them the gas can instead. Probably a good idea, huh?
I was feeling pretty lucky today because the road grader went through 3 times past our place! The country roads are not perfect, but when William came home from some friends house around 4 o’clock tonight, he still had a path to get home. He said that it wasn’t much of a path – but still a path. But when I was talking to Daryl tonight, I think he was the lucky one. He said that he started to count the cars in the ditch today when he was driving and it was over 25 cars in less than one hour. He said at one point he stopped to help someone who couldn’t speak English very well and the 911 operator wanted to know just exactly where this guy went in the ditch. Finally Daryl took this guys phone and said to just send the tow truck to this one town and on the corner they would see this guy in the ditch. The 911 operator said OK. The guy seemed greatfull and then Daryl went on his way. He said he had to be really careful though because just about every State Trooper and tow truck from Northeast Iowa was on this highway trying to get the cars back on the road. Tomorrow isn’t supposed to be as bad, but I’m guessing that the kids will have a 2 hour delay for school or it’ll be cancelled. We’ll have to wait and see.
Snow sliding off the roof today