November Hill farm journal, 34

Heat.

I could stop there with this post but I'll backtrack a little and lead up to this week's string of 95+ days.

Last Friday I went with a friend to a beautiful chalet in Little Switzerland, NC, where we spent 4 days working on our current novels. It was a nice break for me - part of our deal was that Carolyn made dinner every night, and she's a food writer and wonderful cook so the meals were delicious. I got a huge amount of work done. The chalet is on the top of Grassy Mountain with views of Table Rock and the Blue Ridge, and was absolutely charming - an old stone tower that was at some point converted to living space. The stone walls are two feet thick! The landscape was lovely around the chalet too - with blueberries and blackberries there for the picking in the back. The wildlife highlight was when a huge black bear ambled by the dining room window and left, we think, a nose smudge of the glass of the outer front door!

Back to November Hill on Tuesday and that's where the heat comes in. It is so hot and relentless for the next three days before we dip back to the low 90s. The cats are staying in, the Corgis are on vents for the AC, and the horses are enjoying the shade and fans in the barn during the hot days.

Farm updates:

I got my signs for the front gate, which I need to take a photo of to share, but they are very nice and make it clear that no one should enter without express permission. The surveyors finished up yesterday, revealing some surprises about our strip that goes up to the main road. It's much wider than we knew, which doesn't mean much but does make me wish I'd know where the line was a couple of years ago when an obnoxious relative of the heighbors told me "he owned the road." The truck he used to haul in his ATV to race up and down was actually parked on our property! Oh, well.

One flower bed is neatly covered in cardboard and compost now, thanks to my husband, who did that for me while I was away. It's so nice to see that project starting to take off, even if it does coincide with the hottest week of the year thus far!

The horses are having their feed tubs decreased, as they are getting so much grass right now they are leaving the tubs half eaten. The overseeding we did and continue to do has paid off. I can't say enough good things about our Newer Spreader. I'm finding it to be one of the best farm purchases we've made, ever.

That's about it for now! If you're enduring summer heat, my sympathies. I am so ready for fall!

November Hill farm journal, 33

July 4th is behind us now; there were fireworks but mostly distant. The cicadas did a magnificent job providing white noise, Rescue Remedy for the herd helped them stay calm, and an Aperol spritz and dear husband kept me calm as we sat in chairs by the barn and waited it out.

My mom was here for a 5-day weekend and we had good food, great conversation, and a very nice visit. Our son was in town and came by a couple of days for a few hours, and I treasured the constellation of family that made up this holiday weekend. Who knows when these particular orbiting  planets will align this way again!

We're managing to keep on top of the farm chores. The grass is growing like mad, the horses are eating grass and hay and dropping manure at a pace that seems super-equine in sheer volume. We are mucking and spreading and overseeding and mowing and weed-eating and trimming back the jungle. The Newer Spreader is a godsend, and our new shelter is affording space for the mower so it stays where it's most used. The harrow has moved to the hay tent and that's made harrowing easier too.

I have a new mini-ShopVac in the barn and although I haven't used it yet I think that will make life easier as well. This year seems to be all about getting super efficient with the work we have to do here. I'm happy to be getting some things done and getting some tools that help.

Tomorrow I have a new farm helper coming for the day. We hope to have him here every other week for now, and I'm thrilled that he came so highly recommended. He works alone and apparently he can do just about anything I put on the work list.

Horses and donkeys and cats and Corgis are all happy and healthy.

And it's JULY. Once we hit August 1st I think we're over the hump of summer. The wild muscadine vines have fruit! That's the first sign that fall is coming.

And gate annoyance

I love the new gate. Love, love, love it. But no sooner than it was installed and operational did I start to experience some of the annoyance that I guess is inevitable.

A landscaper I had met with one time about some work showed up unannounced to take a second look at a tree (after I had specifically instructed him to schedule any such visit with me) and CRAWLED UNDER THE GATE with someone. I happened to be in my driveway when this happened and I was both appalled and annoyed. What the heck does a closed, locked, gate mean to you? My message with a closed gate is DO NOT ENTER. That I had verbally said this to him just made it worse.

Yesterday the rural mail carrier showed up, on Sunday morning, blowing the horn at the gate and then when I didn't make it out there in 5 seconds, shoved a huge package over the top of the gate onto the ground.

I have ordered signage but really? Is it that complicated? If a gate is closed do not go through it unless you have been invited to do so.

My delivery box is now set up so hopefully once I get signs installed that will be the end of that.

Gate bliss

Our new farm gate was completed this week, though the opener had a glitch and is being replaced. I love this gate so much I am happy to open and close it manually until the opener is working! From the inside, looking out.

Outside, looking in. My first chore today is to trim back the sycamore on the right side to expose the upper edge of the post. Our contractor and gate virtuoso beveled the edges and they are gorgeous!

 The gate is perfectly hung. You can push it open with one finger and it stops when you stop pushing. I am in love with it. We'll let the wood season until August and then the posts will get several coats of dark tung oil and the gate itself will be painted soft white to match the porch and I'll go over that with several coats of light tung oil to finish it off.

My reward for doing that work? A new mailbox and finally, the farm sign I've been trying to get made since we moved in 12 years ago. I finally found a way to do what I want, and we'll see how it turns out. Stay tuned.

This is a sample of what the entire perimeter fencing will look like come September. This little area is the only piece of our farm that wasn't secure so I'm very happy that now it is. No horses from down the lane galloping up to our barnyard fence, no worries if someone gets out of the grass paddock or barnyard and heads down the driveway.

When we do the fencing in September we will also be dog-proofing the new gate. I'm so happy to have this long-time farm dream come to fruition.

Me and Rosie Roomba

This is the spring and summer of home/farm improvement and also a time when we're trying to make our work easier and the chores not quite so time-consuming. I've been going through some of our daily routines, looking for ways to lessen the load.

With cats and Corgis and humans going in and out all day and half the night, tracking in dirt and debris, shedding hair and dropping crumbs, the most basic of the household tasks is keeping the floors clean. Thankfully we have hardwoods and tile only so that certainly helps, but the sheer amount of stuff that ends up underfoot is staggering. We take our boots and shoes off in the laundry room, and that helps too, and we have LL Bean mats at all the entrances, which helps with cat and Corgi paw patrol. But if anyone said "you can only do one chore" it would have to be vacuuming.

I don't mind vacuuming that much, to be honest. It's a rewarding chore, one where you see the results as you go, cat hair dust bunny, whoosh! Dirt and debris, gone! There's something metaphorically satisfying about sucking up all the dirt and having clean space again. Let me take a moment to praise our Dyson Animal. This is the purple vacuum cleaner we invested in years ago. It has had two motor replacements and a number of parts made new by dear husband. At this point the carpet beater part no longer works and we use the wand, which will suck in an entire curtain if you happen to get too close. This is by far the best vacuum cleaner I've ever had and at some point we need to go ahead and get a new one.

The part of vacuuming I don't enjoy is the time it takes to go through the entire house, inch by inch, and the worst part of all is lugging the very hefty Dyson through the gate on the stairs and up to the second floor, then back down again when I'm done. Periodically I've considered getting a second one for the second floor, but the expense was such I never have, and the issue of where to store it up there was also problematic. There's just no good space to put it.

Since we remove boots and shoes, and since the second floor is off limits to Corgis, the floors are much easier to keep clean, but there are still cat hair dust bunnies and flecks of litter box pine flakes that get tracked about. A side bar to say that plush microfiber mats under the litter boxes have made a HUGE difference in this issue! Why didn't I do that years ago? But back to the vacuuming.

Actually, back to my childhood. I'm not really a cartoon person; I don't enjoy the medium much but there was one cartoon I loved when I was little. The Jetsons. There was something about the world of space travel and robots and convenience that I loved, a glimpse of the future. And today, as much as I eschew things like ATVs and kitchen gadgets that do one task and use up valuable storage space, I love some of the technology we have access to. This iPad I'm typing on, my Kindle, the iPhone. I use these things daily and love them, for the most part. Our Bluetooth printer is like a thing of magic to me. So it's no surprise that I've been eyeing the Roomba for a long time now.

Early reviews said it wasn't a match for pet hair, and since we have so many pets, I determined we would be sticking with the Dyson Animal. But recent upgrades have made certain models work better  for those of us with cats and dogs, and since our upstairs is much less problematic in that respect I decided to spring for the Roomba. It arrived in a fancy box and sat there for several weeks awaiting being opened and set up. On Friday night, when I realized I was going to have to haul the Dyson up the stairs to vacuum, dear husband opened the Roomba and set it up for me.

And off it went. I sat on the wicker loveseat in the loft and watched it, then followed as it went from room to room, not always in the route I felt was best, but I enjoyed seeing it do its thing. Skeptical but charmed, I sat on the bed in the guest room while it went underneath, doing a far better job than I do with the Dyson's wand. Other than the fact that it seemed to sometimes get obsessed with certain corners and tight spaces, it made its way through the labyrinth of our upstairs and cleaned every bit of debris there was to get. I let it go until the battery ran down and then docked it for recharging.

The instruction manual says it works best if used regularly, so I emptied the bin on Saturday night  (which held cat hair, litter debris, a screw, and a piece of unchewed gum!) and set it on its way again. This time I cleaned the litter boxes and changed the cat water bowl while the Roomba worked, enjoying the company and the help. It wasn't long before I was talking to the machine in passing, and thinking of it as "her." When she obsessed about an area she'd already cleaned thoroughly I stopped her and picked her up. "Let's go in another room now," I said affectionately.

I finished my chores before she did and used the extra time to read a story in Paris Review. What a treat! I'm smitten. Meet Rosie.