Greenstorm's Journal

Warm again. We're supposed to have a stretch of warm + rain, which of course is on top of what was 3' of snow and is maybe a little closer to 2.5 now. The dogsled race happened on the weekend: I normally love it but last week's forestry conference kept me busy through the start of the long races, and I was in a pretty bad place mental-health-wise on Saturday, and then on Sunday I just wanted to stay in controlled environments and not jeopardize feeling ok. That said, Tucker's apartment was across from the lake where the event was held, so I could peek out and see the dogs in the sunshine.

Warm again and the new piglets got castrated, pushing the edge of the 10 day/2 week window when I'm comfortable doing it at home. Well, comfortable is a tremendous overstatement but it had to be done: they get castrated or they get eaten very young unless I can source that immunocastration drug. They seem to be doing alright this morning; because my anxiety is running so high it's fixating on everything, and one of them having adverse reactions to castration and bleeding out or something is one of them. That hasn't happened to me. I did castrate one with a scrotal hernia once and had to put him down immediately, which was very traumatic, but they all went cleanly here so far. I'll go out later today and watch them all pee but they're sleeping now with Mama Black Chunk, who's been let out of isolation with her babies. Actually it's pretty cute: when I went out the boar was spooning her, and she was spooning the babies.

I sold the 4runner to mom, which is basically the best news. I love that truck and didn't want to see it go to someone who wouldn't care for it. Mom lent her car to someone who had an accident and didn't know to leave insurance out of everything so they decided to scrap it because it got a dent; she was in the market for something new and I had this 4runner which I need to get rid of because I can't keep two vehicles. I'm so glad it's staying in the family. I need to get the windshield redone (they put sand/gravel on the roads up here in winter for traction, since it's too cold for salt, and it's pretty normal to replace your windshield every year or two since rocks fly up and crack them) and replace the battery and pull the farm junk out of it. First I need to shovel it out the rest of the way from under a snowdrift.

The peppers I planted back in January are up and the other peppers are ordered. I've also ordered some black plastic flats, which-- these are supposed to be extra heavy duty so they don't break every year. I keep wanting to get enough of a carpentry shop together to make myself some wooden ones but that hasn't happened yet so hopefully these last a couple years. I need to get the rest of my peppers into soil. I've also put artichoke seeds in. We'll see how they go. I'm starting to rattle what goes where around in my head.

I've also got start dates for most things on my garden spreadsheet; I do need to go through and winnow out what I'm starting this year and what I'm not. Especially, when I have multiple accessions of something from last year I probably want to grow saved seed rather than bought seed, etc.

I really do need to shovel my way out to the greenhouse and A-frame and start grouping out the geese.

I'm kind of tucking this here at the end but Saturday was pretty rough. I think my brother is going to manage to do what nothing else has, and drive me substantially off the social internet. I need to decide what to do about that: block him? Some other workaround? Gracefully let go of those parts of the internet? Hopefully my counselor can help me come up with some ideas this week. He's definitely infuriating and deep into DARVO right now. He spams the family chat with links about the "freedom convoy" and the constitution, ignores any facts he finds inconvenient, does the two-step "you can't trust media to report the science correctly/reading academic papers too closely to decipher them is some kind of trick or gotcha" and most recently "people are too specialized" (I it's think code for scientists are wrong) followed by "are you familiar with the Dunning Kruger effect" which is basically like being trapped in some sort of horror sitcom where someone who doesn't believe in science tries to use a science idea that explains how non-experts think they know a lot to explain why he, a non-expert, knows more than other people.

Horror sitcom is not my favourite genre. Maybe a laugh track would help?

Anyhow, being almost totally offline for the latter half of the weekend meant I watched Leverage with Tucker and had some time to think about a particular scene that had been picking at the back of my mind. In it a dude is flirting with a woman across a counter, and she is flirting back. At one point her hands are lying on the counter between them, he puts his hands on hers, she looks slightly uncomfortable, he lifts his hands away and says "the hands, it's too much, right?" and she nods and says yes and they keep flirting but he doesn't reach out to touch her again.

This little snippet of interaction has stayed in my mind, and I've finally dug out why. A lot of the male-assigned folks I've engaged with sexually would have had trouble getting all the way to the end of the four parts of this: 1) try something 2) collect feedback based on body language 3) ask for clarity if they detected something amiss and 4) course-correct and continue to enjoy the interaction. If they were actually willing to try doing a thing they'd be unable to assess for feedback, if they assessed for feedback and detected something slightly amiss they'd spiral into self-loathing and be unable to clarify and course-correct. Obviously this prevents meaningful feedback; anything other than positive feedback drags the whole experience to a screeching halt. I wonder if this is linked to protect women from even a hint of bad feelings/women are delicate flowers who should never have a moment's dissonance in their lives? I wonder if it's linked to a model of masculinity that's about prowess and always being right the first time? Or what's going on? Anyhow, that bit in the show made me happy.

This weekend we managed to get the canopy off my new-to-me truck. It's a huge hi-canopy with screened sliding windows and a nice little internal light; aluminum, so it's moveable, but it's not easy.

We set up 2x4s across the bed under the canopy, then from one side of the bed to the immediately-adjacent strawpile so we never had to take its full weight. We then sort of worked it along the 2x4s till it was on the strawpile. The whole thing is complicated by the vertical doors that fill the tailgate space; it can't just be set on the ground.

All in all the project was a success; my landscaper project self is satisfied because none of us had to use 100% of our strength at any time, so if something had gone sideways there was soak room to fix it, and the weight was never in uncontrolled movement.

Plus I was able to go get feed with the pulley-and-rail system, which requires an open-topped vehicle to drop into. The truck and I floated back with two 1100lb bags of feed in the 8-foot box; I still barely had to throttle and she didn't even blink at 100km/h up the hills. This is why I got her and she's done good with it. Bonus is that I didn't need to use 4x4 in the driveway on the way home with the feed because there was actual weight over the friction-producing wheels. Extra bonus is that it used less fuel than the 4runner pulling the brick of a trailer to get the same amount of feed.

Not a bonus: now I need to shovel it out of the bags because I have neither a tractor nor a hardpoint and pulley to get it off the truck. Sigh.

I'm so tired lately. Still. We've had some grey and rainy days - well, grey and drizzly on-and-off - which is great for the garden. They tend to be days I want to sleep in, maybe from so many years in landscaping where we often got rainy days off.

I don't ordinarily want to sleep in, though, and this has been many days in a row. I'm not completely sure what's up. I've been taking my b-vitamins less often, maybe that's it.

Yesterday I got another kg or 2 of egg pasta dough in the freezer. Tonight is the last cold night in the forecast: most of the squash and definitely the tomatoes will be evicted tomorrow, into the garden. I should really get the turnips and the last beets in the ground too.

The fluid-sown carrots have cole family leaves coming up in the rows, so either radishes or arugula. That means something has worked! I'm very much looking forward to seeing the carrots come up though.

Demon keeps going out for ~36 hours at a time, coming back for a few days, and going out again. I definitely need to get him neutered but it's going to be rough finding a vet during covid times. My closest vet has heart issues so he's really keeping himself apart at this point.

This marks the first time I pulled two minibags of feed in my new trailer. Cons of the new trailer: I can't self-load, so I need to schedule with the grain guy, and even then it's fiddly. I also can't pull it into the back unless/until I build more of a ramp because it'll pinch through the swale. Pros of the new trailer: can carry two bags of grain, even in the rain, without wrecking it. I also don't need to speed unload at the other end. I really *should* trade the 4runner for a pickup truck at this point, which would solve a bunch of the other problems. I like the 4runner a lot, though, especially in winter or with smaller animals or camping.

Next up: soil for the deck garden.

If only I had a little more energy.

I want to talk about my relationship stuff right now. I'm in a situation where my boundaries have been trespassed so the bubble they protect needs to get bigger. I need to compromise less, to be, well, not less understanding but less willing to bend. I need to pull harder on Threshold, my primary relationship, and invest more time and love into that one.

I probably also need to start nosing around for someone who's into kitchen-table-style and maybe cometary poly with my land. It's a big ask but I'm in no hurry. There are folks out there as nomadic as I am rooted. Threshold accepts all comers; like my heart it's full of the fingerprints of everyone who's been and worked here: I will always have built the pigshed with Josh, whatever happens to that relationship; I will always have built the quailshed and wheelbarrowed dirt into the garden its first year with Tucker even if we end up not speaking again; Robyn will always have built my firewood retainers with me. I find these traces of people comforting; they can leave my life but they can never /not have been there/. In every case, even if there's pain, the memories are a reminder of love.

I still can't quite set down the core of what's going on. My hope, I suppose, is that I'll be able to talk it out with Tucker and come to a workable resolution. The reality is that things have changed substantially regardless of what the resolution is. My internal part of the story won't change. Still, still. Still. I'm not ready to write the eulogy.

Because I'm not ready to write about what I want to write about, I'm just reaching out for contact. I'm inscribing myself in these words and so coming to believe that I am more than these wait-and-hope issues that have surrounded me and prevented me from going forward. I'm not good at waiting; I disappear into it. I am better at multitasking, at going and doing something else for awhile, then at coming back when it's time.

So last night, instead of waiting, I resurrected my 4runner. She's been sitting in the driveway for a year, since I started using the company truck. Originally she had a battery charger on her but unbeknownst to me the geese pulled it out of the wall and the battery went unregistrable-dead. I bought a new battery and was going to install it, well, soon: I lose the company truck next Friday so I need to make sure she runs.

But with these freeze-thaw cycles her tires were going flat finally, so I needed to get the air compressor out of her trunk. Problem is, her automatic locks wouldn't open without the battery. Josh said swapping in the battery was easy and honestly it was; after the kind of tools I grew up with socket sets are miraculous. and the whole thing was done very quickly. Then I got the tires filled - she's still in winters from last year so she's legal - and got her moving.

I'd forgotten how much learning curve there is on vehicles; the word truck just went in for maintenance every 5000km and I didn't really have to know how to do much. It's good to have her going again. I do think I need to find a trailer to haul feed with though. I'm waffling between a flatdeck (more work for the usual uses but more versatile) and a stock trailer (could leave feed in and don't even have to unload and it's bear safe; can actually move animals easily in an emergency). A cargo trailer might be the best of both worlds, jury-riggable in case of a wildfire to move animals but with fewer constraints on the internal space.

The freeze has paused here. It rained all night and everything's mud. I'll be picking up sticks and baling twine so the snowblower can wander around without dying, and I'll be trying to set a foundation for the snowblower shed.

First, though, I do a last feed run with the truck, consult about a new kitten, and spend some thanksgiving time with my boss-for-one-more-week.