What's everybody doing today?

[Amish Heart]

I am too old to do any major changes at this point of my life. Our neighbors are mostly Amish, we are not, so we are never going to be really part of their community. The regret I have is not for now or the future it is for the life I could have had, if that makes any sense
I think maybe people should just stay in their own countries and not move to a different one ( well unless they live in Afghanistan or Sudan or something)

You can be a freundlich in your amish community. But you have to put out some effort and do community stuff. Kinda like an adopted amish.

 

[Bluedanube]

Do you have to parboil before dehydrating? Haven't done those before.

I never even considered par boiling. Doesn’t seem to be necessary? They dry much the same as carrots do.

 

[Tim Horton]

There is a book.... ..The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank.. by Erma Bombeck.. She was quite the humorist..

https://www.google.com/search?sca_e...kGHZWAGYMQgOQBegQIWhAS&biw=1366&bih=607&dpr=1
===
11pm CDST.. Still 45F, mid/high 60sF all week..

Grass, forest fire danger is extremely high...
All keep safe..

 

[Weedygarden]

Today, I attended a lovely service at church, where I enjoyed the uplifting atmosphere and the sense of community.

That is great! I have attended services in churches where people were not welcoming at all and I wasn't the only one who felt it. Sometimes people really need church and haven't figured out how to be a good Christian.

 

[Magpie]

So now I have 2 bottle babies...the little runt today is not getting any food from mom

Plus I am totally reevaluating my life and thinking I made a big mistake
Watching this german tv show about farmers women and thinking, this could have been me, if I had tried to marry a farmer over there. They have the lives I wanted. But oh well, too late now. Debating if I should stop watching since it is sort of making me depressed, no matter how much I like it. It's not a soap opera, it's a documentary\reality tv show and not fake. These people have the absolute perfect lives .
They have beautiful farms, doing what they want ( anything from goat farm, cow farm and cheese making, ostrich farm to water buffalo farm) , they live there with their entire families , parents, grandparents, kids and everyone helps. It's sort of like the Amish here but not religious and not limited in technology. They all love their animals and treat them well.
Sometimes one bad choice can make you have a life you didn't really want. Watching this is making me realize why I have such a bad attitude so often.

I would post a link to it but you wouldn't understand it anyway ( well maybe Amish would? Do you understand the Amish? If you do, you might understand this)

Whats the show @sonya123 -would I have seen it maybe?

 

[Magus]

The Princess has 25 days left until she retires. Friday nights are typically movie night for us. But after she retires every night will be Friday night.

You gonna party like its 1999?

 

[Pearl]

Regular Monday! Hoping for a smooth non-eventful day!

 

[Amish Heart]

I never even considered par boiling. Doesn’t seem to be necessary? They dry much the same as carrots do.

I parboil carrots before dehydrating, helps the color and shape a bit.

 

[snappy1]

My little friend who is home on hospice decided to call me at 3:30 this morning. Sigh/ dementia. Never told me what she needed. I texted her daughter and I guess they worked it out. My friend was calling (on the phone) her daughter. I'm thinking the daughter muted her.

So, up since 3:30, already took shower.
If there is any dew on the grass, I will kill weeds this morning.
Take my walk.
Call Courthouse and get DH out of jury duty. Don't think he could climb the stairs to courtroom and his portable oxygenator doesn't last very long.
Will set up DH's pills for the month.
Do laundry.

 

[sonya123]

Whats the show @sonya123 -would I have seen it maybe?

https://www.zdf.de/br/landfrauenkueche/page-video-ard-handgemachter-kaese-aus-dem-inntal-108.html

yes I know this is a tv show, but I have known actually farmers that lived like that. My brother's first fiances ( whom he definitely should have married...) lived on a farm like that. We had quite a few distant relatives ( like second cousins to me) that had nice farms. LOL when I was a kid I wanted to marry one of them. The German government substitutes farmers, or at least they used to. You don't have to worry about health insurance or paying for your kids education ( if they want one) either. There are also many laws against treating animals bad and factory farming
Of course now that whole country is falling apart also, but when I lived there it wasn't bad

 

[sonya123]

no new lambs today, the little runt is still alive for now
It froze last night again even if it was not supposed to. I wonder if my little plants in the greenhouse are ok . I did cover them
Today waiting on the rest of the lambs, and maybe I will clean the house.

 

[sonya123]

There is a book.... ..The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank.. by Erma Bombeck.. She was quite the humorist..

https://www.google.com/search?sca_e...kGHZWAGYMQgOQBegQIWhAS&biw=1366&bih=607&dpr=1
===
11pm CDST.. Still 45F, mid/high 60sF all week..

Grass, forest fire danger is extremely high...
All keep safe..

I have read some of her books!! Funny! I remember one about traveling

 

[Amish Heart]

Ugh, today has come early. It's dark and little granddaughter just went out to meet the bus. Husband up at 3, at 4, at 5....but he has a doc appt late morning I need to get him to, and a shower, first. So that's the day's plan, and maybe gets some tomatoes up potted and put in the greenhouse. It's supposed to be beautiful weather this afternoon.

 

[sonya123]

You can be a freundlich in your amish community. But you have to put out some effort and do community stuff. Kinda like an adopted amish.

we get along with them fine, I did have a friend when we first moved here for a while until they moved to another state to live with their kids, and she has passed away since. We even went to one of their church services and dinner after once , I can of course read their Bibles LOL
The Amish move A LOT around here. Just when you get to know them, they move . We had a whole bunch we knew relatively well move a few years ago

the point is many farm families in Germany still all live together. I think what I really wish for is that I would have had different parents LOL
They sold off all the farm land the families had for generations and the only thing my mother wanted to do was go shopping for new clothes and shoes, and gossip with her friends....we had nothing in common what so ever, she didn't even like dogs

 

[sonya123]

Even the amish are portrayed in media as what they are not. Their cows poop like everyone elses, and their sheep do, too. Their animals get sick. They get sick. Neighbor Marlon and his family....his wife and young baby son were both in the hospital this last week with RSV. Baby just got over Influenza A and was in Kansas City for that. Saw them today, first day home, it was alot. Now picture that with no medical insurance, and farmwork to do. The community part is right, though, we help each other. But it's not perfect...just recently heard about a sex offender here, now doing six years. Raped his own daughter. No one is perfect anywhere. Grow your garden where you are planted.

LOL don't get me wrong I do not wish to be Amish!! ( well, maybe if I was a guy it would be ok)
I just want to live in a large functioning farm family if I had a choice. And yes, "grow your garden where you are planted" was my point....
It was a very very very bad idea to marry someone from a different country and move to a large city, when all along I wanted to be a farmer and live in a rural area
The jerk was a car dealer from all things....hahaha!

 

[Amish Heart]

If you have alot of amish moving in your community, then there's a problem with the local bishop, minister and probably the rules. Amish don't complain, they just move to another community that matches their beliefs better.
My grandparents owned soo much land in our area, and when they passed, their 6 kids sold it all in chunks. It happens. We saw their farmhouse and maybe just 15 acres to it down the road go up for sale again about 10 yrs ago, and we took a look, but it had been changed quite a bit, so we passed on that sale.

 

[sonya123]

If you have alot of amish moving in your community, then there's a problem with the local bishop, minister and probably the rules. Amish don't complain, they just move to another community that matches their beliefs better.

we have heard that. The people that sold us this place moved for that reason. But, the local bishop seems nice and we like his kids ( they live next to us) . They do some odd things sometimes ( like build a Jurassic park fence to try and raise exotic sheep...didn't work out well) but other than that they seem to care about their animals so I like them

 

[Amish Heart]

I see the amish here doing weird things, too. My favorite cousin's son in law one year decided he was tired of hawks taking out his chickens. His chicken tractor was a converted horse trailer with a grate inside bottom, and the door was solar open and close at night. So he decided to order 300 roosters and 100 hens, thinking the roosters would go after the hawks. Nope. The hens were terrified of the 300 roosters and hid under the horse trailer chicken tractor for fear of been jumped constantly by the roosters. But, hey, if you have a farm, might as well try some weird stuff. You never know. I do like walking someone else's farm and seeing how they are doing things.

 

[Robert Stewart]

Winding down after a chaotic day which started with a quick Adelaide cup public holiday trip to Mount Gambier, for a few shopping items from Woolworths before heading home due to the heat

Several hours later the weather turned pure chaotic with 3 consecutive thunderstorm cells throwing out dry lightning left right and centre, we lost power from 5:30 till 8:30 as im typing theres spurious cloud to cloud lightning outside

Even though I stepped away from fire fighting in 2018 after 20 years the fire fighter in me couldn't resist doing a sweep of suspected spots where cloud to ground strikes happened incase they were missed.

 

[Spikedriver]

Was diagnosed with "post viral bronchitis" and given an antibiotic pack at the clinic yesterday. Then I headed off to help my daughter with her tire. I have no idea what the hell she ran over, but it put a 1.5 inch gash clear through the treads, through the steel belts, and ruined the tire. Luckily she was across the street from the shop where I got her tires, so I took it off the car and we ran it in there to get a new one put on the rim. I tried to make it a teaching moment, showing her how to jack the car up and all that. The rim was stuck on the hub so I had to kick it off the car. When we got back with the new tire, I had her tighten the lugs and let the car down off the jack. Hopefully the lesson sticks, because I'm sure she'll need to do it again someday...

 

[Pearl]

Winding down after a chaotic day which started with a quick Adelaide cup public holiday trip to Mount Gambier, for a few shopping items from Woolworths before heading home due to the heat

Several hours later the weather turned pure chaotic with 3 consecutive thunderstorm cells throwing out dry lightning left right and centre, we lost power from 5:30 till 8:30 as im typing theres spurious cloud to cloud lightning outside

Even though I stepped away from fire fighting in 2018 after 20 years the fire fighter in me couldn't resist doing a sweep of suspected spots where cloud to ground strikes happened incase they were missed.

View attachment 175121

Once a firefighter always a firefighter!!

 

[Tommyice]

LOL I get it...
My point I could have been a farmer much earlier and saved myself a lot of aggrivation by wasting most of my life living in Florida doing things for a living I didn't want to do, living where I didn't want to live....why did I do that???

I would be concerned if you didn’t question life choices at one time or another. We all do that.

Since I’ve been home on disability, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I’m also pondering why other people’s life choices have affect me. One of our tenants has stopped paying rent. She had an accident and was out of work for a couple of weeks so we were ok with her paying late—she’s lived here 5 years. But it’s beyond that now. She’s been making poor choices and now it’s affecting me. I certainly don’t need the added stress of an eviction while caring for dad with cancer, maintaining my health and job at the same time.

All of this reminds me something the Dowager Countess said

 

[Quark]

Dang I hate this daylight savings time. 4-1/2 hours of sleep and I'm up. 09:08 and 44*. Mostly sunny. Except for the big snow mounds which are melting fast just about all the snow has melted. I have so much to do retired that I don't know how I ever found time to work when I did work.

 

[Magus]

Was DLS today? no wonder I feel like crap!

 

[Quark]

Was DLS today? no wonder I feel like crap!

Yup March 9-10.

 

[Magus]

Jeez. I hate this crap.

 

[RJ2019]

just fed the bottle lamb and checked on the rest all ok and no new once since yesterday. We had 2 more lambs yesterday from our youngest and smallest sheep but one of them didn't make it, died right after birth. Happens sometimes but sad. The other one didn't seem that great either, but seems ok now, up and nursing. The bottle baby is already a little pest! I was trying to get the newborn yesterday to stasnd up and nurse, and the bottle girl came over and grabbed a few sips. The ewe did not like that one bit of course. I have seen this happen before. Lambs will try to nurse on other ewes while they are distracted , goats do to. They will try to get all the milk they can
Had to put the bottle baby in a different room.
It gets really interesting when you have several bottle babies, they all want to eat at once and I have to lift them up one at a time to feed them or they will knock the bottles out of my hands and nobody gets anything
Large farms with lots of sheep will mostly just let them die, sad but that's what happens. Or they will give them away. Milk goat boy kids will sell for as little as $50, just so they can get rid of them. I try to feed all of our extras and almost all of them grow up fine. You just have to take care of them a little extra. But the milk replacer is not cheap, you definitely do not make any money on this.

Out of bananas and would like to do some shopping but we have more sheep to go and I don't want to go anywhere right now.

Curious but why are you feeding milk replacer? I use whole store milk for goats and hear it works well for sheep, too. Milk replacer is nasty stuff! It might be worth doing a little research on, I find the milk from the store to be cheaper and MUCH more convenient.

 

[sonya123]

I would be concerned if you didn’t question life choices at one time or another. We all do that.

Since I’ve been home on disability, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I’m also pondering why other people’s life choices have affect me. One of our tenants has stopped paying rent. She had an accident and was out of work for a couple of weeks so we were ok with her paying late—she’s lived here 5 years. But it’s beyond that now. She’s been making poor choices and now it’s affecting me. I certainly don’t need the added stress of an eviction while caring for dad with cancer, maintaining my health and job at the same time.

All of this reminds me something the Dowager Countess said

View attachment 175126

It's McGonagall! LOL

( she was one of my favorite Harry Potter characters)\

But yes, life sucks and then you die. I have said that many times. If I had stayed and married a farmer, I would have probably died from cancer at age 30 or got into a car accident and in a wheelchair or something....

We never know the alternate reality

 

[sonya123]

Curious but why are you feeding milk replacer? I use whole store milk for goats and hear it works well for sheep, too. Milk replacer is nasty stuff! It might be worth doing a little research on, I find the milk from the store to be cheaper and MUCH more convenient.

I use both, first the milk replacer ( lamb milk replacer not cow) and later on when they get bigger regular store milk ( which is cheaper). Ours tend to get diareah from store milk if I feed it right away.
What I like best is if we have a milk goat and I can feed them goat milk, but the goats are not due until the end of the month
Plus if you have a lot, I run out of fridge space for the milk containers ( last year we had 5 bottle lambs, all the ewes had too many, and one rejected all her lambs , she went to the auction)
I did freeze some goat colostrum last year and gave it to the tiny one, but he is not doing too great. I am not sure he will make it. The other one didn't finish her bottle this morning, I think she might be getting milk from various ewes LOL, seen her do it. She jumps right in there just as soon as they start on the feed and goes to the next one as soon as the mom figures its not hers

 

[Mountain trapper]

It's McGonagall! LOL

( she was one of my favorite Harry Potter characters)\

But yes, life sucks and then you die. I have said that many times. If I had stayed and married a farmer, I would have probably died from cancer at age 30 or got into a car accident and in a wheelchair or something....

We never know the alternate reality

It's kind of funny how different people look at things. Life is what a person chooses to make out of it. To the wife and I, life is wonderful. We live on a large parcel of land that we've always dreamed of, and are doing everything that we ever wanted to do. We traveled around the world many times, and have no desire to travel now. We chose careers that allowed us to live anywhere we wanted to, and the time off (up to 7 months paid vacation per year) to live how we wanted. We have zero complaints about life, or the choices that we made over the years. Family is all health and happy and are living where they want to be. And that's what really matters.