You know, before we moved here, no one warned us about the flies. I suppose it’s the same way the Michigan Board of Tourism fails to mention that you might encounter a mosquito or two while you are there. We seem to have very few mosquitos. We have a lot of flies.

Sure, we have some animals on the property that certainly attract flies (especially the chickens and the ducks). But the flies were here before the animals. Everywhere. Buzzing around my head, and congregating on the strangest things. There will be dozens and dozens sitting on the truck. Today there were at least 20 sitting on the charger for the electric fence. They don’t seem to be the biting sort of flies. Are we just some sort of layover between cow pastures? The Schiphol of the Copper Hill?

Oh, and it was foggy this morning.

This coming weekend is Floyd County’s 175th anniversary celebration. I’m sure all our friends are busy planning to come up and visit during it – after all, who can resist…cowpatty bingo?

Although on a more serious note, one of their events is carding and spinning wool – maybe someone at the event would know where we could get our sheeps sheared!

Steve Irwin may have died, but his spirit lives on here at Loafkeeper Farm.

I had just gone into the bathroom to give Sana her fluids when I heard a shrill, girlish yelp from downstairs.

“Are you okay?”

“Snake!”

I was calm at first because….well, I was upstairs and the snake was downstairs and I didn’t really know if there was a snake at all or if Andy was just making it up because he’d gone batty from sniffing so much laundry detergent in his laundry orgy.

Then I started thinking about a snake. In the house. In the basement. Where my bed is. The bed where I sleep.

“A snake? Ummm…is it a big scary snake?”

“No, it’s a little baby snake but my freakish reflexes are too slow to catch it now that I am old.” (Okay, he didn’t really say it quite that way.)

As I sit on the bathroom floor, syringe in one hand and the other holding onto Sana…I picture Andy running around the basement chasing a snake and I realize he probably could use a little help. I hopped up and then paused and thought for a brief moment. AHA! I dashed into the bunny room, grabbed the bunny poop broom, dustpan, and trash can and raced down the stairs.

Well, not all the way down the stairs. I stopped a few steps up and timidly asked, “Um, where’s the snake?”

It had slithered under the big wooden chest and seemingly disappeared. I knew I had to act fast, so I sprinted down the last few stairs and flew across the room to the bed. Safe on my perch, I tossed the snake-catching tools to Andy.

Too bad I forgot the camera in my supply gathering spree. Luckily, Andy was not terribly adept at first with his weapons, so I had a chance to hightail it upstairs, grab the camera, and return to my safehaven towering high above the ground (pictured below during a more peaceful era).

Before reaching the bottom of the stairs, I once again paused for a status of the snake’s whereabouts.

Andy lost the snake.

“Where did it go?”

“Um…I don’t know. Maybe it went under the stairs?”

Images raced through my head of living in perpetual fear of Snakes on a Bed ™.

“Oo! I think it went into the bathroom!”

“Quick! Close the door!”

“Um, the door is closed. It went under the door.”

I ran on tip toes to the bed so I could watch. Andy flung open the door and swept the snake into the dust pan and then said, “QUICK! OPEN THE DOOR!” In the moment it too me to wave my hand at the garbage can I’d brought down, the snake squirmed off the dust pan, back onto the floor, and under the bookcase.

Andy brought in his backup.

Together, Andy and Buddy worked to herd the snake back out into the open. Alas, the snake was wiley, and when the boys weren’t looking, the snake slithered into MY PANTS!!!!!!!!

….which were on the floor waiting to visit the new washing machine.

The snake was in love with my pants. (After no washing machine for a week, I’m sure they smelled really fabulous!) The snake crawled all over my pants and wiggled in my pants and then…then…the snake crawled into my pocket! AHA! We had it trapped!

“Quick! Toss the whole thing into the trashcan!”

“It may jump on me!”

“Hurrrrry!”

The snake somehow got away and ran back under the bookcase. Buddy and Andy got into a huddle and planned their moves out. Moments later, the snake was in the trash can. Andy glowed with the triumph of kings! (Or possibly from the fumes of my smelly pants.)

We both peered down into the trashcan and Andy said quietly…awe in his voice…

“Crikey! Isn’t she a beaut?”

After much delay I finally racked my two batches of blackberry wine, and combined them into one 5 gallon batch so it would only use up one carboy. It seems to be a very nice ruby red color, except when the yeast is still in suspension, at which point it looks a lot like tinted primer.

Racking

I also started another batch going (about 2 1/2 gallons) with the last of this year’s blackberries. They’ve spent more time in the fridge than they really should, though, so I’m not sure how tasty it will turn out. In fact, I saw some bubbling while the berries were soaking (before I added the yeast), which could mean some wild yeasts got a head start. But since the only real costs were a packet of yeast and a bag of sugar (and a lot of holes in my hands), it’s no big loss if it’s gone bad – we’ll just have a lot of blackberry vinegar to bottle.

Last week I decided to do laundry. Hard to believe, I know, but Andy was out of town and wasn’t going to be back for a while, and so I had to do it. I tossed all my work clothes in, added soap, got things swooshing, and went about my evening. About twenty minutes later I smelled smoke. No big deal…folks are always burning stuff around here. I looked out the window to search for the smoke, and I realized it was raining. It had been raining all day.

I found the smoke about thirty seconds later when I ran downstairs and opened the doors to the laundry room. A thick cloud of burning-tire-smelling smoke filled the laundry room. I yanked the washer cord out of the wall and tried to chase kitties upstairs and opened windows and turned on fans and called my mommy and daddy.

Too bad all my work clothes were in the washer all wet and soapy. I pondered calling in to work the next day, but “All my clothes were in the washer when it burnt up” seemed a bit too much like “My dog ate my homework.” I wrung the clothes out as best I could, drug them upstairs to the bathtub, filled the bathtub with water, and danced on the clothes to try to work the soap out. Luckily the dryer was still working.

Andy came home a few days later, and off we trooped to buy a new washing machine. We found what we wanted online, went to the store to place our order, and sat back to wait for its arrival today. When we ordered the washer, we made it clear to the salesperson that our driveway was scary and twisty and slopy and bumpy. He said he would call and warn the delivery people.

==INTERMISSION==

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The washer was supposed to be delivered today. The driver called and said he was on his way, so Andy kept an eye out for him. A while later, he saw the truck way down at the end of the driveway. He waited. And waited. But the truck didn’t come. So, Andy hiked down the driveway and the truck driver said he couldn’t get the truck in the driveway. He was pulling the washer out of the box and loading it up onto a dolly. The driver was going to push our new washer the quarter mile of twisty, bumpy driveway to our house. Now that is a good, solid work ethic.

In addition to being a devoted delivery dude, this guy was also incredibly good with people. When an older guy approached in his pickup, delivery dude jumped into the middle of the road and waved the truck guy down. Delivery dude then convinced truck guy to transport our new washing machine from the road to our house.

You’d think now would be the end of the story and confetti and balloons would fall from the sky and we’d all cheer and wash clothes.

The washer wouldn’t fit through the door.

Bits of the door had to come off, and the washer got in. Delivery dude hooked things up, and after a bit of cursing our plumbing got things swirlin’ and whirlin’.

Things were pretty much golden for us at that point, but not for delivery dude. He still had the small matter of a burnt up washing machine to deal with. The truck guy was long since gone, but the dolly was there. Yup, delivery dude loaded the old machine onto the dolly and pushed it that quarter of a mile over hills and dales, past sheep and ducks, through clouds of gnats and poison dart frogs, and back to his truck.

I hope we weren’t supposed to tip.