Know what I hate? Shoes that don't last and litter.
I just got done listening to myself take a walk. Squeak. Squawk. Squeak. Squawk. If I had bought these shoes cheap at Goodwill, I would say you get what you pay for.....but no. I bought these NEW in November (count....that was 4 months ago) for $85. That's not cheap and it wasn't that long ago. I think I must've stepped on something and poked a hole in the air bladder (is that what it's called?) in my Nike Air Walkers. So now I squeak. And squawk.
And if it would be only MY shoes that are disintegrating on my very feet, I wouldn't be complaining so much. Noooooo. My children's shoes are likewise disintegrating. And again, if they would be cheap shoes I picked up at Goodwill.....but no. They likewise have been receiving $50-90 shoes that are literally falling apart within months of light use.
Brock just brought me his "good" shoes. Total and complete blow out. I asked him when I bought them. October. October was like 5 months ago and he only wears them on Sunday and to town.
You see, my boys wear boots a good deal of the time otherwise. And we are always buying those, too. Right now all of them are equipped with Muck boots. At $80 a pop, I am glad to see they at least seem to be lasting a little while, longer than the special order $30-a -pair-other rubber boots we were getting. Every time I turned around someone was announcing another hole in his boot.
Oh wait. Brock just informed me that the big boys all have another kind of boots. "Quatros" that are $110 a pair. Wow. I never order the boots, Paul does.
Every so often I go through the pile of discarded boots in the mud room and try to match up pairs and then pitch all the "widows". When so many people wear the same-ish size I can sometimes couple a few together and make a "pair" go a few extra miles. The girls, however, refuse to ever, ever wear the boys' boots. I don't blame them. I've tried it. Yuck.
The twins especially have been window shopping snazzy shoes online for quite a while. I am hesitant. Not that I want to begrudge them shoes. I just don't want to be plunking down, now, $120 for a pair of footwear that won't last any longer than the $80 ones. If I knew they'd last, then yes. But I don't know and I'm sick of being duped.
And now the litter. I take what is supposed to be a nice walk in the country side and there is discarded trash every where. Really, people, is it that hard to save it to throw into a trash can when you get some place? Even gas stations have trash cans right next to the pump. It's not that hard.
I am thinking of the trip Paul and I just took. Whoa. I suppose it is because it is the end of winter and nobody has been out picking up trash, but there sure is a lot of it out along the roads right now in at least 4 states that I know of.
I think of littering akin to stealing. Stealing time. I think of that every spring when we have to clean up our fence rows and fields from a winter's worth of people pitching stuff out their car and truck windows. I think if people would pause for a moment and consider what happens when a cow ingests metal with a mouthful of grass or steps on a broken bottle, they might rethink their garbage disposal habits.
And let's not talk about the 30 (no kidding) little sandwich bags our neighbor children leave behind while they are finishing up their snacks as they walk home from school every day. Did I mention this before? I am thinking of putting out a trash can for them.
It's stealing the time away from the people who have to clean up after you when you throw garbage out your window. Really.
So, there are my two grievances for the day. So listen for the squeaking and squawking coming from my shoe. I'll probably be out with a feed bag gathering up garbage from beside the road......
~ Colleen
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Maple Season
Thanks, Shannah, for the pictures! She stayed up at the house washing dishes and then came down to the woods to capture the moments, so she isn't in any of the pictures. Maria was babysitting somewhere else all day and wasn't there for the pictures either. Oh, and Clark was running through the woods and wasn't caught on camera. Mom and Dad were in Missouri on this particular tapping day.
Home Sweet Home
Whoever said farmers stick close to home and don't get out much didn't know my husband.
We just got back from a 1900 miles trek across America to go pick up some tractor fenders and other sundry stuff for our farm that Paul bought on Ebay over the last couple of months. He made arrangements for the sellers to hold the items until we had enough things to make it worth a great, big, long trip to go get them.
It wouldn't have been completely worth it, except we have dear friends in the Missouri Ozarks that we decided to go see as well. They are a family that does a similar type of farming. They also make awesome jam and soap (which we brought home with us).
The most oft asked question when Paul and I leave for any amount of time is: who is watching the children?
Themselves. Not only were they watching themselves, they were actually running the farm while we were gone. They're talented like that.
I'm told they tapped about 160 maple trees while we were gone. Garth is rather good at heading up that project this year. When we were leaving on Friday he was preparing the maple sap bags that I had picked up at our supplier earlier that day.
Logan usually works at framing houses these days and isn't home a lot, but he was home on Monday and helped the rest of the children tap trees.
A note on the sap bags: this is new this year. Our Amish maple equipment supplier highly recommended that we join the bag rage because it is so much better than using the 5 gallon buckets we have always used up until now. There are quite a few downsides to using buckets to catch the sap from the trees that become non-issues with bags that hang from the spiles. The buckets blow over in the wind (or get knocked over by cows if they see them!), get leaves and debris in them, get water in them when it rains, and they are a feat and a half to wash and store. At the end of the season you recycle the bags. And if you think that is wasteful.....you can wash the buckets next time.
Actually, Geof our helper says if we ever get a new apprentice, he wants to break him in. With a sinister laugh he says he knows just what he'll do. He'll make the guy wash buckets on his first day on the job. hee hee hee. That is, by the way, the first assignment we gave Geof when he got here three years ago!
Looks like everyone survived fine in our absence. We took Clay with us, of course. When we leave, I'm told they all fall into a seamless rhythm and get along with one another splendidly. Apparently when we come around again, they relax knowing that Mom and Dad are again taking the helm and they turn back into normal children.
Audrey did send a text at one point telling me she didn't like the "new fangled diapers" I have because she couldn't figure out the snap configuration on the cloth diapers I use for Trevor. Diapers are definitely a Mom job at our house, but she stepped in and did it. :)
It is certainly good to be home again. The rest of the family had to essentially push me out the door when we left because I really didn't want to leave all my bunny bunchkins like that, but we all had a nice weekend.
The children weren't working here the whole time, by the way. Some of them went to a decorating class, Maria was baby sitting another family's children, Audrey did a shift at the thrift store where some of us work, a couple of them went to a gun show, on Sunday they went to church and then in the evening they went to a friend's house. I'm sitting here trying to figure out how they crammed that much into one weekend.
~Colleen
We just got back from a 1900 miles trek across America to go pick up some tractor fenders and other sundry stuff for our farm that Paul bought on Ebay over the last couple of months. He made arrangements for the sellers to hold the items until we had enough things to make it worth a great, big, long trip to go get them.
It wouldn't have been completely worth it, except we have dear friends in the Missouri Ozarks that we decided to go see as well. They are a family that does a similar type of farming. They also make awesome jam and soap (which we brought home with us).
The most oft asked question when Paul and I leave for any amount of time is: who is watching the children?
Themselves. Not only were they watching themselves, they were actually running the farm while we were gone. They're talented like that.
I'm told they tapped about 160 maple trees while we were gone. Garth is rather good at heading up that project this year. When we were leaving on Friday he was preparing the maple sap bags that I had picked up at our supplier earlier that day.
Logan usually works at framing houses these days and isn't home a lot, but he was home on Monday and helped the rest of the children tap trees.
A note on the sap bags: this is new this year. Our Amish maple equipment supplier highly recommended that we join the bag rage because it is so much better than using the 5 gallon buckets we have always used up until now. There are quite a few downsides to using buckets to catch the sap from the trees that become non-issues with bags that hang from the spiles. The buckets blow over in the wind (or get knocked over by cows if they see them!), get leaves and debris in them, get water in them when it rains, and they are a feat and a half to wash and store. At the end of the season you recycle the bags. And if you think that is wasteful.....you can wash the buckets next time.
Actually, Geof our helper says if we ever get a new apprentice, he wants to break him in. With a sinister laugh he says he knows just what he'll do. He'll make the guy wash buckets on his first day on the job. hee hee hee. That is, by the way, the first assignment we gave Geof when he got here three years ago!
Looks like everyone survived fine in our absence. We took Clay with us, of course. When we leave, I'm told they all fall into a seamless rhythm and get along with one another splendidly. Apparently when we come around again, they relax knowing that Mom and Dad are again taking the helm and they turn back into normal children.
Audrey did send a text at one point telling me she didn't like the "new fangled diapers" I have because she couldn't figure out the snap configuration on the cloth diapers I use for Trevor. Diapers are definitely a Mom job at our house, but she stepped in and did it. :)
It is certainly good to be home again. The rest of the family had to essentially push me out the door when we left because I really didn't want to leave all my bunny bunchkins like that, but we all had a nice weekend.
The children weren't working here the whole time, by the way. Some of them went to a decorating class, Maria was baby sitting another family's children, Audrey did a shift at the thrift store where some of us work, a couple of them went to a gun show, on Sunday they went to church and then in the evening they went to a friend's house. I'm sitting here trying to figure out how they crammed that much into one weekend.
~Colleen
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