Winter, being sick, and burnout

Well, here we are in February! Or as Garfield the cat once said, the armpit of the year. February has always been the hardest month for me to get through, because winter's charm has started to wear off and spring is still so far away yet. So I agree with Garfield's assessment.

I suppose I owe you some Christmas pictures, since Chad didn't post any of those in December. It was nice to have a real proper Christmas here on our hobby farm.

It's been a rough winter for us. After so much work last year, with moving, selling our Jamestown house, settling in, and building a new garden, I found myself totally burnt out by November. Tired to the point where I could barely get myself to keep up with the basic chores like dishes and cooking. So that's all I did, all though November, December, and about half of January. And then, just as I began to feel better mentally, I got pretty sick and once again was just trying to hang on and keep the house running.

The dishwasher that came with the house, which was getting close to 20 years old, started acting up on us. We decided to go ahead and replace it. Chad said the old machine had been fixed so many times that the plastic tabs holding the front on had mostly been broken off and that he didn't think he would be able to fix it again.

The new dishwasher had to sit in the dining room and the later the living room for about a week while we waited for a good time to start working on the project.

The project turned out to be so much bigger than we thought it would be. First of all, Chad needed to run new wire in the basement because the old machine had been wired by a crazy person. After that, Chad needed to then replace some plumbing and add some shut off valves. Once that was done, we had to add boards to the floor where the old dishwasher sat, because they had run everything through a weird hole in the floor! It was a total mess. But after two and a half weeks, we finally got the new one installed.

It's stall not perfect. The hole in the cabinet is way too big for the dishwasher. Chad thinks it used to be a large cabinet back in the day because it looks like there used to be shelves in there. There is a good size gap to the cabinet front on either side of the machine, and inside there is maybe 6 inches on either side. But we were tired and wanted to just be done with this project, so we decided to live with it for now until we have more energy to build the hole out better. Chad said we might just wait to do it when we replace this dishwasher! And to top it off, after he worked so hard on this project, Chad got sick too and we had to take another week off from any kind of work around the house.

But we got through January, and both Chad and I are beginning to feel better, more alive, ready to start making plans for the future again. I even started working on my garden plans.

Before I buy seeds, I needed to first inventory what I already have. Technically, I could have a decent garden without buying anything because I have quite a collection, but enthusiastic gardeners aren't known to be that practical. I love to try new varieties every year. Even now that my garden is larger, I wish I had even more space to try more varieties!

I've been using a cool website called VegPlotter to plan my garden this year. Here's what the plan looks like.

It's kind of hard to tell what's going on, so I'll try to explain. The left side of the garden is the berry patch. There will be, from top to bottom, rhubarb, strawberries, blueberries, three kinds of raspberries, and blackberries.

The right side of the garden is the veggie plot. What I have planned, top to bottom and left to right, is garlic, pumpkins, carrots, onions, potatoes, rutabagas, kale, chard, bush beans, ground cherries, peppers, romaine lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, beef and cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, vining zucchini, and sugar snap peas! Undersown amongst the larger and later plants are carrots, radishes, and leaf lettuce. (For those observant people, yes, that is a LOT of garlic. I ordered way too much, and didn't want to waste it, so I planted it all. I'll give some to my neighbors or donate it to the food pantry! Eventually I would love to grow enough veggies to donate more to the food pantry.)

So far, I have gotten the berries ordered. They'll come in March or April, and I'm very excited! We have the rows all ready, and all that I'll need to do is mix in some fertilizer and plop the plant in.

Slowly, we are beginning to come back to life. Tonight, we discussed which projects we want to work on this year. Top of our list is to insulate and finish the attic, to both save on energy and to make my studio more livable in cold and hot weather. We would like to get as much insulating done as we can before we tackle the biggest project, installing a geothermal heat pump to replace our oil furnace. The less energy we need to heat our house, the smaller a heat pump we'll need. That's why we replaced the original windows, even though I liked them so much with their neat old counterweights.

But even when we have our geothermal heat pump, we'll still use out wood stove. It's still the cheapest way to heat the house, and by far the coziest.