Loafkeeper Farm

These category things are confusing me. Does a post about bunnies go in "Cabol" because they are my bunnies? Should it be a "Farm" item because bunnies are animals...even though they are pets and not food? Or, do I list it as "Country Living" because many people who live in the country decorate with geese and bunnies?

The bunnies are shedding. Each has their own way of going about it, but the results are the same: clouds of white fur floating around in the air and gathering along the baseboards.

Wibble is the most fun of shedders. He sheds in clumps. His back and rump are shaggy, and I can pluck little plugs of fur right out. I find this extremely satisfying. Wibble finds it extremely annoying and usually runs off after one or two plucks, glares over his shoulder at me and thumps. Hrmpf. Fine.

Hop also sheds in clumps, and she would probably let me pluck at her fur for minutes at a time. Of course, she doesn't get all shaggy, and there's not enough fur for more than one or two plucks. Here's the neat thing, though: Hop's butt fur is brown, but the little shaggy bits of fur are white. (I guess it's only brown on top?) It looks like she's sprung a fur leak sometimes when a little fountain of white shaggy fur works its way up.

Carla sheds in silent, secret foofs of fur. I rarely ever see her looking shagy, and I can never find little fur bits to pluck. I would almost say to you that she is not, in fact, shedding. Thing is, she has a fluffy, white border of Carla fur tucked into the snaggy parts around the edge of her cage and sticking out from under the straw floor mat.

On top of Hop and Wibble's cage is a dark green glass jar. At one point it was a sugar jar, then it became a kitchen utensil jar, and now it is a rabbit fur jar. When my mom and I harvest bunny fur, we shake it off our fingers into the jar. (You don't drop it really...it's almost too light to be affected by gravity.) I have visions of using the fluff to make some incredibly floaty yarn. I know the fur is too short to make yarn on it's own, so I'm going to see if I can toss bits in to some wool fiber as I spin that. I suppose this brief paragraph about harvesting fiber (haha) and spinning yarn firmly puts this into the "Farm" category. I'm glad I got that figured out.

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Since spring hit, every morning when I drive down the long, long driveway, I see blue birds, gold finches, and rabbits zipping about in the grass, across the road, and through the air. I don't know if I've ever seen a real blue bird before.

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What our taxes (don't) pay for:

Example A:

A couple of years ago, according to the story told by our log cabin neigbhors, a discussion came before the county board about putting aside funding for the library bookmobile. One of the councilmen was fed up with people asking for more money, and he slammed his fist down on the table (at least in my version) and said, "If they want a bookmobile, let them use a wheelbarrow!"*

Example B:

We don't have garbage pickup; instead, we have to toss the trash in the back of the truck and drive up to the dumpster village at the top of the street. Luckily, our dumpster village is not only very close but is also right across the street from the nearest convenience store/gas station/pizza place/tax filer/massage therapist. (Drop off trash...pick up pizza!) But...this isn't the point. Yeah, we don't have garbage service. Fine. We don't pay nearly enough taxes for garbage service. I do think, though, that we pay enough for a couple cubic yards of dirt to fill in the St. Bernard-sized potholes that make the dumpster village look like it's located in Baghdad.


*The next day a wheelbarrow appeared in the library and quickly filled with donations for the bookmobile.

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Today in the mail I received our June tax bill for the new property. It is for half of the annual tax bill.

It is less than one month's worth of taxes in Ann Arbor.

Sure, we don't get those important services like water, sewer, garbage, fire department, mass transit...but a tax bill that's barely a car payment sure is freakin' nice.

-A

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The scythe arrived on Friday after a drawn out discussion with our rural letter carrier via notes in the mailbox. If we'd been in the city, I'd have had it on Monday evening. Tuesday morning at the latest. You see, when you live in the city and a package needs a signature, you merely leave work fifteen minutes early and swing by the post office. Out here, work and the post office are an hour apart, so we are at the mercy of the all-powerful rural letter carrier.

Shortly after we moved here, we received a pamphlet and a greeting from our rural letter carrier, Pat, and her backup, Debbie. Pat wanted to let us know that she was our post office on wheels. She shared this with us through the pamphlet that was, I'm fairly sure, a xerox copy of a mimeographed copy of a document pounded out on a typewriter sometime before I was born.

Some helpful hints from my post office on wheels:

-- Rural customers need to affix postage onto their envelopes. (No longer can you put a chicken in the mailbox and expect your letters to get to their destination.)
-- Do not alter your address as it was given to you by the post office. (Damn.)
-- Rural carriers are not responsible for money left in unattended mailboxes. (Or chickens.)

Luckily for me, my mother was here and able to wait for Pat to appear with my scythe. According to my mom, Pat was a finely coifed little old lady. She sat in the passenger seat of her car. The steering wheel was in front of the driver's seat. To steer the car, Pat reached over with her left hand and spun the wheel. My mom could only guess that there were pedals on Pat's side of the car, but perhaps she has extremely long legs.

If all rural letter carriers drive like Pat, the helpful hint on the pamphlet to keep children far away during mail delivery time makes a lot more sense.

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Worked on the weblog stuff today, got it up and running. Too bad to the plugins we wanted to use involve PHP modules that our webhost has decided (for the time being) not to install. Better than nothing, though, and it's free!

Not sure how much I like this template, we'll have to work on modifying things a bit down the road.

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