It’s been a while

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Well, after I started this, things went haywire…Ken got steadily worse, one thing after another and he died Feb. 8, 2015. So, things that were planned didn’t happen quite as we hoped.

Two days after Ken died, so did the Trailblazer… got it fixed but it took months. A good friend had an old truck that was registered and insured that I drove during the Trailblazer repair fiasco…finally got it back…and one day, in the middle of Rt. 18, it quit, dead. That did it.

The very next day, the Trailblazer was traded in for a brand new Toyota truck. It will cost me a fortune, but at least it won’t let me sit in the middle of the road! Today, 2 years later, it had it’s last “free service” and passed with flying colors… looks good, too, as the dealership washed it! (When you live on a dirt road, washing a truck is pretty much a wasted effort, but at least it will look good until the next rainstorm!)

House??? well, finally we are getting back to that. Brian is slowly working on it… and I’m busy with a variety of things, including spending more time doing art work. I’m a member of the Trillium Arts Guild and we meet once a month to play or talk or eat (or all 3!). I am the secretary of the local historical society, all run by volunteers, so we now have the Knit-Wits and Needlers craft group that meets every Wednesday, from 11 to 3, to do whatever… last week, we painted rocks. (Anyone else live where painted rocks appear here/there/and wherever?)…well, we figured it was a fun thing to play with.

A day in the woodz…

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What do you do if you live in the middle of nowhere on 112 acres of “almost heaven”?? well, lots of things – spend a lot of time with my husband, Ken – and homeschool Brad, take care of my garden, make jewelry, paint pictures, make ATCs and other nonsense and trade on swap-bot, read to Brad or play rummy with him, talk to my granddaughters, cook,do laundry, go to meetings of the historical society and the Farm Bureau,  see what’s going on via Facebook and the local Gilmer Free Press – read – I have never, ever, been bored in 76 years and I doubt if that’s something that will ever happen as there is ALWAYS more to do than time to do it!!

I’ve lived in cities and towns.  However, I prefer the country, trees, blue sky, dark nights with stars and no outside lights, fresh air, good well water, and all the rest.  Yes, our house burned down and we were left with a cabin and a little barn – a close by fire department donated an ancient trailer they used for storage and we fixed it up a little – between that and the cabin, here we are!

We built a woodshed and a nifty little storage building that I named the Taj Mahal, because it’s just too classy looking to be a “shed”…it is insulated, totally sheathed inside and out with pine, and holds our chest freezer, Ken’s toolbox, stored food and whatever else we decide to stuff into the little building.  It’s 8×12 feet and holds an amazing amount of “stuff”.  There are shelves on one end, a door and a tiny window on the other end…and the rest of the “excess” ends up in one of the 3 bays of the woodshed…which is not elegant, not neat and open so we can see the mess in there!  Oh, well…

Today, there was a meeting of the local historical society board with the county commission. They own the buildings the historical society manages.  Up to now, they have paid the utilities and maintenance.  All good things come to an end and the economy is so bad that tax revenues are down and the county is broke.  Not good.  Historical society is going to be broke soon, too, if we don’t figure a way to make a bunch of $$$ soon!  Time to really think about how to do this in a county that is listed as a depressed area, has a population under 7,000 people (and only one traffic light in the entire county).  There is a local magazine called “Two Lane Livin'” and that’s what it is here.  The BIG roads are 2 lane.  Many are narrow, unpaved gravel roads which is fine with those of us who live on them!  (www.twolanelivin.com if you want to see a slice of this part of the state of WV – we are west of the high mountains here).

Someplace on this website, there are pictures of “after the fire” that I can’t find on this computer so they must have been on the one that doesn’t work…but there are pictures here of things relating to EarthStone Hollow Farm (and a couple of pieces of recent art work)… until we meet again!

Karen