Between The Fenceposts

Reminder

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Sat, 28 Dec 2013 12:45:00 +0000

I have been overwhelmed by the response from my last post! You guys are amazing!
And since I had such a response, and in truth am still getting emails and Facebook messages almost DAILY, I wanted to come on here and repost my invitation to join me at my new blog, Tales of the Flying Lady!
It is a private blog, but all you have to do is email me a request to join with a little note telling me a bit about yourself (because it's fun to know who I'm visiting with when I post). I'll send you an invite to join the blog and that should be that!

I hope if you haven't contact me yet, you will because I don't want anyone to miss out on our adventures, and unfortunately, I won't be posting to this blog again, at least for some time. So if you want to keep up with our travels and home time fun in Tennessee, please send me an email!
clearcreekpaints@gmail.com

And this is an open invite, so even if your reading this a month or two after I post it, go ahead and email me! Look forward to hearing from you!

Moving Forward

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Sat, 16 Nov 2013 20:38:00 +0000

I have decided to get a fresh start in many areas of life, including blogging.

I've started a new blog. For various reasons, at this time it will be private.
I've been setting it up and only gotten one post up so far. It was in the works in my brain for a while, and then I got a random message from one of you a few days ago, that kind of motivated me to get that ball rolling! (Thanks for the reminder that y'all were still waiting on me and hadn't forgotten I exist.)

Private, but I have enjoyed my interactions with all of you through this blog, and I want to have you for friends at the new blog too. I just don't want my life to be an open book to the vast and extensive public right now. But I don't think of my current readers as that vast unknown public. Y'all are blog friends. Even those of you who don't comment and aren't on my followers list, because I hear from you occasionally and you surprise me coming out of the blue like that. Surprise me pleasantly, so please feel included even if you haven't made your self publicly known.

So! If you notice this post, after my long months of absence, and would like an invite to my new blog, please email me at
clearcreekpaints@gmail.com

Or you can send me a Facebook message via this blog's Facebook page. Just look up Between the Fenceposts on Facebook and I believe you can send me a message there. You should recognize the little bird on a wire against an orange backdrop. The same as my "button" on here, so you'll know your in the right place on Facebook.

Through either contact source, I will need your Google email address in order to send you an invite. And if I don't personally know you, I would still like to include my regular readers, but I'd also like to know who you are. So if you don't mind mentioning your name in the email and maybe your general location (for my own curiosity).

And here's my promise: I'm not marketing or selling email lists and I'm not a stalker. I'm going to delete your email as soon as I get it and get the invite sent. So don't worry that I'll use it to start harassing you to buy something or just be weird!
Please return the favor since I just gave out my email address to all of you.

Guess that's that. Sorry to have left you so long. It's complicated and then again not so very much. And I might get around to explaining it all one of these days. We'll see. But if I do, it will be at the new blog, not here. I think I'm done here. It's been a lot of fun here at Between the Fenceposts and I'm kind of going to miss it. But I'm excited about starting new with a clean slate too. And I hope most of you will want to join me there.

Thanks for sharing so many adventures with us here! Y'all have been great friends and readers!

Salty Dogs

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 15:43:00 +0000

I meant to share this a few weeks ago, but didn't feel like spending much time on the computer or inside when there was so much going on outside and so limited time to enjoy!

But here I sit in a parking lot in Illinois with time to kill. And I think this is worth sharing because for dog owners there's some good to know information in this story.

There are no pictures. Sorry! I had some sad, forlorn Chinese Cresteds on film, but I'm not going to do battle with my computer just for those few sad pictures. If you don't know what I'm talking about, refer to the previous post.

So, let me set the scene:

We arrive home and it feels so good! Everything in it's place, everything well taken care of. Only two minor problems:
1: there is, after nearly 7 months living in the house, a dead mouse in the trap. The first, mind you, after several years of living with mouse issues, and so I count my blessings, discard of the dead mouse, and feel the blessing of the miracle that I can live in an old farm house and not have a mouse problem. And why is that? I was fascinated but relieved!

2: my kitchen sink and counter is covered in tiny ants, going busily from the cupboard to the back of the counter and disappearing beneath the sink.

Turns out they'd found the sugar bowl in the cabinet above the sink where I keep the glasses and coffee mugs and coffee additives....like sugar!
So I cleaned that up and moved the sugar bowl and anything else accessible to an inaccessible location.

Problem solved! Right?

Ummm...no! If you've ever had ants in your kitchen maybe you know what a pestering problem it is to get rid of them. The little demons persisted in plaguing me for days and days! I had to check the sink each evening to make sure we hadn't left any dirty glasses or anything in it. The rotten little buggers found a way into the dishwasher, where I'd stashed half a load of dishes waiting till morning to wash after breakfast. It was a constant frustration to me!

And since it was around the sink mostly and I have limited counter space for food preparation, I really didn't want to use one of those anti-ant sprays, with the overspray getting on everything nearby. So I was just dealing with them till I could find a natural-ish way to give them an eviction.

I had some suggestions from friends but wasn't having much luck getting my hands on the required materials, and finally in one big gigantic fit of frustration and disgust, I went to the store and bought some Combat ant bait strips.

I put one by the sink up against the back of the counter, and I stuck one to the inside of the cabinet between the dishwasher and the cabinet wall. Two little strips in safe out of reach places, where the ants could get them and no one else could!

And then I had two of my high school friends over for lunch and we had a lovely time and there wasm't an ant in sight, even though I'd put the bait strips out just that morning! I was thrilled.

Visit, laugh, and play with the new baby who was adorable, and then hugs goodbye and I went to the kitchen to clean up and get ready to go out and see if Malcolm needed help. I finished the dishes, wiped down the counter, walked into the living room, and walked right into a heart stopping sight.

Ella, proudly standing on the ottoman guarding her new toy...an EMPTY any bait strip!

The bait was totally licked out and the other two girls were bouncing around trying to get a turn at what Ella had.

I was sick! I was panicked. There was a storm coming, and Malcolm was down the road at the neighbors helping them with the creek crossing at their place, and my dogs were going to die right there in the living room from eating ant bait that I'd foolishly put out instead of some natural ant deterrent.

I snatched up my cell phone and called the vet, the new vet, the very one we'd just had out three days before on a Sunday morning when we thought Fancy was having problems (another disaster story). I called and had no signal!
Next room, call, no signal!
Another room, call, no signal!
And by now I was getting really upset!
I finally flew out the front door onto the porch, closing the door behind me so the girls would be quiet and so I could hear. I finally got the vet on the phone, and proceeded to explain what had happened. And half way through his instructions, the storm broke and I could barely hear him because of the thunder and down pour. But eventually I was able to make out what he was wanting me to do, and so I hung up and turned around to go back in and suddenly realized I'd just locked myself out of the house with no key.

So there I stand on the porch with a downpour and lightning storm between me and Malcolm and my poisoned, possibly dieing as I stand there dogs on the other side of the locked door, near tears of frustration and heart ache, and I heard Malcolm coming on the bobcat.
Which was a relief and a sickening feeling at the same time because I had wanted to get this done before he returned so that he didn't have to walk into our chaos and more stress.

However, I did need in the house! So his arrival was very timely!

Back inside, and the girls are over joyed that we've returned to them! Life is wonderful! They think! No signs of death or serious illness yet! Thank the good Lord!

I scooped up Ella, and since I didn't really know who exactly had licked out all the ant bait, they could have been sharing for all I knew, I called the other two and the four of us hurried into the kitchen.

The vet taught me something very interesting and I think, especially now, valuable for all dog owners to know. So I'm sharing it with you.

If you cram a teaspoon of salt down your dogs throat, they will start throwing up within minutes!
Its a near guaranteed way to get your dog to throw up if you need it to.

And so that's what I did. I took my happy, bouncy little dogs that thought we were going to get a treat or play a game in the kitchen floor, and one by one I held them down and poured a teaspoon of salt down their precious throats.

And it was effective. Ella was first and before I'd finished getting Carlie's dose in her, Ella was already heaving. By the time Paris had swallowed hers, Carlie was starting up and Ella was still going.

I no longer had three bouncy happy dogs. I had three traumatized girls, heaving their guts up, and between bouts looking at me as if I had lost my mind and broken their hearts. And they were breaking mine!

Ella had a full tummy and I think that saved her a lot of discomfort. She only threw up a couple times and after that was fine, though a bit warry of me.
Carlie and Paris apparently were running on empty, and as a result, they heaved and heaved and heaved with little to show for it but slime and foam, and they felt awful and were so upset. It killed me!

There was a mess to clean up obviously. And in her trauma, and also juggling three sick ones, I'd not been able to contain Carlie towards the end and so I had three rooms to clean up, as well as a hallway.

It was while I was cleaning that the vet called me to see how it was going. He was pleased with the results (at least someone was). He also told me that if we'd been in the office, he would have also given them a charcoal paste to absorb any residual poison that might be in their tummies. Well I had some charcoal tablets and he was thrilled to hear that. And so I was instructed to shove a couple of those down each dogs throat.

More trauma.

And then poor Carlie Jean apparently hadn't been done with her vomiting, so I had to clean more up, and then force tablets in her again.

And after that it was a wait and watch game.

By that time it was late in the day. The storm had passed, and shortly after Malcolm came back in. We cleaned up, had dinner, and retired to the living room to watch some TV. By this time Ella had returned to her normal bouncy "the world is a marvelous place" self. Paris was pouting and content to snuggle in the blankets and watch me with a wary eye. But I wasn't worried about her. Carlie Jean, however, was acting very lethargic and shivering, which is normal for her when she thinks she's been mistreated in even the most minor way. She was just not herself at all, and since she'd had some blood in what she'd managed to throw up, and also lost control of her bowels towards the end of the episode, well to tell the truth I was worried. More worried than I tried to let on to Malcolm, because Carlie is his baby.

Later in the evening, when it was time to take them out, I forced her to go with us, and once outside, when she went to pee on Ella's pee spot, because Carlie always has to mark Ella and Paris's spots, and then growled at a real or imagined movement off in the dark, I felt like she was going to be all right. I think she was just really traumatized from the whole event and plus she got a double dose of the charcoal tablet cramming. And the vet had not seemed concerned when I mentioned the blood to him, saying something to the effect that it was probably just from the trauma of so much heaving.

The next day all three girls were alive and well and back to normal and had even seemed to forgotten that their lady tried to kill them the previous day. Life resumed its normal rhythms, I discarded all ant baits except the one high on the counter where there was no way the girls could get at it, and enjoyed the rest of our vacation at home....now ant free!

So here's what I though was note worthy that every dog owner ought to know, because you just can't tell when it will come in handy!

If you need your dog to throw up for various reasons, whether you think it's poisoned or it ate a pair of underwear (as our neighbor shared with us his story of dog retching trauma), pour a teaspoon of salt into the back of their mouths and force them to swallow it. You're pretty much guaranteed instant results. And according to my vet, if the salt doesn't work, a teaspoon of peroxide will do it, and won't hurt the dog. Also you can try mustard, but he prefers the other two first as mustard is extra unpleasant to them, although I doubt anything about the experience can be counted as anything but unpleasant!

I'm relieved to have had this whole situation turn out ok. As I mentioned before, this was only three days after we'd had the vet out for Fancy, after sitting up with her all night in the barn, watching her sweat and strain and panting for breath and giving every indication that she was having this foal...early...and then no results in the morning but no changes either. We had the vet come out and the first thing he said upon arrival was that it didn't look good and that we'd probably lost the foal, and maybe the mare too. After an examination in which he discovered she wasn't even dialated, he changed his diagnosis to "she's uncomforatable and going through the motions cause she wants it over with." Yeah...thanks Fancy for the trauma and the weekend vet call bill just cause your uncomfortable!

Anyway, to say the least the week was rather emotionally packed! But it all turned out ok. And a week later we had three healthy bouncy dogs AND a healthy bouncy foal! Fancy was more comfortable after that, and though my purse was a bit lighter (thanks again Fancy) I was healthy and happy too, and the rest of our vacation at home ran a lot more smoothly and pleasantly, no more drama or trauma!

But I have to say, there is something to be said for being back at work! Malcolm's said before and in this instance I have to agree....
We had to go back to work to get a break!

Horse Cuteness Overload

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:47:00 +0000

The day came and we have returned to work. But before I resume travel posts, I had to share one more blog post laden with cute horse pictures.

And the travel posts may still be delayed a bit longer. We got a new laptop a couple months ago and I've been fighting a battle with Windows 8 trying to get my pictures loaded where I want them off the camera. I'm losing the battle so far. It's very frustrating. And I can't access them, or rather I can't figure out how to, in order to upload them to the blog or facebook. I've been posting pics on facebook from my phone, and then saving them from facebook onto the computer where I want them to be located, so that I could then come post them on blogger. It's a pain and it's frustrating and I know I'm not computer savvy and that's the problem. I do not like Windows 8! What was wrong with Windows 7? I got along really well with it and I'd like to have it back please!

Anyway....

Fancy's little man is growing fast, as they all do! At day three he scarred the living daylights out of me by accidentally jumping the water tank. He was running and didn't have his "stop" down pat yet, so when he couldn,t get stopped he just hopped over it. But I saw it coming and fully expected my weekly disaster, which seemed to be the trend this past month. (I'll fill you in on that later, if I can remember)
Thankfully, Fancy gave birth to a natural athlete full of grace and more coordination than I gave him credit for!

We also have come up with a name that seems to be sticking.
Meet Midas!

Hopefully he'll have that golden touch!

I'm leaning back towards thinking he's going to be palomino, and thus the golden name. We will still have to wait till he sheds his baby fuzz in a couple months to know for sure. But either way, I think Midas has stuck to him like glue, cause that's how we refer to him now.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I got an email from Dawn and Gemma's new owner announcing the birth of Dawn's foal....EXACTLY 24 hours after Fancy foaled.

Another colt, and a very unusual color! Isn't he gorgeous though?

And also a comic?
One thing Lisa (his owner) pointed out right away is how remarkably similar his markings are to Gemma. And she's right! Compare this little guy to his big sister Gemma at that age. Just about the only way to tell them apart is the color, because the markings are nearly identical! He's even wearing Gemma's black lipstick!

Speaking of Gemma....

Last we saw her was in October when we handed her and Dawn off to their new owners. Here's a picture of Gemma late last summer in her yearling year.

Lisa has been working with her and started riding her a couple weeks ago. The report is she's very smart, quick to learn, and hasn't even considered a single buck or trick to unseat her rider! She's everything I had hoped she'd turn out to be, so much like her big brother, Sky, in attitude and brains, but with the looks of a super model thrown in.

I'm glad she and Dawn are in such a good home and I love getting the updates and pictures from Lisa.

I'm in love with her mane and tail, so long and thick for a 2 year old (at least in my experience). I told Lisa she's going to need to braid that main when she rides. Otherwise she'll have a face full of it when they get going good.

We are hoping that one of these days we'll get close enough to their home where we can stop and visit Lisa and Dave and see the girls. I'd really like that.

Back at home, we finally had to pack up and get back to work. We left on Wednesday. We haven't had a chance to get another pasture fenced off at home, so we had to move Fancy and Midas to a new location. I couldn't take a chance putting them in with Sky, since your not really supposed to mix geldings with mares and foals. Sky is just a love bug and wouldn't hurt a fly, but I wasn't going to take a chance that his natural curiosity and pushy affection caused problems.

It was a problem that I'd been pondering, and then a couple days after Midas's birth, we had some visitors, and I realized I might have my answer.

My sister-in-law came over with her girls, and her sister and nephews, the grandparents, AND her parents.....who happen to have some acreage and a few horses and her dad's a horse nut like me! We all had a wonderful visit and the kids (and adults) all loved Midas, of course! Who wouldn't?

Well turns out, my nieces are horse nuts too, and even my sister-in-law is a bit of one. Funny the things you don't know about the people close to you. I had an idea that my older niece was, but I've learned a lot about my family this spring and summer, and the discovery that I have multiple horse loving relatives was a delight!

Anyway, Midas was a star! Everyone fell in love! And when my sister-in-law's father started talking about wanting to breed one of his mares because he'd always wanted that experience, I started to think this might be a good thing for all of us!

So when my first plan didn't work out the way we'd hoped, I called him up and posed the question to him, "would you be willing to board Fancy and Midas for me while we're on the road?"

And of course his answer was yes! Which worked out perfectly!

So while Malcolm and I are criss crossing the nation, Fancy and Midas are staying at their new summer residence, being totally spoiled and loved on!

I told Malcolm after this, we'll have the most imprinted foal under the sun!

It is so nice to be gone from home and know that everything and everyone is being taken care of. I have no worries at all! And while it does make me kind of sad to miss so much of his growing up, just like I had to do with Sky and Gemma, its great to get so many pictures and updates.

We got off to work with a bang, which was tiring, but nice after so many months of slow work. We left Wednesday night and we've already run half way across the country and back, from Illinois to Montana, to Wisconsin and now we're back in Illinois waiting to see what's next!

north unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota

I hope there will be more motivation to share some travel posts. I think it will help once (if I ever do) I get this picture thing figured out. As long as it's a battle I'm not going to want to blog much. But maybe Windows 8 and I can come to some reasonable terms and get along. We're going to have to, because I'm pretty much stuck with it!

So that's the latest from Redbud Farm and the littlest of the big four leggeds at our place.

I have a story from the little four leggeds too, from when we were home. I'll share that with you later. Heart stopping moments and lessons learned that I think are worth sharing. Stay tuned.

The Wait...

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:00:00 +0000

...is over!

It has been in the 80's but muggy. And these last few days it has insisted on letting little thunder storms and rain showers pop up at least once or twice a day. Things have gotten soggy again.

Yesterday we had a nice day. When we got up in the morning it was raining which created a delay for Malcolm, who has been working on the truck brakes. So while we waited for the ground to dry up a little, we drove to Dayton to pick up some parts. It's a pretty drive and we're enjoying exploring that town and what it has to offer. It's actually about 5 miles closer to go to Dayton than to go to downtown Chattanooga, and the traffic is MUCH more enjoyable, since we're mostly the only vehicle out there on those two lanes through country.

When we got back home the sun was shining and there was a wonderful breeze. Malcolm went to work on the truck, and Fancy and I went for our daily foot soak in the creek. This time we had company.

He was swimming along when we got in the creek and he kept bumping into my feet. I've never seen one that was mossy! And he was big too! We visited for a little while, but Fancy was unimpressed, so we let him go on his way.

Fancy had other things on her mind. She kept looking around and turning her head to me and resting it against my side and talking to me the whole time. Not her usual creek soaking staring straight ahead bored out of her mind expression. I've been letting her graze in the back yard after our creek time and I decided that she was looking forward to that treat. So as soon as we'd been in the creek long enough, we headed for the yard.

So we went there and where she usually can be "parked" and stay put more or less, yesterday Fancy was going where Fancy wanted to go, and too bad to anyone else who had other ideas. Completely out of character for her.

After a while I got tired of it and needed to go help Malcolm, so Fancy went back to her corral and we worked on the truck and wrapped up our day mowing the yard and finishing that chore in another down pour of rain. We were drenched, but it was good to have that job done, and afterwards the sun broke through the clouds with that glorious sunset lighting, and revealed a beautiful rainbow!

We have been staying up till 11:00 or later, which is totally out of character for us! Lots of "out of character" going on around here! I have no idea why we're staying up that late, because we're both tired! But not tired enough to go to bed earlier apparently. Last night was no different. It was after 11:30 before we turned off the TV and tidied things up for the night. And on a whim I decided I wanted to go out and check on Fancy. I've not been going out at night for several days. But I wasn't quite ready for bed yet and thought an evening walk to the barn would be nice. And I told Malcolm he had to come keep me company.

It had just finished raining, apparently really hard, because it was soggy and the trees were dripping enough to make it sound like it was still raining.

Fancy was out in her corral, even though her stall was open to her, and when she saw us she came over to the fence and was talking to us, and just talking and talking. I checked her and she did look a little bit swollen, but mostly normal. But Malcolm said we might as well put her in the stall. I liked the idea because it's dry in there and her abscesses have healed nicely, but I don't think the muddiness is that good for them drying out. So me and Fancy went over to her stall, her just following because she does that without a lead. And as she passed me and entered the stall I looked and did a double take.

Between the spot where we had been standing and the stall entrance, maybe 10 feet, the sack with a big sloshy water bubble had emerged!

She did a circle of the stall, laid down, and in less than 10 minutes we had a foal sitting up and looking around in dazed confusion.

I don't know what prompted me to go out when we did, well obviously it was God nudging me to go, but I'm so GLAD we went out when we did! The timing could not have been more perfect! We got to watch the birth and everything without sitting around for anxious hours worrying. It was a first experience for both of us and I'm glad Malcolm was with me to share that moment.

It was too dark for decent pictures and besides, I'd not even had time to go back to the house for my camera because everything happened so fast, but I'm sure you can figure I was out there at first light to check on things and wait for the sun to light things up.

And now for introductions!
Here's a new little guy!

It's a boy and we are very pleased!!!!
There is a diamond shaped white spot on his nose and that is all the white there is on his face and most of his neck! This really surprised me!

Fancy's past three foals all had high white legs, as does this one, with the exception of one rear, which is colored almost all the way down.
Which gave him the cutest butt ever, especially with that flashing white tail!

He has a beautiful distribution of color and white! He's just gorgeous!

And on one side he has a nearly perfect circle!

He is very active! He got up pretty fast and only fell down twice. He just hops right up this afternoon and he's in constant motion. He just paces in circles around and around Fancy. And this evening he was trying to pick up a little speed, but there's not quite room for that. I think this one is going to keep her busy!

Thoughts on Color:
Initially I was thinking Red Dun like Fancy. He is lighter in shade but kind of a reddish gold color. However, there's not a single dun marking on him. Nothing anywhere.

Second considered option was palomino. And that's the way I was leaning. But then a couple of friends pointed out that his mane is two colors and palominos have an all white mane. So....

And one of those friends also thought the coloring around his eyes and face was unusual. I do too.

So we will wait and see. If he's anything like his half sister, Gemma, he'll keep us guessing for a while and switch shades of color a time or two between now and later. I do know one thing for sure. He's not the buckskin I was expecting! Not a black point anywhere to be found! Not one hair!

He's a busy boy with lots to learn and explore, and Malcolm and I are both enjoying being one of those things.

It has been a beautiful day here all day long. Muggy, but sunny and pretty and it never rained so it was able to dry up a little. This evenings light was just beautiful. One of those evenings that just takes your breath away.

I am so relieved that the wait is over, that we have a healthy happy foal, that the birth was easy, and that he came in time for us to be able to enjoy him some before we return to work!

Today was a good day!

Wrapping up Week One

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 22:16:00 +0000

Sunset over Chickamauga Lake near our home

This has been a busy busy week! One thing about these longer summer days is that they are longer in literal daylight hours, but in other respects they are shorter.
I like to come inside in the evenings, get cleaned up, and relax for a while. But on these longer summer days we tend to utilize every minute of sunlight, which takes us up to pretty late. And by the time we've gotten cleaned up and eaten a little something, it's time for bed, because tomorrow will be an early morning! Not much time for winding down and relaxing.

But man is it (still) good to be home!

Number one job on the list for this week was the hay. As I told you before, Malcolm got it all cut by Saturday. We had a family reunion last Sunday and hoped the hay would be dry enough by Monday. But things are just a lot more moist down here than they were in Montana. And on Tuesday it was dry on top, but still just as green and wet as the day we cut it underneath.

And so we have now acquired a new piece of farm machinery! This is a tedder!

Down here, everyone tedders their hay before raking. Basically it takes all those neat tidy rows your cut and throws them to kingdom come! It looks like a twister on wheels going through your hay field slinging hay every which way! But by golly! It does the trick! Malcolm teddered in the morning and by that afternoon it was dry enough to rake! (which I forgot to photograph)

The next day, after the dew had dried, we got busy baling.

And like all old (and sometimes new) farm machinery, it was being persnickety. It hasn't been used in a few years, and had some rust. Required some grease and WD 40. But then that got the twine slick, and so all the knots were coming undone. So till we got the kinks worked out, I did some baling...

...while Malcolm walked behind, tying off the bales that didn't want to stay tied.

Eventually he got it to cooperate and function like it's designed to do. And so he got back on the tractor and finished the field real quick. That was a really pretty and proud sight!

The next morning we were out there after the dew had dried to get them loaded up. Picking up square bales is not a fun job. I didn't actually pick them up. Not strong enough to lift and hoist, so I got to drive the pick up around pulling the trailer. But I can tell it's not a fun job!
Dad showed up a little after we had gotten started and between the two men, we had the bales picked up by early afternoon and loaded in the barn.

We had been real nervous that morning because we woke up to ominous skies and a strong breeze. There was a threat of afternoon thunderstorms and we were dreading that we'd done all this work just to have our bales rained on!

But as it turned out, God had sent the clouds and breeze to make it cooler. And just about literally as the last bale was tossed into the barn loft for stacking, the clouds broke and the sun and heat and humidity returned. Kind of cool timing!

It was still a hot and itchy and tiring job! We were really appreciative that Dad was able to come help! We ended up with 201 bales. We'll be gone on the road when everyone else is doing their second and third and however many cuttings they do this year. But we'll get one more in before the end of summer. And that should be enough to meet our needs! And we might even sell some. We will see.

Not much has gone on between haying. I did take some time one day while Malcolm went to pick up the tedder, to cut some bottles for my candle making.

I'm looking forward to trying out some of my new scent oils.

We've also enjoyed taking note of some of our other farm residents that we didn't know about. We have seen this turkey hen a couple times lurking around the fruit trees behind the house and also in the tree row back in the hay field.

And yesterday we discovered there's a family of ground hogs apparently living in the brush pile by the little hay field behind the house. Two adults and three juniors. And we know ground hogs can be bad news, but for now we're enjoying them. They are funny and now that we've noticed them, we actually seeing them quite often. They are not very skittish!

And then there's this little guy!

We have been getting a kick out of watching him scamper around the bird feeders, leaping from the ground to the bird bath for a drink, and this afternoon, he actually was on the porch with us. Malcolm was sitting right next to that wood pile and our chipmunk was just sitting there watching. He eventually left for more interesting company.

The girls have been enjoying their trips out onto the porch and patio. Paris especially. It's hard to get her off into the grass to take care of business because pretty much as soon as she hits the porch or patio she flops down in the sun to bake.

The clothes are because the AC inside makes her cold.

We got the pool uncovered so we could get pictures with intentions to sell it on Craigslist. But Malcolm has enjoyed jumping in every evening to cool off after haying, and it's kind of tempting to keep it now. I even got in one evening, though it really was too cold for my taste.

Speaking of pool, we have been spending some fun time with those nieces at the pool. Only they are the ones in it. We just watch from the sidelines and Uncle Malcolm shoots them with squirt guns.

And Saturday was Kenslee's birthday party at the park. She turned three. I didn't get a picture of her because she was here, there, and everywhere! Talk about a wound up little girl! But Ava Grace is still slow enough I can keep up with her! So I did get a fun picture of her discovering the joys of slides!

And between all these things, I've been making regular trips to the pasture to check on the girls.

Fancy continues to grow and is clearly really uncomfortable.

We had a bit of a scare last night. She had developed a bad limp on her rear leg and so I was watching her, figuring it to be a strain or something from climbing the hill, and aggravated by her extra burden. But last night I went out to check and she was laid out flat in the pasture, and showing no signs of interest in getting up. There were other suspicious signs, so I went home to get Malcolm. Of course when we got back to the pasture she was up grazing, but we decided to bring her in anyway to get her on level ground and closer to the house.

She was sweaty around the flanks and breathing hard and kept laying down and straining like she was pushing. I sat out in the barn practically all night. Every time I convinced myself I could probably go in, she would start something new. It was a long night.

I did eventually go in, going back out to check her periodically. This morning there was no change, and since myself and a couple of good horse friends felt like she was giving lots of indications of labor but seemed to be getting know where, Malcolm and I decided to go ahead an call the vet.

At first he didn't give us much hope, but I think he just wanted us to be prepared for the worst. After a more in depth examination, he determined that she wasn't dilated at all and that basically, she's super uncomfortable and wants to have the baby because she's done this and knows that helps. So she was going through the motions in hopes, but her body wasn't ready. Still isn't.

So we continue to wait. But thank God the foal and Fancy are both ok! I was worried sick, literally!

He did discover that her front foot has an abscess on it, even though it wasn't bothering her at all till this morning. But it has ruptured and we have instructions to soak it everyday.

Which we all kind of enjoyed in this humid heat.

It was a stressful morning, so after the vet left, and after lunch with family that came over with carry out, and after soaking her in the creek for a while, I put my pajamas on and have been puttering around in the house. So has Malcolm. He needed the break.

I guess there will be a lot of trips to the barn in the days to come, throughout the day and night. I'm just so relieved that everything checked out ok, but also dreading the days to come of stress and tiredness and not knowing WHEN!

Tomorrow starts another week. We have to work on the truck, pick up Sky from the trainer, and a couple of my girl friends from high school are coming over for lunch one day. It's shaping up to be busy, but in a good way! And hopefully Fancy won't give me more worry and stress than is normal. Because the normal amount is more than enough for me!

Home

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Mon, 27 May 2013 15:55:00 +0000

That has become the most beautiful word in my vocabulary. It sums up so much!

We are home, and there is so much I want to talk about! And today I decided, while I wait for this batch of cookies in the oven to finish, so I can go outside, I'll blog! And hopefully keep it up for a while!

We have been gone for the better part of two whole months! Eight weeks on the road and miraculously we did not kill each other (though there were some touchy moments the last 2 weeks). Truly God was watching over us!

It felt so good to cross that state line and know we were less than a half our from home. I felt like falling out the truck and kissing the ground!

But instead, when we arrived, I just stood in the yard and admired, in awe, the beauty and peace and the flowers that bloomed while we were gone!

I've been telling Malcolm for months now, "I could live here!"

Eight weeks on the road and there is so much to catch up on. Our place is well taken care of. My parents make trips over here nearly every week to check things in the house, pull a few weeds, take a look in on the horses, and absorb some of the peace and tranquility here. And our amazing neighbors keep an eye on things, give our horses lots of love and attention while we're gone, and have even taken it upon themselves to keep our yard mowed. We are truly blessed in so many ways. And it's so nice to know everything it so taken care of.

But still, there are other things that need attention.

We haven't seen family in ages, and little girls are growing up fast. So we will be making up for lost time with them.

My kitchen has missed my presence and activity. I'm working on making it up to the appliances.

My flowerbeds have been attended to by Mom and Grandma, but they missed my admiration. I'll work on giving them extra over the next days.

Our Redbud tree, for which we named the farm, bloomed a few days after we went back to work. We missed it, but Mom sent us a picture. It was magnificent, as expected, and she said it literally buzzed with bees.

It has traded in it pretty lavender blooms for large heart shaped leaves, and it calls to me from the windows of the kitchen, "come sit with me!"

I have promised it that there will be many meals taken under its sheltering branches, and that we will enjoy it's shade on hot afternoons when we take a break for a cold glass of tea. There will be lots of time, and we will be spending a good deal of it with the Redbud.

But first there are things to do, there is a hustle and bustle and pressure felt to get things done. We arrived home Friday afternoon, and by Saturday night, Malcolm had the hayfield cut. First cutting is on the ground and drying.

After a very wet spring that had us pondering how we were going to get hay to dry enough for horse hay, we came home to the blessing of a 10 day forecast of sun, warm temperatures, and low humidity. And the hay is beautiful!!! As we drive around the community we see that everyone is hustling to get their first cuttings in! Pray with us all that the rain holds off long enough to get this baled and put in the barn.

We both have so much we want to do over the weeks to come. We're not sure how long we will be home exactly, but it's for a length of time. It's all up to one lovely lady. It all depends on her, because she's the reason we are here. She's the reason we stuck it out and drug ourselves down the road for 8 weeks with no break, so that we could afford to stay home as long as needed to be here for her big day.

She has 2-3 weeks before she will foal. Hopefully it won't be any longer than that. I can hardly wait!

Growing Things

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000

There are things growing all over the place at the farm! When we were home back in late January for a weekend, I had discovered the emergence of some buds.

This past week, they were making appearances all over the place.

And the daffodils are blooming. I love daffodils. Who can help but love those first bright rays of brilliant yellow after weeks of brown (or in some cases, white) on all surfaces?

While Malcolm was working on clearing the hedge out of the fence lines last week, I did some clearing of my own. Someone planted a lot of English Ivy around the house and it's lovely...

....but English Ivy is kind of like Privet Hedge, in that it knows no boundaries. And I wondered what it might be smothering. So I started ripping it out of a flowerbed last week, and made all sorts of discoveries. It was keeping so many treasures captive beneath it's weighty vines!

There were dozens of bulbs trying to come up through it, as well as several shrubs, and though this Lenten Rose was able to grow and bloom through the ivy, I'm sure it will by happier now that it doesn't have to compete for space.

There are other things growing around here too.

Fancy is at 8 months now, and her baby belly is making itself more noticeable.

It is sometimes lopsided, which makes me laugh. It's probably just the way she stands sometimes, but I like to think it's the baby laying on one side or the other. Let me pretend.

I think her official due date is June 13. That is 330 days from her last breeding. But according to her breeding records, her last two foals went around 345 days, so it could be later. It's going to make guessing how to be off work a little hard, with such a broad window, but I'm determined to be there for this one!
We're considering working clear through the next two months with no break at all, and then possibly taking off nearly all of June, maybe coming home a week into June and staying through July 4th or so. It shouldn't be a problem, especially since we no longer need to take off several weeks for haying like we've done the past two years. We'll just take off several weeks and use them to play on the farm and wait for Fancy's baby. I can't wait!!!

Boy or Girl? Her last two were colts, but this is a different stallion. I've only had one foal from him, and that was Gemma. It will be interesting to see what we get this year, and I'm in touch with Dawn's new owner, and looking forward to hearing from her when Dawn foals in early June. It's going to be so hard here in a few weeks when everyone else starts having foals on the ground and I'll still have weeks to wait!

Even without a foal around, we still have a baby on the farm.

I think he will always be the baby. I think he thinks so too.

He still comes running to meet me at the gate, and he's still impossible to photograph unless there's a fence between us. It's because he insists on being right next to me if I'm on his side of the fence. I used to think I was special to him, but recently I heard from a couple of neighbors who were going on and on about what an "incredibly friendly horse that black one is" and I soon realized Sky has been kissing up to everyone on the street. I felt a little bit betrayed. I wanted to be his special someone.
I know he doesn't turn down anyone with a cookie and from what I hear, several neighbors are passing them out to my little herd.

I've been on the phone a lot over the past week or so, and I think we've narrowed the search down for a trainer, as well as a new romantic prospect for Fancy.

So we're back on the road for a couple weeks, and then we go home for a break toward the end of the month.
Our plans are to enjoy the hopefully fine Spring weather, do some work around the farm, drop Sky and Ringo off at boarding school, and go meet Fancy's prospective suiter and his owners.

Hope the coming days go by quickly. I'm looking forward to being home again! So much I want to be doing, and sitting in the truck is not one of them right now! I'll have to content myself with day dreaming until we get there.

Getting to Know Redbud Farm

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 17:25:00 +0000

in September

Things are kind of brown and winter drab here at the farm right now, but there are signs that Spring is quickly approaching.

We went home for about a week to take care of some trucking stuff. It was nice to be home, and even though a little cold snap came through while we were there, we still took the time to do some work outside. And there were a couple of nice days before the chilly weather returned, which made it more enjoyable. Now that things are settled and unpacked inside the house, we are enjoying exploring and getting to know Redbud Farm a little better.

After my "house tour" post, I told you I'd come back to give you an outside tour of the farm later on. I expect you'll be seeing plenty of it over the months and years to come, but here is a quick walk around the place.

The house, as I told you previously, was built in 1915. I expect Malcolm and I will be spending many summer afternoons in the shade of our porch, enjoying the sound of the creek and the birds, and a cool glass of sweat tea. We are still very much in love with our house.

We love the rest of our property too. We don't know much history about the buildings on the farm. We don't know how old they are, but it's clear that they are not new, and we suspect a few of them may even be as old as the house. They are all going to be project buildings.

This is the big barn. It sits between the house and the small pasture that runs down to the creek. It obviously has some issues. We debate back and forth on what to do with it. The reasonable thing would be to just take it down and rebuild, but I cringe at the thought of doing so, and Malcolm still goes back and forth on it himself. What we'd like to do is try to salvage the center section, but it would be a pretty big, and probably expensive job.

It is a neat old barn, even with the sagging and brokenness of it. We have a resident ground hog that has made his home beneath the barn floor, and in the hay loft we have a barred owl that roosts during the day. We've seen them both several times, though I haven't had my camera handy when they made their appearances.

I still hold out hope that one day down the road we'll be able to tackle the job of saving this barn. But it's not high on the priority list, and so we'll continue to watch it sag for a bit longer while we tend to other things.

Like pasture.

We have a 10 acre farm that has been neglected for a while. While the house was being loved and repaired over the past years, the rest of the land and buildings were unattended to. There is some fencing but it's over grown and in disrepair, and what there is of it is no longer worthy of the title "fencing." On our first day on the property, our neighbor walked down and offered the use of his pasture. We were over whelmed by his generosity and God's providing a solution to a delima so quickly, even before we'd given it much thought really. So our horses are next door keeping his pasture cleared for him, and enjoying being the neighborhood pets (apparently the neighbors all around are buying horse treats and making offerings of apples and carrots, or so I hear from them), while we work on getting our pastures ready.

Years ago, people planted a shrub, called privet hedge, as landscaping. You might be familiar with it. It can be a lovely, ornamental shrub. It can be a huge headache that wants to take over the world.

It is growing on all boundaries of the property, among the trees, and along all the fence lines that are sort of in existence, and it creates an awesome privacy fence as it gets well over 6 feet tall! But it also happily encroaches on every square inch of land that you don't watch closely. As in the picture above, it is trying really hard to take over the world, creeping off the property line and into the woods and pasture. It's even poking it's nasty head up here and there in the landscaping around the house. I hastily pull the random sprigs of it up whenever I find them trying to take root in my gardens and landscaping areas.

We have the one large pasture on the hill behind the house, and then two smaller pastures, one behind the house, and the one behind the barn that runs down to the creek. It was terribly over grown on the fence lines and well out into the pasture. Doesn't look like it in this picture....

...but Malcolm got out this week with the bobcat and started clearing brush and hedge off the fence line. The result was impressive. He more than doubled the size of the pasture, just by clearing out hedge!

He also worked back into the woods, what used to be shaded pasture that had turned into scrubby wooded mess. But now with some cleanup, and then smoothing the ground back down, we should have some nice shaded pasture back here.

We'll also be having a HUGE bonfire at the end of the month. Anyone want to come roast marshmallows?

After pastures are repaired and fenced, we'll be moving on to the building projects. Right now there isn't a building large enough to pull the truck into, so that will probably be the next project. We are thinking about taking down this old machine shed...

...and building a large barn that will fit the truck, but we want to build it to look like it is one of the old farm buildings. We'll probably do board and bat or something like that, and use an older style of barn design on the exterior so that it looks like it belongs.

And after that, we'll tend to the other smaller building needs.

There are 4 other smaller outbuildings. The woodshed/garden shed/catch all building by the house needs upkeep. It's a neat building though and we plan to stay true to it's current style and design. The previous owners did a lot of landscaping around it and put in a chain link dog pen on the back side. I love the plants they chose, and the dog pen will make an awesome chicken yard once we get a top put on it to keep out the hawks. So we think we'll try to reconstruct this building within the current space, so that we don't hurt some of the unique landscaping that's been put in.

Speaking of chickens....

...the old chicken house, complete with concrete floor. It's pretty much a useless structure and a little far gone for help. We'll probably be taking it out completely. See that door on the far end? That would be our two seater out house. No joke! And we're high class here! We have concrete toilet pedestals with wooden seat covers! (and about 1000 crickets and spiders, and the roof is off of it so you and your creepy crawly company can admire the stars while you see to business.)

There's an old grain barn that is neat. Somehow I've managed to not get a picture of it. We'll have to fix that. It's actually in pretty fair condition and as we look at it, currently being used as a tool storage building for Malcolm, we both can see it renovated into a little guest house, or play house. I think it would be neat to make it into Malcolm's gun house with all his reloading stuff and such. But if he won't claim it, as he seems reluctant to do, I have no problem taking over. It's going to make me a BEAUTIFUL little sewing/craft play house! He better speak up soon if he doesn't want me to move forward and stake my claim on it.

Though our buildings are in need of some serious TLC, I still love them. It's a frustration to me that they are so far gone, because I despise the thought that we are going to tear them down, after they have survived so long. But it's impractical to try and salvage them all. So I've made it my mission to try and save at least part of the big barn, and sacrifice the others.

I don't have to cross the creek to go visit the horses, but I like to. It's easier to just walk on the road, but I like to cut across the pasture and wade through the creek with my waterproof boots on.

It is about 1 1/2 feet deep at our crossing with a nice sandy/pebbly bottom. I envision hot summer afternoons wading in cool water. It should be pretty cool water as the creek is spring fed from somewhere across the road. I'll have to take my nieces wading with me this summer. We'll hunt for crawfish (Malcolm and Dad found a fist sized one earlier this winter), and pretty pebbles, and have fun splashing each other and getting good and wet and cooled off.

In our exploring and walking around the property, we keep making discoveries. As with all old farms, things were tossed aside when they were no longer needed or wanted, but they weren't always hauled away. We have found some interesting things hiding in all that privet hedge I was telling you about. Back at Christmas, Malcolm was working with his tractor on a patch of brush, and discovered an old fuel tank, the remains of a Sears manure spreader, and then later he pulled this out of the brush to show me.

It has a huge hole in the side of it, which was disappointing to me. It would have been neat to set it up somewhere. It's tempting to do so even with the hole. I could grown some pretty flowering vine on it or something like that.

There's some old farm equipment lined up in the pasture behind the house that we've got to haul off or at least move.

Treasures tucked in every corner, or at least treasures to some of us. Even if they have no use, they are still historically of interest.

We have other treasures too. There are these four fruit trees.

By the time we bought the property they had shed their leaves and there was no trace of fruit left on the ground (probably thanks to our resident herd of deer), so we have no idea what they are. I'm leaning towards thinking they are cherry. I know they are not apple. But we'll have to wait for warmer weather and baby fruit to know for sure.
There is a huge pecan tree in the back yard and I'm hoping it will bear plenty of nuts to share. This past year, I suspect the squirrels carried them all off because we only found a handful on the ground.

There are also these two trees...

...which were loaded with these tiny speckled berries in September...

...which the birds had managed to devour by the time we got moved in. I have no idea. Mom has no idea. In fact, I haven't been able to track down their identity. A cousin suggested perhaps they are Autumn Berry, and that's the closest thing we can come up with. Any other suggestions? The fruit is about the size of large chokecherries.

I can't wait for things to turn green again. There are traces of green in Tennessee year round, but the full out green that means warm weather and beauty has arrived is just around the corner and I can't wait. Spring Fever has hit I think. There are signs all over of bulbs emerging. I have daffodils blooming among other things, and I fully expect that giant Redbud by the house to be blooming when we get back home in two weeks.

There is a lot of work to be done on Redbud Farm to get it back into shape, but it will be a fun project, and with the coming of Spring, we both are looking forward to being outside and getting our projects underway.

Every time we pull up to our yard, returning home from being on the road, I feel so overwhelmed by how blessed we are. This place has surpassed all my years worth of day dreams about having an old farm house and living on a farm.

So Long California

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 19:55:00 +0000

Back in September, unexpectedly, we found out we were on our last trip to California. We were actually on our way out of the state. And it was actually only an hour after learning Malcolm's grandfather had passed away, that we were informed we were no longer welcome in California. It was a traumatic day, you might say.

At first, we were more than a little disturbed. We were already in the midst of an upheaval as we were preparing to leave the ranch and trying to figure out where we were going to go and how we were going to get there.

And then CARB (California Air Resources Board) drops the bomb on us and denies us entry to the state. In fact threatened to write us a $1600 ticket, but settled for a total banishment if we would leave right away and not come back.

We were disturbed because, as I noted before in a previous post, about 70% of our loads were going to or coming out of California, or working us to one of those loads. So to suddenly learn that we won't be going there, we were rather concerned about the potential for disaster with our income. First and foremost on our minds was what this was going to mean for our loads. If we can't go to California, will there be enough good paying loads to keep us running with Northwest, or were we going to be forced to look elsewhere for our loads, something we really didn't want to do. We are very attached to Northwest, our brokerage firm.

Mt Shasta near Weed, CA

The reason California kicked us out:
Several years ago, California started passing laws regulating emissions from vehicles. At first it was just nuisance stuff, like passing a law forbidding truck drivers from idling (letting your truck run while parked). Spring and fall it's no big deal, but temps in California get high in summer and when your sitting in a fiberglass box, well the interior of these trucks get pretty hot without the truck running. Not to mention freezing in the mountains in winter.
There were other things they decided we had to do too, and then a while back they started weeding out the older trucks. If you get around trucks close enough to read the stickers on their door, you'll start noticing that some of them have a round sticker somewhere around the door that say Certified Clean Idle and has a picture of the state of California in the background.

The sticker gives evidence that the trucks engine meets CARB emission standards. The only way to have that sticker is to buy a new truck or do a $20,000 upgrade on the engine of an older truck. Our gray truck was a 2010 and had the sticker.
They set up a schedule for compliance and each year moved forward in the age of trucks allowed in. Our new truck is a 1999. We new, when we bought it, that we'd have to be out of California by the end of 2014. But that was ok because it fell into our plans to be off the long roads within a year and working locally around the ranch.
What was hidden in the tiny tiny print, that we missed, was that in order to keep trucking in California till the end of 2014, you had to have your truck registered with CARB by March of 2012. Not only did we not know this, but we didn't even buy the truck till April.

the hills near Los Banos, CA

So when the CARB officials set up at the Sacramento weigh station and pulled us around back, we didn't realize there was going to be a problem. When they told Malcolm to rev the engine so they could watch the exhaust, we thought it was odd. When they asked Malcolm to get out and open the hood and then started getting ugly with him and accusing him of lying to them about not knowing he wasn't supposed to be driving the truck there, and on and on and making nasty threats of big fines and such, we were flustered. And then they dropped the bomb and told him that they could right us a ticket for $1600 but instead, since we were headed out, if we'd leave right away they'd not write the ticket, but that we were not to come back into California with this truck, and if they caught us in there, there would be hell to pay.

So we left and didn't look back.

a train winds through the mountains east of Bakersfield, CA

Except to wonder how we were going to make a living without California.

Our broker was less than pleased to hear the news. I won't repeat his exclamations. But then, after he vented, he said we'd work something out and they'd just start shopping for long haul loads in other parts of the country. He promised us we'd figure something out.

After the initial shock wore off, we started feeling better about it. Honestly, we never liked going to California that much. In fact we complained about it a lot. Of course, once you realize you'll not go to a place again, you start thinking of all the things you did like, the drives you enjoyed, the places you liked to eat, the scenery in special places, and you start to feel a little sad that you'll never ever go to those places again.

the dry deserts of southern California

Things have worked out so far. Since September, and of course we took off quite a bit of time for the move and for the holidays, we've been doing well for the slow time of the year that it's been. We've had some slow weeks, but it's hard to say if that's because of the California deal or because this is just a crappy time of year for freight. And listening to our friends talk, we're thinking it has nothing to do with California. All our trucking friends are complaining about too much sitting and too low rates. Next month is the month that things start to pick up, and then we'll be able to determine to what extent this will have changed things for us. But just judging from the past weeks, I don't think it's really going to have that big of an effect.

traffic jam in the Sierra Nevadas near Donner's Pass

Now, changing gears a little bit:
You know, back in September when we were working on finding somewhere to live in Tennessee and planning our move, we were both facing the likelihood that we'd not be seeing nearly as much of the house. Living in Montana, we were getting the occasional loads that passed us by the house over weekend and holidays and it was nice to get those unplanned home times. But we only went to Tennessee when we asked to go. I can only think of one time when we stopped at my parents for a weekend because we happened to be passing through in the last 5 years.

Given past experience we did not expect to see the house often.
And then we got kicked out of California.

I'd call it one of those situations that we, as humans who can't see the big picture, look at and think is a really bad thing.

But God, who knows what the future holds, knows what's best. And looking back, I would never have thought being forced out of California was a good thing.
But as it turns out, one good thing has come of it. Because we don't go to California, we're getting more loads that head east. In fact, since we moved to Tennessee, we've passed by the house on a load 3 times already, and been able to stop for a day or two. I wonder if perhaps allowing us to be banished from the west coast was God's way of providing for us to be able to still have those random weekend trips home that have always been such a balm to our road weary souls.

We went back to work January 10th, after a lengthy Christmas and New Year break. We've been home two weekends since, one in particular that was unplanned but provided me the chance to say goodbye to my grandfather, who passed away a few days later. If I'd been driving the west coast, I would have missed that. Those two weekends at the house were the breaks we needed to get rest to heal from our illnesses, and to mentally recoup from life on the road. Those random breaks are what help us to stay out for 5-6 weeks at a time, or longer. So I'm glad that we didn't lose them after all, as I had feared.

God provides for all our needs and more, and He does it in ways we never expect, even in allowing things to happen that we think can't possibly be beneficial to us. In the long run, they are, and He knows.

I don't miss California.

Crossing the Line

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:34:00 +0000

Yesterday we crossed the Mason Dixon line. Perhaps in our modern age of few who care about history, many of you may not know what I'm referring to. But for us historians, especially those of us who are southern historians, the Mason Dixon line is well known.

The Mason Dixon line has played a role and symbolized many things in its history, but for me, crossing the line means I'm either entering "enemy" territory (the land of the yankees) or coming home.

We've crossed the line three times in the past two weeks. After 5 years of hardly ever going into the northeast, we've had two trips in two weeks into eastern Pennsylvania. Last week we went to Allentown, and then reloaded at a little town north of there and so far east that I spent the afternoon watching the Delaware River and glaring at the New Jersey shore with dread.

We used to run in New Jersey and into NYC and beyond, back in the beginning days of my driving. I don't have pleasant memories of that period of driving. If you, my dear reader, happen to be from that area, I hope you won't take personal offense. There's plenty I'd like to go visit and see in New England and the Northeast. But in a truck, it is a miserable experience.

And also don't take offense to my calling your part of the country "enemy territory." I think a small part of all us southerners thinks of you that way, but for the vast majority (myself included) it's just a phrase. We harbor no lasting hard grudges and hateful feelings towards you. The war ended 148 years ago.

So I sat glaring at New Jersey because I feared we may soon see the day when we have to cross the Delaware (it will be easier than when Washington did it now that we have bridges and such) and travel around in those tiny states with tiny roads and way too many cars.

But not yet, and according to our broker, not any time soon or ever unless it really really pays.

After loading, we hurried south to the Pennsylvania border, back across that symbolic line. Then 13 miles through Maryland, 22 through West Virginia, and then a couple hundred through Virginia into North Carolina, where we delivered the next day. And it was all in the dark and I didn't get a single picture. I was disgusted, because I could have actually blogged about that. Something new. Something different. But hard to capture in the dark.

So last Friday when we got a load from Texas to Hazleton, PA, I figured I'd just been handed a second chance. We loaded Monday morning in Texas, and we crossed the Mason Dixon line around 10:00 Tuesday morning.

It was soggy and 35 degrees with light flurries falling.

Which changed to heavier flurries the further north we went.

One of the neat things about driving around in the northeastern states is all the history. I mean the really old history. And I understand that it's not really old compared to European history, but as far as American history goes, this is where we started. This is old history!

When I think of Pennsylvania, I think of incredibl barns and houses (many of them built of all rock)...

...lots of dairys and farms....

...and some tight squeezes because these towns were established a long time before cars, and especially before trucks of our size.

Shippensburg, PA established 1730

Southwest of Harrisburg, there was a backup on the interstate and we found out in time to be able to jump off and go around it on the side roads. Turned out, it probably didn't save us that much time. Between having to slow down to go through Shippensburg, and also slowing down for the other traffic on the roadway...

....we didn't make that good of time. But the scenery was enjoyable and so I didn't mind.

Back on the interstate we crossed the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg...

...and from that point I-81 moved into some really hilly terrain. Also the snow had picked up considerably and we were once again slowed down by slow moving traffic and a number of snow plows that were out doctoring the roads.

Our thoughts were that it would be best to get to Hazleton and get unloaded and back south before the temperature started dropping for the night. We didn't quite make it, as by the time we left Hazleton it was dark and had restarted snowing in random spurts of hard wet showers of big fat flakes. Traffic was really slow heading out of the mountains. Right about the time the snow would let off, there would suddenly be this incredibly heavy fog bank that forced traffic to a crawl. This happened over and over again until finally we got back down out of the hilly country and to Harrisburg. From there it was smooth sailing into Virginia.

This morning we're loading in Timberville, VA and heading on a short load into North Carolina.

The last two times we passed through Virginia, it was dark. So I enjoyed the scenery this morning. The Shenandoah Valley that I-81 runs the length of is really a beautiful part of the state. If we can get loaded and get going before too late in the evening, I'll try and get some pictures.

As to why we're crossing the Mason Dixon line more often, and why I expect to be seeing more of this part of the country...

California kicked us out and told us not to come back.

Frankly, our feelings weren't that hurt. There are some things we'll miss of course, but California has just gotten to be a pain to deal with (again if your from that part of the country and reading this, please don't take personal offense). But since September, we've been banned from California, and since coming and going from that state made up about 70% of our freight, well....it's changed our loads and regular stomping grounds around a little.

I'll tell you about it later.

Long Time Gone

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 17:46:00 +0000

We didn't get lost. We didn't fall off the side of the road. In truth, I'm not sure what happened other than January and the beginning of February were rough weeks. Malcolm was sick with whooping cough and as a result, we're just now getting our first nights undisturbed rest since Christmas break. And right about the time he started showing signs of recovery, I came down with a week long fluish thing.
So heap exhaustion on top of a period of lagging interest in blogging, and I just let you slip. I apologize.
Even now I'm not feeling real motivated, but I had three friends contact me (within a two day period) via the blog to ask if we were OK and what was up with our being a long time gone.
And so I figured I needed to drop in a note to say I'm a long time gone, but not gone forever. And I didn't want y'all to worry and how touched I am that you cared enough to notice. I lvoe my blogging friends!
Illness, winter time blues, and such are the culprits, but they will all be clearing up soon.
We take a break in March. I'm looking forward to being home, spending time with my horses, and exploring what all is growing and blooming there. And I just bet I'll feel more interested in blogging after that, when I have some new things to share.

So hang in there. I know I've not felt like blogging, but I also know I'm not ready to give it up. I'm not leaving you yet.

Racing the Storm in Arizona

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 13:30:00 +0000

We had a load to Indiana which we delivered last Tuesday. It's been a while since we had a load on that side of the country, unless we were trying to get home to Tennessee.

After delivering we had a wait till the next load came in, but it didn't take too long. Just long enough to give us time to eat and take a nap, which was appreciated after driving all night.

Wednesday morning found us even closer to home, as we delivered in Guntersville, AL, about 90 miles from the house. It was hard to turn west instead of east, but it was too early to go home for Christmas break. So we headed to Flagstaff, AZ with a load of chicken meal for a pet food place.

Three things of concern with that load. The delivery appointment wasn't till Friday evening, which would leave us sitting in Flagstaff for the weekend with no load. Also, we'd be arriving on Thursday afternoon, and sitting for a day with nothing to do till we could deliver.
And finally, Flagstaff was supposed to be getting a snowstorm Thursday night.

Normally that particular place is difficult to get an appointment changed, but luckily this time they worked with our broker and allowed us to deliver on Thursday at noon, which meant some hard driving to get there. We didn't exactly get good fuel mileage, but we did make it on time. And we dumped that stuff out and high tailed it north to get ahead of the storm.

The scenery was absolutely gorgeous going north towards Utah. Highway 89 scoots just east of the Grand Canyon, and you get to enjoy a taste of what it might be like if you were to go on over to the park, which I will do one day! It was late afternoon, with an amazingly blue sky, the perfect light for photography, and the way it was hitting the red rock cliffs....well, it was just perfect!

We've been on this road before, almost always going south, and almost always in the dark. So it was a real pleasure to drive through here in the daylight and see what all we've been missing.
We'd been missing out on a lot!

I've known for some time that I want to come back to this area as a tourist one day. I think that's going to have to happen pretty soon.

It was almost all straight roads, until we came to a sharp turn and then started climbing into the sky.

And we didn't feel like we'd climbed that far, but a look back at the valley floor make it clear we'd come up quite a ways.

Once we crossed the hill the land leveled out and we were on a plain of sorts. There was hardly any indication that there had ever been any canyon walls or stone spires.

We drove till dark and a little after, crossing over into Utah. We were tired. It'd been a long hard drive to get to Flagstaff in time, and since it was 53 degrees and we felt like we'd gotten far enough north that we shouldn't have problems with the snow coming in, we parked and went to bed.

When woke up at 6:00 the next morning, we discovered that we'd made a mistake. We hadn't gone quite far enough north. There was about 2 inches of snow on the road, which normally wouldn't be that big a deal, but we had some hilly country to go through, and, an even bigger issue, our trailer was empty. That's about like pulling around a big sled that has a mind of it's own. The load is what helps give us traction on slick roads and without it, things can get interesting. We were spinning tires and sliding around a bit, but we made it over the mountain and onto I-15 where we found nearly dry roads for the remainder of the trip.
We weren't completely problem free at that point. We'd picked up about 1000 pounds of snow and ice that was stuck all to the trailer and the frame of the truck. Malcolm and I got out and beat on it with a hammer and scraped with a hoe, trying to dump the weight off. We were on our way to load and carrying around 1000 pounds of snow meant we'd get loaded shy a 1000 pounds of product and get paid less. Fortunately it was just hovering at freezing and so a lot of our snow fell off be the time we got to the shipper.

We're leaving the shipper in Utah now and will be delivering in North Carolina in a few days and then going home for the holidays. By the time you read this, I'll be a home visiting family and playing with the horses and sitting in my favorite chair in front of our fire. I decided to do a few posts in advance and schedule them to post next week, since I don't have internet at home.

So this will probably be the last you hear from me till we go back to work after the turn of the New Year. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas surrounded by your closest loved ones and dear friends.

In case I don't manage to get back on here:
Merry Christmas! And may God bless you all in the year to come!

The Other Side of South Dakota

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:30:00 +0000

A couple weeks ago, I shared some scenes from South Dakota with you, pictures that I'd taken while driving through eastern South Dakota. Well last weekend, we spent Saturday morning driving through western South Dakota, and I thought I'd share some scenes from that part of the state with you today.

Last blog post, I left you in Fairview, MT where we had just loaded Safflower seed. It had started snowing by the time we were loaded and it was still frigidly cold, so even though it was late evening, and we only had 600 miles to go by Monday, we decided to go ahead and drive south a ways.

We went as far as Bowman, ND and stopped there for the night. We got up really early and headed south. Our destination for the day was Rapid City, SD, only about 3 hours away.

Highway 85 goes south out of Bowman and drops down into South Dakota. We're very familiar with the route, as this is back in our old stomping grounds when we lived in Montana. As the crow flies, we were probably only 30 miles from the ranch, if that.

They'd had snow out there, which on the plains makes it very easy to see just about everything.

With snow on the prairies, if its not something white, it stands out, often dramatically.

I have always enjoyed this drive. And since Malcolm was behind the wheel, I spent the time enjoying the scenery and playing with the camera.

Bear Butte on the horizon

I love the sky in this one

one of my favorites, for obvious reasons

Around mid-morning, we reached Rapid City. We had to stop at Kenworth and buy a part. Then we played at the mall. Malcolm went to Cabelas. We had some good food from a favorite restaurant. And then in the evening, we went to the movies. We hadn't been to the theatre to see a movie in at least 8 years. We watched Skyfall, and had a great time.

When we left the theater, it was 4 degrees and the wind was blowing. The girls didn't much appreciate being taken out of their warm truck to potty. But afterwards, we made it up to them by letting them snuggle in the bed with us for a while to warm up. And then we tucked them into their bed and we all got a long, much needed rest.

Sunday, it was still bitter cold. We drove south into Nebraska and on into Colorado. We stopped in Sterling and met up with another married trucking couple we know from Iowa. We hadn't seen them in probably a year, though we stay in touch. Our paths just never seem to cross lately. So we enjoyed a good long dinner with them and a long night of conversation. And then the next morning we delivered in Akron, Co, reloaded in Otis, and headed east across Kansas and beyond for a Tuesday morning delivery in central Indiana.

That was last Monday. We had a good strong week, the first after several slow ones. In fact, we drove through the night every night until Thursday, when we made the mistake of parking.

But that's another story.

Catching Up

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 15:23:00 +0000

Since our visit to the house at Thanksgiving, time has been dragging. Freight this year has slacked off significantly, or at least it seems to have. Probably a person would think that it was the holidays causing it, but really, we've kept moving through the holidays in years past. And talking to other drivers, we're hearing the same complaints. Slow freight, low rates, and boggled up loads.

Overall, it's working out alright, but we've hit a slump here and there that left us bored and cranky. We had a couple of loads rejected too and that's always frustrating because it wastes our time, even though we still get paid for hauling the stuff.

And we had a couple days, both Monday's actually, where a decent load couldn't be found and we wound up sitting all day twiddling our thumbs. Something we're not used to doing.

With all that, my motivation for blogging was down. You'd think with all that spare time I'd have been on it. Something to entertain myself with! But given the blah mood it brought on, and the fact that I've had my nose glued to my Kindle during every spare moment lately, as I've stumbled across some really good books, the blogging got neglected.

So it's time to play catch up.

Two weekends ago, we headed north out of Phoenix, spent the night at Las Vegas, and the next day drove up US93 through eastern Nevada.

There's a lot of vacant land out there. US 93 goes up through the Great Basin National Park. We take a short cut and go off 93 for a bit in order to stay going straight north instead of swerving east. So we miss the park itself, but the scenery on the rest of 93 is still admirable. I think the most striking things about the region are...

...the almost absolute emptiness. We passed through about 4 "towns" in about 300 miles.

And also the patterns in the mountain sides are quite interesting. With a lack of trees and really much any kind of vegetation, you can admire the geology of the area from your car window. There was a lot of activity here eons ago. You can tell the ground was busy moving around.

fascinated by that black stripe of rock running through the mountain

its hard to tell what was going on here. Earthquakes? Floods? Those swirling lines of rock could keep you guessing for quite a while.

We delivered northeast of Boise Idaho on Monday morning (Dec. 3) and then sat all day long waiting to see what would come up. And the answer was nothing. Finally, Monday evening, we got directions to head to Caldwell, ID (near Boise) to load apples in the morning.

So Tuesday morning we loaded up apples...

...and headed to an unexpected location. The times in the past that we've hauled apples, they either went to Petaluma, CA or to Wisconsin. But these apples went to a town near Grand Junction, CO. There was, to my great surprise, several wineries, vinyards, orchards, and this little juice making company where we delivered. I never would have thought the arid climate in western Colorado could have supported fruit, but apparently it does.

From there, we bounced down to Monte Vista, where we were a couple weeks earlier, and loaded canola.

Back to Idaho, near Rexburg, for a Thursday morning delivery and then we went down to southern Idaho and loaded fertilizer.

Interesting frustration occurred in Colorado. Out of the blue, I got wrapped up in a massive allergy battle. Violent sneezing, itchy watery eyes, sniffles......in Colorado....in December! I was very aggravated, as the winter is supposed to be my time of allergy liberation. What was up with that? The allergies followed me all they way to Idaho and persisted in annoying me throughout the day on Thursday.

winter skies near Soda Springs, ID

In fact I didn't find relief until I climbed into the mountains of the Yellowstone area near the MT/ID state line. My allergies cleared up right about the time the tires started slipping and sliding around on icy roads. And by Yellowstone the freezing rain had turned to snow, and I was breathing clearly. I guess there was just enough dust and garbage in the air to make us allergy victims suffer. Clearly, it's a dry winter following a too dry summer.

Crossing into Montana was like flipping a switch. All of a sudden we found winter, and it's been following us around ever since. We were on snowy roads almost all the way to Billings, and past that, though it dried up, it was still bitterly cold. By the time we got to North Dakota Friday morning with our fertilizer, it was 6 degrees and a heavy fog was just lifting, at least the fog that hadn't frozen to every surface available.

Frozen fog can be messy, but it sure is pretty!

Since the load of apples, things had run smoothly, but we hit another glitch in North Dakota. After unloading, we were going to take a load of flax to Ohio. But the trailer had to be washed out first which presented a huge problem.

First and foremost, the closest place to washout was 160 miles away, in the wrong direction, from our reload, which was only 20 miles away. And a bigger issue was that even if we could find a place to wash out, at 6 degrees, the trailer doesn't wash. It freezes. The broker asked if we could just sweep really really well, but they turned that request down. No washout, no load.

So we sat around in northern ND for most of the day, and finally towards evening we got a load of safflower from Fairview, MT and headed south towards Colorado. 600 miles and the whole weekend to get it done. So we took our time, played some, rested lots, and made the best of it.

I'lll tell you about the weekend in the next post.

A Tour of Our Home

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:18:00 +0000

This one's going to be long, but you don't want to miss it. If you've got time now, grab a cup of tea (or whatever strikes your fancy at the moment), sit back and enjoy. If your in a rush, come back later today when you have time for a lengthy visit!

I was going to post pictures last week and give you a tour of our new home. However, with the holiday, I just didn't get to it. I'm sure you can all understand. But I've had several people asking me for pictures of the place, and I told them to be watching for the post. So I'd better follow through with the promise!

When we started house hunting, we had a short list of "must haves" for the new place.
We were determined to find exactly what we needed no matter how long it took. And we were prepared for it to take a L.O.N.G. time because we knew our needs were a little out of the ordinary.

We knew our new place needed:
- most importantly to have room for the truck to get in and out, as well as a place for Malcolm to keep his tools.
- some acreage (the more the sweeter) for our horses and farming hobbies.
-to be within a reasonable price range, something not too easy to come by if your wanting acreage too.
-to be close to our family in Chattanooga. Also not so easy to do if your wanting acreage as well.

We did a lot of internet hunting before we ever went to Chattanooga to look in person, and we found some pieces that interested us, but each one was going to need some tweaking, and nothing was going to be any closer to my parents than 45 miles. It's that hard to get acreage in the right price range that close to Chattanooga.

And then we got to Tennessee in September and took a week off to go look at the properties we were interested in , as well as some Dad had heard about, and each one got vetoed for various reasons. One was just too far from Mom and Dad. Another one was too much money for what it was. The next one, and the next one, and the next one you couldn't get the truck in without major ground moving/tree cutting work. And by Friday, we'd exhausted our list and our motivation. We had found a place we liked. It was going to be an ~~exhausting~~ awesome long term (3+ years) project to get it livable, but it came with 56 acres(!) and was only 25 miles from my parents. We had decided that was the place, because we like a project, we had a lot of fun renovating our little farmhouse in Georgia years ago, and, well, being as we live in the truck anyway, we could live in a camper or something until the house was ready, and shoot! 56 acres! Need I say more?
We actually did put an offer in on that one, and thought we had it in the bag. The realtor had assured us it was ours. He just had to get the owners to sign on it. And he procrastinated by one day, just enough time for another offer to come in. We had a one day bidding war, and in the end the other people got it, and I hope they are happy with it. It will be a really neat place! I pray they aren't going to make it a neighborhood!

So on Saturday night, a day after exhausting our list of hopefuls and having just found out we'd lost the only one we were even slightly interested in, we weren't feeling too good about the whole situation, and we knew we needed to get back to work on Monday. But we were also feeling pressured to find something even though we had promised ourselves we weren't going to rush into anything and we were going to take our time and find the PERFECT place.

It's been said for ages that when God closes a door, he opens another one, and it is so true. We'd had our heart set on that 56 acre project. It would have been, eventually, beyond what we'd thought of possibly having, after a lot of time and money invested. And after that, it was hard to think of anything else even coming close to being as good. But God sees beyond what we see. He sees what's better!

So that Saturday evening, when Malcolm called me into Mom's living room to look at a house Dad had found on CraigsList, I wasn't feeling much like looking. But I was also trying to keep my spirits up and trying to lift Malcolm's too, so I went to look.

How we missed it in all our internet searching I don't know. It was listed on all our websites we'd been using to look and had been on the market for almost a year! It was within our price range. It was, from all appearances on the computer screen, practically perfect in every way. It was, honestly, a little too good to be true, and made one wonder...."what's the catch?"

And so on Sunday, after lunch, we set out to do a drive by, just to see if this place really existed.

And on Monday, after taking a look at the inside of the house and walking the property, we put an offer in on it.

And on Tuesday we had a contract for a closing in October.

We moved in a few weeks ago. I still pinch myself nearly every morning to make sure I didn't dream this all up.

I didn't.

It sits nestled into a secluded valley only 20 miles from my parents house. It feels like you drive quite a ways out into the country. It is so quiet and peaceful and yet just 10 minutes from every convenience you could dream of.

Down a two lane highway that meanders along the banks of Chickamauga Lake and the Tennessee River...

...you turn onto a tree shaded one lane road...

...and arrive at Redbud Farm.

picture taken in September when we were viewing the property

The house was built in 1915. We know very little of it's history, but I'm making it one of my projects to find out. One of the benefits of my home town is that, as large as it's gotten, it's still one of those places where you always know someone who knows someone, and it turns out my cousin used to work with the guy whose grandparents farmed this land and lived in this house. So I have a contact already!

We're thinking of calling it Redbud farm because of this tree that grows next to the house.

None of us have ever, EVER, seen a redbed get this big! It has to be ancient, by redbud standards. I almost wonder if it's as old as the house. You should have seen it with leaves in September! Amazing! And I can't WAIT till spring when it's covered in those dark pink blossoms that redbuds are famous for! Can you picture it in your mind? Don't worry! You'll get to see pictures!

There are redbud sprouts coming up all over the place, and I remarked to Mom, as she and I were walking around the yards and noting which shrubs and plants were there, that "well at least we know the place will grow redbuds." to which she replied, "Redbud Farm!" And the name stuck.

There are a number of barns and outbuildings. A creek babbles it's way through part of the front of the property. Year round water for the horses and whatever other animals join us in the years to come. An answer to prayer because now my dad doesn't have to go over there during our absence to water our critters for us! And behind the house and buildings, there is a gently rising hill that is covered in thick green grass, that in September was taller than Malcolm's head because no one had cut it this year! There are at least 5 walnut trees, and in the back yard this massive pecan tree. I'm in love!

There are 10 acres in all, and though that's small by some western standards, in Tennessee that's enough for us to be a farm, and so we are! Very happily! Those ten acres are holding a passel of dreams and possibilities for us. So many dreams that are going to come true on that ground!

I'll give you a tour of the barns and property in another post, but for this time, I promised those folks a look inside the house, and so lets get to it.

I just have to say, I am still, even after a month and a half of happy home ownership, absolutely amazed that in the past 97 years no one ruined this house! Someone (or multiple someones), bless their souls and love them, loved this house and maintained it enough to so that it didn't fall into disrepair beyond saving. And then a few years ago, another angel of a someone bought it and renovated it. RENOVATED! not remodeled! The first time I stepped through the front door, I thought I could have walked into one of those historical home tours. Praise God for people who love history and old farm houses!

the front living room as you enter from the front door

It's been updated beatifully. The walls may not have originally been sheet rocked, but now that they are, the paint colors that were chosen are complimentary to the age of the house. Care was taken in selection of light fixtures (I still want to know where they got them because I love their choices, and I've never seen anything like some of them!), and the original floors are still in place.

this one's kind of dark, but gives a feel for how large the room actually is, something I find odd in a house this old. The rooms are huge, relatively speaking!

There was love and care in that renovation project. Care to make updates that didn't clash with the ambiance, and care to preserve what could be preserved. One of the original fireplaces and mantels, now equipped with gas logs.

From the front living room, you can head down the hallway that passes through the center of the house...

...or you can turn to your right and enter the other front room. We're still debating what this room's original purpose was. We're leaning towards office or parlor. But now it serves as the guest bedroom.

And no sheet rock here. Original tongue-in-groove pine board walls, floor and ceiling! Makes for a dark room, but a lovely one. And some brightly colored quilts and rugs will snap the gloom right out of the room.

This room has two doorways. One goes out to the front living room, where we just left, and the other goes into the other living room. Guess we'll call it the den.

note not one, but TWO closets flanking each side of the doorway. Another unusual feature for a house of this period.

The other living room, or den, is where most of my library has landed. It's also where your most likely to find the girls, if they aren't shadowing you.

"Why is that you ask?" says Carlie Jean.

"Do we really need to explain?" says Paris.

Because this room houses the second fire place in the house, now equipped with a very effect wood burning stove. Plus it's just got that cozy cabin feel to it with the woodwork. Plus, (and this is the biggy!) it's the only carpeted room, and the girls LOVE carpet!

From this room, you have three options other than the way we came in. You can go left into the hallway, right into the laundry room and then exit the house, or...

... straight ahead and into the kitchen.

Nooks and crannies abound, which I love! I wasn't digging the black and white linoleum, but it's growing on me quickly. The light fixture in the kitchen is awesome and unique, as is the one in the breakfast nook...

....which sits at one end of the kitchen and looks out onto that lovely redbud tree, and now several of my bird feeders.

I have only one complaint about this kitchen, but it's nothing that can't be fixed. And so it's my "think on it" project and it involves the lack of counter space, and this wall.

I'm wondering about getting an antique stove. But the more practical solution would be to get some kind of table of counter. We'll see what happens. In the mean time this wall looks really bland and barren, all except for that awesome built in cupboard. It's one of two and I just adore them! I've always loved built ins!

The other door leaving the kitchen leads into that central hallway you saw from the front room, but now your at the back of the house. Right outside the kitchen door is a doorway to underneath the stairs, and the most awesome storage space ever! If I lack counter space in the kitchen, the house has made it up to me by providing abounding storage space, which is something Malcolm and I have never ever had! It's awesome!

And heading back down the hall towards the front of the house, brings you to the two other bed rooms. We think perhaps it was originally one large room. Or maybe it was two rooms. Hard to tell. We're calling it the master suite because they are smallish, and so we're using them both as our bedroom.

Enters the third and final fireplace of the house, complete with original mantel. This one is non-functioning. We're toying with the idea of putting in gas logs. Functioning or not, the colors are lovely!

Note the little cupboard above the mantel. It has two shelves in it and is about 6 inches deep. Interesting.

In fact, there are two more similar cupboards in the den, one on each side of the door, and so high on the wall you have to have a ladder of chair to climb on. They are deeper and one contains an old straw hat and a newspaper scrap from 1920. They are clearly original to the house, and also very mystifying. Never really seen anything like them before.

And back out in the hallway, is the stairs to the attic.

A little over 800 square feet of fairly easily finishable living space but right now completely awesome storage!

previous owners stuff. Not ours. It's much more cluttered now as we stacked boxes here and have been unpacking from that point. Made the rest of the house much more livable!

There are dormer windows on three sides, and even if we finished it, we'd still have TONS of storage! Each dormer has attic space on the sides that have been closed in to create 4 massive closets, one in each corner. I'm thinking what an awesome space this will be for Malcolm and me! We want to lay some carpet and bring up our wood pellet stove. He has set up his gun reloading stuff in one corner. I can just see my sewing space in one of those dormer window alcoves, and a table for working puzzles under another window, a comfy sofa and chair for relaxing...just loads of possibilities. And the girls can lay by the stove while Malcolm works on his guns and I quilt. It will be so cozy!

There are so many different little features, small details, that add so much charm to this house, right down to the doorknobs.

And no matter which window you look out, there is a lovely a view that gives the feeling of being secluded and very far out in the country....

out the back (the pool is probably going by by in the spring. Anyone in the market for one?

the master bedroom windows look out onto the screened in porch and across into the soybean fields of the farm that borders us on two sides

out the front windows and from my porch swing I can enjoy the views of a wooded forest

from the other side of the house I can the barns and look down to the creek there at the far end of that small pasture

....even though we have neighbors. No one is right on our doorstep. No where near that! We can only actually see one of the houses clearly and it is still set back down the road a ways from our house. We've met our three closest neighbors, and another neighbor that lives down the road. All amazingly nice, helpful, and generous people. We feel so blessed and fortunate. One always wonders and worries abit about having good neighbors (or nightmare neighbors) when moving to a new place! It just adds to the "too good to be true" question that seems to linger about the place in my mind.

The porch wraps around three sides of the house. I've dreamed of, and longed for an old farmhouse for years and years and years. And if I ever expected that dream to come true, I thought surely it would be dilapidated and in need of lots of work. So to get handed one that is so old, and already "fixed" and landscaped beautifully, and nearly perfect in every sense of the word, at least nearly perfect according to the standards of those years I've spent dreaming....well I can't help but wonder if I'm still dreaming.

But then we ended up going past the house for Thanksgiving weekend, and I walked in the door and all our stuff was there in that dream house, and our horses were there to greet us, and our mail had been delivered to that address. So I guess it really is a real place! And I really do live there!

Scenes from South Dakota

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:21:00 +0000

On a frosty Autumn morning in South Dakota, you might see...

....on US81 from Watertown to Yankton.

Crossing the Rockies in Colorado

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 18:25:00 +0000

It felt good to be back behind the wheel this week. Not to say that I don't wish I was home, because there's always something I'm wishing I were home to do. But it felt good to be back at work too, being productive in other ways. And quite honestly, after the last few months of our lives being suddenly turned upside down, it was really nice to just do something "normal" and know that when we take off for our next break, we'll just be going home for a break, and not heading home to a giant chore. The clouds have cleared from over our heads and I'm glad life can just get back to normal now. No more stress, no more tension, no more chaos. Just living!

We left Chattanooga on Tuesday and took a short load down to north central Alabama. By short, I mean we drove 90 miles to deliver. That's really short for us. It was a "get me there" load, a time filler to get us down to the "real" load, which was chicken meal from Hanceville, AL to Flagstaff, AZ.

It's always a bit of a trial to start back to work with an all night run. We drove straight through to Arizona, arriving about 6 hours before our appointment. We used that time to take a much needed nap and get a decent meal because we knew as soon as we were loaded that evening, we had a long night drive to get to our next load.

I slept while Malcolm unloaded the trailer, drove north about 70 miles, and washed the trailer out. We parked for a couple hours there, and then I got up at 3:00am to finish the drive to our destination.

There are a number of routes across the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. All of them are scenic. You won't be disappointed no matter which way you go. If your in a hurry to get from point A to point B, then probably I-70 is your route to go, though even it has its slow going moments. Your going to have to count on twists and turns, ups and downs. Your crossing a huge mountain range after all!

We actually don't cross the Rocky Mountains that often. Our loads don't seem to take us that way much. We generally stay out of western Colorado. But on occasion we do have a trip that takes us there and it's usually kind of fun to get somewhere off our beaten path. Of the handful of times we've crossed, we seem to use US160 the most. And that was the case on Friday morning. It's on my list of "must drive" road trips for anyone who wants to know.

When I started early Friday morning, we were still in northern Arizona on US160. I followed it almost to the border where it cut north into Utah, but I kept heading east on a short cut, jumping across the northwest corner of New Mexico. At Farmington, NM we headed north, into Colorado, and caught back up with 160 just outside of Durango, CO at dawn.

Perfect timing! I had hoped to have sunlight to enjoy the scenery. God went ahead and gifted me with a dramatic sunrise to get me started.

We would spend our morning traveling US160 from Durango to Monte Vista, where we would be loading for our weekend trip. If you ever get the chance to drive this route, please take it! Trust me! It's worth it!

There was quite a bit of cloud cover on Friday morning, which worked with the mountains to keep the sun blocked, making photography a little difficult. You'll miss out on some fantastic scenery in this post because of that. Guess you'll just have to go see it for yourself!

From Durango, we headed east, passing through the San Juan National Forest.

Near Pagossa Springs, the road encountered the San Juan River and followed it into town. The temperature was down in the 20's and in town the hot springs were steaming. Unfortunately my camera couldn't get focused on them, so I had to stick with mountain vistas instead of hot spring steam.

East of Pagossa Springs we entered the San Juan Mountains. It seemed with each turn in the road, the snowy peaks just got more impressive.

At the base of Wolf Creek Pass it was neat to look up the mountain and see the road passing back and forth across the facade of the mountain as it climbed to the summit.

Half way up the western side of the pass, there is an impressive view of the valley below. I've seen it once in fall and it was amazing with all the Aspens all golden and the afternoon light making the valley floor glow. I've seen it once in summer when everything was green and fresh. And now I've seen it in early winter with it's first blanketing of snow.

Wolf Creek Pass, at it's summit, is 10,850 feet. I suspect it's quite an adventure to go over during the dead of winter, though I imagine it's well maintained since it's one of the main routes across the mountains.
I spent some time craning my neck trying to get a second glimpse of that spectacular view, but we were headed the wrong direction, and even though the road was twisting, it wouldn't quite twist enough. So I had to get creative to get a second look.

Over the pass and headed down the other side. On the eastern side, it's not quite as open as it was on the west. The mountains are more pressed in on each other and the road and river just slip between them.

It was also considerably more snowy on this side of the pass and onward. Each turn in the road revealed another great rock wall and snow covered shoulder. I think the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains must be the cause of the name.

It was during this part of the drive that we followed the course of the Rio Grande for a bit before it left the highway to head south through New Mexico and then on to the Mexican border. It was kind of strange to see that river up here in the mountains when I've always thought of it as the desert river that I see in El Paso.

Eventually the mountain passes opened up into a huge valley. It's so large at first I thought we were finished with the mountains, but then off on the horizon, I spotted the blue outline of a distant range. And then, looking around, I realized we were surrounded by ranges.

I didn't get a picture to truly depict the effect. There are moments when you have to look closely to see that it truly is a valley and not the beginning of the plains.

We had reached our destination of Monte Vista, an appropriate name for this town, as the Spanish translation for Monte Vista is "mountain view," which is has, in every direction.

We loaded canola seed. I think it's the first time we've hauled this. And then we had lunch in town and went to bed for some more sleep, just a couple hours. In the late afternoon we got back up to drive a few hours, crossing that distant range I'd seen earlier in the day across the valley from us, and headed at last out onto the great plains of eastern Colorado.

That was our little jaunt across the Colorado Rockies this week. I enjoyed it very much, as I'm sure you can tell. But it was also really nice to be back out on the plains. As you well know by now, I have a slight obsessive love for the grasslands. Yesterday we finished crossing eastern Colorado, cut across northwestern Kansas, and went up into Nebraska. Today we headed north out of Grand Island, NE and will cross the Dakotas, ending our day in the very northeastern corner of North Dakota where we deliver in the morning.

Our first week out after our lengthy break is behind us now. It will be interesting to see what the next week brings us. We seem to have started a tradition of working through Thanksgiving, and since everything closes for the weekend, that usually means we get LOTS of time to kill on our weekend load. It gives us the chance to get some rest, and have some play time too. And it's fun to celebrate the holiday in differnt places. Last year we had Thanksgiving dinner at Cracker Barrel in Kingman, AZ. Wonder where we'll be this year?

The Great Migration

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:23:00 +0000

Fall is the time of year when some of the greatest migrations on the planet take place.

Malcolm and I have been off the road and, for the most part off line, for a little over a month now. While we were off, our time was consumed with gathering, packing, loading, and then the reverse of all those actions.

One chilly evening we were down by the water working on getting some things loaded before dark, when a familiar but seldom heard sound reached our ears. And sure enough, when we looked, way off on the horizon we could see a long wavering line of sand hill cranes making their way towards us. Have you ever watched them in flight? They do not fly with the organization of geese and ducks. It always looks to me as if they are constantly trying to straighten their line, and failing time and time again. This particular group made their way to the lake behind the house and were well into their circling (which takes a while) and landing routine, when we noticed another line off on the horizon. And behind them, another line, and once they were landing, another line, and it went on like this for an hour or more! By the time they were finished, there must have been hundreds of them up on the lake, and it was all I could do not to abandon Malcolm to the work and sneak up there with the camera. If not for the fact that it was too dark for decent pictures and that I didn't want to risk disturbing them, I would have done it.

As it was I did end up with a picture of their great migration. The next morning, Malcolm and I had to run an errand and we left pretty early, just as the cranes were gathering into their various groups and heading on east.

Birds are not the only creatures that migrated south this year.

On a frosty morning in early October, we loaded up and headed out...

...to deliver Dawn and Gemma to their new owners. We had decided to sell Gemma as I already have my hands full with Sky and Reba, and also she is such a gorgeous girl with so much to offer. I was thrilled when I was contacted by a couple that wanted to purchase both Gemma and Dawn! I am so happy that they were able to stay together and that Gemma didn't have to go off to her new life all by herself.

The new owners are really nice and I believe they love the girls as much as I do. Dawn and Gemma had started growing their thick winter coats getting ready for a Montana winter, but I told them to slow down on that and wait a bit. They are now living in Arizona, and I don't think they'll need much winter furr down there.

After that, there was just one more migration to get taken care of. It involved a lot of early EARLY mornings,

2 vehicles, and lots of miles. I drove the pickup and Malcolm drove the big truck. The girls generally road with me. We started out with everyone in the pickup with me.

Some "people" are good pickup travelers.

Some...not so much.

So there we were, going back and forth across the country. Montana to Tennessee...

...and back....

...and forth...

...and back...

...and forth...

..and back...

...and finally I'd had all I could take of Carlie Jean. So she got the boot and had to ride in the Peterbuilt with Malcolm.

After that, we were able to lay back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

All those crazy Carlie Jean pictures are actually from the first three hours of our first trip. Which should be enough explanation as to why I kicked her out into the Peterbuilt. I thought I was going to go crazy. Apparently our Carlie Jean, the big truckin' dog, is not so much of a little truckin' dog. It was a lot quieter once she was moved, but really not that much more pleasant.

It was tiring and long and tedious because it was the same trip, same scenery, and driving a pickup is actually a lot more tiring than driving the big truck. Can't explain why. It just is.

It took three trips.
Trip one was pickup and Peterbuilt and then the Pete stayed in TN and the pickup went back to MT.
Trip two I hauled the horses down with the pickup while Malcolm took the Kenworth down with the hopper. Our broker actually got us loaded for that one, so we got paid to move our stuff more or less.
Malcolm got there a day after me and the horses, but all ran smoothly and we didn't have any problems. The horses were relieved to get off the trailer and their eyes about popped out of their heads when they saw all that green grass. I don't think they came up for air for at least three days!

Ok, so I'm exagerating a bit. We kept them in stalls for the first night with hay, and then the next few days we kept them in a corral while they recovered from their long ride and adjusted to the new surroundings. And then we let them have the run of the pasture. They are now settled in, quite content, and making friends with all the neighbors. They are quite popular, which works great all the way around. All our neighbors enjoy visiting with them, the horses get lots of attention and treats, and we know we have a number of people keeping an eye on them while we are away from home!

Back to migrating:

Then there was trip three. We had moved the trucking business and our horses and tractor, but we still had to go back for our household things. We also needed to haul a couple more things with our pickup. But why drive two vehicles back empty. So, Malcolm, ingenios problem solver that he is....

...figured out how to save fuel costs on that return trip.

We loaded up in some cold windy weather, turned around, and got back to balmy Tennessee. We decided to take a couple weeks to unload, unpack, and do some relaxing before we hit the road again.

That couple of weeks is up now and we're loading this morning. Time to get back to work. We got nearly everything in the house unpacked and put into place in our new home. It's a good feeling. We got started on putting Malcolm's shop things away too, and will work some more on that when we come home for our next break.

We had not expected to be leaving Montana. It's amazing how much the road of life can turn so drastically in such a short amount of time. But we've landed solidly on both feet in a wonderful place, where we're surrounded by lots of family and have already had encounters where we've been able to get reaquainted with old friends and already began to form the bonds for new friendships. We love our new home, and are excited about our life here in my sweet home state of Tennessee!

Party for the Princess

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Next Monday is a very special day!

Monday is Paris's birthday! She has declared from her thrown that it will be a global holiday. You are all supposed to take off work and celebrate with good food, fun games, and snuggling in warm blankets in her honor. Have a party for the princess!

I was snooping around in some boxes a few weeks ago at home and ran across her baby pictures. I don't have them on the computer so I haven't shared them with you, as I have Carlie and Ella's baby pictures. And so I scanned them into the computer so I'd have them to look at on the road, and I thought this would be the perfect oppertunity to share them with you too.

This was her first day at home, when I showed her her new bunny and pink blanket. The bunny she never cared for. The blanket is still her personal favorite (out of a rather large and ever growing collection of blankets) and she gets really excited when she sees me laying it across my lap, because she knows she's going to get bundled up in it.

I got Paris for my Christmas present a couple months after I became an official truck driver. I told Malcolm if I was going to be a truck driver, I wanted a very froo froo girly dog. I think I got exactly what I asked for when I picked Paris.

because every princess needs a little bling!

She has been a princess from day one. The first few days with us she was extremely timid, hiding under the dining room table, staying quiet and keeping a low profile. Turns out she was just scoping out her new kingdom, because within days, once she had the lay of the land down in her memory, she took over our lives, and has ruled her world and all that are in it, even if your just visiting!

She started out by declaring her food not good enough. She wouldn't eat...unless the lady hand fed her.
She appointed Malcolm's shoulder as her throne for evening relaxation periods.
She spent all of 2 nights in her kennel before assisting the humans in realizing princesses sleep in the big bed between their people. How could we have made that mistake?

And from that point, the bed became one of her favorite spots, particularly under the covers.

Preferrably as far under the covers as she can get.

Her demeanor has turned out to be not timid at all. She is the social butterfly. She is the strongest willed of all three of our girls. She gets what she wants when she wants it. But as "big" as she is, she has always been petite. From day one, clothing the princess has been an issue.

Nothing fits. Store bought was always impossibly small, even the tiny sizes. And handmade even took some growing into at times.

Her siblings have outgrown her by leaps and bounds and she is reduced to wearing their hand-me-downs at times, as they outgrew things before they were worn out.

Paris is our pavement princess. She has never liked prickly grass, but preferred the concrete. It's great fun to run on concrete, and the perfect surface for spinning fast circles when your really happy.

She has been my best friend and baby girl from day one. And she has remained devoted to us, even when we forced two crazy siblings on her. She has been patient and forgiving, though there have been times.....

Paris was born in Alabama, and so it's no wonder that she has always dispised the cold and wind. She is a southern belle, and is looking forward to returning to her native lands, or at least close by in Tennessee. She has always enjoyed her visits there, sitting in her grandladies bay window watching the birds.

Paris will be 6 years old on Monday. We haven't told her yet, but there won't be much of a celebration this year. We're going to be very busy. We'll be home on her birthday but not for rest and relaxation. Paris will have to content herself with laying in the sunshine on the back of her couch. Her man and lady are going to be busy packing and tying up loose ends.

We won't have time for partying and big celebrations. It's time to start moving!

Lately

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 19:13:00 +0000

Sunset near Bend, OR this past weekend was lovely. Turns out smoky skies are good for a few things after all.

We traveled that stretch of US97 three times between Thursday evening and Monday afternoon, hauling two loads of sunflower seeds from Quincy, WA to north of Sacramento, CA. Those seeds will be planted and become another crop of the sunflower seeds that we hauled from Sacramento to Fargo, ND so many times last winter.

I do love that stretch of 97 from Weed, CA to Toppinish, WA. It is a lovely drive, and it smells wonderful, like pine and earth.

This past weekend was the second weekend of running straight through. We had a small break in that we had from Saturday afternoon till Monday morning to get the 700 miles back to Washington driven. We just bounced back up there empty for a Monday morning reload.

We needed that little break. It has been a very busy and profitable 2 weeks, but we are accustomed to getting to be a bit lazy on the weekends to recuperate, and not getting that for 2 weeks in a row, especially after a week off the road, has hit us hard. Although, on the flip side of that, it has gotten us worked into a schedule and a well oiled driving machine. Go Go Go...cha ching, cha ching! That, of course, will come in handy with this whole moving thing, which is going to pack a punch financially and physically. Do you have any idea what it takes to move a business? If you thought moving a house hold was hard work, think about doing that along with a business. Lets not even get started.

Anyway, we got our sunflower loads finished up, took a shorty over the mountain from Sacramento and into Sparks, NV, and then reloaded in Carson City, NV and shot up here to Idaho over night for a morning delivery.

Monday was a difficult day. We were tired already, because though we had that little tiny break Sunday, we had neither one of us slept well the past two sleeping opportunities. We had a very early morning delivery, a rush to get to Sacramento and be first in line to load (it can take a long time there if you are not at the head of the line), and then an unpleasant visit with the Sacramento weigh station on our way out. Another story for another time.

And in the midst of all that, we received word that Malcolm's grandfather had passed away just that morning. We had known that he was ill and that he'd been taken to the hospital. Malcolm' s cousin was keeping us abreast of all that was transpiring, so it wasn't exactly a shock, but it was rather sudden, and mercifully over with quickly, but regardless of how prepared you are, it is never an easy thing to lose someone you love.

Malcolm's grandfather was a sweet spirited, quiet man who served the Lord through ministry and loved his family very much. He and Malcolm's grandmother were missionaries in Africa for a while, and upon returning to the US, he served as pastor to a number of churches around the country. When I first met them, they were actually living in Chattanooga, and Malcolm and I enjoyed having them close by and getting to visit with them when we lived there.

There has been much on our minds lately. It is not about just working anymore, but we now both find our driving time occupied with thinking and calculating and figuring on the best method, schedule, and organization of getting us and our life from point A to point B. And when we switch drivers, we compare notes, and one of us pretends to sleep while the other mulls over what the possibilities are. And to not be able to put those ideas into action immediatly is also frustrating. We are both the type that like to act on a plan or idea, once it is born.
And then add to that all the other dynamics of all that has transpired over the past weeks.

I promised to share our adventures with you in our move and our new home. I still commit to do so, but please allow me to be stingy with details for a bit longer. I will do my best not to exclude you for too long. I promise it will be worth the wait. And if it's any consolation to you, believe me when I say it's rather frustrating to me to not be sharing things with you. But I just feel it's necessary for now.

Back West

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:12:00 +0000

We left my parent's home last Thursday early in the morning....

...and headed to middle Tennessee to load up and get back west where we do most of our trucking. It was a peaceful morning, with a light mist laying on the mountains. As much as I love my mid-western plains, I have missed my Tennessee mountains tremendously.

We took a load of dirt to a Minnesota farm. It was comical to see that windrow of brown Tennessee soil dumped out in the Minnesota field. Expensive dirt too! OK, so I'm exaggerating a bit. It was actually not just plain dirt, but some kind of mineral stuff for fertilizing. But....basically dirt.

It's always fun to start off after a break with an all nighter. We were kind of tired on Friday. Fortunately, we had the weekend to recuperate. We loaded sunflower seed in North Dakota and headed west, wrapping up the day with a lovely western sunset near Bismarck.

We stopped and slept a few hours during the night, and started our day in Montana, a very smoky Montana. We took our time getting across the state, stopping to run some errands and have a couple of meals at a couple of favorite places. It was a very smoky Montana, as I said. It was smoky from the time we entered the state, till we left it late Saturday evening. In fact, the smoke was the worst we've seen all summer.

southwest of Bozeman

Sunday we had to make up for our lazy day in Montana, so we stayed rolling most of the day, down through Idaho and across northern Nevada...

...delivering in central California bright and early Monday morning.

Since then, we've pretty much been going going going....
We bounced up north of Sacramento and loaded something called "heifer mix." They were burning off some harvested fields there. More smoke.

In fact I could pretty much sum up our week in two words: busy and smoky.

We left California on Monday afternoon by way of highway 20...

...and I-80 into Nevada, and have been running our wheels off ever since. Not that the loads have been long, but the way everything is landing, it's been a lot of load and unload during the day and then drive all night to get there. We've been driving through the night every night this week, and when we're not used to doing that, it starts to wear us down. However, by this point, we've worked our way into the routine, so it should be easier from here forward, if we continue on this pattern.

We delivered in Idaho, reloaded in Ogden, UT, and went back to California. We reloaded in California, delivered in Ogden, UT, reloaded in Idaho and this morning we delivered in Washington. Now we're reloading in Washington, and about to head to California, where we'll deliver in the morning, turn around, bounce back to Washington, and do this run again by Monday morning.

I find it really bizarre that California has had the clearest skies this week. Usually it is so very much the opposite! But west coast skies have been pristine blue compared to the other areas we've been driving through. Montana of last weekend still takes the cake for the worst, but Idaho last evening ran a close second. You know it's bad when you can drive into a blazing western sunset and you have to take off your sunglasses because it's making everything too dim!

Today in Washington, it's not much better.

I told Malcolm this morning, "you know that lovely first whiff of someone's wood smoke from their fire that you get each fall that brings back all the warm fuzzy memories and makes you feel all nostalgic? I don't have that this year. I'm sick of smelling smoke!"

http://www.networkedblogs.com/" target="_blank" title="NetworkedBlogs">http://static.networkedblogs.com/static/images/logo_small.png

" title="NetworkedBlogs"/>

http://www.networkedblogs.com/blog/between-the-fenceposts" id="5d7a8305a430e6418d6778e8caf79e0d">Follow this blog

The Chattanooga Market

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 19:33:00 +0000

Since Friday afternoon, we've been at my parent's home in Tennessee. We spent the past few days house hunting, ending up with some disappointments and a couple of hopefuls. We'll see what happens.

House hunting, something I'd normally think of as fun, has been rather tiring and a bit frustrating this go around. Probably because it's being over shadowed with dread. Not dread of living here, but we're both dreading the process of the actual move. And along with that, we're both wanting to get the ball rolling, but just not seeing anything that hits the mark for what we need/want.

We did a lot of traveling on Saturday looking around, and so Sunday morning we decided we should all take a break and do something fun before continuing on the search.

Mom had the perfect suggestion.

In Chattanooga, beneath the protective rise of Lookout Mountain...

...down near the UTC football stadium,...

...in a nice open air pavillion there...

...on ever Sunday during the summer months, the city of Chattanooga hosts The Chattanooga Market. It's a gathering of vendors and shoppers, artists and musicians, and all sorts of things, within the shade of the pavilion where there is lots to see, smell, sample, and purchase.

It opens at 11:00am and we were there for the beginning, before it got too crowded. Mom said some days it's so crowded you can't hardly move. There is live music, with a different musician featured each week. Seating around the stage where you can enjoy the entertainment and some yummy food from the many food vendors.
And after lunch, you can stroll through all the booths and make purchases of all sorts of things, such as fresh produce grown by area farms...

....yummy breads and pastries baked by local bakers....

...stock your pantry with some delightful canned jellies, relishes, and goods....

....purchase a lovely flower arrangement or stock up on fresh herbs...

....and pick up some unique arts and crafts as well.

We toured it all, sampled several yummy things, and purchased a few items of fresh goodness. Then on our way out, we stopped at the cake stand my parents have been telling us about. This lady bakes and decorates specialty cakes. And on Sunday's she bring an impressive collection of flavors down to the market and sells them by the slice. One look, even without a taste, made me want to write down her name for any future cake ordering needs I might run across. What a great marketing strategy she has come up with!

Talk about a hard decision to make!!!! She had just about any type of cake you could think of, from traditionals like German Chocolate, Lemon, Coconut, and Caramel, to some more unique flavors, such as Pumpkin, Tropical, and Dad's favorite, Mounds, which turns out to be an extremely rich chocolate cake with coconut and Mounds candy bar pieces and topped off with chocolate icing. And she's not skimpy on her icing either, or her servings. It's a giant piece of cake! We got a couple pieces to enjoy after our lunch.

After our cake purchase, we drove out to a favorite local deli that mom and dad have eaten at for years. It's like their special place, or at least that's how I've always thought of it. And after lunch, we did some more house hunting.

We found two really neat places we liked this past week, only to have them bought just as we had discovered them. But as Mom said, and as I keep reminding myself, God must have something even better for us.

We might have found the something better Sunday afternoon. If it's meant to be I know we'll get it, but it won't hurt to ask for as many prayers and crossed fingers as we can get going on this. So if you don't mind? Thanks!

Here's a link to The Chattanooga Market for more information. Chattanooga's just a great place to visit, so if your trying to figure where you want to go for next summer's vacation, and your tired of the same old beach trip, think about coming down here and exploring.

Endings

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 14:20:00 +0000

It started as the silence of boredom. I was tired blogging about trucking and the rut I felt I was in.

It turned into the silence of having been shocked and not having the words for expression.

And then it became a choice to be silent because I hadn't much good to say.

These are the reasons I give for my recent silence on this blog. But I am finished being silent.

More often than not, the path we envision ourselves taking in life, isn't exactly the one we end up traveling. And despite how much we plan and dream and work towards a goal we have set in our minds, sometimes it turns out that's not where we're headed.

Fortunately, God's plans are always better than our own, and, though I don't believe He necessarily orchestrates the painful experiences in our lives, I do believe he uses any and all situations to help us grow, draw us closer to Him, and to bring glory to His name.

All that said, it's time to share with you, my blogging friends, that here in the weeks to come, Malcolm and I will be packing our boxes, the girls will be packing their toy chest, and the horses will be loading their saddle bags, and we're all going to hit the road for Tennessee.

Montana has been good to us and for us, but the future we had envisioned there is no longer what it was envisioned to be. And since the only other place we would want to be is near our family in Tennessee, that is where we are heading.

It is a bitter sweet moment in our life. It will be sad to say goodbye to Montana and all that we love there, but we have moved through, and are getting past the sadness, and are emerging into the happiness and excitement over all that the future may hold.

So, in summary:

Into every life a little rain must fall, but when one door closes another one opens, and as we all know, this too shall pass.
So county road take me home, to the place where I belong.

A door has closed, and the sun is setting on our life in Montana.

But this is the beginning of whole new adventure.

A Fair Time

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah Johnson) — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 19:21:00 +0000

We've been home for a couple weeks. It's been nice to be off the road.

We've both been staying busy with home and trucking chores, but despite the work, it's still been a fair time.

A few of the things we've been up to:

Aren't these gorgeous? Makes me think of Christmas. Know what they are?

They are called Buffalo Berries and Malcolm and I went and picked a couple of quarts. That's all we got because we weren't sure we'd even like the jelly, plus the bushes have some lethal thorns and we got tired of being pricked and scratched up. But it turns out I LOVE the way the jelly tastes! Strange berries! When you boil them and then squeeze out the juice, you get a bowl of milky white liquid that smells kind of odd. But then you add sugar and cook it and it turns a pretty shade of orangy pink and taste sweet and tart. I spent an afternoon in the kitchen and ended up with three pretty jars....

...of very runny jelly, even after a second round in the pot and adding more fruit pectin. Oh well. It was fun making it, even if it is too runny (even for syrup).

I also spent a couple afternoons working on a quilting project, trying to rebuild my confidence to attack the Civil War quilt again. I've been wary of triangles and piece work ever since my catastrophe with that one block, over a year ago, and haven't touched it sense. But I felt like working on something so I pulled out a table runner pattern that I'd been collecting fabrics for and decided to give it a whirl. It was fun, and easy, and my corners don't meet up perfectly in a couple places, but it still turned out pretty good. I have a little more confidence now. It helped that my mother-in-law loaned me her sewing machine, which is better than mine. I think I might need an upgrade.

I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen these past couple weeks. We've been eating pretty good, and I've had fun cooking. I went through my cabinets and freezer and listed all the things I had on hand because some of my stock needs to be used. I figured out some menu plans that I had everything for (only needed a handful of ingredients from the store to make it all work). Some things were just so-so, and some was really good. These mashed potato patties were one of the good things.

I've been missing my family and old home in Tennessee a lot lately, so I've been going for comfort food that reminds me of home there. One of the things I've learned to enjoy a lot is some tea my mom starting making a couple years ago and I enjoyed it so much I started making it at home. I make a pitcher of green tea, and throw in a couple tea bags of some flavored black tea. My current favorite is blackberry sage. I like it unsweetened, but I also like to add a half cup of honey (I make 2 quarts of tea) to it to give it just a bit of sweetness, and the honey compliments the blackberry nicely. It's cool and refreshing.

While I've been doing all this, Malcolm was helping with haying and then went to work on the truck. The truck needed a better radiator because it was having trouble staying cool. So we put the new radiator in and he's done some other things too. Also been at work on our two trailers that needed some work. Just like in any business, our equipment is in constant need of maintenance and such. Wish it didn't take up so much of his time, but I'm glad he enjoys mechanic work so much. It's a good thing. I've been helping him a lot this last week on his jobs, and took on a project all by myself. I disassembled the old radiator so we could take it in for scrap. You get more credit if they are already disassembled.

Work, work, work, and stressing a bit over the gray truck. It's been on the lot in Billings trying to find a new owner. We were a little bit on pins and needles because the payoff was coming up fast and we didn't want to have to make it. So we were just beside ourselves when we got a call Thursday and the dealership informed us that the truck was sold! ONE day before the payout was going to have to be sent in! Talk about cutting it close, but we're not complaining!

To celebrate, we went to town on Friday and visited the Fallon County Fair! OK, I was celebrating and Malcolm was indulging me. He's not a big fair kind of guy, but he is good about taking me and enjoying it with me.

We went to the fair last year, on Sunday, for the rodeo, but at that point, being the last day, most people had packed up their exhibits and gone home, so I wanted to make sure I got in to see them this year.

The Fallon County Fair is not big by some standards, but it's a nice fair. The advantage of not being huge is that you don't get jostled around by a lot of people, and yet it's still big enough to draw in some nice performers and stuff. We were there at lunch time on Friday so it wasn't very crowded at all. Perfect conditions for me!
First stop, LUNCH! Fair food around here means these really yummy Indian Tacos...

...but I didn't think I could eat a whole one at the time, so I had a Spartan Taco, which is basically a taco in a Doritos bag...with the Doritos. Yum!

Then it was on to the exhibit hall to see what people had brought in.

They had brought in a lot of stuff! There was quite a variety of things! I enjoyed seeing all the vegetables from area gardens.

And of course I was drawn to all the flowers.

This was my favorite arrangement. I thought it was very creative, bright, and cheerful!

Quilts! You'd never guess I'd have found my way to this corner, would you?

After the exhibit hall, it was on to the building with the animals. And on the way, we paused to look over the machinery they had on display.

I never get tired of the farm animals! The sounds, the sights, even the smells, which I know many people find unappealing. But I've never minded the odor of cattle and horses, and just farm smells in general.

The goats drew me in first, not just because they were the first group we came across, but because they are goats and they just have a way of demanding attention.

Goats never fail to entertain me...and make Malcolm groan. I think he dreads the day I get mine...

as he frequently points out goats along the roadside that have escaped their confines, and others who are standing on things they probably shouldn't be (like cars).

But he does this with a smile and a laugh in his voice, so I know he's not going to deny me the fun of having a couple of dairy goats when the time comes.

Malcolm is always drawn to the sheep. He harbors a deep love for sheep, and often tells stories of long cold nights in the lambing barn, or makes references to one sheep related adventure or another.

He spent quite a bit of time admiring the sheep, and talking to different ones, and judging their personalities by their reaction to having a visitor.

A quick glance at the pigs....

...and then it was on to poultry!!!

Quite a variety of chickens, ducks, and rabbits. It was fun to walk through and see them all. And then we ran across these three geese who were taking a nap, balanced on one foot and with their heads tucked in. So peaceful...

...until we arrived. Malcolm was saying something about how geese don't like him, and as we paused by their cage, the front one suddenly looked up at him, and the next thing we knew, the three were raising cane and making the biggest racket, I'm sure everyone in the building thought we'd done something to them!

After that, we were pretty much done. We'd seen some neat things, run into some people we knew, and had a good time. But it was time to say goodbye to the fair for another year...

...and head home to do some more chores, like laundry!

Today and tomorrow is "gather things together and pack the truck" time because we're hitting the road again Monday morning. We've been home two weeks, but it feels like longer than that. I feel like it's been a good long break, and I'm actually looking forward to going back to work. I feel rejuvenated and ready to tackle the road and go back with a force and drive hard and make money! Hope it works that way!

I've neglected reading blogs while I was home and I just discovered this morning that a friend of mine is doing a giveaway, and it's a pretty neat one! It's her blog anniversary and to celebrate she's got a pretty nifty little package put together. All that's required is a comment, but I thought I'd go ahead and share it, even though it means more competition for me. You can check out the possibilities at A Life on Dreams and a Prayer.