Sunday, January 30, 2011

There's something happening here

I was gone in Barcelona for a week, and all kinds of things happened while I was gone. 
Our Belgian mystery rooster is maturing. He made his first croaky attempts at crowing. The hens seem to detect the changes and show a bit more respect for him now, despite his humorous appearance.



Before I left I asked the neighbor to come over and clear some ground for our garden with his Caterpillar. He was nice enough to bring his tractor over and disk up the ground after that. I took a soil sample in for testing, and the soil is good, if low in nitrogen (which is no big surprise). So now we have a nice garden space, though I still have a lot to do before we can plant. 


And then the witch-doctor, he told me what to do...

This is Tres.
People who know me know that I don't generally 'eat healthy' in the traditional sense. I do not choose what I eat based upon the fat, calorie, fiber, antioxidant or vitamin content; nor do I attempt to balance my diet to meet nutritional recommendations. In part, this is because I do not believe in the science that underlies most of these recommendations. For some reason, this Fall I felt compelled to write a summary of the history and science behind nutritional guidelines, as a means of explaining my point of view. You can find the link to the PDF below. Let me know what you think.

Friday, January 14, 2011

To dig dig dig dig dig dig dig is what we like to do

We (Tres especially) have big plans for a garden next spring, but it will take some work before we get there.  The number one consideration, obviously, is that we live in a desert and so will need a reasonable and efficient way to get water to our future fruits and vegetables.  Up until now, our water has come from the well to the back corner of the shop.  Our goal was to bring it down to the bottom of our property, where we can then attach sprinklers, drip tape, etc. to extend to the garden.


How to accomplish such a thing, you ask?  Well, you're going to need a Dingo.  Now, you know that I'm generally a big fan of operating heavy machinery, but this one was a bit more work for me.  In order to get the Dingo to move, you squeeze and pull a horizontally-mounted bar towards you, using only your fingers.  To turn and move it, you twist the bar and pull it at an angle.  Sounds easy, but simultaneously squeezing and turning, with all of my weight pressing down on my hands, had my wrist feeling more than a little sore the next morning.  Still, we reached our goal, a 3 foot (or so) deep ditch from our water to the bottom of the property.

driving the Dingo

I want to clear up any misapprehensions that we knew at all what we were doing when we began this undertaking.  The truth is, that while I may present us as somewhat knowledgeable or competent, for the most part, we have no idea what we're doing when it comes to most of these construction/home projects.  We do our best to educate ourselves by talking to the people from whom we buy our materials, looking online, and consulting more experienced family members, but the truth is that you can read and talk as much as you want, but nothing beats experience.  We learn that lesson over and over, as we undertake these little projects, but it hit home especially well as we were digging the ditch yesterday.  Within perhaps 10 minutes of driving, I managed to run the wheels out of their track.  Lacking the proper tools and knowledge to get it back on, we called the rental company and waited while they sent someone out, who fixed it (after borrowing some tools from us - guess we had them after all!) and advised us that it happens periodically and that we should try to keep the tracks level to each other, in order to avoid it happening again.  

Tres gets me back on track

With that, I was back to it and determined to make up for lost time.  It turns out that I got a bit off track and we decided, so as to be thrifty with the PVC (this is all about laying pipes, don't forget) and, more importantly, to avoid the site of our future septic field, that we'd correct by digging a second trench off of the original and filling in the error.  So, Tres got on the Dingo (I was not feeling confident enough in my steering), lined us up, and promptly got the tracks stuck in the trench.  By the time we'd finished maneuvering a bit, the entire Dingo was on its side in the trench.  Oh boy.  Now, this piece of equipment weighs about 4,000 pounds.  We would not be picking it up, dusting ourselves off, etc.  There is no photo of these events, as we were freaking out and hardly wanted to document the moment (a bit of a regret now, as it was a sight to see).  Tres came to his senses and went to the neighbors (without whom we would truly be lost, I suspect, as they have helped us out of a jam on more than one occasion) for advice and help.  One kindly brought over his tractor and he and Tres easily extracted the Dingo without any damage or (additional) consternation.  I continued my trenching without any further mishaps, while Tres glued the PVC together and lined it up next to the hole.  


When I had finished, we set the pipe in the ground.  The next day, Tres finished attaching it to the frost-free hydrant and tested it for leaks, then used the tractor to fill it in.  


One step closer to the garden of our dreams!

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Seamstress for the band

my assistant attacks the thread

Seamstress is an overly complimentary word for my relationship with a sewing machine, but I have been doing a lot of sewing since I finished up working with Tres.  First up were pajama pants for the immediate family.  This was a Christmas project I had started several years ago (as in purchased fabric and sewed most of two pairs of pants) and then abandoned, when I realized it was just too much during what is one of the busiest times of year for a teacher.  With free time in the month before Christmas this year, I could finally get them done.  With the purchase of materials for one additional pair (we've added someone to the family in the interim - hi, Steve!), I got going.  Now, I am lazy and slow, but I did manage to finish with a bit of time to spare.  Here are the 7 pairs (the only ones missing are mine, which I finished after I had the out-of-towners' off in the mail).



I learned some valuable lessons along the way - trying them on early in the process will help you to realize that they require significantly more hemming than the pattern recommends, I'm not yet advanced enough for fabric with even a hint of stretch, and I still hate pinning and cutting - and this was a great project for getting reacquainted with sewing.

Next up were bags for wrapping.  While we were cleaning and organizing at my parents' house a few years ago, we found a bunch of leftover Christmas fabric from projects of yore.  A wrapping paper substitute seemed a logical solution and thus a family project was born.  Mom and I cranked out a bunch of bags over Thanksgiving weekend and then she, my sister, and I made some more at our respective homes.  I also embroidered some pre-sewn bags, just one for each person this year, but maybe I'll add a new one each year?  It feels really good to have finished some projects that have been "in progress" for awhile.


Cleaning onion seed this fall left me with a fair amount of mental space for daydreaming/planning.  I came up with several ideas for potential Christmas cards, but none that I could successfully execute (ask my former students, I am NOT an artist).  While I was talking to Tres about one of my ideas at lunch, he made a rough sketch and it was perfect.  A few weeks later, he drew the real thing.  I did my best not to ruin it when I colored it in, using my rudimentary Photoshop skills.


Tres prefers typing up a  yearly letter update to "writing the same message in every card," so he spent a few weekend hours doing that and then I printed everything and mailed then out over the course of the following weeks.  I've been making our Christmas cards since we decided we were grown ups and should be sending them out, usually just using stamps on blank cards (see aforementioned artistic shortcomings), but I'm so excited about the ones we made this year.  Of course, now I have all sorts of schemes for using Tres' artistic prowess.


Tres and his helper compose the Christmas letter

I apologize for the lack of activity around here lately.  There's been only VERY slow house progress, we haven't been up to many house/property-related projects, and I'm trying to figure out exactly what I want this blog to be. . . I'll get there.