Update

Summer schedule has been keeping me far away from computers, which is an entirely voluntary thing, I just can’t bear to sit down somewhere and miss the precious sunlight and fresh air just to watch some screen. This is such a wonderful time of year, though I’ll say that about every time of year, I sure like being able to get my hands and bare feet into the fresh garden dirt and it’s great to have the horses eating the green grass and looking so good. I got a bunch of sweet corn seed and since I didn’t want to keep it around for a long time I decided to plant all of it. By the time I was finished I had nearly a quarter of an acre in corn, which is incredibly far from my goal of having a very small minimal garden this year. Oh well, I’ll have enough for the coons I guess, I did get a visit from one of the coons I raised last summer just the other day so they may just come visiting again when the corn is ripe, and since my heart has seriously softened toward wildlife, coons especially, I doubt I’ll do too much about the coons in the corn. Speaking of the critters, I’ve been kind of missing their antics and wishing for another one, (just one this time please) I found a family of them so I may grab one for a pet if I get a chance, though that might make the travels this summer kind of difficult.
The biggest news of the week is that an old friend of mine came out from Washington with Kyle on the Azure truck in order to look for land and a job with the plan of moving his family out here. This was somewhat of a surprise for me because I never expected them to consider North Dakota, though to have them nearby was something I have wished could be for a long time. Aaron really likes the farm next to mine and is going to try buying it, which would make one of my wildest dreams a reality (to have a decent homeschooling Christian family that thinks just like I do have that farm). I had just been thinking that it would be nice to have more like minded people living close by for a pile of reasons so this is great. If he is able to get that place (and a job, which is an essential part of them moving out here) they will be 1.5 miles from me and 1.5 miles from my sister’s place which will be convenient. There’s safety in numbers and also it is nice to have more people around for Bible study, singing and other such things. He was my best friend when we were teenagers and we used to scour the woods together as well as work long hours on Y2K preparations, hunting, camping, shooting etc. His wife Faryn was my sisters best friend at the time (still is) so we were always all together at each others houses doing crazy things, mostly us boys trying our best to irritate the two girls and the girls doing their best to drive us nuts and mostly succeeding. Faryn and I have always been enemies in a nice sort of way, we could be perfectly frank with each other without worrying about making the other one mad because we both knew that the other one’s goal was to make the other person mad so to get mad about something done was to let the other person win which was something each of us was willing to do just about anything to keep from happening. As a consequence there were a lot of not so practical jokes that were more often than not painful in my case. I would always get bored at Faryn’s place unless Aaron was there so I would read books until it was time to go and then I would get great pleasure in barging into whatever the girls were doing to say that they couldn’t play anymore because it was time for us to go. Of course the tree house was completely off limits to us boys which meant that we tried every excuse and opportunity to get in there, which made the girls mad and start screaming which was the point in us doing it. Also, the girls room was supposed to be girls only and I would irritate them in there, at least I did until Faryn got the bright idea to make trails of sewing needles all over the carpet so I would step on them which is just what I did and that made me mad but I never let them see that it did of course! (As you can see I was a very unpleasant guy to be around those days) Anyway, after our family moved to ND my best friend married Jenifer’s best friend and I haven’t really talked to them in years, which is really a shame, now that they may end up neighbors I am pretty happy about the whole deal. Aaron is a finish carpenter, which is something I am not and something my house desperately needs so this may work out well! He is also a beekeeper and is planning on having about 300 hives out here, all completely naturally raised. He has Russian bees which are a lot more hardy and should do well in this climate. One evening Aaron and I measured the windmill tower on the farm he is wanting (63 feet) and then we both somehow ended up at the very top to watch the sunset and see the view, I kind of enjoy high places so it was great to be up there visiting for a while! If they come out here they will be bringing a line of fabulous Oberhasli goats, which are my absolute favorite goats out of all breeds so I may end up getting a few goats just to have some as I can’t imagine a better survival/small subsistence home type of animal, though chickens are about as good.

Last weekend I took an afternoon and went exploring on the motorcycle, looking for interesting places and camping locations that are off the normal track but within quick access of my place here. I put on well over a hundred miles, about half trails and the other half on highway 2 getting from one spot to another, I got approximately 135 miles per gallon on that tank, which wasn’t too disappointing since a lot of those trails were steep hill climbing with the transmission in low range and a lot of bouncing over rocks and dodging trees and brush, I try to carry at least two gallons of gas with me on the motorcycle and just got another jerry can so I’ll be able to carry 7-8 gallons at all times which, with my average highway miles so far, should carry me about 1,200 highway miles. That bit of useless information aside, I did find some fabulous territory for taking off into for a weekend or two and roughing it and the best part is that it’s only a few miles from here so I can run over there anytime I want without having to make a big production out of the whole thing, next project is to get some good topographical maps of the area.

For the news of here at home, the garden is doing well, though not much is up very high since I got things in kind of late and there was almost no rain for quite a while, we did finally get a bunch of rain, though I am not sure exactly how much, several inches at least since my pond is quite full so the worries are over for a while at least. The raspberries are doing great and the strawberries are fantastic, especially since I have weeded them and mulched the paths with lawn clippings. The horse training is going great, though I haven’t been working with them very hard, just a few minutes each day but that is enough to make a difference, all I am trying for right now is to win their complete trust and confidence. The stallion is definitely a male and is being much less trusting and a lot more cautious, he is extremely intelligent though and once he has something learned he remembers well, while the filly is extremely sweet and trusting but she can be a real nuisance because she wants to be with me all the time and when I let her come she steps in the garden or knocks the boards down I am trying to put up, I have to face the fact that a huge Belgian is a ridiculous work companion in the garden or construction site. On the other hand, she is somewhat dumb, not remembering that when I say to move over it really means she needs to actually move her big old self to a different spot! With time that will get better though.
The other day Kyle bought a beautiful grand piano, fortunately he has a living room that is large enough to hold one! He called me after he bought it to ask me if I would mind helping him move it with my pickup (and arms) and I agreed to do so if I would be allowed to play it once in a while so we had a deal. We stacked my Dad, brother Samuel, Kyle, Aaron, and myself into two VW’s and drove to where the piano was, after a few minutes of tossing ideas on how to move the thing we decided to place it on it’s side (the long side) on top of a 2x12 board and remove the legs and pedals and then strap it to the board so we could carefully drag/pull it from the house it was in down the stairs and onto the trailer behind my little VW diesel pickup. We tried lifting and carrying it by hand but we couldn’t manage it, which gives you an idea just how heavy it is! We managed to get it onto the trailer and strapped down just fine and at that point I really wished I had a camera to record the sight because the piano is really bigger than the little pickup so it looked very interesting! Kyle drove the pickup and Dad drove the car behind to watch things, Aaron and I rode on the trailer with the piano to keep closer watch and it was probably a good thing because we had to tighten the straps a couple of times. Getting it into Kyle’s house was easier because we had the dolly that we had forgotten earlier so we just got the piano onto that and rolled it into the living room still on it’s side. Legs on, pedals on and a careful flip onto the legs and the move was done, now it just needs about 5 visits from the piano tuner to get it back in shape so I can stand to listen to it! Now it’s my turn to get one but I have to get the house done first so I have a good place to put it because if I had one in the house now it would take up the entire downstairs, no kidding! I really like my Baldwin spinet piano but it is still a spinet and as such hasn’t got the power of a grand, I tend to make my pianos work rather hard and a spinet runs out of sound, wheezing a bit where a good grand will sound like thunder and the ocean breakers on the jetty if I want but still can do the lullaby stuff when that’s in order. Music is about feeling (in my opinion) so an instrument must have a complete range of ability to make that happen, a flat, dead sounding instrument is a bore.
With that all said there is nothing left to say that I would want to post online anyway, I am sure I’ll think of something later and I’ll have to see if I can scrounge up a way to get some pictures to post here, I’ve made a lot of changes since I last posted some and it would be fun to see the difference.