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it was too whinny, had to come down. So those of you coming over because feed readers have declared an update, sorry. It had to come down.

Don't you love, how I break

With the time change, and it not getting dark until after 9pm, we have been having some late nights. We aren't eating dinner until 10pm some nights. Wake before dawn, sleep after sunset, I think I am now tired.

It is one of those "work! There is still day light" things. We don't wear watches, bad things can happen if you get caught in something, and the strap decides not to break. Kind of like my husband doesn't wear a wedding band. This upsets many people, but we explain that wedding bands can mean a loss of a finger in his line of work. And he is always working, the only time he would wear it would be to eat or sleep. I however do where mine because I don't go digging around in machinery.

We use to live in Hutch (Hutchinson in non Kansas speak) and we had a friend up there that was an EMT. Prior to that he worked on cars and other machines. He had lost and reattached more fingers than he had. Rebuilding a cars transmission can be a problem for those little digits. I always worried about my husband, he came close one time, when a transmission slipped, he had to have a few stitches, but never lost a finger. He has many open wounds on his hands from working on motorcycles and tractors. Washing them in solvent hurts a bit.

My injuries have been less, I have been shocked by things, dislocated both my shoulders, tore tendons in said shoulders, some cuts that probably needed stitches, chemicals in face, and lots of severely sprained ankles. I have actually done more damage to myself as a child then as an adult. Learned from my mistakes I guess. Because I haven't broken any bones since my youth.

Moving to the farmstead causes even more challenges when it comes to injuries. Larger machines, and 2 hours for EMS to arrive kind of puts the fright into you. A boy down the road from the farmstead saved his grandfather's life by placing a tourniquet on the stub that was once his grandfather arm. He had got caught in a swather. Losing a limb seems to be common practice in the sticks, sorry boonies, we were informed our farm is in the sticks. We have to be very vigilant and never get complacent out there. even here, a farmer has lost his life due to farm equipment.

And I have no idea how I even got on this subject. How I write posts is find a title, most the time it is a lyric to a song I heard the previous day, then start writing about something. Today I just kind of went in a different direction than I thought I would. One things leads to another I guess.

It had to be a dream

It was one of those evenings that the bed called out to me. "Phelan, come, lie down. You know I love you." How could I ever resist that kind of sweet talk? I carefully avoided stepping on the kittens that ran around like Mad hatters in the height of a cocaine high, and snuggled down into the deep down of the pillow top bed. ahhh. . . now this was the best part of life on the prairie, being able to put the day's work behind you. Fatigue so great that you never stop to silently toil with thoughts.

My eyes slowly flutter as my shoulder popped, and I roughly pushed against the muscles of my husband's back. It was all the energy I had left in my bruised and battered body. I was making a pathetic attempt at a massage, my sorry way of showing my appreciation. It felt like I had ridden a bull for the eight full seconds, but nothing so dramatic. In truth it was a day mixed with flu like symptoms, uncooperative fencing, and a lot of crawling. But it was enough to allow the drama queen to show her poutty face.

I quickly faded into the bed. No more thoughts, and too soon for explosive dreams. The floating sensation took over, and everything was peaceful. Suddenly I shot up from bed. Glass was shattering all over the kitchen. No one but me, and the now paralyzed kittens were awake. Even in my daze of sleepiness knew better than to attempt to wake my husband whose soft snores were the only sound I heard.

The gun isn't in my bedroom. A mistake that I should rectify. However, knives are scattered through out. And I prefer the safety that these provide me to feel. Gingerly I placed my foot down, the kittens were instantly reanimated, as the hurried to huddle around my feet. They had heard the glass breaking as well, and they knew that as long as I didn't step on them in the dark, that they were safe. I wanted to mumble, it is up to us team pussy, but restrained it and the giggle that I felt bubbling up. Throwing knife in hand I slowly pushed forward, into the kitchen. Nothing was moving. No strange shadows to declare an unusual presence. Quickly I flipped the light on.

The sink and floor was covered in glass, but the cabinet doors where shut, as were the other doors to the house. The dogs neglected to give off any kind of alarm as well. Suddenly there was a creaking noise to my side, a door was slowly opening. With a flash, the adult cat jumped out of the kitchen cabinet, glass coming down with her.

I grumbled as I cleaned up.

Don't celebrate just yet

I discovered that 1 of my 3 boys is allergic to poison ivy. It took 24 hours to discover this fact, but my husband and small are both allergic. Medium, large and myself seem to be immune. When we arrived at the farm on Monday, my mother and a few of her friends where there. They had a blanket out, and my thinking was that they had already scoped out the area. We hunkered down and had lunch, soon husband walked over and informed us of the poison ivy. I felt stupid for not looking first, as I wasn't sure which of my boys had my skin and which ones have my husband's. We found out 24 hours later.

It was a pleasant day however. We planted blackberry bushes and raspberries. Discovered that they deer hadn't killed the fruit trees. We measured and sized up the area for the cattle, and figured out what we were doing with the lean-to's.

Husband and the boys went swimming in the stream. Husband showed everyone the work he had done on the windmill. It is working properly, we just need a link to complete it and we will have running water!

We discussed toilet facilities. Outhouse seems like the first logical step. We will move on from there.

My priorities are, solar shower, outhouse and cattle pens. Anything after that is a luxury in my eyes.

Husband and I took the back road out of the area. It is more like a private drive, than a maintained road. Grass grows in the center, the bridges had been flooded out, the concrete bottoming out the car at one point, but gorgoues. We would like to get in good with the neighbors and evntually purchase a few acres of it. It has a wonderful hill that would be perfect to dig a house into. But that is still a few years away.

For now we will work on the farmstead, and worry about the future of the homestead.

on a different note, it looks like the Blogathon will be back this year. Any one have plans on doing it?

Hope your weekend was good

I tend to tick people off accidentally.

We went to the future farmstead this weekend, and I have got the go a-head on the corrals.

The future farmstead use to be a hobbyist farm. And will continue to be so for all but five acres of it, for the near future.

I am a homesteader surrounded by people that seem to only want very large lawns to mow. More power to them.

I use to make good money, could have afford to buy a smaller acreage with a nice house, but choose something else. We are now broke and struggling, but our good neighbor, who is also a homesteader, doesn't have to work, and makes a little money by selling produce on the side.

I would love to have enough money to get the farmstead going right now. And I have no problems with those that have the money to do so. If they want to buy a 200 acre yard, that is up to them. If they want to use that 200 acres to play with, experiment with livestock, or food stuff. I am happy for them. If they want to use it to hunt only, like my new farmstead neighbors, more power to them. If they want to use it to be completely green, I say go for it. If they can afford to completely change their lives and be farmers or homesteaders, then I am thrilled for them.

If your happy, then you are doing things correctly.

I am not better than anyone just because my owies are bigger. Or I struggle more. I would love not to struggle, and I am working hard so I no longer have to be a broke homesteader. I am not dirt poor, but I am not comfortably rich were I don't have to earn a living from the land.

I apologize for making it seem like I was anti hobbyist, anti-rich or that I was holy than thou. that was never my intentions, ever. I don't like to see good land go to waste, but it isn't my property and I have no say in what they do with it.

What I don't like and I can say something about is how SOME people make other's feel horrible because of their misfortunes, their mistakes, or the fact that they can't afford the things they can. I don't like it when people claim to never make mistakes and then attack those that have.

I made a mistake by not clarifying better in a previous post. By not naming names or whom the post was written for or who it was about. I thought it better not to do so. I felt that a broader generalization would be more appropriate, and did attempt to include the fact that I had no personal problem with those certain people. By no means was it about any one's blog that I read. Though to whom it was written for (don't allow them to make you feel bad) was directed towards a few blogs that I read.

I friend of mine had an animal die. It was an obvious mistake for those that had been doing it for awhile. I was upset that this person didn't seem to know better, but was really ticked when a slew of people began to attack her for the mistake. She should have heeded other's advice, but she chose not to and had to suffer the consequences of the actions. She felt that the books were better than that of the advice she was getting, mainly because the books made it sound like this was the only way to do it and no one else knew what the author knew.

I made a big mistake by following the books as well. I was called out for it, I removed that post because it was thought that other's would do the same, even though I said not to make this same mistake even if the books had said to do it this way.

I want to read books that say how and why something was done, and that this was the mistake, and this is how we fixed it. I know not one book can cover every single mistake and how to fix it. But it would make many of us feel more comfortable about moving forward with these plans. Not everything is perfect, and I am tired of feeling less because my life (and some other's feel the same) doens't go as smoothly as the books claim they should. I am tired of feeling like a failure because these books tell you that this is the only way it will work, yet doesn't seem to for me/you.

If you have the money to allow other's to do something for you, then by all means, take advantage of that. If you have the money to buy an established farm, then go for it, please. I would never feel less of you because of that. That would be silly. I had thought I had said as much. But please, if you never do those things yourself, like butchering or harvesting or whatever else might be involved with a farm or homestead, don't write about it like you did. If you only do the business side of it, then write about that. I would love to read about that aspect. Write about how your farmhands do things. But don't criticize other's for making the mistake if you have never put yourself into that situation.

Have I clarified things enough? I sure hope that I have. If not, then I will try again. But at this point I have no idea how to be clearer. I am surly going to hurt more people's feelings, and if that was my goal, I would have been very harsh and called out some people. Like an entire forum. But I haven't and I hold no animosity toward anyone, or anything.