Bellwether First Days

This is an picture of me and Trinket, taken by a dear friend a couple of years ago. Trinket comes home soon, where I can check on her blankies before bed every night. And have some control over the quality of her hay and her bedding. And her turnout time. And the footing I ask her to work hard in. Bliss...

Yesterday, we closed on the new mini-farm. Well, we sort of closed. We closed in that Utah kind of way, where somebody somewhere didn't do their job, and everyone told us it didn't really matter, because our bank sent their bank the money, and that's what really matters. We're getting used to it, but it's hard sometimes for a chick from NJ, to get used to this sloppy... er, relaxed... way of doing things. I'm always certain someone's going to sue me...

At any rate, we went over there last night, and shifted 240*33=7920 pounds (3590 kg) of shavings into a gigantic stack in the detached garage. That's almost four tons. It was so much fun watching the delivery guy build a trampoline out of shavings bags, and then toss the rest onto that so they'd bounce into the garage. Good physics, that. And then J and I had to pick up all the bags and stack them neatly in the corner, which amounts to approximately 35,000 Nm of work done. Which is shockingly only about 100 Calories. I hate physics sometimes. Oh, right, but then I remember that the human body is about 25% efficient, so we're at 400 Calories. That's more or less a piece of pizza. Drat, again. Because I've been hungry ALL DAY!!!

Anyway. That was yesterday. Today, all the people did their jobs, and so we officially own the property as of about 11 am this morning. But we had to call and ask, if you can believe it. And the selling agent still has his sign and key lock there. What if he never comes to get them?

This evening, we cleaned out the hay barn, so that when we get hay delivered on Saturday (all three tons of it, in 50 pound bales---another piece of pizza), we have some place to put it. Then we cleaned out the stall that will get turned into a tack room. We cleaned out the grooming stall, and I started sorting through a ridiculous pile of random bungee cords, nails, screws, u-shaped fencing fasteners, etc. We filled the truck with trash to take to the dump, and raked up a huge pile to go to the green waste place. We got rid of a heap of ancient raccoon poop, and moved the straw that it was sitting on to the hay barn (for the chickens). We took down a plethora of baling twine, that was twisted around one of the stall doors, and filled in a hole in the dirt floor (why do people save baling twine???? It's a disease.). To sum up, we cleaned the hay barn, and a third of the horse barn.

The whole time, we were keeping half an eye on the dogs. They were keeping a full eye on the neighbor's cows.

It's so awesome. I don't know if this is true for everyone, but I sleep better, feel better, and am much more balanced when I spend at least a couple of hours a day doing physical labor outside---even if it's in the snow. It makes me feel like I live in the world, instead of in my head. That helps me know what the rules are. In my head, anything could happen. But in the actual world, there are rules that everyone has to live by.

Tomorrow, we get to spend all afternoon and evening over there. Hopefully, JoAnn and Shawna will stop by, because we've been so busy we haven't seen them, and I miss our pony pals. Saturday, we'll be out there all day, moving small boxes in, but mostly cleaning up the property. It's a good thing the house is in great shape!

Saturday/Sunday will be big work days. I will let all our friends know, so they can stop by and check things out. They keep asking me when they can see it. But they should be warned that I'll probably hand them a rake or a broom and send them to the back pasture. ; )

Oh, and silliness. I had to call the MAYOR of our new town, to tell him that I needed to sign up for sewer and garbage. Hysterical, because Marriott-Slaterville has a population of 1500. In Utah, that is about 300 households, more or less. So of COURSE the mayor is the guy who takes your information for garbage cans. It's so... cute...