Halfmoon's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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Ego
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by Ego »

My goodness, this is a fun journal.

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

Thanks, Ego! It's strangely fun for me also. I get a huge kick out of reading your Something for Nothing posts (a friend calls us "combat shoppers"), so I'm glad that I can return the favor.

Riggerjack
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by Riggerjack »

Your http://www.nwedible.com/you-absolutely- ... -chickens/ link had me literally laughing out loud.

I agree, goat is great, but I think the flavor is enhanced by my joy at a goat's death. That may not reflect well on me, but there it is. To this day there are times when my carnivorous tendencies are still inspired by livestock experiences. :twisted:

Or, maybe that isn't true, I have never raised pigs or cows, and pork and beef are still delicious.

1Vikinggirl
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by 1Vikinggirl »

I love this too!
You write well and provide sobering thoughts to all who have never stumbled out to an outhouse in the cold morning.(NOBODY needs to go to the bathroom at night when it involves a walk in the dark!) And I remember when the house was a divided battle groun between the cats and the (field) mice. Mice ruled the floors and cats sat on top of cabinets, playing rhe floor is lava-game. Or having to turn the electricity off every time it rained... Aaaa, the days, I love my apartment!

Farm_or
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by Farm_or »

You have a gift for flair in story telling that's obviously broadly appealing. Great stuff.

We have raised sheeps for twelve years now. My DW is the opposite, she gets emotionally attached to the critters. This worked to our favor though, because we traded hay for some butcher lambs that were hair sheep (Barbados).

We raise the wooly types (Suffolk/Hampshire), but the Barbados are better eating- similar to goat, or a cross between wooly lamb and venison.

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

Riggerjack wrote:Your http://www.nwedible.com/you-absolutely- ... -chickens/ link had me literally laughing out loud.
Yes, I loved the line '...4.5 years of Pets Without Benefits'. And this:

'There is a local urban farming message board that is filled – filled – with people trying to give away their three year old chicken to a “good home.” Are you kidding me? You own the chicken. Your home is a good home. And once it’s not, your soup pot is a good soup pot. I once joked to a good friend that I could stock my freezer for the entire year off no-longer-laying hens being given away free “to a good home.”'

This got me thinking about ERE possibilities for filling the freezer. Hmmmm.... :twisted:

Sadly, I think I'm too soft for it now.

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

1Vikinggirl wrote: You write well and provide sobering thoughts to all who have never stumbled out to an outhouse in the cold morning.(NOBODY needs to go to the bathroom at night when it involves a walk in the dark!) And I remember when the house was a divided battle groun between the cats and the (field) mice. Mice ruled the floors and cats sat on top of cabinets, playing rhe floor is lava-game.
The cat/mouse thing is hilarious! There goes my image of cats as marginally useful. :? DH is allergic, so I never got to find out. Besides: I prefer the sloppy devotion of dogs.

We were fortunate enough to have a flush toilet in this stage of our lives; it was only when we moved to the mountains that we reverted to an outhouse (very nice one, I must say). I actually did use it at night, or at least in the dark evening and early morning. Funny thing about that: it got me outside to see the stunning night sky, which was awash with stars so far from civilization. That's a story for another day, though.

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

naomi wrote:I love your journal, thank you for sharing.

Is bringing back some memories from time spent on my grandparent's farm during school holidays...From a child's perspective lots of good holiday memories, but would have been a tough life.
Thank you for sharing in it by reading and commenting! The truly satisfying part of telling a story is starting a conversation. The memories you listed brought back thoughts of my own grandparents. My grandmother used a wringer washer with her own homemade soap, had a wonderful apple-redolent fruit cellar full of home-canned food, and made apple butter in a copper kettle over an outdoor fire. When I wrote to her bragging about our kerosene lamps and wood cookstove, she wrote back:

'Why on earth would you choose to live like that? We did it because we had to.'

:lol:

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

Farm_or wrote: We have raised sheeps for twelve years now. My DW is the opposite, she gets emotionally attached to the critters. This worked to our favor though, because we traded hay for some butcher lambs that were hair sheep (Barbados).

We raise the wooly types (Suffolk/Hampshire), but the Barbados are better eating- similar to goat, or a cross between wooly lamb and venison.
Now, this is something I never knew: there are wooly sheep and hair sheep? Is this where a hair shirt comes from? ;)

Do you or your wife spin the wool? I know from the comments that @saving-10-years does fiber spinning. Do you do your own shearing? It seems to me that we need some stories. :D

EMJ
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by EMJ »

Shearing is not that hard. I watched a few videos and got a friend to help hold the sheep the first time. I went from 1.5 hours/sheep to less than 30 minutes including hoof trimming (yes, I know how fast professionals are). Some sheep are more ticklish than others and that makes it harder. Take your time, fast reflexes to drop shears if sheep flinches, careful around delicate parts.

Farm_or
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by Farm_or »

halfmoon wrote:
Farm_or wrote: We have raised sheeps for twelve years now. My DW is the opposite, she gets emotionally attached to the critters. This worked to our favor though, because we traded hay for some butcher lambs that were hair sheep (Barbados).

We raise the wooly types (Suffolk/Hampshire), but the Barbados are better eating- similar to goat, or a cross between wooly lamb and venison.
Now, this is something I never knew: there are wooly sheep and hair sheep? Is this where a hair shirt comes from? ;)

Do you or your wife spin the wool? I know from the comments that @saving-10-years does fiber spinning. Do you do your own shearing? It seems to me that we need some stories. :D

I don't know much about spinning or fashion. We have a couple of neighbors that spin though.

Yes the hair sheep have some appeal that they never need sheared. But thus far, at our local auction, they are not as profitable as the lambs we raise. We topped the market for the first time last year!

We used to shear our own. We did for about four years and maybe we are slow learners, but it never got much easier. The sheeps really don't like beginning learners either because they suffer a lot of nicks. We have a regular shearer come by once a year. He is a machine! And works too cheap. We always get him some food, drinks, a good tip, and give him most all of the wool.

Part of the reason that I like your journal so much, is that I am trying to learn some style points. I am another aspiring writer, but what good is it until you can deliver in a way that people want to read? I have years of material, but still not satisfied with refining my style. Some day though?

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

EMJ wrote:Shearing is not that hard. I watched a few videos and got a friend to help hold the sheep the first time. I went from 1.5 hours/sheep to less than 30 minutes including hoof trimming (yes, I know how fast professionals are). Some sheep are more ticklish than others and that makes it harder. Take your time, fast reflexes to drop shears if sheep flinches, careful around delicate parts.
Okay; you are far braver than I am. If the animal flinches, I squeal and freak everyone out. I tried clipping a ratty old rescue dog of ours once, and he came out bald in spots. What's worse: the hair never grew back. :(

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

Farm_or wrote: We have a regular shearer come by once a year. He is a machine! And works too cheap. We always get him some food, drinks, a good tip, and give him most all of the wool.

Part of the reason that I like your journal so much, is that I am trying to learn some style points. I am another aspiring writer, but what good is it until you can deliver in a way that people want to read? I have years of material, but still not satisfied with refining my style. Some day though?
First of all: I want to shear your sheep! Food, drinks, tip and most of the wool? Sign me up (aside from my complete inability to do something like that). :lol:

I'm not really an aspiring writer in the commercial sense. I don't want to wonder about everything I write: does this measure up? Would someone pay for this? It's similar to my feelings about our home. If I think about marketability, I'll be forced to take down the cold frame made from old windows, the huge compost piles waiting to become onion beds, the endless pots of volunteer tree seedlings DH rescued from the mower's path...the chaos of an interesting life.

My suggestion is that you put aside self-judgment and tell the story. I guarantee that your life is interesting; I already want to hear more. :D You can always refine it later, but tell the story first however it comes out. If nothing else, the telling is really fun.

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

I deleted this because I found the earlier post I thought was lost. Idiot at work. :oops:
Last edited by halfmoon on Mon Dec 05, 2016 11:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

THE HOMESTEAD/ACCUMULATION YEARS

SCHOOL AND WORK:

I come from a family who all prize education and hold advanced degrees (but can’t change their own car battery). When I was 17, I told my father that I didn’t want to go straight into college when I graduated. High school felt like a prison to me, and I had no desire to surrender my impending freedom and return to a cell. I dreamed of living in the Alaskan woods or a Maine island or a New York City loft (so many choices!) and experiencing Life.

He sent me to a psychiatrist. :lol:

The fall after I graduated from high school, I hitchhiked to the Maine island where I had spent my childhood summers and started working in a sardine cannery. It was…different. The packers were in a huge, decrepit uninsulated wood shed adjacent to a dock. Fishing boats unloaded their catch onto a conveyor belt that ran the length of the building, and the packers stood on either side of the belt grabbing fish, cutting off their head and tail, and shoving the body into cans. We were paid by the can, and these women (all women) were amazingly fast. Grab, snip, snip, shove. Grab, snip, snip, shove. When the boat was almost empty, the packers at the top of the line (more seniority) would take all the fish, and those of us in the back would be idle. Then a demanding chorus of “FISH! FISH!” would rise and resound in the shed’s high rafters until another boat hooked up.

I lasted at that job for one week, at which point a girl on the canning line caught her hand in a processing machine. I still remember the screams.

So…back to working in the restaurant in the early eighties. DH and I were getting disillusioned with the restaurant business and thinking about a possible future free of vomiting drunks. I began talking with an older customer who worked from his home as an accountant to small businesses and individuals. He encouraged me to pursue an accounting degree and try doing the same.

For me, the degree would be solely a path toward working from home. I wasn’t fascinated with math or interested in enriching my mind with philosophy or art history; I just wanted the tools to create income while staying home. DH and I decided that a 2-year degree would achieve that goal, so I signed up at a community college. Classes started at 8 AM, which seemed doable because I got off work at 6 AM.

Another brief detour: our workplace was unionized, and we had undergone a month-long strike that resulted in keeping our current pay rate and medical insurance. DH and I each had seniority in our department and picketed every single day of that strike. The owners were not happy with us. Every subsequent manager tried to break the union’s back in general and ours in particular.

When the current manager found out that I was taking classes that started at 8 AM, he announced that he was changing the schedule so that graveyard shift would run from 11-7 instead of 10-6. It would be impossible for me to get from work to home (drop off DH) and back to my classes inside an hour, and management figured this would cause me to quit. DH and I decided that we were stronger together than…oh, pretty much anyone. :) I told the manager that union rules allowed the person with most seniority (me) to choose from available shifts, and I chose swing shift. The manager sputtered, “But [DH] works graveyard!” I replied, “Yes, but graveyard isn’t going to work for me under your new schedule.”

And then began the torture. I would get up at 6 AM; take a shower and get a ride from neighbors who were driving sort of close to my community college; walk the rest of the way and attend classes until 2 PM; take two buses to the restaurant; work from 3-11; study in the back for a few hours; sleep in the car until DH got off at 5 AM; ride home; stumble into the house and sleep on the couch until 6 AM; get up and repeat. The hardest part was not spending time with DH.

After a few months of this, the manager sat down with me and said, “We want you to go back on graveyard.” (Translation: no one else wants to work that shift, and they’re all making my life miserable.) I told him, “I’ll do it, but I want my shift to run 9-5 [exactly like DH’s shift].” He agreed, and we finally had matching schedules. :D

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

THE HOMESTEAD/ACCUMULATION YEARS

BUILDING PROJECTS

We had our matching work schedules, but we were still working 5 nights/week and I was still going to school full time. DH did all of the cooking (he always had and does to this day), took care of the animals, cut firewood and maintained the garden and greenhouse. Of course he was still bored ;), so he started building stone walls.

Flashback: before we moved into the house, we had it jacked up about 10 feet into the air and braced with wood cribbing. A fearless excavator then drove underneath and pushed out the dirt so we could form and pour a basement. After the house was lowered onto the foundation walls, the excavated dirt was piled up against three sides of the basement. The fourth side was left open so an attached greenhouse could be built. The end result was a house on top of a big pile of dirt and rocks.

We didn’t do most of the skilled labor on this stage of the house. DH helped the carpenter we hired while I dug drainage ditches and laid pipe. I prefer the unexciting, structured tasks like “dig a perfectly straight ditch” to the traumatic ones like “climb across these rafters and lay down glass greenhouse panes without breaking them or yourself.” DH always wants to be working with and learning from any skilled person he can find. He likes to say that he only wants to pay people to do something once, after which he can do it. It’s usually true.

Some photos below (as usual, these are scans of blurry old film photos). We moved in after the basement was poured and before most of the other work was done.

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Stone walls DH built while I went to school. He used a tractor for the large ones.

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At some point (brain gets fuzzy on timelines), we also had a barn built. Again: DH helped with construction while I did grunt work. DH designed it with Styrofoam insulation between the metal roof and the plywood ceiling to minimize condensation. Like the house, it has a full basement that’s exposed in the back. The upstairs floor is 2x6 car decking on top of 8x12 beams because we wanted to drive our tractor into the top and fill it up with hay bales (still in farmer mode at that point). We intended to keep sheep in the bottom and never did that either. After seeing the finished product, I thought maybe we should move in there and put the animals in the house. :?

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*Note: I could use some advice about the photos. They look (too) huge on my 17" laptop screen but tiny of course on my phone. Should they be smaller?

saving-10-years
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by saving-10-years »

Lovely story. Keep these episodes coming please. I have limited writing time currently and slooow writing speed but I am avidly reading (and as an aside I am now back to some, currently very unimpressive, spinning). Re.latest episode. This is heroic (and fascinating) civil engineering. Wow. (Pictures work fine for me, viewed on 13" laptop).

The livestock stories bring back (vivid) memories of our introduction to sheep. We researched and did courses on smallholding and small flock management before opting for sheep rearing but were terrified by the prospect of lambing with more than four legs to contend with in a birth canal at once. So we requested an expert friend find us 12 ewes which had already given birth and had 'lambs at foot'. He focused on the fear of multiple birth part of the message and bought us 25 'ewe lambs' (young sheep without previous experience) each scanned as pregnant with a single lamb with a suffolk sire. Just imagine ... inexperienced owners, inexperienced sheep, single large head offspring (= much more likely to get stuck). We all got a lot of experience very quickly.

I am in awe of the schedule you kept to while studying. I've done a lot of studying while working full time but never with that level of challenge. It sounds like there was a complete disconnect between home and work life. I've pretty much always done work which was intellectually absorbing and intrinsically worthwhile. The downside is that I stole hours from family to work above and beyond the normal hours. Now I am retired and away from that life I wonder whether I missed accomplishing a lot at home (especially as I got older) because work was so absorbing. So work you dislike may have its up side?

My you two are a strong team. There have been lots of discussions here about going alone in ERE, and the problems of finding a compatible partner. When you have a partner who stretches you (as yours does) and stands side by side in adversity its such a strong plus in life. Having the same sort of crazy ideas when there are two of you makes it more than twice as likely that they won't work out crazy at all? (There is no scientific proof in that but it feels right from personal experience).

More please.

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

What a nice comment! You've put your finger on our exact feelings: together, we're greater than the sum of our parts. We've always been aligned in our attitudes toward money, loyalty to each other and shared goals. DH has an incredible determination and work ethic, but I hold up my end.

Having 25 pregnant ewes at one time would scare me to death. That's impressive!

The school/work schedule was exhausting, but at least it wasn't very mentally challenging. I'm guessing that your education was more in depth. I learned much more after graduating than I did in school.

Also: interesting thought about a job you dislike being a help in focusing energy elsewhere. If either of us had been involved in a fulfilling career, we might never have been so close or so motivated.

Crazy ideas? You ain't seen nothin' yet. Wait until I get to the 60-foot tower. :lol:

theanimal
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by theanimal »

Like everyone else, I'm really enjoying your journal. Fascinating stories. Keep them coming!

halfmoon
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Re: Halfmoon's journal

Post by halfmoon »

Thank you, animal! That's high praise indeed from a person who's doing what I always dreamed of. The fantasy got a little trashed when I read Coming Into the Country years ago, but the photos in your journal have buffed it up again. :)

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