welp it’s the solstice
Jun. 22nd, 2018 01:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2tt17Nj
longest day of the year and i’m out in a camper in the driveway by the barn trying to get my niece to fall the fuck asleep
actually it worked pretty well though. so. score one for me.
and now i have an excuse to pass out at 9:15 pm.
let’s hope we can actually sleep through the night…
I’m signed up for babysitting tomorrow night so sister and her husband can have a date night, but then they remembered they each had separate obligations tonight that were not really kid-compatible, so. Tomorrow night, Middle-Little sis is coming and we can collaboratively babysit, and we’ll do something fun, like go out for sundaes or roast marshmallows or something.
I don’t remember this week, already. It’s been a blur.
Today there were some Adventures. Thursdays are the day that the egg hens move pastures, so both parents are required to be present for chores, start time 7am sharp, and since Farmkid doesn’t reliably wake up that early, it gets hairy when I’m not here. But this morning they just went, and I sat around waiting for the kid to wake up.
At 7:35 I finally went upstairs to check on her, because every goddamn Sunday she’s up at 5:30, and most days by 7 at least. And I found her reading quietly in bed, perfectly content.
“We gotta get to the post office at 8 to get the chicks,” I told her. “Everyone else is busy so we have to do it.”
She threw the covers off and leapt out of bed and immediately removed all her clothes, which was a little bewildering, and ran away, but then I realized she had gone to the potty, and came back in and neatly laid out an outfit for herself, shorts and a cute shirt and some knee socks and underwear, and it actually kind of matched, and she got all dressed without any fuss.
“You look like you’re ready for action!” i said.
“No!” she said, genuinely distressed. “No, I’m not!”
“Uh,” I said. “How about adventure? You look like you’re ready for an adventure!”
She perked right up. “Yes,” she said, “I am!”
I have no idea what she thought “ready for action” meant.
She packed a big backpack so that she could… ride in the car about a quarter of a mile down to the post office. We arrived there at 8am on the dot, and from the front door, we could hear the peeping. We were presented with a giant peeping box, and we drove back and went into the brooder and carefully removed the chicks, checked them all in, made sure they had feed and water, and then washed ourselves up. She put her giant backpack back on, and tied her hat to it, and filled her water bottle, and found her walking stick, and we set off mountaineering across the barnyard to find her mother.
Then we harvested flowers with her mother. We decided that giving the kid full-size adult pruners was actually the safest bet, because she needs both hands to squeeze the handle shut, so she can’t possibly catch her fingers in it. She needs to be supervised because she might hurt herself carrying them, but she can safely be allowed to cut things down with it, she just sort of isn’t… going to do a great job harvesting. And she needs her own bucket to harvest into, or the things she cuts are going to wind up mashed straight through the real flower harvest. But! It mostly went well.
And I got the first things of the season put by into the granary for drying! We really still need to clean up from last season, but. Thyme and oregano, harvested in the first flush of their readiness, not flowering yet. I’ll try to harvest more this coming week.
Then Farmbaby went with her father to a really neat special event: the Corning GlassBarge’s first event! It was very cool.
In the afternoon I worked on mending while Kid had TV time, and then we read in the camper, and then I washed eggs for like three hours. There’s a pop-up camper, the family has, and it’s in need of some repair, so it’s set up between the barn and the creek, and it has become a fort for Farmkid. It’s close enough to the house that she’s got permission to go there unattended if she so desires (she just needs to tell someone), and so she’s been spending hours in it listening to audiobooks and reading to herself. It’s really great, she’s finally able to enjoy her own company, and she loves to camp out in it.
So I decided I could camp out in it with her, at least this once. So here I am. It’s not bad. Everyone’s like “oh my gosh you’re so brave.” Listen, it’s got fewer mosquitoes than the yurt, and the wifi reaches from the house. The mattress isn’t bad at all. The real test will be if the kid stays asleep. if not, I’ve dealt with her before, and the worst-case scenario is that I bring her inside and foist her onto her parents.
So far so good, though. OK it’s 9:30, I’m totally allowed to pass the fuck out now.
Oh– I figured since it was the solstice it’d be light real late, and it was, and so it was going to be hard to get her to go to sleep, so we ran around a bunch before bedtime because I figured it wasn’t going to do any good to try not to. We had a pajama party in the yurt, at her instigation, before it was even sunset, then after we’d brushed our teeth and washed our faces, she said we should take the dog for a walk.
Why the hell not, I thought, so we did. And we got out by the garden and sure enough there was a deer in it. “Go get it!” we yelled to the dog, who– apparently couldn’t see the deer.
So Farmkid took off running through the field, and I was like “No! Don’t! Don’t do that!” There were pea fences in the way, and like– just– no! Good lord, child.
“I got this!” she yelled. “I got this!”
It’s a big field, it’s like… two football fields across. So she didn’t really get all the way there. I walked about halfway out, and picked up a couple of rocks and started chucking them.
The dog eventually saw the deer, but clearly was not really excited about the prospect. (She’d clearly been hoping we were pointing her at a groundhog. She fucking loves murdering groundhogs.) So the deer, after a couple more rocks (my arm is not what it used to be), nonchalantly walked away.
“I got this!” Farmkid yelled again, as she had been throughout. She had a piece of lettuce in her hand. I don’t know why. “Wait– where’d it go?”
“You scared it off,” I said.
“GOOD,” she said, and flung the lettuce and then went sprinting back across the field.
Then we heard a tractor coming, amazingly enough, and sure enough, the vegetable manager was still out there working, up in the upper field. He waved at us as he went by. The dog followed him back to the house. We went in to the camper and, eventually, to bed.
(Your picture was not posted)
longest day of the year and i’m out in a camper in the driveway by the barn trying to get my niece to fall the fuck asleep
actually it worked pretty well though. so. score one for me.
and now i have an excuse to pass out at 9:15 pm.
let’s hope we can actually sleep through the night…
I’m signed up for babysitting tomorrow night so sister and her husband can have a date night, but then they remembered they each had separate obligations tonight that were not really kid-compatible, so. Tomorrow night, Middle-Little sis is coming and we can collaboratively babysit, and we’ll do something fun, like go out for sundaes or roast marshmallows or something.
I don’t remember this week, already. It’s been a blur.
Today there were some Adventures. Thursdays are the day that the egg hens move pastures, so both parents are required to be present for chores, start time 7am sharp, and since Farmkid doesn’t reliably wake up that early, it gets hairy when I’m not here. But this morning they just went, and I sat around waiting for the kid to wake up.
At 7:35 I finally went upstairs to check on her, because every goddamn Sunday she’s up at 5:30, and most days by 7 at least. And I found her reading quietly in bed, perfectly content.
“We gotta get to the post office at 8 to get the chicks,” I told her. “Everyone else is busy so we have to do it.”
She threw the covers off and leapt out of bed and immediately removed all her clothes, which was a little bewildering, and ran away, but then I realized she had gone to the potty, and came back in and neatly laid out an outfit for herself, shorts and a cute shirt and some knee socks and underwear, and it actually kind of matched, and she got all dressed without any fuss.
“You look like you’re ready for action!” i said.
“No!” she said, genuinely distressed. “No, I’m not!”
“Uh,” I said. “How about adventure? You look like you’re ready for an adventure!”
She perked right up. “Yes,” she said, “I am!”
I have no idea what she thought “ready for action” meant.
She packed a big backpack so that she could… ride in the car about a quarter of a mile down to the post office. We arrived there at 8am on the dot, and from the front door, we could hear the peeping. We were presented with a giant peeping box, and we drove back and went into the brooder and carefully removed the chicks, checked them all in, made sure they had feed and water, and then washed ourselves up. She put her giant backpack back on, and tied her hat to it, and filled her water bottle, and found her walking stick, and we set off mountaineering across the barnyard to find her mother.
Then we harvested flowers with her mother. We decided that giving the kid full-size adult pruners was actually the safest bet, because she needs both hands to squeeze the handle shut, so she can’t possibly catch her fingers in it. She needs to be supervised because she might hurt herself carrying them, but she can safely be allowed to cut things down with it, she just sort of isn’t… going to do a great job harvesting. And she needs her own bucket to harvest into, or the things she cuts are going to wind up mashed straight through the real flower harvest. But! It mostly went well.
And I got the first things of the season put by into the granary for drying! We really still need to clean up from last season, but. Thyme and oregano, harvested in the first flush of their readiness, not flowering yet. I’ll try to harvest more this coming week.
Then Farmbaby went with her father to a really neat special event: the Corning GlassBarge’s first event! It was very cool.
In the afternoon I worked on mending while Kid had TV time, and then we read in the camper, and then I washed eggs for like three hours. There’s a pop-up camper, the family has, and it’s in need of some repair, so it’s set up between the barn and the creek, and it has become a fort for Farmkid. It’s close enough to the house that she’s got permission to go there unattended if she so desires (she just needs to tell someone), and so she’s been spending hours in it listening to audiobooks and reading to herself. It’s really great, she’s finally able to enjoy her own company, and she loves to camp out in it.
So I decided I could camp out in it with her, at least this once. So here I am. It’s not bad. Everyone’s like “oh my gosh you’re so brave.” Listen, it’s got fewer mosquitoes than the yurt, and the wifi reaches from the house. The mattress isn’t bad at all. The real test will be if the kid stays asleep. if not, I’ve dealt with her before, and the worst-case scenario is that I bring her inside and foist her onto her parents.
So far so good, though. OK it’s 9:30, I’m totally allowed to pass the fuck out now.
Oh– I figured since it was the solstice it’d be light real late, and it was, and so it was going to be hard to get her to go to sleep, so we ran around a bunch before bedtime because I figured it wasn’t going to do any good to try not to. We had a pajama party in the yurt, at her instigation, before it was even sunset, then after we’d brushed our teeth and washed our faces, she said we should take the dog for a walk.
Why the hell not, I thought, so we did. And we got out by the garden and sure enough there was a deer in it. “Go get it!” we yelled to the dog, who– apparently couldn’t see the deer.
So Farmkid took off running through the field, and I was like “No! Don’t! Don’t do that!” There were pea fences in the way, and like– just– no! Good lord, child.
“I got this!” she yelled. “I got this!”
It’s a big field, it’s like… two football fields across. So she didn’t really get all the way there. I walked about halfway out, and picked up a couple of rocks and started chucking them.
The dog eventually saw the deer, but clearly was not really excited about the prospect. (She’d clearly been hoping we were pointing her at a groundhog. She fucking loves murdering groundhogs.) So the deer, after a couple more rocks (my arm is not what it used to be), nonchalantly walked away.
“I got this!” Farmkid yelled again, as she had been throughout. She had a piece of lettuce in her hand. I don’t know why. “Wait– where’d it go?”
“You scared it off,” I said.
“GOOD,” she said, and flung the lettuce and then went sprinting back across the field.
Then we heard a tractor coming, amazingly enough, and sure enough, the vegetable manager was still out there working, up in the upper field. He waved at us as he went by. The dog followed him back to the house. We went in to the camper and, eventually, to bed.
(Your picture was not posted)
