Yesterday morning we were cleaning house when a knock came at the door. In the city, when you aren’t expecting someone and the door bell rings, you can usually count on some unwanted bother: sales people, politicians, religious folks. Out here, it’s just plain strange and startling. My first instinct is to run and hide. (Especially after that time the weird fruit tree homeless guy bugged my mom while I was at work.) Andy answered the door, and I heard something about trees (AIE!) and then the person left.
Turns out, someone wanted to buy a Christmas tree!! So, Andy went hunting for a saw and went down the hill to the tree patch by the barn where we actually managed to trim a few dozen trees in the summer. We decided not to sell trees this year because we didn’t get many trimmed into shape and, well, honestly I don’t want to spend my weekends sitting in a cold shack waiting for people to come by to get a tree.
When Andy came back up after the folks found their tree and got it in the back of their van, he told me the story of how these folks ended up knocking on our door. It was a grandma and her son and granddaughter, and they had bought a tree here for the last few years. They even came out last year and trudged through the snow to find a tree. They’d looked around at trees in Roanoke this year, but they couldn’t find a tree they liked. The little girl said, “I want to go to the field of trees!” So, they drove out to our place. They were confused not to see the any sign of tree sales, so they drove on up to the house to see what was up.
It was neat to sell a tree, and it hit home that we probably really should have tried to sell trees this year because now all the “return” customers probably have found a new tree place. C’est la vie.
In other farm-type news, I’ve sold five dozen duck eggs at work in the last few weeks. There’s a lady there who told me she’d pretty much buy whatever we had, so we have some regular income from the farm. (HAHA, $2.50 a dozen, about a dozen a week, so yes it’s regular but noone around here is quitting his/her day job!)
All the critters are doing okay, and we haven’t had any more chicken disappearances/deaths. I still think the silkie will return one day with a suitcase covered in stickers from the far-off-places she’s been to.
Haven’t taken many photos lately, but for your viewing pleasure here’s the ducks splashing about in their pool a few weeks ago, back before things started being frozen.
