Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

  (Sooo...you may or may not have noticed, if you are following this rather random page, and bless you for doing so, that I have been trying to be more consistent in posting.  I feel like I am pretty much posting random nonsense with no direction.  When it was Dairy Daze I had a pretty clear sense of what I ought to be posting about.  Now that we are "Beyond" the dairy, I just wander off on random subjects.  Today will be no different.  Maybe I should just totally rename this blog.  I had considered just calling it "House of Howard" but the "address" would still be dairydaze.   I had considered starting a completely new blog on a different platform, but that seems like a lot of trouble and I don't want to abandon this blog, now that I have come so far.  So I am going to continue on with this one, as is, and will continue to post random entries about random subjects that amount to very little, other than the early morning musings of a middle-aged MidWes

 Yesterday I had to head out early to Bolivar to get my fingerprints taken.   There's an opening sentence to raise lots of questions and eyebrows.  Haha...  Here's the story. Since Gary retired the dairy a bit over 2 years ago I have enjoyed not having to do chores early in the mornings and late in the evenings.  It has been great to not have to fight the winter elements at 6 AM in the black dark every single morning.  For sure I have enjoyed sleeping in an extra hour or so every morning.  But now Ellen buzzes off to school of mornings, Gary has been super busy with his water well work.  Me.  Hmmm...  I have found any number of ministries, hobbies and whatnot to keep myself busy.  However, as the months have gone on, I have become more and more restless for something a bit more constructive. So, last month I took complete leave of my senses and completed an online application to become a substitute teacher in the local school system.  No.  It was actually a move I have thought

Gary has had quite a few well calls the past week or two; not only for broken water lines from the freezing weather, but other issues as well.  Yesterday he went to a place where they needed a new control box, or something fairly simple.  At any rate the lady was so happy to have water again that she gave him a dozen fresh eggs and this box of goodies. You might wonder; where in the world did SHE get all of this?  Well, if you could examine each box you'd notice that they are all from Nabisco.  Her husband drives a truck for Nabisco and these are all from cases that broke open or were damaged and couldn't be sold.   Of course absolutely none of this stuff is the epitome of health food.  We will eat the crackers, and there was a box of Strawberry Newtons that Gary wanted to try.  We kept a couple of boxes of the cookies for ourselves, for treats of course.  But the rest of it is headed to church or to other family members.   Gary said it was too bad the guy didn't drive for

 The past few days have been busy here, I have been distracted by several different events.  Suffice it to say I haven't been keeping up with my walking as much as I should have.  Plus it has been raining here.  This January we are getting all the precipitation that we really needed back in July and August.   Above you can see tracks in the mud.  That is in the fenced-in garden to the west of the house.  I take Bella out there for walks when I don't want to go down the ridge to the creek bottoms.  If I let her loose down there, it is often close to an hour before I can catch her again.  She is quite clever and won't come when called until she is ready to leave.  haha...  I don't blame her, I wouldn't want to go before I was good and ready to go either.   In any case, back to the above photo.  We haven't had an overwhelming amount of rain, but enough so that the garden area where I walk is all squishy and muddy....as gardens are when properly wet.  The top prints

 The above is a picture of our old cat, Matilda, a few months before she passed.  I believe Smudge is in her carrier beneath.   In glancing through my photos to find something to post and blog about I got to thinking about how much things have changed since I first started taking photos.  I had a little 110 camera with those flash cubes.  I remember buying and inserting the film, doubles exposures, rewinding the film, taking it to be developed...etc. Then piles of photos, the negatives, photo albums...etc.   I remember it was always fun getting the packet of photos back so you could see if any of your pictures were actually good, or if they were off center.  Nowadays, with digital technology, a bit of the fun has gone out of it.  But if you see you don't have a nice shot,  you still have the family there so you can make them stay in position to get a better photo.  That part is nice. I do however miss having the packets of photos to look through.  When Ellen was little I did order

From the get go Bella was to be an outside dog, and so she has been for many years, with the exception of super cold nights.  She didn't really care to be inside when she WAS in here, she just sort of cringed around at the inside sounds of furnace or vacuum cleaner and huddled in the bathroom.   But now, after being inside more often over the past few years due to inclement weather, she is becoming accustomed to it, and prefers it really.   And who can resist this face?   This cat tolerates her to a certain degree, so I am not constantly on edge should they meet face to face.  Matilda, our previous cat, would have nothing to do with her and would fly into a panic at the sight of her.  So Bella stays inside more often now, because I am not as worried about pet drama.  And occasionally she might have learned that if she's cute enough, or persistent is perhaps a better word, she could get a treat. And so she pokes her nose where she ought not be poking it; namely under my elbow wh

 It is difficult to tell that everything is icy today; but it is.  Strangely enough, those are puddles you can see there, but it's ice underneath, so it was treacherous trying to walk around.  The dog and I stuck to walking in the grass or leaf litter so we'd have some traction.  I put old rags or towels down on the porch steps to get out the door. We left a white trail of ice around the yard on our walk. I guess the top picture is a bit more obvious. At any rate, while I am not longing for the 100 degree days and high humidity of summer,  I have had enough of winter weather drama for a bit now. 

 I'd always believed that squirrels hibernated.  I was wrong.  And only a little thought would have led me to the truth.  If squirrels hibernated in winter, they wouldn't be such pests at the bird feeders.  Ha!  But they have stashed tons of nuts away for these cold snaps, and stored them in random caches all over.  Apparently this squirrel was out raiding his store of nuts.  This picture is from last week; or whenever it was that it snowed.  Bella and I took a walk around the place and found these tracks; squirrel and a mouse, I presume.  Rarely have I ever seen mouse tracks in the snow.   Today it is still quite cold.  It was 10 degrees at 2 AM, when I took the dog out for a potty break.  Now at 7:30 AM, it's 13 degrees.  The sun is just about to rise over the back ridge.  We are forecast for rain all this coming week.  For tomorrow we will still have super frigid temps so the rain will be freezing rain and will ice everything up until it warms up later in the afternoon. 

 This, I believe, is the first big snowman I ever built for Ellen.  I am almost certain I posted a picture of it on here when I did it.  But I remember while I was building it, she was playing in the snow, making random snowballs and whatnot and it occurred to me that making snowmen isn't for the faint of heart.   If you remember in the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes" Calvin was forever building huge snowmen, herds of snowmen; some he called snow goons.  I remembered that comic and was quite sure of its fictionality, because no 6 year old would have the patience or endurance to build multiple snowmen that much taller than himself out in the frigid air.  Haha... Here is another snowman we built. She was a bit older in this picture, and was able to help me more.  If we had put our minds to it, and if we'd had enough snow, we might have been able to build a whole herd of snowmen.  Haha... In past years we just haven't had the amount of snow needed to build such large

 She has no brains, I am afraid.   Well.  I take that back.  She is fairly smart...when it suits her.  She recognizes quite a few words.  When I ask her "where's the SQUIRREL, Bella?"  she will look up into the trees, wagging her tail.  When I ask her where the CAT is, she will look around the place, toward the house, or toward the places where the cat frequents when she is outside.   But when it comes to common sense things, she is hopeless.  She will just pester the cat to the point of the cat's insanity.  Smudge will be lying on the sofa, trying to snooze, and Bella will just get up in her face, as above.  She will just stand there, not moving, staring at the cat.  Smudge will try to sleep, but then the tip of her tail will start to twitch, and she will look back at the dog from squinted eyes.  I just keep them in separate parts of the house when they both have to be inside.  Maybe I should just let them duke it out one of these days, but I just don't want to r

 Since the frigid Polar Vortex hit the US a few days ago, it has been a matter of surviving for quite a few people. This is what Gary has been dealing with...all over the area: Shattered pipes in wells around the county.  He has been flooded with calls from people saying they don't have water.  Most of them deny that any of their pipes could possibly be frozen, but Gary has them try heat in their well houses for a few hours, and quite often he doesn't hear back from them. Then there are the calls from people with the very obvious problem of shattered water lines.  He kept this one because there are still usable joints, or whatever they are called, on the end.  You can see there are other fittings at the other end in this photo, sort of at least. This morning he has to go to town to get more fittings, pipe adhesive and other supplies; then he has a few places to do repairs.  For the most part people are glad to see him coming and are overjoyed when he leaves and they have water.

A couple of days ago I finished a project I started in mid-December.  I saw on a Facebook page that someone had made little dolls like this, so I tried it as well.  Per Ellen's advice I modified it from what the other person had done, and I think they turned out super cute.  Gingerbread cookie dolls. Their smiles leave a great deal to be desired.  I wish I were more talented at doing faces.  But I figure younger children will probably end up with them, and usually they aren't too picky.  That is also why I didn't put the plastic safety eyes in them.  I realize one doesn't put a cherry on a real gingerbread cookie, or at least I have never seen any like that, but it makes a nice addition to a 3-dimensional doll.  I am hoping the little ties maybe resemble a little piece of that red rope candy. So these dollies will be packed away until Nov or December, to be taken to a Christmas/Craft Bazaar somewhere.  Now I am going to make more of the other little dolls that I'd m

 It is still well below freezing.  Bella and I have been making tracks in circles around the place here, doing circuits of the driveways with her on leash, or letting her run in the fenced garden off leash.  It is still super cold.  At almost 5 PM it is currently 8 degrees out.  This morning I think it was -1.  Ellen has taken her for walks and made some tracks, too.  We are all getting cabin fever...well, except Gary.  He has been making tracks of another sort; up and down the roads.  Gary has fielded numerous calls from people who don't have water for one reason or another.  Most of them he has advised heat lamps or heaters in their well-houses and hasn't heard from them again.  Presumably they thawed out and have water again.  Several people, including his aunt, have heat and water in their well houses, but no water in their actual houses, so the pipes are frozen up underneath the house somewhere.  I believe there are also several who have broken pipes; which will need to be

 Most of the nation has been thrown into the freezer for the next few days!  Here is what it was when we got up this morning. Further north it is even colder, of course.  And in normally cold states it's colder, and more snow cover.  We have a bit of white stuff out there, but I think the roads are pretty much clear.  There may still be ice in spots. I have been keeping the dog in the house, of course.  This is what she does in the mornings: She goes from one window to the other, looking out and boofing occasionally at invisible things.  Up until this morning I have been taking her for a long walk, but when the temps are in the negatives like this I think I am going to forgo long walks.  When the sun comes out I will probably put her out in the kennel for a bit so she can do her business, but then I will bring her back in. The cat goes out, does her business, then come back in and curls up for the day.  When Bella is in the house I shut the cat up in the bedroom to sleep in peace. 

Let's see... Today is Saturday, and it is stinking cold.  We are in the midst of a "Polar Vortex" they are calling it.  It is 8 AM and our thermometer says it's 10 degrees outside.  Ugh.  According to the forecast I have seen it isn't supposed to get above freezing until Wednesday.  I can almost guarantee that Gary will get a phone call from someone who is puzzled because they don't have water.  Usually it's because either their light bulb or heater in their well house burned out, or because there was some sort of damage to the well house where the wind and/or cold was able to get in and freeze up the pipes or mechanisms in there.  I always feel bad for Gary when he goes out in this weather, but people are always happy to see him and to get their water back on.   Here are a few pictures from when it initially snowed mid week; the pictures must have been taken on Wed morning after we'd had a bit of snow the night before. It had actually been above freez

 Yesterday when I got in the car to head to Plad Pantry (which is a discount grocery store in the township of Plad) the odometer read 160051.  I know that it's 10 miles from our place to that store, but I didn't take any chances; as soon as it flipped over to 61 at the end I pulled over into someone's driveway and took this picture.  I missed it when it went to 160000; got distracted on the way to town last week.     Below you will find butter in a bowl.  I am sure you wonder why that is at all significant.  Yes, well, here it is.  This was Wednesday afternoon and I needed something to take to the Ladies Meeting the next day.  On occasion I will cook up a jar of green beans and take them, but I am about green beaned out so I decided to make a batch of cookies.  Snickerdoodles are the easiest to make, and are the ones Ellen's friend's have started requesting when they have a get-together.  But Snickerdoodles require a full cup of butter...softened...and all of my but

 Bella and I took our walk yesterday morning in the creek bottom.  No strange dogs in sight, but I always keep my pepper spray in hand.  It wasn't too terribly cold; temps hovered around mid-30s, but the wind was awful, driving the snow horizontally.  You can't really see it from this picture.  It was that dry hominy snow again, little pellets that would go up my nose in the wind.   You can see it better in this picture.  I had her leashed because we were headed back up the hill to the house.   We only got maybe a quarter inch all told, but it still blew and snew all day.  Yes, I am aware "snew" isn't a word, but it ought to be.  I mean: "blow-blew" "throw-threw."  "grow-grew."  What happened to "snow-snew?"  English is forever a frustrating mix of nonsensical rules, to which there are endless exceptions.   Yesterday evening about sundown, after 5 PM-ish, the temps finally started dipping below freezing and the roads started

And I don't mean "finally"  as in I really want to get winter weather.  We have just had a really unusually mild cold season this fall and winter.  Since November I have noticed in my Facebook memories that 7-10 years ago from November through now we have in past years had random snowfalls and/or times of sustained temps in the teens, even down into the single digits.  But this year we have yet to get down below the upper teens.  I think in December maybe it got down to 19 degrees, maybe 17 degrees depending on the thermometer, but only for one or two nights.  This is currently on our radar:   Oh.  That's cool, my screen copy and paste actually caught the video!  Anyway.  On the map we are located under the word "Lebanon" almost in the center of the picture.  The thermometer here says it is 39 degrees out.  We are getting a smidgen of mist out there now, but no rain, sleet or snow yet.  There have been predictions of up to 6 inches of snow, only 2 inches of

Over the years, mostly thanks to my mom, and other people, I have built up a collection of snowmen ornaments.  The first couple of years after I married and moved here to Missouri my mom would send us a set of ornaments every December.  I am not sure she meant them always to be snowmen, but they were, or at least contained a snowman or two. This was the first set: snowmen bells.  They came in this round box:  I think on the back of these I noted that she'd sent them to us in 2005. There is also this set, which I think she sent in 2006, but I am not sure. I don't have pictures of them on the tree, but they are metal and are anywhere from 4-5 inches in height. The lid of the box has faded over the years, but it is still cute enough to display on its own. This set below was also sent to us my by mom, but I forget when.  I am not sure I wrote the date on the box.  We usually set them up on a shelf, instead of hanging from a tree. This snowman on a star was given to my by one of my

 This is the track I travel to get down to the creek bottoms.  This, of course, is my view on the way UP out of the creek bottoms.  I am determined to get back to where I can walk up it without having to stop one or more times to catch my breath.   This is the track the dairy herd used to traverse twice a day in the summer, going to and from milking.  The grass stays greener and the temperatures cooler during the day down along the creek.  After two years the weeds and dead leaves are starting to encroach on the track and it looks different to me. I was here for 18 years of dairy farming, so in my mind I still see it broader, muddier and more gouged out by cow hooves.  I figure eventually the leaves and weeds will make more ground cover over the rocks and in a decade or two or three there will only be a narrow track, used by deer or turkeys and the occasional coyote. Sometimes I wonder about the paths I have made in life; not the physical paths, but the spiritual, though that isn't

 The dog and I just got back from our walk.  We went back down to the creek bottoms.  Unfortunately it is becoming a bit hair-raising to take walks down there.  Three days ago on our way back we encountered a pack of about 5-6 dogs.  It was difficult to count them as they were milling around in the trees and bushes.  They all looked like labs, or some sort of lab mix.  There were 2 or 3 black ones, maybe 2 golden brown ones and a golden-brown and white one.  I called out to them, Bella woofed at them, trotted toward them and they took off across the creek bed.  When they were on the upper bank across the way one or two of them barked a bit, but then they took off.  I couldn't really see which way they went other than across the creek; the trees and all are too thick down there.  The past 2 days I've taken Bella out to the fenced in garden and done my walking there.  Today we went back down to the creek.  We didn't see hide nor hair of any other dogs; but Bella did quite a b

Day before yesterday Gary and I processed that dead tree he cut down.  He sawed it into chunks, got the splitter out and we went after it.  This is probably less than half of what he split eventually. As a general rule we will let the pile sit there and just haul it to the carport a load or two at a time as needed.  But this time, as you can tell from the above picture, our pile was just too close to the road.  We know of more than one place locally that has been totally wiped out of goods and whatnot, and we would not be surprised if someone were to come along, stop alongside the road and load up with some wood.  Not that we'd be above helping someone out in need; Gary cuts and hauls his sister's wood.  We went up to his Aunt's place the other day and split some of her bigger chunks of wood so she can handle them easier.  But, like as not, people who'd steal it would resell it.  This time of year firewood is going at a premium.   There were some chunks left from the fi

...seed catalogs time, that is!  This one, my first one of the year, came in 2 days ago.  I love that it is illustrated in the old fashioned way.  The first few pages and the last few pages are of their most popular selections are always in color...   The last few pages are always of flowers and those are always in color as well:       But the middle pages are in black and white: The old timey-ness of it is fun.  I think this year I am going to order a few things from here.  I have ordered from them in the past and have always been pleased.   Last year we weren't able to get any Top Crop green bean seed locally.  I notice that they have them in this catalog, so I might go ahead and order them.  Also last summer I had volunteer pumpkins and spaghetti squash thrive and grow, so I thought I would try growing pie pumpkins.  Of course, last summer was a drought and the bugs were pretty scarce.  I didn't even see any squash bugs until early fall.  This coming summer might be super we