We’ve kinda hit the doldrums around here. As I started thinking about this post, I looked up, first, the spelling, then, some photos. I’m not a seafarer, so I don’t use this word in my everyday lexicon, and I wanted to spell it dulldrums – because I associate the word with dull times – but I found differently. I still don’t know the origin, I didn’t want to spend that much time, but I did find that it refers to a specific area in the equatorial region that experiences ocean calms, but can also be plagued with sudden storms and light, unpredictable winds. In the more modern usage, it’s come to refer to a time of waiting; waiting for something to happen so you can go on to the next step. That’s sorta us. Crazy times, man. Continue reading
doldrums
03 Monday Dec 2018
It was a moving day again today. You know, our chickens travel around quite a lot – I’ve just been thinking about that. The layers out in the RCW are moved- as a unite – maybe once a month, less if there is more grass, more if the there’s less grass (now there’s a sentence for you). We’re always shuffling the others around to take care of behavioral issues, and the like. Lately we’ve been talking about how to consolidate. We completed a big step in that process tonight. 
…when you can reuse??? It’s really a part of the tenants of Permaculture. I think it could fall into several places on the wheel: ethics, energy, or may be even climate. Regardless, it is one of the things we try to do as much as possible. We keep a stock pile of those items that we feel we will be able to reuse; wood, roofing materials, siding, welded or chicken wire… that sort of thing. We are keeping them in an area we visit any time we have a new project. We’ve started one recently, but it’s more of a morphing project than a build from scratch sort of thing. I’ve alluded it to it several times recently and now I can share some photos of it with you. I’d like to say that I was waiting to give you some good photos, so I didn’t blog until tonight, but the truth is, I completely forgot it was Friday. The holidays really throw me off! 
Over the weekend and this morning, we did end up accomplishing all the weekend goals we set for ourselves. Sometimes that doesn’t happen because, once we get into whatever task we’ve started, we find that it’s more involved than initially thought. Those tasks that we do regularly, we generally have an idea how long it takes, but sometimes there ends up being a monkey wrench in the works. Luckily we didn’t experience that… well, not much anyway. 
As with every season, there are things we like and things that aren’t our most favorite, in regards to Fall. If you spend any time on Social Media, you know that there are memes galore extolling the virtues of all things pumpkin spice. I am here to tell you – I don’t necessarily buy into that craze. I don’t like pumpkin spice lattes, nor pumpkin spice English muffins, nor pumpkin spice cheese cake. On the other hand, I have always enjoyed pumpkin bread, pumpkin pancakes (a Halloween tradition in my family), and cold pumpkin pie for breakfast. Recently, I added 
I’m not exactly sure why, but the week has just seemed to drag along. I think we’re both happy it is finally Friday. Somewhere this week, I picked up a cold – I think Sue may have one too. We’ve just been not quite up to par lately. Also, I’ve been having to spend more time at work lately, and Sue has been having to do everything by herself. I mostly have made it home in time to help with the putting to bed, but that’s not a lot. 
The days are getting shorter and shorter as we get closer to the winter solstice. For those of you outside of Arizona, you may not know that we do not observe Daylight Savings Time, so we never change our clocks. That also means that for 1/2 of the year we have the same time as my folks, and our friends, in California. This November, California will be voting on whether to continue to adhere to Daylight Savings or not. If that passes, then we will always be an hour ahead of California. Interesting times. 
It has been a wicked long week and we are so glad it’s finally Friday! It seems like Monday was about a month ago. Rather than pick one thing to write on, like I did earlier this week, I thought I’d do one of those general run down things that we sometimes do to catch you up on what’s been happening around the farm. Shall we get started then? 
So, it was a rather quiet weekend and on into today. Not a whole lot to report. Sue ended up spraining her foot – not the ankle, but the top of her foot – and it was a fine weekend to prop it up and ice it. I did go to a rehearsal Saturday, so when I got back from that we took eggs to Tom to baker in Old Bisbee. Got back home just in time to do chores. One of our neighbors wanted to purchase eggs, so we made a deal to meet her at the gate around 5. Oops! We totally forgot. Silly people that we are. They were honking, but we were watching The Fellowship of the Ring, which completely drowned out her desperate attempts to contact us. She even called and texted me, but my phone was on “do not disturb” so that didn’t work either. Have no fear, though; we worked it out that we’d leave some eggs in a cooler by the front gate for her to pick up sometime Sunday morning as we are generally gone to church starting at 8:00 a.m. Wrote a thank you note, and gave her an extra 1/2 dozen for all the trouble. I think she’s still happy and, if that’s the worst thing to happen on a weekend, that’s a good weekend. 
This is the end of the week report. I’ve been trying to see if I can scare up some photos, but – no joy. So it’s a photo-less Friday for you. Sorry about that. I looked through the latest photos on my phone, the only one I haven’t shared with you is one I’m saving for next month. I’ll just run through some highlights. 
Wing and a Prayer 