Tuesday, January 29, 2013

My First Outdoor Work of the Year


Yesterday morning I headed out to the bread-baking area of the barn to make breakfast: toaster oven, Nutrimill, KitchenAid, all lined up for me to make the two loaves for the day.

Except that the KitchenAid was gone. Gone!

A strange thing for a thief to steal, in a strange place. Why come all the way down the driveway, right by the house, to take the KitchenAid but not the toaster oven? What?

Phil came to the barn. "Did you even look? The KitchenAid is right there!"

And it was: lying on its side, bread hook snapped clean in half. I use the bread hook every day. The dratted dog must have jumped up to get ... cat? mouse? food? I'm using the paddle for the moment to mix the bread, but that's not really a kneading action, and it's not good for the motor.

Another strange accident in an ongoing string of unfortunate accidents.

Today was a glorious day: weather in the 70s, sun. Phil was up in town most of the day; I spent two hours cleaning out the little greenhouse. I didn't finish (photo is "after," so you can imagine the "before"). It makes me excited to think about this year's growing!

A friend called Phil yesterday: boards at the local mill had gone up from $5.50 to $9. So the friend will bring the logs from his farm, and Phil will custom saw them. This is the first time we've tried such a thing, so we'll see how it goes.

Phil headed down to get the sawmill from the lower pasture. Because of his trip to town, it was dark as he was getting it packed up to move. I headed over to open gates for him, as he would have to drive up through the cow herd. I went to stop the water; while there, I noticed that a line of fence seemed down.

It was quite dark by then, and I didn't know if the electric fence was actually off. As I came to where I thought lines should be, I would swing my sweatshirt out to see if it met with resistance. None. And the cows are trained to follow people to new paddocks, so as I went down slope to tell Phil that a line was down, all 14 cows followed me. A few looked like they tripped a bit on the downed line, as they hopped and bucked.

But it seemed counter-productive to fetch Phil, leading the cows ever farther from their proper paddock. So I headed back upslope and then just stood, surrounded by potential live electric wire, frisky cows, and darkness.

When Phil, mill in tow, finally came upslope, we opted to leave the cows as they are for the night.

But a semi-permanent fence line going down: that hasn't happened before. That was today's odd accident.

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