This is Svenya.  

She does not have a pedigree and came to us as a "Black Jersey"  but I'm going to say she's a Canadienne.  She fits the description of the breed and often the term "Black Jersey" is used for Canadiennes or a cross breed between a Jersey and a Canadienne.

She is small, dark and friendly.  (and much more slobbery than a horse)   She is due to freshen in August.  She has tiny teats but hopefully they will get bigger so that I can milk her.

She arrived yesterday in a trailer pulled by a big truck.  (Maxx was impressed!)  One of Bry's fellow teachers in Heuvelton picked her up at a recent auction and knew that we were wanting a cow.

We were afraid that we would not be able to get a cow for a long time - finances have just been too tight and a heifer ready to freshen is an expensive prospect - usually in the $1,200 -1,800 range.  We thought we might buy a little heifer calf this year but then we would have been waiting over a year for milk because they have to grow up and have a calf before they start milking. 

But by some happy coincidence, Svenya still has her horns so she was a bargain!   (I like the horns - we'll just have to be careful of her moods and pay attention to what she is doing with her head.   That's a good idea even with hornless livestock!)   So far, Svenya feels like another one of those Gifts that we have been given as we try to put this big, crazy plan together.  Things will look bleak - impossible even - and then some unexpected opportunity will present itself and voila!  Another bit of the puzzle falls into place.

Maxx photographed the arrival

 Right now she is bunking in the same building as the pigs.  They seem to like each other.  She would like to be OUTSIDE, though.  When we leave her alone in there, she kicks the wall to say  "Hello?!?   Cow does not wish to be incarcerated!   Cow wants grass in meadow, water in brook, please!"

The horses make way for Svenya.  They seem to like her, too.

This weekend.  We don't want her wandering all through the woods and the meadow just yet as she is new.  We'll make a secure area for her close to the big barn in the next couple of afternoons and then she can go outside during the daytime.  We all know that sun and green grass makes good milk.

I think this makes us real farmers now - or at least real hobby farmers.  Molly has a horse, there are 2 pigs and a cow in a barn and there are 2 feral kittens in the big barn.

There's a lot of work to do.  There is a LOT of junk - dangerous junk - lying around from former owners that we need to clean out of the pig pen, big barn and general environs.  We need to build a milking pen for Svenya - there is an old row of broken stantions in the big barn but I'm sure those will be inappropriate - too open and lose - and we need to prepare a good place for her & her calf to winter in.  The pig barn is too open and drafty - great for pigs in summer but not so good for animals in 20 below weather!

And there's still a lot to do in the house this summer.  Maybe it's good that we are too broke to take a big month-long cross country adventure? 

Sigh.

Or - What do Molly Bryn and her Uncle Al have in common?









It was such a beautiful evening.  Warm, sunny, slight breeze, no recent poop soup applications on surrounding fields.





Ziggy met the pigs for the first time and was Thrilled that such creatures exist and reside in his barn.  (Does he know instinctively how yummy they will be this fall?)

I said "Let's go for a walk!"

Molly said "Let me ride Spinner in the meadow.  We can put him on a lead rope.  He will be fine even though we don't have any tack for him yet."






And he was.

So happy to be spending time with The Girl and the Woman and The Man in the meadow.  The Boy stayed further away and he was O.K. with that.

All the horses were happy and calm.  We walked to the back of the meadow where they usually don't go and they discovered that the grass and clover back there were very good.

There was a lot of happy snorting and snuffling as they ate - "Check out this great grass!"   "Yes this is very good."  " Let's come back tomorrow!"





And then we turned around.

Stupid, stupid me.

Ziggy was being a pain on his leash and the horses were being so good that Bry and I traded.  He took the dog.  I took the horse.

Why it is good to have former Boy Scouts/ a WFR & a Fireman in the neighborhood

 Right about that time, the horses got very excited     
"Let's go back to the barn!"  
"There might be carrots!"
"Let's RUN!"
"YAY!!!"



I have to say that it was a pretty good dismount at 15 or 20 mph.  And she didn't land on her head or smash into any rocks or get trampled or anything.  Just broke her ankle.  Really well.   It needs a pin.

Tune in Later for a story about why Molly will never be a Drug Addict.

One of the first questions the ER nurse asked was "Have you ever had surgery?"

...

 This is Elaine.  It is a good name for her - she is named after Lancelot's accidental, unwanted wife. 

 Emmeth brought her home this winter while he was feeling all sexy and she has stayed.  And apparently, had kittens. 

Not that we can find any of them. 

And she eats ALL the cat food while poor, stupid Emmeth watches longingly, wishing he could sneak his face in the dish - just for a second - without getting clobbered.  He runs through the door every time it is opened and cowers next to me, begging for food. If not promptly ejected, he goes off to sleep in my bed with his dirty little kitty feet. 

I think Elaine will be finding a new home as soon as I can either find & catch the kittens we think she had or verify that there are no kittens to worry about.

Has been at a standstill since the beginning of school.  We ran out of construction $$ at the end of August and it took me several weeks to put together a packet of receipts and estimates and project overviews for the bank and then the USPS changed its sorting route for Upstate NY and all of my early September bill payments were three weeks late.

THREE Weeks!  To get a piece of mail from Brasher to Potsdam.  And our mortgage payment got completely lost. 

That created multiple glitches with the the other Evil Empire (National Grid)  and with the bank that were finally all straightened out yesterday with a $25.00 stop check fee.  Aaargh.  So maybe we can have more construction $ next week?

My lovely new bathroom is still at the early skeleton construction stage.  That non-functioning bathtub taunts me every time I walk upstairs.

We got the two female Kittens fixed.   Emmeth can wait a little while.  He's not spraying and he still says "meeew?"  It will be a while yet before he becomes a full grown, sauntering Tom Cat.









The cows have moved away.   This makes us all very sad but we are growing some spectacularly large spiders in our side entry to make up for their absence.   I think they make a pretty good home security system.  By 8:00 every night, they have spun new, strong webs and hang at about head height to catch yummy flies - which we also have plenty of.

The cold is coming on strong.  Our first delivery of wood for the season comes today and the trees are beautiful.

















...

1 night.

8 traps.

6 dead mice.

I feel like I need some Monty Python bloke to wheel a barrow past my door singing "Bring out yer dead!" Farm house or not, I do not tolerate any creature with neither functional sphincters nor clothes in my pantry.  Or on my table or counter top or cupboards or in my silverware drawer - etc . . . .   I'm tired of washing everything every day. 

And how do they get in the places they do, anyway?  Grappling hooks?  Tiny helicopters?  Little catapults? 
Sheesh. 
The war continues.

Unlike this cat*, we have been feeling the advent of September with a great deal of discomfort.   It has been the "School is coming and we still don't have the roof fixed yet" variety of discomfort that only teachers and the spouses of teachers can fully appreciate.  We worried about it for a while Monday because of the rain and because of our exhaustion and because we were beginning to feel just a little bit helpless and hopeless. 

Bryan sat down and scribbled pictures of sticks on pieces of paper and tried to explain them to me.  I nodded sagely and turned away feeling rather bewildered and, I imagine, looking quite a bit like Buttercup before she stepped into that patch of lightning sand.  On Tuesday we looked at the weather forecast and saw that there were 5 days in a row that did not predict rain and certain doom for roofing projects.  Bryan promptly climbed up on the roof and began tearing off pieces of tin.  I began exhibiting small signs of extreme stress, like chuckling under my breath at strange and unlikely times and rocking back and forth for no apparent reason. 


You see, last year my brother-in-law, Jonathan, tore his roof off with similar abandon mid summer.  He blithely explained that he was going to build a few new walls, reinstall his rafters and put new siding on in order to have an extra story on his house.  He anticipated that this project would only take a week or so, especially if the weather behaved the way the forecast predicted. 



He took his roof off.

We had monsoons.  Water poured out of the electrical sockets in his downstairs living room.  All of his  lovely sheet rock walls downstairs were destroyed.   Several rolls of insulation were saturated.  High winds and rain squalls persisted for WEEKS.  It was like Jumanji without the stampede and giant alligator.  The whole family played games with thunder and lightning in a desperate attempt to get Some work done whenever it was dry and light enough out to work and then to get SOMETHING over that house when the rainclouds invariably began rolling in.  It was a nightmare.  It was so traumatic that when his wife came home and saw that our roof was off, she almost threw up in her driveway.


Perhaps stimming in the corner is not such a bad coping strategy considering the experience I've had with absent roofs.

Perhaps my terror was unfounded.  Progress has been good. 

Tuesday. Day 1.  No great pictures because the day consisted mostly of Bryan consulting with Amish men (who do not enjoy having their photos taken), writing checks and hauling lumber on the hay wagon over to our yard.  (You can see that my lens is a bit greasy in this photo.)




Wednesday.  Day 2.  Tin gone.  Decking gone.  Naked rafters.  Scary things falling from the sky.

























Thursday.  Day 3.   Old rafters gone.   (I worked at the Arts Council so did not get to witness scary things falling from the sky nor all of the silly horseplay on the naked roof.)   New rafters up.  Dormer framed up and built in.








Friday.  Day 4.  New decking.  Tin begins to be cut.














Saturday.  Day 5.  Will it rain?  If it stays dry, we'll  get our tin on. 

We're over budget but things are moving so beautifully fast and smooth.  It looks very promising.  Dad and Jonathan and Trenton and Ken and Mickey and Robert and Mom and Greg and Nichelle have been so incredibly helpful.  The men and Mom have all pitched in on the actual labor and Nichelle and mom have helped me out by taking turns with me to prepare meals for everyone.  It's been great.  I'm still rocking and chuckling quietly, though.




*(This cat believes herself to be Queen of the Universe.  And she can climb walls.  She has actually Climbed Up The Side of The House and gotten in through the construction project.  There is no keeping her out.  She is every cliche' you have ever heard about stubborn, persistent cats who keep coming back.  And she's absolutely adorable.  I'm trying SO hard not to be in love.)

Yay!  We got a bridge.  It is sooooo cool.  Now the Beorningstead is only 3.4 miles from the Ft. Jackson house again. 





That's going to come in handy when we start seriously trucking things like beds and refrigerators over there tomorrow.   I might miss the 12 mile round trip over winter chewed back roads complete with sharp bends, multiple stops and daily sightings of kamakaze deer . . . but I doubt it.

Molly has the mellowest cat ever.  The mama is teaching the kittens how to hunt now so we'll be able to move her over soon, too.














Most of my Day lilies managed to take transplanting fairly well.  I even got a bloom or two this year.







And to make up for our failed strawberries  (totally the fault of too-busy humans) the garden has presented a wondrous crop of Black Caps.  Maxx like to pick them.  He wants to pick the red ones because he LOVES raspberries but has been admonished against doing that many, many times. 



Berry picking is a good activity for my FAS boy - Lots of sensory input, great fine motor skills practice, good problem solving situations and instant feedback on behavioral choices. 

We're planning to have the bedrooms all painted by tomorrow night.  We'll probably go offline here in a couple of days as we transition to actually sleeping at the Beorningtead.  We've got a lot of stuff still to pack & move but this two households thing is getting very old very fast.

Yes.  I am also learning how to tape up seams in drywall.  It's actually sort of fun and satisfying.   I must admit that I would be having MORE fun if the drywall mud were purple or turquoise  or even lime green instead of off grey.  


They could come up with something like that.  Right?  Kind of like purple fade to white elmer's glue-in-a-stick?  
I also must constantly fight the instinct to just run to get the duct tape and spray paint, but the process of smearing goo into a crack in the wall and smoothing it down is a lot like painting.  Or pottery.  It's messy.  It accomplishes something.  Your work is immediately visible.  I like that.







I do not like this.
















Or This.

What crazy person put this toilet and sink in here before finishing the drywall?  I mean, really.  Who can reach in there?

I can't even fit the blade in this corner.  Oh - wait - yes I can - If I crawl Underneath the sink and carefully wedge the corner knife up between the sink and the wall, I can sort of smear it downwards . . .





Oh - and installing this light fixture before mudding was a brilliant plan.

You would think this guy was under some pressure from his wife to get a functional potty room into the house NOW or something.

I'll tell you something else brilliant.  It turns out that the water supply fixtures for this sink have some sort of "emergency flow restriction device" or something.  Which means that if you turn the water on full blast too quickly, the sink seizes up and shuts off the water on you.  For HOURS.  Or until a plumber comes and takes the Whole Bloody Apparatus Apart  and resets it.  It's supposed to protect homeowners from water damage if their faucet breaks and starts spraying all over the place.

Well, do you know how many times I've had my faucet break off and start spraying water all over the place on me in almost 41 years? 

None.  Never.  Not at all.

Do you know how many times I've had something go horribly, hideously wrong in the kitchen or the studio and need several gallons of water at 40 tons of pressure NOW! in order to contain the damage or rinse out dye or spilled paint or caustic chemicals or just to pressure wash the burned rice off the bottom of the pan?

Daily.

There had better not be little flow inhibitors on my studio and kitchen sinks.  Let me tell you.


This photo makes it look like I've been put in time out, but I'm actually putting mud in the corner behind the toilet.  (I wonder if there's a difference?)  While Moly runs around taking pictures of herself with the cat. . . .   BTW - that cat has been through about 5 names already.  The latest being something Irish which I can neither spell nor pronounce but which means "she who inspires terror." 

We are still holding the line on it remaining a barn kitty.  Molly may have to go live in the barn, too.  I am appalled at the amount of garbage this kid has.  There's no way I want it all to come into the Beorningsetead.  She has more laundry than most third world villages.  But she thinks up awesome names for cats.

Yes!   A shower at the Beorningstead!















And this is what Molly wants to bring home. 

How can we refuse?

(Please - help me find a way to refuse!) 






It's so soft.

And cute.

And fuzzy.

And it rides on her shoulder.

















And it hasn't actually pooped on anything or clawed up any sofas or barfed any hairballs yet so I'm still susceptible to the cuteness.   Beorn is remaining strong, though.  He says it must live in the barn and she can visit it out there.  He remembers stepping in cat puke and having shredded furniture with much more ire than I do.

This Saturday, we all went to do some work at the Beorningstead. 

Bryan worked on our Teeny Tiny temporary Shower. It still needs water and some waterproof walls and a vent.

Ya.  It's not going to be fun.  But we have determined that we will have to wait for summer vacation to get the roof work done on the back part of the house, which means that the main bathroom will have to wait until the roof is done. 










After sweeping upstairs and pulling off a bunch of loose wallpaper in preparation for priming the upstairs bedrooms and hallway, we determined that it was a good time to get this abomination out of my studio.

It is the sink/counter top that Barbara used to use.  There was a disgusting rickety old improvised hand pump attached to it.  The pump came off with just a teeny bit of prying and promptly fell apart as I pulled it up out of the counter.  The rest of the de-construction was a bit more challenging.  I started in on the project myself but Molly & Maxx, seeing something they could pound on, promptly promoted me to supervisor/journalist and set to the task quite happily themselves.

As mentioned in previous posts, the Amish used huge nails to hold all sorts of things together.  They used several rail-road spike sized nails to secure the counter top to the back wall.   The bottom was inset into the floor and was nailed to the wall, the riser around the counter bottom and to the floor.  Some nails were pounded into the structure from down BELOW.

That thing did not want to MOVE. 




(Don't you love how Maxx had to insert himself into that photo?!)
It was finally dragged out, after much sweating and prying and now I have an empty spot with a lowered floor in my studio.  This is where I plan to put my long dyeing table.  I'm not sure how I will deal with the inset in the floor but I surely am glad to have that icky sink thing out of there.

Oh - our swallows are back.  As I was packing up our lunch gear, I head this little guy singing away about springtime, nests, old barns and bugs to eat as his mate swooped around the eaves.