Time to winterize

11/20/07 Tuesday
Well, today will be a day of winterization. I had already intended to wrap the evaporative air conditioner and even talked about it in this journal but, like many other things, it never got done. So Cherie reminded me this morning and put it down on the scheduler that is vital for me to get anything done. I’ve got lots of plastic laying around so should be able to find pieces big enough to cover it.

So I took the dogs for the morning walk they have become used to and beg for every morning. Getting to the halfway point, where I usually turn around and head back, I looked up to where the well is. Then I suddenly realized that the insulation we had wrapped it with last year to prevent it from freezing was no longer there because we had to replace the entire unit when it had been shot out by the neighbors. This had totally escaped my mind as so much does. It’s a good thing I noticed this as a hard freeze is coming Thursday that will last at least three days maybe four. This potentially could destroy the pipes and the tank that keeps pressure even or something. We will run to Lowe’s and buy some insulation. Fortunately we have a thirty dollar credit from some countertop parts we were able to return. We’re back to being tight on the finances again. The CRP check is long gone and we didn’t even get the new glasses both of us need.

Speaking of that, Beene Tractor just called about the credit application we submitted for the cheaper tractor. It had been unequivocally denied. That is not a big surprise. They said that if we had a cosigner they would have to have strong credit. As with most things it is a struggle to push forward. I don’t give up but it is hard not to get discouraged. I’ll just focus on the things that need to be done around here and do the best I can with what I have as always. Building a farm from scratch on a disability check is an obvious challenge but I’ll do it, probably with the help of others, but one way or another something will happen.

Here are some pictures of life on this farm. Every day we kill twenty or thirty wasps in the house. Sometimes more. I haven’t been able to find where they are coming from but they keep coming. This house is so full of holes we may never get it sealed up. So I swatted this wasp and it fell into the waste basket. Evidently spiders had built a web on it overnight because these came out of the behind our files to take on this wasp. They all lost to my fly swatter. Hopefully the winter freeze coming will reduce the wasp problem. Spiders are constant no matter what we do. They congregate behind furniture were we can’t reach them. I think we will probably fog the house come spring to reduce them for at least a few weeks or months.





The other day I noticed two little apples on our trees. That was a surprise but nice to see. Mostly I didn’t encourage apple growth this first year because I read that they can take a lot of energy out of a tree and I wanted them to get established this first year. Especially because they were just about dead when I got them from Ace hardware. The nine trees seem to be doing quite well all things considered. It’s a shame I didn’t have the funds to pick up the other twenty five trees Ace was getting rid of for four bucks each. But this is the start of our apple orchard. Just a few steps at a time we will get there. After visiting Apple Country Orchards I have a goal of five thousand trees on twenty of the seventy five acres we have. Then we want to have peaches, apricots, pears, and a little of anything else that will produce fruit in this part of the country.

Some of the Rye grain I’ve planted is coming up now. It’s just in time for the big freeze. Now I’ve read this is “winter hardy” and it is indeed called a winter cover crop so I will be fascinated to see how it will do. Honestly I really don’t know what I am doing but am trying the best I can. It would be nice to develop a relationship with some or a farmer who could advise me. But developing relationships is something I am not good at and have never been good at. That is part of the Asberger’s syndrome I’ve had since childhood and exacerbated by the multiple brain injuries. Social skills are the areas most hit by both of those ailments. Add to that mix is my background that gives me little to relate with the average person. So the Rye is just another part of my ongoing education in farming.


I just called Wayne in Ohio. He tells me that the lawyer at the Zeph Center said that my ideal of his sending his money here as a loan to prevent Social Security from reducing his check by one fourth amounts to money laundering. That is nuts but I suppose legally true. It’s a crying shame and what a catch 22. They screwed around three years making me fight to get Wayne his disability, that there is no question he needs. Then when we finally won and he was coerced in only taking two years of what was owed him they are going to reduce what he will get monthly because the lump sum he received exceeds what Social Security says he is allowed to have in order to draw benefits. I wasn’t comfortable with it but suggested he give us a loan for real to buy a tractor with and thus it wouldn’t be money laundering. “We can pay it back in two years or so” I let him know. He’ll think about it but probably won’t. It’s really sad how the government is treating him and all the others like him. Medicaid just cut off his physical therapy along with denying him getting into the cheap medicine program.

One of the comments on yesterdays post suggested we set up a PayPal account for donations to help us get this farm going. That is an idea I think we will pursue.