Good Phil Stays Busy

From Monday night to Tuesday morning, I suspect Phil was up until around 4am. We ordered lintels to go above windows, but when he checked the specs, the lintels would not be strong enough to support the roof. Hmm. He always likes to do his engineering design work into the wee hours. He gets in a groove and time passes. When he worked outside the home, this would drive me bonkers. Eight pm: are you coming home? Oh! I thought it was 4:30! Yes!

This overnight design fun would have been no problem. Except that I had noticed that it had been raining on and off all night, and in the middle of a particularly stressful dream, I suddenly woke, heart pounding: "We have a newborn calf, who we haven't verified has eaten yet. Soaked overnight in rain like this, she might be almost dead. But our house is so crowded and our bulb syringe broken—where and how will I keep her alive?"

Not up for hiking next door in the rain, I woke Phil. He lay stunned for a bit, then got up and headed out. I had suggested he try maybe leading Cleo and carrying the baby, bringing them to the barn.

That wasn't one of my brightest ideas. Perhaps an hour later Phil returned, drenched (none of his waterproofs are waterproof any more), all cows and calves in their original places. The calf had been shivering, but did not appear worse for the wear.

Soon the sun came out, and though the building site was flooded, the air was warm. Phil went to check again and the calf rested on dry hay and all was well.

Phil needed clean clothes, so he took the boys (all tempted by the root beer that Phil gets any companions who go with him) and the five of them did laundry for a few hours.

He unloaded the bags of clean laundry, then took the boys up to town. They ate there, and did the grocery shopping. Phil was beat by the end of that trip.

In the snowstorm last week, the awning over the motor home collapsed. This made the farm look even more decrepit than before. Phil figured out how to fix it, though.

Then he went with me to add supers to the beehives. I checked on them several days ago, and now, just a few days later, am amazed at the frantic activity showing on the board below the hive. Fun though swarming was last year, the idea overwhelms me this year, and so we added a super to each hive, hoping the increased space will allow the bees to build up in freedom, and not grow agitated from too tight quarters.

Just in the last three days, the daffodils have burst into bloom in earnest, and the comfrey has finally poked up. No sign of asparagus yet.