Sundry Saturday Notes

I have woken the last few nights with such an insane need to scratch my itchy limbs, I feel like Job: longing for a piece of broken pottery. I finally got up in the middle of the night to scrub up with anti-poison ivy soap, which didn’t really help much. Then I found my dream lotion: Caladryl. I smeared it on all four limbs and kept smearing until I no longer wanted to scream. I didn’t realize how poison ivy will keep spreading. At some point after we have internet, I want to research if it gets into the blood stream and comes out systemically. I mean, it starts on me as a whip-like streak (where, clearly, a vine slapped me and I didn’t wash the oil off in time), but then it keeps spreading and spreading until the one spot on my arm is now up and down both arms, on my ankle, my shin, my stomach, and under my underwear line. Yow.

I’m thankful we weren’t hit with ticks, chiggers, mosquitoes, poison ivy, deluging rain, and summer heat all at once. We’ve been able to take them in stride as they come.

We stopped by the Bessettes during a pouring rainstorm. They have graciously let us store some supplies in their basement. We had originally planned to get a shipping container for storage, but when Phil learned that they are heavy and difficult to move (and, thus, once set off the truck, they stay in that location indefinitely), he decided against purchasing one. After all, if we decide we want the construction trailers relocated, he simply removes the tie-downs and tows it behind Samson, our dually truck. But a shipping container—well, we didn’t know for sure where we’d want one for the duration of our life on Old Green Mountain Road. So we don’t have quite enough storage.

I was encouraged to hear that a good Jersey cow right now will sell for about $1000. That seems really inexpensive to me, since a gallon of raw milk costs about $8 to purchase. It seems a cow would pay for itself very quickly. And I was surprised to hear how expensive the Dexter cows are, the ones we were hoping to get. They are small and rare, and sell for over $2000. Maybe we’ll stick with Jerseys.

Phil mowed the upper acres of our land yesterday. It took many hours of very bumpy riding for him, as he hit every rut and hillock, every stump and hole. He was stung twice when he rode over an inground bees’ nest (left cheek and forearm—and to add insult to injury, he got a mosquito bite on the sting on his cheek!).

In the meantime, with the baby on my back, I sowed 250 pounds of oats over almost all of our meadow acreage. The over-the-shoulder seeder holds about 20 pounds of oats, and you set a clamp so it broadcasts at the right rate (all clearly spelled out on the seeder itself). The seeds cast out in beautiful waves, almost like a fountain of grain, throwing up to 18 feet wide (though I think I didn’t turn the crank vigorously, so I think my rows were maybe 9 feet apart or so). Phil definitely had the more painful, more nerve-racking job, and he woke up quite sore from his hours of bouncing.

As we’ve pondered the electrical issue, I think we’ve settled on paying about $5K right now for a generator, a battery pack, and a propane tank. For those who haven’t read about off-grid living, here’s how this works. The propane fuels the generator. The generator puts off a certain amount of power, which is stored in a battery pack. Phil describes the generator like a car engine: it has to put off a certain amount of power, even when idling. Same with a generator, so you don’t want to run it all the time, or you would waste electricity. I mean, if you just wanted to charge your computer, you wouldn’t need the same amount of power as if you were heating the house, baking bread, and running the computer and printer. But with the generator, you would have to have it on for one appliance or on for five appliances just the same. That’s where the battery pack comes in. It stores the generated power and relinquishes it as needed.