Not That Anyone Should Care

We put one of those washlet toilets into the downstairs bathroom as part of the age in place renovations. I wasn't expecting to care about it, but we both got to "what, I have to sit on a cold toilet seat and wipe my own bum like a savage up here?" within days.

Tomorrow we unpack the storage container into the house and have all our stuff inside. I am moving all sorts of stuff around in advance, but I am so excited.

here's another contribution from me. Talking with the team lead about my dryer, which is very elderly, and how my appliance guy says there are no more repairs to be done to it, if it borks, I will need to get a new one. There is also another repair I might have him do, and then there is also my ice maker issue. The bar that raises when the container is full and stops the maker from making more ice has broken off. It's a tiny repair, and I am putting off dealing with it until there are more things to repair at once. I have been emptying the container ever night, since it got plumbed in. Team lead looks at me and says "Why not just turn the water off in the basement when you have enough"

Which was frickin' obvious.

Good amount of snow out here in central MA, about 5-6", but now we have freezing rain coming down, soaking the snow and this will freeze solid this evening. Get your steps, paths, and cars cleared now, while you can. There was already glazing happening.

It's been a long time since someone tried to mansplain me that hard. I was visiting used kitchen supply stores. I started in Worcester, struck out, same in Billerica, meaning I had to go to the one place in NH that I should have started at, but it's a long drive. It probably would have helped if I had eaten something. I walked in and said "I'm looking for a used 3bay, 18"bays, 14" deep". The young guy and the other one next to him were sure there weren't any used ones (this place has 2-3 huge lots outdoors with used stuff) as they had been in the lots that morning. He asks if he should go find out info on a new one. I said sure, and he comes back and an old guy(probably my age, but I'm accepting I'm old) followed young guy. He starts asking me what I want to use it for, where I'm from, starting to get into the differences between NH and MA boards of health, water and gas line issues, and just wouldn't stop talking. Perhaps after the second time a woman says "I know what I want and need" you should shut up. If you really believe I probably don't know and understand everything you are telling me, let it fucking go and let me be wrong. The young guy interrupted him and said he would put together some quotes and options, and email it to me. I suspect the young guy realised I was ready to blow.

So, you woke up to a wonderful snow covered day in New England. The sun is out, everything looks like a Christmas card, and it's a Sunday. I highly recommend that you do not blow off clearing snow, especially on your cars, until tomorrow. It's on the warmer side of cold, meaning the snow is almost, but not quite, ready to melt into itself. This means it will freeze into ice over night. You will come out to an ice encrusted car that will be much harder to clear off on Monday morning

So, for those who are from far away, or new to my FB friends list, you may be wondering " WTF with all the peaches ,Tamar ?" Let me explain :
About 4 years ago, after eldest headed off for GT, we realised a few things. Youngest would be heading out in a few years, the house was enormous for just 2 people, and there were a lot of things I wanted to do that I couldnt do in Littleton, like have a garden, more chickens, goats, stuff like that. Since I also realised I was going to have to retire from cooking due to my ankle getting worse and worse, I was also going to be out of a job and career, too.So, we started thinking about selling our big house and moving to a smaller one, in a Right to Farm town. About 3 years ago a college friend of Mark's, Bill Caloccia, passed away after a prolonged illness. Bill had a small house on 2 acres in a Right to Farm town, making it perfect for us. The house needed a lot of work, but had good bones, and we could see it working for us eventually.
Bill had a plan to eventually retire from IT security and be a gentleman farmer, and he started planting an orchard. By the time he got ill he had 60 dwarf fruit trees planted. There are plans hanging in a closet that show he wanted to plant about 30 trees more, but didnt get to it. By the time we actually got the house and moved in the orchard hadn't really been tended for 4 years or so. The dwarf trees are not so dwarf anymore.
In New England last year, especially Massachusetts, no one had a good fruit harvest. 2 Weeks of high temps in January got trees budding and then a hard freeze in early february killed all the buds, and then there was a very bad drought in our area. There was no fruit, anywhere, aside from some apple orchards doing OK, and oddly enough our Asian pears were OK. Frankly, we figured we might end having to cut down most of the orchard, because they were doing nothing, were seriously overgrown, and werent worth saving. Then this year happened. Perfect weather, good rain, and a lot of these trees are producing huge amounts for all that they are overgrown. A few trees have branches breaking off because they have too much fruit. This is great, but is way way too much for anything I can deal with on my own. I have no interest in being a professional farmer, this would require employees to pick, etc... way too much. However, Bill must have put 10s of thousands of dollars into that orchard, it would be a shame to just cut it down. So, I am asking friends to come pick fruit constantly. I am working on trying to hook up with the Boston Gleaners, or people like them, and if I can manage to get them to pick and take all the fruit for the food banks, that would be great. For now, tho, please , come pick peaches (and in a few weeks pears, Asian pears, and apples)

So, what's happening with the Amidon's ? Things have been a bit nuts over the past year or so, but hopefully it will be calming down soon. Really really hopeful.
A bit over a year ago we decided that we needed to move. This was because both girls were going to be going off to college really soon, our house is huge, and my hobbies with gardening,making jam, chickens, hopefully goats, and other stuff,'t is really suited to where we are.
Here's where things get interesting and a bit sad. Many of you knew Bill Callocia. He was a college classmate of Mark's, and many other people I know. He also was involved in many other groups. Land Rover road rally groups, electronics, music, Jazz Fest (Mark saw him annually there),and he worked at Left Bank with many people I know. Bill passed away last year on October 8. I apologize if you are someone finding this out from this posting.
At Bill's wake, I was chatting with Paul Krause, Bill's best friend and executor, about how we were planning on moving so we could have a smaller house and I could have chickens and goats, and it didn't ping then. A week later I was having nibbles and drinks with Kristen Norwood when she asked me what we were looking for. I said "A smaller house on at least 1 acre of usable land in a Freedom to Farm community near rt495 which would be Bolton,Stow, Berlin, or Harvard. Maybe Hudson". Without missing a beat Kristen said "That's exactly Bill's house".
It turns out that, along with his many other interests, Bill was into small hobby farming. He had a small house on 2 acres of land that he was already turning into a farm.
Long story short, we're buying it, we signed the P&S last week. This is a perfect place for me. He put in 60 fruit trees, which have been neglected horribly, but at least 1/3rd have survived. We picked 80# of Asian pears today, and apples. There is over 1/3rd an acre fenced for a back yard and dog run. There is 3/4 of an acre I can turn into a goat corral, and then lots of space to put in gooseberries, currants, blackberries,raspberries, elderberries, and blueberries. It's across the street from a farm with large farmstand, that I can buy tomatoes from instead of trying to grow my own. Lots of space easily turned into a chicken run. There is plenty of space for me to try out lots of different things, from berry bushes, to guinea hens, to goats, to whatever I want. Anything that turns out I'm not so into, I can stop and switch to something else.
At first we didnt think the timing would work. Paul has had a huge amount of work to do, sorting and dealing with the legal issues attached to a property stuffed with huge amounts of stuff from Bill's various interests, and getting them to the appropriate folks sometime soon.However, the whole ice debacle has delayed our selling our house, and now I worry more that we won't sell our house in time. It looks like we can carry both for at least a while, but everyone needs to wish really hard that someone buys this place.
I am also sad that I never knew Bill was into all this. I only met him a few times, Mark saw him every year at the Jazz fest. Unsurprisingly, they talked about jazz and work, Mark didn't tell him about his wife's chicken stuff, and Bill didn't talk about his farm. I think Bill and I would have had a lot of fun talking about this stuff with each other. It makes me, and a bunch of other folks including his family, feel good to think that I'm going to be carrying on with his plans. I'll still be calling it The Wee Farm , as he did, and I hope to get the ow defunct website updated and continue on.

hopefully it will. I have always liked LJ, but it seems everyone's moving AND lj gets flakier and flakier. I'm not even over on LJ that often, but I like who and what I read there, and all y'all seem to be moving