Have you missed me? Wondering what I've been up to? Concerned for my safety and mental health? I hope not, that would all be a bit weird. Well, aside from my freelancing as an amateur frog orgy photographer, I've been pretty busy.
You may be wondering, what the hell is going on in this picture? You wouldn't be alone. I have no answer, I'm just using this sordid depiction of frog debauchery to get your attention.
Mostly what I've been up to is leveling up a field to be used for soccer practice. This has been the calmest, most scenic site that I've worked in 14 years at my current job. 10 hours a day, it's just me, the dirt, and a bulldozer.
I got sent to this job because I can make miracles happen. We don't really have equipment of the proper size for handling this job quickly, but I've developed a reputation for getting things done without access to proper tools.
This pics don't really show it well, but the grade on this field started out with a variation of +/- 36". In 3 weeks, I leveled out the hardpan clay sub-grade to +/- 2" while separating out the better soil, then spread the soil back over the top at a depth of 4", and blended all the edges into the existing grade. This job site is about an hour drive from our shop, which is about a half hour drive from my home. So, 10 hour work days, with 3 hours of drive time, followed by 2 hours of watering when I get home every night because it hasn't rained here in almost a month, all add up to no HIVE posts for 3 (4?) weeks.
Of course, that hasn't taken up all my time. There's also been some light paver repair. The company hired some new people to take my place on the paving crew, and they are doing okay, but are a little slow learning how to take care of my machine. Crawling underneath this on a hot, humid day, with a torch and a scraper, covered in oil and tar, is no fun at all. It does pay the bills though, and helps keep 6 other people employed.
I've also had some parking lots to re-stripe. I used to also do the sealing on these, but we've finally got some other guys trained well enough to take that job over for me.
Here is the job the boys did with the repaired paver. This is new parking for emergency responders at a local airport. I still do almost all of our new install striping. We have other guys that can do the job, but they take a bit longer and do slightly sloppier work. In 6 hours I can lay this out and apply two coats of paint all by myself. The secondary crew will take about 10 hours to do the same job with two people.
Of course, it hasn't all been paying work. There has been (and still are) many things to plant at the homestead, so much of my evenings has been spent screening compost. Because the ground here is so hard, everything that gets planted has to be surrounded by good compost for them to root well.
Planting also means picking stones. Every shovel full of my local 'soil' is about 20% rock, 75% clay, and 5% weeds. I've spent over a decade moving stones like this from my gardens down to my driveway, and after all those years of backbreaking labor, both are actually starting to look like something useful.
There is also the constant process of reclaiming land from the forest. This mass of weeds is actually a tiered hill of herb gardens, when I can find time to keep it tame. It's not all just hard work, though. This tangle of weeds included a lot of red clover and yarrow, both of which we harvest and use.
Another good chunk of time has been spent putting up fencing. The dog keeps most garden pests away from most of the gardens, but now that the baby chicks are grown up and roaming, they've decided to trash all of my hard work to show their disapproval of how I spend my time. For them, it would be ideal if I could spend my whole day throwing scratch grains around the yard. Here they are staging a sit-in outside the fence around the garden they used to freely roam.
Harvest waits for no one, and has taken the rest of my 'free' time. The dehydrator here is filled with FrankenMint, lemon balm, and red clover.
By the end of the season, I should have at least two gallon bags of each of these. These herbs get used mostly for tea, but the mint finds its way into plenty of other recipes, and we're looking into actually using the red clover in meals this year.
I cannot be surrounded by those wonderful smells without craving my yard tea, so I had to spend a little time whipping up a batch of that as well. It's a fabulously refreshing drink on hot, humid days, so I like to keep some available in the fridge.
My accomplice has also been feeling much better, and is back at her hedge-witchery. She put together these oils for us, infused with healing herbs. Boo boo goo is for open wounds and burns, and trauma oil for bruises and sprains. They work remarkably well, and we'll want to get another quart of each before the end of the season. The time I spent straining these and making yard tea is why this post didn't happen yesterday.
While I was doing that, the hedge-witch took it upon herself to reconfigure this toolbox that I bought her to keep essential oils in as a rolling med cart. This is now my favorite piece of prepping paraphernalia that we've procured. This box has a little something for everything, from abscesses to Zika.
This is, of course, just a taste. There was also a good deal of time spent wiring up an off-grid battery bank and inverter for a friend, and some brake replacement on the car, both of which will get their own posts. There is also the time spent doing the boring stuff: paperwork for work, paying taxes and utilities, and a host of other things that nobody wants to read about.
That's a wrap for this one, folks. I know it doesn't really teach anything, and feels like a vanity post. It is, however, all I have time for. There is little I can do but put it out there and beg your forgiveness. I can only hope, dear vociferous viewers, that it will be enough to bring you back for the next one.
