Saturday, August 15

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Our friends who came to help us frame up the addition today. They are a couple, who also live on an acreage, and we trade back and forth with them to do work together (we have one other couple like this too). It's an amazing thing, to have a few friends to form a network to do work together or trade things, or lend tools and equipment. It has become a rare thing indeed. My sweetie is a valuable helpmate to anyone, since he can build or install all kinds of things. He can do electrical to proper code, he can do plumbing, he can do carpentry, install a window or a door, do siding, hang drywall, do roofing, build a fence or a shed. It's not too tough for him to attract friendships with people who want to come help us with projects, because he is so skillful that having him come help them with something saves hundreds of dollars, and he's a loyal person who will come out and help just about anyone who asks. Then, the expectation is that person will help where they can for us at some point. It's a good system, and it works.

Personally, I find it strange that he ended up working in an office, though it is for a construction company, and his background means that he is good at interacting with the people working on the project.

A surprisingly good day of working on the addition. It was good weather, and the frame went up quickly for the first story, and it was fun bantering with the couple helping us. It's nice to see people. I gave them some of the honey from our bee project.

Support from a friend at the barn. I had another disappointing interaction with the barn owner today. I was looking at the hay she just baled, to see if it was dusty or moldy, because of River's breathing difficulty. Nine times out of ten, the breathing will improve with nothing more than better hay. In fact, there might not even be any point in treating him if they hay isn't good, as he will go right back to having problems. I looked at the hay in his feeder, and yes, it's quite dusty. So, I went over to a row of the new bales, and found one bale that was "hot". That means the hay was too wet when it was baled, and it's fermenting and heating up. This is extremely dangerous, because the bale can actually ignite if it gets hot enough, and it was right against the outside wall of her arena, with a row of other bales, so the whole thing could go up in flames. Not to mention that fermenting hay would kill horses if fed to them. So, I did the right thing and I called her, and tried to warn her about the fermenting hay bale, so that she could move it away from the buildings.

You know what her reaction was? Anger that I was checking the bales for problems. She felt that I didn't trust her to know how to check hay moisture. Anger that I was bothering her at all about the hay. Once again, her response was that if I didn't like how things were being done, I could leave. She was not one bit interested in hearing about a threat to the horses, or her buildings.

This friend that was at the barn today came and looked at the hay with me, and she agreed that it was heating and fermenting, and she supported my decision to call the barn owner, and at least made me feel like it was the right thing to do, even if I was met with anger.

Coming home, and my sweetie helping me to clean the turtle tank thoroughly by taking it outside and scraping and pressure washing all of this extremely persistent algae off of the sides and bottom of it (the tank is a big plastic horse water trough). It was a big job, and it was already a long day, but every day this one job was getting put off again and again. It had to be done.

Having the chili that I made yesterday (our friends didn't stay for supper), and it was very good.

Watching an older movie called "Beautiful Creatures" and enjoying it.