Looking at the dark side of life

My neighbor John stopped by to visit me on Monday.

Timmy was home from school as it was the end of the quarter. John used to stop by every single day until Tom and I got jobs away from our farm. John lives alone on his farm five miles from our farm. He lived with his mother until she moved to town about 15 years ago. I asked him how he was doing and he said, "Oh, fair to middling. My water froze up when it was cold, but that was to be expected. I had the plants in the house upstairs to keep warm, and they froze a bit too."

"Didn't you have your furnace on?" I asked.

"Well, some. I tried to keep the house heated with the wood stove in the living room. I guess it wasn't warm enough," he said.

I then asked him how his cattle were doing.

"Oh, pretty good. I am going to run out of hay this year. I will have to buy hay for the first time," he said.

"How many cattle do you have?" I asked.

"Twenty-two, plus the two draft horses," John said.

John's dad, Keith farmed with draft horses until he died in 1980. John doesn't use his horses; he just likes having them around. His dad, Keith was a reader and a deep thinker and felt that people needed to use less energy and take care of the land hands-on. He was extreme in his thinking and rather ornery in that it was difficult to work along side him.

My husband, Tom went to help him one summer when he was threshing oats with an old threshing machine. Keith had a tremendous amount of energy and moved nonstop. Tom was impressed with how the machine worked and the large stack of straw it made. Tom couldn't work around the dust from the straw and grain very long as he has asthma.

John had a hard time working with his dad, as Keith lost patience with him. My impression of John's dad was that he felt that no one could work as hard as he could.

Keith's work ethic didn't rub off on his son. John takes each day slower and will not be pushed. He doesn't like to fuss with machinery and is limited on what machinery works on his farm.

John mentioned that hardly anyone puts up small bales of hay anymore and he doesn't have the equipment to haul large bales of hay to his farm. He has to figure out some way to get the hay to his cattle. I asked him how some acquaintances of ours were doing and he said, "Not so good. They are having money problems and can't keep up with the upkeep on all their buildings."

I asked him about a few other people, and they had problems too. I didn't want to hear depressing news about anyone else. John always brings up the negative news about any and everything.

In his house his mother had a plaque that had Murphy's Law written on it. Murphy's Law states that anything that could go wrong will go wrong. That is John's philosophy in life. He relishes the fact when things do go wrong he isn't surprised as he figures everything will usually go wrong. He is more amazed and suspicious when things turn out right.

Since I didn't want to hear any more negative news that made people look bad, I gave John a book to read and went about my work. He read for about an hour and a half. He stopped reading for a while when he ate lunch with Timmy and me. I talked to my daughter Bridget on the phone after John left. I told her that John had been to visit and that he had spent most of the time reading a book. Bridget said that she would like to be able to go to someone's house and just sit and read.

"That sounds really relaxing to do because then nothing is expected of you," she said.

"Yeah, I guess it is nice," I said.

I then thought that John must be surprised that he had a positive visit. But knowing him, he will say something negative about something to someone later on. That's just his way.

Take those icy corners slowly

The gravel road in front of my house is slick with heavy ice.

The school bus that picks up my son hasn't been able to stop at our driveway to pick Timmy up, it slides right by. Timmy must walk down the road to get on the bus after it finally glides to a stop.

This ice is dangerous to drive on and walk around on outside. Older people will be staying indoors more because it is too dangerous to walk on the icy sidewalks. Breaking a wrist or hip can happen quickly on the dangerous ice.

The heavy ice on the roads and sidewalks will make the winter seem longer. It is taking me an extra 15 minutes to drive on the secondary roads before I can get to the main roads that are more cleared off.

Around 12 years ago we had a winter similar to this one. Most of that winter the gravel roads had the same heavy coating of ice on them that they do this winter. This was the first winter that my son, Danny, had his farmer's license. He was in basketball and took turns driving back and forth to practice with another neighbor boy his age.

The two did fine driving to morning practices, but at night after a practice when they were pumped up full of energy and hungry, whoever was driving would often take the turn on the gravel road to our house too fast. Night, after night Danny would slide his vehicle into the ditch. Tom had to pull his car out with our tractor night after night. One night the neighbor boy, Jay, was driving his dad's four-wheel-drive pickup when he took the corner too fast and slid the truck into the ditch.

Jay told Danny, "Ah this is nothing, we can drive into the field and get right out of here."

Jay drove the pickup further down into the ditch and crashed through the snow, into the plowed field. The ground underneath wasn't frozen, and the field was soft and muddy. Jay got the pick up stuck even deeper. He and Danny walked the quarter mile to our house and called Jay's dad. His dad drove over with another four-wheel-drive pick up, and he got this stuck. Tom drove him home to get his tractor, which was larger than ours. It became a long cold night getting the two vehicles out of the field.

Needless to say, Jay's dad was really upset and loudly proclaimed to his son to drive more carefully and to slow down. Actually he said a lot more than that, but I wasn't present to hear it. Danny and Tom said that they had never seen him so angry.

Tom and I decided that Danny was getting a good lesson in winter driving. But when a young boy is 15 and driving for the first time, it takes him a while to get the message to slow down in his head.

A couple nights after the incident of the two trucks in the ditch, I was taking a walk at night with my daughter Bridget, and I heard Danny's car coming down the road. The car had a distinct sound that went tick, tick, tick as it drove along and could be heard a mile away.

I said to Bridget, "Here comes Danny. He is driving too fast again. Let's head up into the fields because I know he will be going into the ditch again, and I don't want to see it."

Bridget and I headed up into the fields and took a long walk. When we got home, Tom said that he had just gotten indoors from pulling Danny out of the ditch again. Bridget and I acted as if we hadn't heard Danny driving home.

Danny never did learn to slow down that year, but he is safe driver now. All my kids had to learn to slow down, as have I. This winter, I will be taking my time driving on these icy roads as I don't want to end up in the ditch. Take care yourself on the icy roads and sidewalks the next couple of months.

Time to plan spring planting

I hate the cold, cold weather we had over the weekend.

The water pipes in my torn-up kitchen froze up along with the drains. I told Tom this is the last year I am putting up with this craziness. My patience has run out. I did have running water in the basement and the bathroom sink, so I wasn't without water entirely, but I couldn't do dishes. There is a large pile of dishes to wash and the pile keeps getting bigger.

Oh, Tom just called me while I am writing this on Tuesday afternoon. He told me that he had gotten the water thawed out and was slowly getting through the huge pile of dishes. Unfortunately, while he was thawing the water out, the hot water came on while he was outdoors and the drain in the bathtub was still frozen. The bathtub overflowed.

It has been one of those weeks when everything seems to be going wrong. I broke off a piece on my computer that connects the printer, so now my printer doesn't work. Because I couldn't work on my computer or do dishes, I decided to do my pilate work out.

The DVD player wouldn't turn on at all. My daughter, Mary says I probably need a new DVD player because we live in such an old house, dust must have gotten into the machine. I have been spending a lot of time working on modern conveniences that are not making my life convenient at all.

Because it was so cold last weekend, I spent Saturday evening pouring over seed catalogs to boost my dismal mood. I have to be careful I don't go overboard in ordering too many seeds. All the colorful plants look so wonderful in the catalogs.

I became uplifted for a little while thinking that the frozen ground outdoors really will thaw out in the next couple of months for planting. I underlined the seeds and plants I plan to order from the different catalogs. From my experience with last summer's garden, I know that if I want to buy certain seeds or plants from the seed companies, I have to order them soon or they will be all sold out .

Last year I wanted to buy a tomato called Tangerine Sweet from Burpee's Seeds. It is described as generously golden and astonishingly sweet and ripens in 68 days. I called Burpee's Seed Company in late March and this tomato seed was all sold out. I am going to order Tangerine Sweet Tomato this week to make sure I have it for summer planting.

I ordered garlic last fall, but I ordered it too late to plant it in the ground. I saved all the garlic bulbs and will plant them this spring as soon as the ground thaws.

It probably is good that I am waiting to plant the garlic bulbs until spring, because last spring the garlic I planted in the fall, Tom accidentally tilled it all up when he went to till the garden for spring planting. There went my garlic and hard work.

So right now, I am dreaming of warmer weather, planting and machines that work properly. January often seems as if it is the longest month of the year with its cold, cold temperatures. Tom says he hates January, but at least February is a shorter month. I better order those seeds soon.