The Move

Thankfully the feeling that the move was one long nightmare is fading. Just getting the truck up the hill and then backing it into the driveway scared the s*** out of me and after it was loaded, Ken did it again with the trailer. As we were pulling out with both fully loaded, our neighbor, Larry. who had dropped over to say bye, came running after the truck, waving a piece of something in his hand. He said it was a bolt from the trailer suspension that was completely broken off. Thank you, Larry, from the bottom of our hearts! So we made our way carefully to the UHaul in Bothel (about 7 miles away) where they told us there was nothing to be done but reload the load into a new trailer and that there was one available in Seattle. We pleaded, begged, threatened, whined and cried but had no choice but to drive the monster truck/trailer to Seattle. We had been promised some help with the job, but the two guys who got the assignment were intent on assigning blame for the broken bolt to us, saying the trailer was too heavy and that we were going to have to leave some things behind. And then it started to rain. After they slammed a few things around, we asked them to stop "helping". Another man came from another dealership to smooth things over but other than helping us get the first trailer unloaded, there wasn't much he could do to help. I took the photos above as things came out hoping they would help reload, but the battery ran out just as we finished unloading. Have I mentioned yet that we spent three days getting the trailer loaded? Six rainy hours later, with only one major breakdown on my part, we were ready to roll, with only a few things left behind. I want to say another BIG thank you to our daughter-in-law, Kei Chi, who drove over to Seattle and dog sat with Juniper and Sambo. We wouldn't have been able to do it without her gracious help.

And speaking of the two dogs, you can see from the photo how squeezed we were. I was in there with them! Sambo found a warm spot on the floor and didn't complain about my resting my feet on him. Juniper was more curious and spent most of the trip an my lap. If I scooted all the way to the door (about 3 inches off the seat), we could sit side by side to give my legs a rest.

Some of the ride was extremely bumpy, but some was fairly smooth. It was slow going, taking a full five days to get to Ashland. The other major headache was near Chicago. We had made the trip three weeks earlier to scout out the roads and get the Prius back. I had routed us completely around the whole Chicago area, and when we got to the point of diverging from the AAA plan, it was raining cats and dogs and we got a phone call and missed our turn. So we drove through the Chicago construction, in the rain, with me in tears, convinved we were going to die. We didn't and it probably made the trip 3-5 hours shorter. And way more memorable.

Ohio Bound

Our house in Washington was as sold as it could be before the closing finalizes it and at that point we will be handing over the keys to the new owners. We had done some looking on the internet at properties in Ohio, but hadn't wanted to get too attached to anything that might get sold before we were ready. We had looked in Oregon just to see what we could see and now we were ready to go find a house to buy. We were pulling a trailer to get the first load to Ohio even though we had nowhere to put the contents except a storage locker courtesy of U-Haul. They know we'll have to rent another truck to get it out of there.

The scenery is just east of Bozeman, Montana and it made me want to stop and look for our little farm there, but we ignored the impulse and kept on rolling. We saw this house in Ashland the second day we were looking and it seemed just about perfect in it's attibutes except that it wasn't near the folks we wanted to be near in Pike county. So we spent four days in southern Ohio trying to find something that would measure up to it. We found one lovely house that we made a bid on, knowing that it was much bigger than we wanted or needed, and that deal fell through when we realized that some expensive work needed to be done to finish the house.

So we went back up to northern Ohio to look at this house again and when we were having trouble making up our minds, Ken made a strong argument for erring on the side of caution by buying a house that seemed to fit our needs. And his sister Carol reminded us that even though we wouldn't be extremely close to our friends in southern Ohio, we would be a lot closer that we were in Washington state.

The 7 acres are about 1/3 wooded (behind the pond) and are in a long narrow plot. I've shown the north and south boundries (the browner mow lines) and the pond is visible in each of the shots. The garage is attached to the house by a breezeway and I have plans to make it my studio. We got airline tickets the same day we signed the papers for the house so we are back in Washington now, packing like crazy and hoping (probably fruitlessly) that we will be able to fit the rest of what we want to keep into a rental van.

Dreaming of Buses

I don't remember dreaming about buses before except when I am leaving my dream downtown. Let me explain. I have dreamscapes that are fairly constant.

So having three bus dreams in a few days is unusual. In this one the driver has left his seat and as the bus starts to roll downhill, I have to get in the driver's seat and steer it. It comes close to hitting trees and toppling off the road but I manage to get it to the bottom of the hill. Once there, I can't get it started up the next hill, and using typical dream logic, I back the bus back up to the starting point and try again. The second time goes much smoother as I don't have any near misses with trees or ditches.

I Photoshopped a photo of the Smokey Mountains by squeezing them vertically to get steeper hills, and then raw sketched and colored each hill. Then I dropped in sections of curvy highway and gave each one a similar treatment. I think the dashboard was a Porsche but it had the wrong proportions so it had to be stretched and have a longer hood to look like a yellow bus before I did the raw sketching and coloring. The dream really was as vivid as what I came up with but I don't know how to convey the out of control movement of the bus. I don't give much credence to dream symbolism but this was interesting enough to include.

I Can't Get This Off my Mind

Sunday, early August, southern Oregon. We had gotten a little off track following the GPS system which had already admitted it didn't know where we were. So we got on the phone with the realtor to find our way to the property and she mentioned to me that the house was selling because of a divorce, that the man was resistant to selling and that we should not be surprised by anything he said. As we pulled into the drive and up to the house, there were some horses on one side and cows and chickens on the other. A boy about 10-12 years old and a fairly old man came out of the house and started talking to the realtor, challenging who she was and what she was doing there. After she reassured them that she had talked to Bobby the old man said, "Well, you can't be too careful about who's coming onto the property."

She started pointing out the fencing on the pens we had just passed and the boy mentioned to his grandpa (he called him that) that we would need to be careful of the wolf. We thought he was talking about the dog chained to the truck where they were standing but it turned out that that dog was only half wolf, the other half being Rottweiler. It seemed to be a very laid back, fat old dog that appreciated a little attention and a pat on the head, but it could have been more aggressive if they hadn't been there. Then the old man started telling us about how many dogs he had breed from the female wolf that was somewhere in the pasture below, with or near the horses. I was beginning to wonder if he thought we had come to buy a dog when the realtor got him back on track by asking where the property lines for the 3 1/2 acres were. He pointed out the ones we had seen along the road as well as where they used to keep the pigs when they had pigs.

He pointed to a gate behind the house that he said opened onto a neighbor's land and as we walked back I saw a couple of dachshunds in a dog run. I started toward them but thought better of it when they started yapping at me. The old man said to just go on back to see them so we all walked back. Just as I spied one really, really long dog with it's back held at a horrible angle, he said that two or three of the white ones were blind. He explained that they used to breed them to sell and there were always one or two in a litter that the kids wanted to keep and that's why they had twelve. I adore dachshunds and have had to put two down because of bad backs but all I could think was that all of these needed to be spayed, some of them put down immediately, and all of their offspring be hunted down and spayed. So as we walked into the house, I was already feeling a bit of shock.

The old man and the boy walked into the house with us and sat down on the couch to watch TV. They pointed out Bobby who was washing dishes at the sink and there was another old man sitting in a chair. I can't remember if he spoke but he seemed to be pointing toward a bedroom. I don't know if he was asking for something or trying to tell us about something. He had a doughy look as if he didn't ever get out of the chair and in the bedroom were the things I remember from my mom's house when she was bedridden. Bobby didn't stop washing dishes but told us his wife had left him and wanted him to sell the place. He said he had hoped he could keep it but that didn't seem to matter. Every surface of every piece of furniture was covered with stuff. I don't know what the stuff was - it was too much to comprehend. How would these men ever begin to pack it up and get it out of there? How would they get themselves out of there and where would they go? There are not enough boxes in the world to pack up their lives and go. We poked our heads into each sad room and got out quickly. As we left, I noticed on a wall by the door pictures of a nice looking youg man. They looked like several graduation pictures.

Grandpa and the boy followed us out and told us that the calf in with the cow was a Charolais but the cow was a Brahman. A neighbor's very young bull had been visiting? boarding? and he had never imagined that that little bull could have breed her. He said he hadn't even wanted to breed her again because she was so old.

We walked out to the barn which was really more of a manger or maybe a half barn since it was missing one side. Ken pointed out a pig lying in a depression beside some tools. We wondered if it was alive and it answered by wiggling it's snout. It was in no way contained; it could have taken a mind to folow us home but it just laid there. Then Ken started wondering if they even knew the pig was there since they had referred to a time when they kept pigs. The pig didn't tell us the answer to that one and we decided not to go back to the house and find out. We drove down the drive and around to the other road beside the old pig pens and chicken coops. There, in a small field, were enough chairs and tables and stuff and more stuff to fill another two houses the size of the one we had seen. Maybe their realtor, like ours, had told them to clear the house out a bit.

I've tried not to inject my feelings into this, not altogether successfully, but I really can't get this out of my head!!

File This Under: Too Dumb To Be

The boot on my left foot is for a fracture that was discovered after I hurt it while I was walking the dogs. At that point it was about two weeks old and I have no idea how or when it happened. But the bruised toes on the other foot are another matter. After Ken and I had walked around a few acres in southern Oregon we were covered with seeds, lots of the little furry ones that stick like velcro and lots of the ones that work that tiny little fish hooks to spread themselves around. I was starting to feel them prick my skin. So while he was getting gas, I decided to take off my shoe and boot and pick them off. All was going well until Ken got back in the car and said he was ready to go and I shut the car door on those two little toes. It really didn't hurt at the time so I thought maybe they had just gotten pinched but they turned black and blue quickly. Ken thinks I'm trying to get out of all of the work.

What's So Great About Goats?

Last Wednesday Ken and I went to Everett (30 minutes up the freeway) to a farmer to farmer presentation sponsored by Washington State University on dairying and selling raw goat milk to local co-ops. The presenters (John and Marsha St. John of the St. John Creamery) had upwards of 150 Oberhasli goats of which 17 were billy goats, about 40 does with kids and the rest does without kids. They milked 60 – 70 goats morning and evening with one early and one late employee. They did all the marketing and all of the milk deliveries themselves. The goats were mid-sized but with fairly high milk production. They were a beautiful chocolate color and they pointed out which ones had had their copper for the season already and it made quite a difference in the depth of the color. Most of the talk was near the kids so we got to watch them play. The presentation itself seemed about right for us knowing nothing but I think there was quite a bit that went over our heads because there were other goat people there asking questions about everything from size and restrictions of the milking facility to county to county farm management. Marsha said she had so many billy goats because the boys of this breed have the sweeter dispositions. We didn’t actually get anywhere near the boys so we had to take her word for it. I think another reason for so many boys is that up to this point they have mostly been breeding and selling the kids and have only recently started selling the milk. She is still selling kids for $25 or with papers for $100. That seems pretty reasonable to me; they leave the kids with the does for eight weeks, I think they said. We resisted bringing two home for Sambo and Juniper to learn to take care of but they were sooo cute.

After the farm part of the presentation we were supposed to go to the Everett co-op and listen to a short presentation by their buyers but we got lost on the way and missed the presentation. It was a very well stocked co-op, though, and we were pleased to get some sorghum molasses which we haven’t been able to find anywhere since we’ve been here. We also got a $16 gallon of the raw milk produced at the creamery to see if we would like goat’s milk. It tastes pretty good although I haven’t really drunk milk straight for quite a few years so I am a little more interested in learning to make cheese. We seem to be adjusting to using it on our cereal but it cleaned us all out pretty thoroughly. We met some other people at the presentation who raise goats (Nubians) mainly to make a little cheese and asked if we could visit their farm also, so that will be a fun thing to look forward to.

Cob Owner Builder Workshop

I decided to post the pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kenandsharonsahl so that my thoughts about the workshop wouldn't be quite so public but the pictures would be available. I learned a little about building cob houses but found the learning procedure very trying most of the time. I think that in attempting to make people feel comfortable designing their own little homes, they didn't want to give answers to our questions that could be construed as "THE answer." But the answer given most often was, "It depends," and unless the factors that an answer depends on are clearly spelled out, along with the range of possibilities, that's not an answer at all.

The weather was atrocious and contributed to my getting quite sick along with a number of other people. I had Ken come to get me at the end of the second week and it took several days at home to get back to normal.

The jury is still out about whether I would attempt to build cob anything, but I do think I would try something more managable than a house the first time out.