Farm Filosophies

“This is the worst thing in the world that you can do to a teenager!!!!”, said the 17 year old grand daughter of one of our guests when she discovered that there was no cell phone reception at our house a couple of weeks ago. This week, we have 4 teenagers and a single mom staying with us. I mentioned the quote, and immediately all 4 of them pulled phones from their pockets to see if they had reception. For this bunch, luck is with them, they all had service of at least 1 bar - thank goodness that’s enough to text!

I try to tell people that the house is remote - and that they may not get cell service, because even though this is the 21 century, and Ohio is one of the US’s most populace states (in people/sq mile), we don’t always have service at the rental house. We don’t have it at my house either (in fact it’s actually worse than the rental house), so even though Verizon says, “Can you hear me now?”, they haven’t tried that out here apparently.

I did offer to Verizon a few months ago, the opportunity to put up a cell tower on our third farm. They haven’t responded yet. I think I’ll apply again. Stretch the truth a little, and see if I can get them to come out. My neighbor says you just have to complain enough, and they’ll eventually get you service. I’m not sure about that.

For now, my philosophy is that getting out side and enjoying the great outdoors would be a better use of our teenager’s time. I actually think being without the phone while I’m at home is a peaceful break from the modern super-fast world we live in, and I actually hope that Verizon doesn’t get service out here until after my teenager becomes an adult. I think she’ll be a better person for not always having to be connected to people via the phone. She’s now writing to her friends as I write, “WTF is my mother thinking? LoL. TTFN”

You will never believe the conversation going on at our house this morning. First you have to understand that we live in Rural Ohio, where in spite of the fact that it is 2010, we do not get cell phone coverage. We live within 60 miles of the city of Columbus but in such a low population area of Ohio that there aren’t any nearby cell towers. Verizon has the best coverage out here, but we must drive to the top of a hill (about a mile away) to get enough signal to make and receive calls.

Next you need to understand that we have no cable television, nor do we have city water. There are no cables besides the phone cables that run past our house - and the phone cables are old, and have static in them sometimes. So we have satellite TV and Internet at our houses if we want to connect with the outside world.

So, last night we had a thunderstorm that didn’t sound all that bad, but took out the power! The power at our house blinks every day - how do I know? Well, daily, I must reset the clocks and the message on the answering machine. Anyway, this morning, we awoke to now power in the house - which means - since we are on a well, that we can’t flush the toilets without power to kick the pump on. Well, you can, once! So, I was laying in bed this morning contemplating my options for using the facilities - when low and behold, the power comes back on.

In a rare burst of morning energy - I jumped out of bed, and said, “Does that mean I can flush the toilet now?” I said to my husband. “Yes”, he said. Then, after I used the toilet, when I hit the lever and it flushed I said, “That is just AWSOME.” Hummm, funny rural world we live in.

Home Away from Home advertised on the Superbowl and all heck is breaking loose. The secret is out, and people have been “flocking” to vacation rentals, ours included. Of course, at our place you can really see sheep, cows and horses. You can check us out at www.HomeAway.com/184064 or on VRB).com/233794 or check out our calendar here on this website, under “Availability”. We’ve got a few weekends yet available this year, but they are going fast.

We’re starting some construction work in August - an expansion project as money and time will allow. We hope to make the basement into another large gathering space for scrapbooking or parties. Eventually, if it works out, maybe a separate apartment…. we’ll have to see what the reaction is to that.

What project shall we think of next?

We got hit pretty hard this year with snow. Right now there is still snow on the ground, and Frank started separating sheep yesterday for lambing. He’s got them all in little pens, about 4-6 per pen. Makes for more work, but it keeps the sheep gentler when he needs to get in with them for tagging and weighing, and heaven forbid helping! He’s even got so many that they are over flowing the barn into the shed he built on the garage last year. I’m glad we have it. Should be nice for those moms to have fresh air after all the sheep have been in the barn for the last few weeks.

Lambing is coming - the first lambs due about 3/10. Frank says they don’t seem to come early, and we’re hoping the weather will return to something more “normal” while we lamb. Last time we did this in March we lost several babies that just got too cold. Let’s hope we’re better this year, that the weather cooperates, and that the sheep are a bit hardier! Can’t wait to have all the little lambies running around. They’re so adorable.

The snow just keeps falling and falling. We have about 8 inches so far that came down all in one day yesterday, and we are expecting up to another 4 inches today - although the flakes are way smaller than yesterday.

I am looking forward to going out and hearing the quiet that follows a large snow storm like this, and I am actually glad that we have no guests this weekend, although if we did, they would be able to make it out by Sunday I am sure.

The trees are all covered with snow - not quite as neat looking as after an ice storm, but hopefully less damage to the trees.

It’s a great day to sit by the fire and read… or nap…. Hope the day finds you all cozy!

So we cleaned today after guests left the Weston House. Every now and then we find something gross (usually compliments of the people) such as 3 days worth of dirty dishes, or poopy diapers (people with toddlers are the worst!). But now and then we find something funny - which is usually compliments of the visiting critters. Today - and I’m not sure what possessed me to open the drawer - I found a little mouse’s castle.

One of the challenges of having a log cabin built in the 1830’s, is keeping the critters out of it. Since long before 1979, it was seldom lived in, and even after 1979 (when the Weston’s bought the cabin), there haven’t been that many people in it full time. We are out in the country, surrounded by fields and near the woods, and the critters (sometimes chipmunks and squirrels), usually mice, think the house is a really nice place to live.

The drawer under the sink (which is an antique dresser base), is where I usually keep the hair dryer. The top drawer has been altered to allow the plumbing for the faucet to pass up through the dresser top. It doesn’t have a back - so I guess it is pretty easy for the mice (and we do do pest control when we know there are critters) to get into. Anyway, someone left a roll of toilet paper in there - and the mousey built himself a housey! The pile was about the size of a layer cake - thank goodness there weren’t any babies in it!

This incident was beat only by the time a couple years ago when I found a little racetrack that a mouse had constructed - inside a loaf of bread in the cabinet. Pretty amazing that those little critters can eat that much in a night (I’m guessing it must have been a party for the volume of bread they carried away). It was hilarious, there was a little hole in the plastic bag, and then a huge ring inside the bag, but on the outside edge of the loaf, all the way around - like a racetrack.

Needless to say, while cute and entertaining perhaps to me, these incidents call for “pest control”….thank goodness for D-Con.

The Christmas Carols started this year a day or two before Thanksgiving – that’s when I heard my first one. Then we got slammed with them right after Thanksgiving, such that for several days 2 out of 3 songs I heard on the radio were Christmas Carols.
And you know, while I like Country music the best, and even recently have acquired a taste for “teenager” music from artists like P!nk, Lady GaGa, Nickleback and dare I say it – Britney Spears (ugh), I like Christmas Carols. They’re great songs to sing along with – after years of hearing them on the radio, the words don’t change so you can feel confident that you know them. They also do add to the Christmas spirit.
And I do believe in Christ-mas!
And I love Christmas Carols!

Well, here it is another Thanksgiving - and I was thinking that this really is the time to give thanks for all that we have. Looking back it’s been a great summer. I had a couple of months when I was fearing I might loose my job, because my project ended suddenly, and I had to work pretty hard to find another one. But I made it through, found another project and still have a job - THANK YOU!

Our business, in spite of the economic downturn, has done pretty well this summer. We’ve been really busy - have had every weekend booked since mid September - THANK YOU.

Back in May, we lost our little puppy, Gigi for 4 days, and then she was found. While we were searching for her, and had just about given up - we went to get another Great Pyrenees becaues we didn’t want to be without. Then some neighbors found her and called, so we got her back, and then we had 2. They’ve grown to be great big huge, but lovable beasts which we get a lot of pleasure from every day - THANK YOU!

H1N1 has been going around, and so far (knock on wood) no one in the family has gotten it - THANK YOU…..

The sheep had good healthy babies this year, we had little death loss - THANK YOU!

My father-in-law passed away this fall after having broken a vertebrae, but he didn’t suffer long - THANK YOU

And the weather hasn’t turned cold yet! THANK YOU…..

We’ve got lots to be thankful for…

Ok, so it is the 4th of October, and we’ve had a dry and cool summer. We had our first frost last week on Friday - hard frost. It killed a lot of the soy-beans that hadn’t quite dried out yet. I think they were mature, and hope they’ll be ok, but none-the-less… it killed them.

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that Fall is here - and the trees are really starting to turn. I am never really sure when the peak of the season is - and it’s not quite here yet, but it should be here within a week or two I’d say based on the frosts and what I’m seeing outside my window. I expect it’ll be as pretty of a fall as it always is - sometimes we wonder when it’s dry because it seems some trees loose their leaves awfully fast…. but somehow Mother Nature always comes through and puts on the most gorgeous color show - EVERY YEAR!!! I think she’ll do herself proud again this year…. I hope to get some good fall pictures. I’d better start carrying around my camera on my drives!

Great time of year to drive around and see the countryside.

I went to this convention on Friday - for non-profit organizations, and how they can use technology to help manage their overall costs. It was put on by Groundwork Group. It was really interesting. I’m not a non-profit, but there was still quite a bit of information that may be applicable to me and my own website. I was fortunate enough to sit in two workshops, one put on by Ricochet about how to use social media as a way to reach more people. I think I may try twitter and see what happens…. it looks like an interesting philosphy on getting customers. The other session was about how to drive more traffic to your website (which is by the way, what stirred me to write this blog). It was put on by a couple of great women who run a company called “People to My Site”. From them I got a lot of really good information about how to optimize my website for Search Engine visibility to improve my ranking of my website. I plan on going out an trying some of the things they recommend with my own web administrator - who by the way, is a great website administrator and designer in the central Ohio area: DKG.net You should go there if you want to develop a site - his prices are reasonable, and he’s really easy to work with.