Renewed enthusiasm

5/2/09 Saturday
It’s gone from a hundred plus degrees yesterday to about fifty this morning. There’s a thick fog out. That’s good as it indicates a lot of moisture in the air. Any moisture is good even when it’s not in the ground. I’ll have to get out a flannel shirt till it warms up. I’m sure that won’t take long.

I started the tractor up to keep the battery charged and drove it around the five acres we cleared for farming. It doesn’t have much power and bogs down easily but you could say the same thing about me. As I drove I checked out how things were growing. It was another slap in the face. I had been running the sprinklers every day to get the six hundred and fifty pounds of rye and winter wheat to germinate and grow. When we had that good rain I stopped watering because the soil had lots of moisture in it. I’d only intended to not water for a couple of days and start back up when things dried out. That didn’t work. My short term memory problems kicked in. First thing is I can’t remember when it rained. In my mind it was just a couple of days ago but from the looks of things it could have been two or four weeks ago. I’ll go back in this journal right now to see.

Looks like it was about three weeks ago we had some rain. Basically I stopped watering because of some rain and forgot to start back up again. Forgot for three weeks while I worked on other stuff, all the time thinking it had just rained a couple of days before. Driving out there I saw lots of stunted rye standing about two inches high and turning brown from lack of water. Five acres of it! The weeds of course are doing quite well and going to seed now. The plan was to till everything under before it went to seed with the hope that the rye would be standing tall so it would provide a lot of organic material to this sandy soil. To do that I was going to rent a tiller or disc to tow behind the tractor but now that we lost the disability check there are no funds for that. I started chopping the weeds with the hoe yesterday and will continue that today, but that may be an exercise in frustration. I think it would probably take over a month to do five acres by hand. But there’s all this baby rye growing and I’d hate to waste all the time and money I put in to plant it. Maybe I’ll just mow the weeds down. That will cut off the seeds and by catching the clippings with the mower bag I can compost it. Then the rye may have a chance to grow. It just feels like I’m banging my head against the wall.

Let me tell you about the visit we had from the rehabilitation people. It went better than I expected. Up to this point I’ve lost my enthusiasm for life and have become quite demoralized. I was surprised to see two cars drive up instead of one. “They are ganging up on me” I thought as they pulled in. My new counselor is deaf so the second car was her interpreter. That was cool, at least to me. She started out by explaining this and hoping I wasn’t put off by it all. The truth is I always like to see others with difficulties overcoming them. Just wish I was better at it myself.

I started out by explaining that Cherie had just got a full time job and I lost my disability, figuring that would disqualify me for any assistance. I was surprised to learn it wouldn’t. Her question was if I still desired to go back to work. I explained that I certainly did and had no interest in sitting around feeling sorry for myself. (Though the truth is I sometimes do) So I asked “What can you do for me?” All of that had been explained when we first went to the agency but I couldn’t remember much of it so it’s like starting over. Actually we are. I told her about my dreams for this place. Not the big dreams of putting in an RV park and campground along with a greenhouse operation in addition to the “Pick your own” apple orchard. I just talked about getting the apple orchard going along with short term goals of growing farmer’s market type produce to generate immediate income. Just got to start little by little, set up easier goals one step at a time to get to the bigger ones down the road. She said it sounded exciting and was very positive. We talked of what’s needed to accomplish that and she explained how they can help. So I have my hope renewed and hope to regain the enthusiasm that dried up over the last year or so.

Cherie’s gone to a women’s church thing she was invited to by someone where she works. She will be gone till about 1:00. I’m going to call the vet and see if we can visit Ben today. That’s it for now folks. See ya next time.