but my wheels won't go

I often sing a bit while doing chores.

Sometimes I sing to focus my mind and remain calm when life is complicated.

I think Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" got me through chores the entire first year after the 2016 election.

Sometimes I sing to distract the goats while they are being combed. I'll bet my goats know more Hamilton material than just about any other goats.

Even my own special segue from "The Room Where It Happens" into "Quiet Uptown." Whew, I can almost make them cry with that one.

Well, do you remember the Cat Stevens* song, "Fill My Eyes"?

This song has become the whimsical sound track for my morning chores these days:

"I'm just a coaster but my wheels won't go..."

I own two wheelbarrows, a garden cart, and - a very recent acquisition - a tiny open trailer designed to be towed behind a utility tractor or whatever those machines are called. Every one of these items was secondhand and, except for latest, each has already given me years of yeoman's work.

Unfortunately, at the moment, none of my four cargo-movers has its requisite number of functioning wheels. In fact the wheelbarrows don't have one functioning wheel between them and my fanciful idea of cobbling one sound undercarriage out of parts from two very different wheelbarrows hit a snag quite early on.

If the pandemic hadn't put a crimp in even my limited amount of normal "travel," I would have made a determined effort to get the garden cart in working order by early April. I knew at least one tire was in sad shape last Autumn. Once the snow is gone, I rely on the cart to move bales of hay from the roundtop to the "central distribution landing" between the barns. The bales I'm feeding now are particularly heavy, and - although I don't like to admit it and have had to prove it to myself over and over again - I cannot carry a whole bale that far. So I have to open a bale in the roundtop, stuff flakes of the hay into a big plastic bin, and carry the bin out to the paddocks.

It takes three or four trips per bale. Four to six trips per day.

"I'm just a coaster but my wheels won't go...
my legs are weak, my heels are low."

After the initial rebuild, 2015

The extra work isn't a bad thing in and of itself (I could live without it), but every time I open a bale, some hay falls to the ground. Every time I grab a flake to stuff into a bin, some hay falls to the ground. Every time I put the bin down to open a gate, carry the bin through the gate, then put it down again to close the gate, ditto and ditto. I've been trailing hay all over the place, several times a day, and the wastefulness is very frustrating. Considering how often the goats hear a lecture about not wasting hay, this very much smacks of "Do what I say, not what I do!" 

Still going strong in 2016...right through 2019

So on today's early-morning walk with Piper - which is when I got all these fern portraits you may have been wondering about - I decided to Take Steps. As soon as we were home and Piper was having her breakfast, I got online and found a bicycle shop a half-hour away that is open, with appropriate levels of distancing and caution. I've emailed my cart details to the shop with a request for an estimate. The tires may be standard bike tires, but the axle of the cart is different from a typical bike axle, so the job may hang on whether the rims are still in good shape.

I'm hoping this won't turn into one of those decisions about replacing an entire  item because the relative cost of parts is so high. I don't enjoy those decisions.

On the other hand, this little cart has worked very hard for a long time and "doesn't owe me a thing," as the saying goes. Do you remember the state it was in when I found it?

2014: the original "cart" - a jumble of metal parts

~~~

*  "Fill My Eyes" 1970 by Cat Stevens, who later changed his name to Yusuf Islam and stepped away from music to focus on doing good in the world, and now, later still, is known by both names and for using music as a vehicle for doing good in the world. He's always been On The Road To Find Out, that fellow.

~~~~~

in like a lion

March did indeed come in like a lion this year.

It began with a roaring, middle-of-the-night windstorm that brought down a great many branches - but would likely have taken down entire trees had they already leafed out, so we were lucky. No injuries, no damage to buildings, no power lines down.

There was this small, localized bit of misfortune:

It's the top of a maple, that snapped and fell across the roundtop. I was able to pull it off with that line, but...

Possibly later I can buy replacement sections for the very bent frame pieces, but there's no point in moving all the hay now; it will be fed and gone soon enough. Meanwhile, I've got a tarp tied down over the many holes poked in the cover. It'll do.

~~~

We had snow for three days in the first week of March, but the sort of dusting that one can thoroughly enjoy; an end-of-season novelty, soon to be just a sparkly memory.

Of course the reality is, we've had massive snowstorms in April, and I recall once being stuck in my own driveway in May. But despite this...when the season is shifting and days are growing longer and are sometimes pleasantly warm, it is easier to perceive snow as a transient and beautifying gift. Which is why I don't think this titmouse was worried at the moment when freezing rain turned to snow yesterday:

"Snow? Let's see...a variety of seeds,
a perch all to myself,
under an overhang...
and it was 60F yesterday.
I'm good."

~~~

Scattered between all this rain and snow and wind, there have been some blue-sky-and-shirtsleeves days. Some outdoor carpentry project days.

 Some let's-muck-out-the-barn days.

And even a couple of "drag the chaise out to the Upper West Side paddock and knit for an hour after chores" days.

Yes, actual knitting.

With agreeable company.

And valuable opinions when requested.

~~~

So, here we are quite suddenly halfway into March, and it's been characteristically changeable so far.

I wonder what will happen next?

~~~~~

winter sun

It's raining today, after two days of bright sunshine.

These pictures were taken on Christmas Day.

This one was taken shortly after high noon.

"High"?

Ha!

Can you believe those shadows?

Here's Tansy, the quiet little girl with the valentine face.

And here's Azalea. She's pretty special.

I wish I could have bred her this year.

Left to right: Betula, LeShodu, and Acer.

The Big Goats.

Here's Azalea again, with her mum, Lily.

My little camera could not cope with this high-contrast world.

"Focus? How do you expect me to focus?"

And because some things are the same every day,

rain or shine,

Christmas included:

(Remember this garden cart? It used to look like this.)

Wishing everyone a lovely Sunday, whatever your weather.

~~~~~

rainy or not

Autumn continues!

Between recent days of rain and strong wind, there has been the welcome gift of dazzling sun. Clever Piper does not waste an opportunity to bask in the doorway of the screenporch, at a comfortable distance above the saturated ground:

On such sunny days, the few remaining garden plants can be pulled up, and either added to one of next year's garden beds or shared out amongst the goats and hens.

Rainy Day Projects have been getting more attention. Some are routine indoor tasks, like housework (seriously necessary at this point, I'm embarrassed to admit), and, more happily, a little more WIPCrackAway knitting:

But some Rainy Day Projects can be tackled in the sheds or barn. Which is nice, because I can't even see the housework from there.

Months ago, I found the tangled pieces of a garden cart at the dump. My plan was simply to salvage the wheels and axle, then take the remaining odds and ends back to the dump. But once home, I realized many of the metal frame pieces were semi-attached. Maybe...I could rebuild an entire cart?

All summer, I've been using a sadly rusted-out wheelbarrow (lined with plastic feedbags, which actually turned out to be fabulous carriers for loose materials going to the VRB!) and postponing the garden cart project, which had all the earmarks of an endeavor that would require multiple unplanned trips to a hardware store and possibly a lumberyard.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to admit that the tangle of parts was a bit intimidating, and rather than waste a lot of time trying (and ultimately failing) to reconstruct something, I should simply bite the bullet and buy a new, heavyduty wheelbarrow.

I wish I had taken this step sooner!

Because...

well, have you bought a wheelbarrow lately?

I looked at a few ordinary wheelbarrows. Nothing special.

The prices averaged two hundred dollars.

For a wheelbarrow.

I didn't even get as far as looking to see if they were made in Not China, which is usually my first step in shopping.

The very next rainy day, I completely dismantled the tangle of garden cart pieces, and started the process of trying to cobble together something useful. I may not succeed, but there is now a pretty strong incentive to try. Here in Goat World, $200 = 40 bales of hay.

Wish me luck!

~~~~~