Thursday, November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving to All


Here's one of the advantages of living alone, and hermit-ing over the holiday.  Today is going to be the last nice day in a while, so I decided to postpone Thanksgiving cooking until the raised beds were finished.  (I can cook tomorrow if I have to, but I will not want to finish raised beds in the rain!)  Now the bed construction is complete, the turkey breast and stuffing are in the toaster oven (boy I hope THAT goes OK), and I am making blueberry pie with blueberries from MY bushes, taking a break while the base pie layer cools in the fridge.

I am thankful for so much.  When I moved here last fall, I had this vision that I would have a goat business going now.  I had an expensive horseshoe-shaped road built for loading and unloading goats that I am still paying off.  After I realized that this business would start much slower than I had planned, I worried that I had made an expensive mistake, that maybe I should have used that money for other things instead.

But now it's beginning to look like having the road built wasn't such a bad idea after all.  The loggers are using the road for staging their(my) wood, and for loading wood onto trucks, and having the loggers around is affecting many other things.  This picture has the fingerprints of the loggers all over it, starting with one of their log skidders at the end of my driveway.  (If you click on the picture, it should get bigger.) There's a pile of 2x4s to the right of the building that will be used to rebuild the woodshed, which is the middle "structure" with the rusty, uneven roof.  There's a pile of dirt just past the far corner of the right-most raised bed that they dropped off yesterday.  That dirt (plus gravel they'll bring later) will be used to fill in the depression from the old swimming pool.  They'll be bringing over some topsoil and manure to fill the raised beds.  And, last but not least - I'm standing where the 10 stumps used to be, recently graded, grading paid for by the logger.  I have no illusion that this work is free.  I'm paying for it.  But I can say for definite sure that each one of those things would have involved MUCH more effort and time if I had to do them myself, or learn how to get them done.  So I'm thankful for the loggers - and that it was these loggers that posted the craiglist ad I responded to.  (And no Chicken Mama, they're not single.)

The black lump to the left of the dirt?  That's Maggie, rolling in the grass.

So mom - you can start planning what to put in the raised beds!  There are three of them, at 4ft x 12ft each.

There's more that I'm thankful for, but this post is long enough already.  I'll post about the rest later. Now, off to finish the blueberry pie and start the potatoes and beans - there'll be a Thanksgiving feast today after all!

7 comments:

  1. Enjoying that most everyone is gone. We had a great Thanksgiving here with family, even with my dad in the hospital, but I also like the part where everything is done, everyone is gone and I'm going to find some flannel to put on..is that bad, since it's not 6pm yet?? OK, I'll wait until after 6, then I think I'll see if I can scare up a BlueMoon, but it may just be Sprite tonight!!

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  2. Jordan,
    Happy Thankingsgiving to you from down south.

    Shannan

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  3. It's late, the leftovers have been put away, the kids are in bed and we're playing a board game. A good day here with family in Ohio. Looks like you had a productve day!

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  4. Your homestead looks so...peaceful, so...welcoming. Good job on the raised beds. A lot of work, but it will be so worth it. Blueberry pie made with your own blueberries!!! It is the perfect ending to Thanksgiving Day. Now rest.
    Cindy

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  5. What a nice post. Your Thanksgiving day sounds very satisfying. You wouldn't be human if you hadn't had a moment or two of "I wish I was with family / friends today", but it sounds like a truly lovely, restful (well, aside from all the raised beds work!) day.

    Thanks for sharing it with us!

    P.S. Bummer about the loggers. ;)

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  6. I'm SO SO thankful for my blogging friends!!

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  7. Jordan,

    How did the turkey breast in the toaster oven work out? I forgot -- did you mention something about the oven in your house?

    And the goats.... just curious. How did you choose goats, and what is a goat business? Is there a market for buying goats you raise, or is it goat milk and cheese, or what? I think it sounds very interesting, and wondered how you chose that.

    About ovens... I have a 65 year old Hotpoint stove that works, but needs to be re-calibrated -- the oven is about 35 degrees hotter than the temp says, so I wing it and lower it.

    I was by myself too, like you, on Thanksgiving, and bought the smallest turkey for sale at the market. I will freeze the extra (most of it) for my dog's meals.

    I really love your post, and thanks for sharing where things are at.

    Kate

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