Killer Dog

Wednesday notes: I am so thankful the chicks did not arrive today. I had my every-other-week work deadline, so worked well at home while the children played happily outside. Phil the electrician designed and installed an electrical panel in the barn so that, when the chicks arrive, they can have the heat lamp.

We went to the Bessettes for a few hours in the afternoon. Phil had some questions about how to design a water system, so he looked at their setup. He asks me questions at times about electricity or water that are so far outside my comfort zone, I hope that by his asking, he is able to process and figure out the answer, since I feel incapable of giving helpful input.

In the last few days, we’ve had an explosion of strange ladybugs. They aren’t quite the bright red I’m used to, but more a russet color. Michelle said that they have an infestation every year after a strange weather pattern (like our frost nights and 80 degree days). She wonders if the helicopters Phil’s seen flying overhead drops them as a natural insecticide for bugs that kill trees.

If the government is “protecting” us and our forests, I’d prefer they use the ladybugs than a poisonous chemical, but I still think it’s a bit odd.

Thursday notes: Both Phil and I had our little disappointments today. On Tuesday, Phil went into Charlottesville to pick up some electrical line so he could get the barn wired. Neither of the two stores he went to had the right electrical line, but one ordered him some so he picked it up on Wednesday. Yesterday, though, he came down with a migraine (was the culprit the Thai green curry paste? Or Dennis’ bootleg Scotch?) Today, when he could walk around enough to lay the line, he realized that it was about 10 feet too short. He had measured it (obviously), but the extra feet on the front end and the back, buried to the depth it needed, was too much. Argh!

And the stores didn’t have any (again), so he’ll drive into Charlottesville for the third time tomorrow to pick it up.

I’m sure an aching head didn’t help him, but he managed to get a fair bit of digging done. He trenched around the barn, so if we get more deluge-type rains, the barn should stay dry. And he trenched under the barn, so when the electrical line comes in, he can lay it.

Unfortunately, the keets took the opportunity to explore the outside world. At eight weeks now, they are about the size of robins, and very curious. Phil said it was cute to see them pop out from under the barn wall: pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I was a bit concerned, since we do have scavenger birds flying overhead, but I figured a hawk wouldn’t swoop down with the boys running around and Phil working right there.

Sadly, the neighbor’s dog Neeta decided to attack. Neeta has been a more-or-less fixture on our property, but I’m not surprised she grabbed a keet and went off running. Somehow Phil managed to nab four of the remaining five. But that fifth flew up on the roof of the trailer, from whence it cheeped most pathetically. And most foolishly: I could just imagine every hawk in the area listening to its little cries: “Come and eat me! Here I am! Alone and unprotected!”

I climbed onto the roof and gingerly made my way across its rusted surface. As I got close to the keet, it flew down and landed about 25 yards away in the woods. Isaiah then tried to corner it against the chicken net near the pig pen, but it squeezed through and flew under the trailer. I climbed down from the roof, and Isaiah returned from the woods. But together we couldn’t nab it: it flew back into the forest.

Thus went most of the afternoon: keet comes to pile of papers for recycling and hides underneath. (Maybe those papers will go to the dump, depending on whether we ever go to a recycling center. We have no trash pickup, let alone recycling service like we did in Boulder. To the casual observer, I suppose parts of our homestead look like a dump, with a separate garbage back for cans, glass bottles, and plastic numbers 1 and 2, as well as one for packing peanuts, several for actual trash, and a large pile of paper. It doesn’t look pretty, but it is environmentally friendly!) Next keet heads to a brush pile. Now keet wanders near the pigs. Now keet calls for his friends.

Finally, finally, Phil herded (in a very loose sense of the word) the fifth keet back into the barn. What a relief!

My disappointment came in food. I have been scrambling to figure out how to cook and bake with the tools at my current disposal (the loss of the oat press is keenly felt every day). I made a loaf of bread first thing in the morning, and it rose, perhaps, too well. Rather than a dense, sink your teeth into it loaf, the frothy center had a thick crust. But it was edible (indeed, we polished off the whole loaf for lunch). The second loaf, though, caught fire in the house, so our smoke alarm went off. It had risen so ridiculously much that one quarter of the loaf had ended up on the heating element. What?!

I tried a third time. It finished right before Bible study: another half-mixed, inedible mess. That was supposed to be either breakfast or a snack after Bible study. But instead, it was nothing, fit for the pigs. It made me cry, wondering how I was to feed my family tomorrow.

Then I realized I’ve been carrying the load of how to feed all these hungry mouths. In the same way that I “gave over” the bills to Phil this month (“gave over” in quotes because I still actually write the checks; I just gave him the responsibility, the potential for worry), I “gave over” the feeding of my family to God. He tells us to ask for our daily bread. My daily bread has been burning. I have done my very best to be the Proverbs 31 woman who looks to the ways of her household, and I feel like I have been thwarted every day.

Very well. I still intend to faithfully prepare food for my family to eat, but it is not my responsibility to make sure that the loaves cook correctly. That’s God’s responsibility. It was a weight off. I have never lacked for food before, and I trust that God isn’t going to start us lacking on October 23, 2009. (And please note that I am not meaning that we have no money or no foodstuffs. We have plenty of both; it is simply the actual preparation of said foodstuffs that has been abysmal the last week. But then, baked oatmeal and pizza aren’t really supposed to be cooked on the stovetop, so part of that is my complete inexperience in cooking in a new medium.)

I needed to water my garden. I may have mentioned that garlic isn’t supposed to get dried out (“even once will diminish yields”), and I didn’t water yesterday. Today the prospect of hauling water was too much, so I hooked a hose up to the well’s pressure tank, ran the hose down the hill to the garden, and turned it on. I immediately heard the water start to run, so I ran down the length of hose, and as I reached the end, I watched the water spurt out the end for the first time.

Turning on the faucet is such a simple thing, so simple I hadn’t really considered what an amazing gift it is. As I ran down the hill, chasing the first stream of water, tears came to my eyes: the first running water on our land! Phil came and joined me; he filled the buckets, and I poured them into the watering can (my Haws watering can has a very gentle “rose,” or head, that allows the water to fall almost like rain). We watered and watered, for probably fifteen minutes, rejoicing in the chance to really saturate the garden, really water the plants.

So there was bad and good today: bad that the keet was eaten; good that the other keet came back. Bad that the bread burned; good that I gave it to God. Bad that the line was too short; good that the water ran.

And in children notes, Isaiah, Abigail, and Abraham played most of the day up on the pulverized rock around the well. It’s their castle, and Isaiah is the king, Abigail the queen, and Abraham the guard. (When Jadon deigns to play with them, he’s the king’s best friend.) They came to dinner covered in blue grit, and very happy. I’m astonished that a flat bit of blue would fuel their imaginations so well, but they preferred playing to read-alouds today. That’s a day for the record books!