Aliens have landed in the back field

Posted on September 16, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

As you can likely appreciate, it’s pretty dark at the farm once the sun goes down. There’s no glow of city lights. The closest street light is about a kilometre away. The stars and the moon are our only light.

So imagine Matt and me arriving home very late one night last week. It’s a moonless night, so it’s pitch black outside. We can see the glow of the cats’ eyes in the headlights… and some very bright lights circling the back field. We’re a wee bit startled.

It turned out that it wasn’t aliens who had flown over the fence and it wasn’t hooligans who had somehow broken in past our newly installed gate. It was our farmer finishing our second hay harvest of the year.

The finished bales are loaded onto the trailer.

For those wondering how he got past the gate, our fields are gated separately and can be accessed from the road.

Owning a farm but not actually farming the land ourselves creates an interesting dynamic. It’s our land, but we don’t manage it ourselves, so sometimes we’re surprised by what happens when we’re not there.

We weren’t sure whether we were going to have a second cut this year because the summer was so dry and the hay was looking very scraggly to my untrained eye. However, apparently there was enough for a harvest because when I came home from work one evening last week I found all of the fields had been mowed.

A couple of days later all of the hay was baled, and by nightfall it was loaded up and trucked away.

So no alien sightings on the farm. At least not yet. We are however keeping our eyes open for crop circles in our freshly mowed fields.

I’m missing my front-end loader gene

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

You know when you see those large machines working away, effortlessly moving large piles of dirt, easily scooping massive rocks, bopping along over the roughest terrain? I’ve discovered there’s a lot of skill that goes into this mechanical ballet.

Skills I apparently don’t have.

Wiley’s been getting a workout over the last little while, cutting, hauling, scooping and carrying. He’s a great partner when it comes to managing the property. Me, however? I’m not such a good teammate.

My specific issue is with the front-end loader.

I just do not find the front-end loader intuitive.

I raise when I want to scoop, I dump when I want to raise. It’s all kinds of awkward.

Please ignore the long grass and the basketball net. Landscaping is next year’s project.

The front end loader is controlled by a joystick. Move it up to raise the bucket, down to lower the bucket. Move it to the left and the bucket curls up. Move it right and the bucket tips to dump.

Maybe it’s because I never played video games growing up, but I just can’t master the joystick. I’m forever moving it the wrong way and end up digging the blade into the ground or prematurely dumping my bucket.

We finally got the new waterline trenched into the driveshed last week, and I decided to backfill the trench. While the job did go quicker with Wiley than it would have with a shovel, I was not efficient by any means. Poor Wiley must have been so confused. “Why is she dumping the dirt here when the hole is over there?”

Yeah. It wasn’t pretty.

Every so often I’d hop off the tractor and grab the shovel or the rake to deal with a random pile by hand.

Matt, Mr. I-love-video-games, has no such issues with the loader. Allow him to demonstrate.

This is how you position the bucket to carry a load. This one happens to be one of the many piles of rocks that exist around the property.

This is how you dump a load out of the bucket.

So is my lack of front-end loader ability an actual genetic deficiency? Or do you think front-end loader manipulation can be learned? Should I hook up Matt’s old Jump Man game for some joystick practice?

I live in a gated community

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

It’s a very exclusive enclave we have here in the country.

Population: 2 (plus 1 cat and 1 kitten)

With our new gate in place at the bottom of the driveway, farm living has become quite chi-chi.

Open sesame

Actually, setting aside my new pretensions, we installed the gate for security. We’re far enough from civilization that neighbours or police really wouldn’t be much help to us in the event of a break in. If we’re home we can keep an eye on things, but when we’re not the gate may just be enough of a deterrent to people who are thinking about trespassing.

I’ll admit that I was initially pretty resistant to having a gate. I don’t like the way they look, and I didn’t want the inconvenience of opening and closing it when I was coming and going.

However, I actually like the way our gate ended up looking. It’s still a bit of a pain to stop, open the gate, drive through, park and close the gate when you’re leaving or arriving, but it’s a small price to pay for feeling secure about our house.

It’s a simple set up: just a chain and a padlock

If you want in, you have to have the key

My Dad and Matt made some metal hooks to support the gate when it’s closed and when it’s propped open.

The hook supports the gate to ease the weight on the hinges and also secures the gate in place.

We do like having visitors at the farm–at least from people we know. So if you’re planning on dropping by, let us know, and we’ll open the gate for you!

Welcome to the farm

Anyone out there live in an actual gated community? How do you deal with security at your house?

See my earlier post for the story of setting the posts for the gate.

Signs of September

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

On Friday I got all sentimental… and metaphorical and poetical… about the sun setting on another summer. I realize officially we have a few weeks left, but here we are the start of September (already!) and things are starting to feel a bit different.

They’re starting to look a bit different too

To mark the start of September, one of our maple trees has already started turning red.

I don’t mean to alarm you, but the change is not limited to just a handful of leaves

So far, the change does seem to be limited to the one tree.

But the whole tree is involved in the metamorphosis

I think it’s coming, people. Yes, it’s the f-word (not that one!), soon to be followed by the big W.

Are you ready?

Rain clouds at sunset

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

As the sun sank fully below the horizon, the clouds lifted.

A wave of bright peach orange floated across the bottom of the sky glowing brightly behind the dark spires of the trees. The light flowed up, ebbing to a light grey blue splashed with the dark flotsam of the rain clouds. Following the light up into the sky, my view shifted to the darkening east where the deep blue tide of night rose.

Wildflower week – Goldenrod

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Matt and I have decided to take it easy this week, so the blog is going to be a little quieter than usual. To tide you over until we resume our regular program of renovations, I present a week of wildflower pictures from around the farm. Thank you for allowing me to loaf a little.