It’s a bright, sunny Monday morning. My orders are in the post and I’m now hiding in front of the computer. The thermometer says it’s 38ºF in the greenhouse. The top of our greenhouse today will likely reach 50ºF, whilst the draw below the cabin is likely in the teens or single-digits. It’s a comfy 70ºF inside after a busy morning of frying up sausage, pancakes, and onions.
Why am I indoors in front of the computer? I fractured my ankle and I’m trying to stay off it. It’s been a blessing in disguise, considering I got THIS done! This website! The thing you’re looking at right now! I get to busy my time indoors writing posts like this and migrating my inventory into this fancy new shop. Once I’m up on my feet again I won’t be getting quite as much computer work done.
How did I fracture my ankle? Walking. I was walking, then I was on the ground. I don’t know what happened. My body glitched and fell down. I soaked my foot in a series of foot bathes during the first few days. Featured herbs included horsetail for tendon and ligament healing, comfrey/hound’s tongue for healing the fracture, and birch bark and marshmallow to reduce inflammation.
It hurt for 2 or 3 days and then I was fine for about a week. I puffed myself up with pride; “Ha-HA! Take that fracture! I heal you instantly with my herbs!” Then I spent a day mechanicing on the ever-broken vehicles. My front right brake caliper was seized up completely and I had to take the caliper pins out, strip the grease and rust off, re-grease them, put them back in, and replace the caliper. We had the car completely blocked and suspended since it’s all wheel drive and we can’t test the steering and wheels with just the front end jacked up. I was prepared to change a CV axle, but because of the seized brake (which had apparently been seized for some time be we didn’t notice because we’re just crawling up and down the icy mountain roads, not driving around town), the brake pads and ball joint on that side were trash. So we needed to get the ball joint and new pads before tearing everything apart again and replacing stuff. May as well do as much as you can in one sitting while you’ve got it in pieces!
Anyway, a few hours of crawling around on cardboard mats on the snow and ice in 25ºF, moving tires and cranking on wrenches, and my ankle was starting to scream at me again. That day really lit it up with pain. Now for the last week I’ve been laid up and barely able to walk on it.
I got too cocky and confident! I stopped my tea bathes when the pain stopped. Of course fractures aren’t going to heal in 4 days! So it’s back to soaking in tea bathes and minimizing my walking.
But more about today and recent events! Well, Andy recently built a bathtub out of wood, that’s super cool. I mean, I have no qualms bathing in a plastic tote, but I realize not everyone is lucky enough to be so small that they fit in a storage tote. Sometimes I pity the tall, I really do.
The bathtub was made out of a single length of 16″ lumber that he milled with a relative’s saw mill. We’ll likely never see boards like them again. The massive tree they came from was gifted to him, we certainly don’t have trees that large on our farm. So the tub is roughly 16″ tall, 16″ wide, and 4′ long with a nicely sloped back rest. He filled with with ultra-fine saw dust from the table saw and then filled it with water; as the water runs out of the seams, it sucks soggy sawdust through it it and clogs all of the leaky joints. It’s sealed well enough in this way that, if left filled with water, it will only leak about 1″ of water per day. To empty it we scoop the water out with 5 gallon buckets and water the plants in the greenhouse with it. Even in winter, they still need water delivered!
He now wants to make bathtubs for everyone he knows with the last of this magically gigantic lumber we have. So far no one is interested in a wooden bathtub. I can’t fathom why! A 100% natural, raw material bathtub with no chemicals, plastics, sealants, or other harmful crap! What’s not to love? I mean, yeah, it’s gotta be spritzed with some thyme or other antiseptic teas to keep the mycelium from moving in and eating it. But hey, maintenance is maintenance, whether it’s wood, metal, plastic, or porcelain!
In other news, only 6 more weeks until baby goats! And do you know what that means?! 7-8 more weeks we can go back to milking the goats! 😀 I swear I’ve been dreaming about fresh milk and cheese since we stopped milking a few weeks ago. It’s important to dry a doe off before she kids. Not only do want her to focus her energy on growing the kids instead of producing large sums of milk to humans, but milking too close to her due date means you could start milking out colostrum that the kids need to develop their immune systems when they’re born! We’re toying with the idea of selling 1 doe’s kids as bottle babies so we can milk her for us, and letting the other raise her kids. It will likely depend on the genders they have. Several of the neighbors are interested in buying the kids, so who knows, they might want every one we get and we’ll end up milking both does!
I’ll leave it at that for today. Thanks for reading 🙂
