Perfect description for the immediate present in comrade’s world… situation normal – all fucked up.
So it’s all going along fine during the approach to the spring equinox, chicks cracking through their shells in the incubator, the second batch of soaked peas sprouting, garden ground all tilled up ready for the potatoes, Mrs. Wiggles set to drop her first litter of bunny kits, and that sense or joyous relaxation that comes with a new start. But then here comes the usual stupid assed last blast of winter wrecking my oh so serene state of being.
I get up this morning and it’s still slushing the wintery mix that started yesterday noon, and the boy informs me that Mrs. Wiggles’ nest box has fur in it. Shit. Shaddap Sandy (the goat) – I’ll milk you when I can get to it. Toss the dead and cold hairless rat-thing out of the nest box for the chickens to play rugby with, feel two things squiggling so I slosh my way to the house, put the box on the kitchen floor and make a return trip to bring in the rabbit. Auuugh! I need floor space! Shove the seed potatoes under the table, the chairs can just be in the living room for a while, oh christ I gotta get the Rennet in the ripe milk for cheese – bunnydom on hold… shit – milk Sandy. Son – just hang out with the rabbit for awhile. Move trash can and stool out of the way to make space for a bunny cage, Spend a half hour outside in the slop scraping and disinfecting a cage, get the rabbit squared away – 8 squiggly things at this point sharing the heatlamp between the broody tub for the chicks and the nest box for the bunnies. Somewhere in all this I’m keeping the wood stove going and getting breakfast in the boy, and neither tracking mud and shit through the house while keeping the socks dry at the same time. How it got to be noon already is beyond me.
I cope. And all I can hope is that the thermometer stays above 29 degrees for the duration of Freak Frost Season so we get peaches this year. The beauty of managing a clusterfuck is that there is no room in the head to ponder doom – I suppose during the kind of juggling act I was doing this morning I could add “gun down MZB” without losing a beat. Sandy would probably kick over the milk bucket…
comrade simba 
March 21, 2010 at 4:34 pm |
Thanks for the comment, mayberry, check your email for an explanation of its disappearance.
comrade simba
March 21, 2010 at 5:57 pm |
What the hell can we do about the weather? Yesterday in the North Country it was T-shirt weather, today I was picking up bits and pieces of left over firewood so the snow wouldn’t cover it. Spring is a deceitful time of year.
March 21, 2010 at 7:26 pm |
Even up here it is too good to be true. My garden is weeded and tilled and ready for insemination (which, normally, will not occur until May 1st to be safe). Seedlings are all in bed waiting. Fruit trees are pruned. Buds are everywhere. The world tells me to put all the firewood back on the pile. I’m not buying it quite yet. I’ll give it a couple more weeks before I’m loosening my grip on sweaters and long johns. Still, every one in a while nature throws us a bone. The other times it just bones us. Hope it works out, Comrade.
March 22, 2010 at 3:23 am |
Nahh…not a SNAFU, just another regular day, souds like to me! No snow out here, lots of rain, turned to ice, back to rain, but not bad. Hopefully last blast of winter? I’m sure there’s got to be at least one peach-killer-frost in store. All the crap is still better than sittin’ in some shitty office though, right?
March 22, 2010 at 7:52 pm |
I’m actually pretty hopeful for peaches this year. My apricots were just past bud stage and made it through this one and nothing worse than 29 degrees looms over the next 2 weeks. We finally had a cold enough on average winter – apples for sure!
March 23, 2010 at 2:55 pm |
Comrade:
I’m off subject here, but I’ve wanted to ask you a while now: any FEMA camps in your area?
Any renovated spur lines or military bases?
I’m also looking out for short-hairs (Army, Feds) scouting an area for possible Counter Insurgency operations. They did it in the South during the 1960’s. See Col. Hackworth’s About Face.
My radar is telling me it’s time to do an inventory of such things.
March 24, 2010 at 10:28 am |
I feel for you buddy;
but I don’t have much time to converse at the moment. The buck rabbit that was sold turned out to be a buckette when we took a close look, the first of the sheep lambed 3 days early, the goat that should have dropped her kids last weekend is all bagged up has a smile on her face and her fuc&ing legs crossed tight, and still hasn’t dropped a thing. The baby monitor is on in the barn and is blaring in the bedroom all night long, and the breeding calender is posted on the door going outside with all the birthing dates.
Still raining, and the mud is still so deep that you can’t push a wheelbarrow full of barn manure across the yard to the garden. I’m beginning to understand why the Egyptians worshiped the sun. It eventually came every summer to relieve us of the insanity of the transition from winter into spring.
Praise Ra…
tired john
March 24, 2010 at 7:18 pm |
Yeah tired john – we are living the good life!
March 28, 2010 at 8:25 pm |
..
Staying above 29?
..
March 29, 2010 at 7:04 pm |
Peaches can handle a light frost of 29 for a couple of hours with about 25% damage. Acceptable casualty rate there, colonel…
April 2, 2010 at 4:36 pm |
Where ya been, no bloggin’? Couldn’t help to comment after my own “SNAFU’S” the last couple days, you just gotta laugh sometimes. Came in last night covered in..er..umm..various “liquid-solids” from cows, loading sorting all day, its a given. Gotta clean out the chicken coop this weekend…oh boy! Just picked up 2 new “junk” calves today, poor guy was desperate, couldn’t afford to feed’em any more, sad. Another “Success” story of our current economic conditions. Mood is improving as the mercury rises, though! Mice got to the greenhouse dug up all the squash seedlings…errrr,,,,,damned barn cat ain’t doin’ his job!