Overwhelmed

So right now I'm slightly....OK, actually more-than-slightly overwhelmed at what we've taken on at the new house. As per usual, there is a lot we've learned since closing escrow that has added to our to-do list and will put a strain on our wallet. There are busted window casings, broken blinds, and garage doors that don't open. Is it ever any other way? Do people ever buy houses without hemorrhaging money for the first six months? 

I'm not even gonna list all the things that need to be done, because it will probably make me cry if I see it all written down in one place, and I don't think you have that long to read it all anyway. But some of it has to happen before we move, and the rest will be done by us (long) after we're in.  I don't even have a date for moving right now, because as I said....some things have to get done first, which means I'm relying on The Guys (collective term for the Flooring Guy, the LockSmith Guy, the Tile Guy, the Windows Guy, the Contractor Guy, and the Garage Door Guy) to start work on the things that are on the Before We Move list.

That's right, I'm expecting contractors to show up and complete work on time. Clearly I have lost my mind already.

But once we're in, I suspect I'll have projects going on for literally years. And since I actually like projects, this may be the most perfect house ever for me. But looking at it from the start is a little like staring up at a skyscraper you are about to climb. Hopefully once you get past the 10th floor it'll get easier. Hopefully.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying our last few weeks in The Vineyard House. The Vineyard House is like good, strong alcohol...incredibly enjoyable until it gives you a headache. I will miss the views, the grand trees in the back, and the quiet -- but not the total isolation or the fact that something died under the house recently and is causing intermittent stinkage. Neither Big Ag or myself feels inclined to crawl into the crawlspace and inspect, and the company does not seem to be inclined either. They already have this place rented out when we move, so I guess the new employee/tenants will have to deal with it.

I also had the fun experience of having a mouse living INSIDE my car recently, which stays in the barn when I'm not driving it. One electronic trap later and I have solved that problem. But living in a working vineyard has its drawbacks, I'm tellin' ya.  Yet I will miss it deeply. How dysfunctional is that?

So in the overwhelming moments, I'm having to just breathe deeply and remain in the present. After all, how does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Of course this situation is actually TWO elephants. One elephant is this house (packing and readying to move) and the other is the new house (unpacking, projecting and making it  a livable home). But taking it all in good time all any of us can do when faced with a pages-long to-do list...

Life and Death on the Homestead

Every human has a sliding scale of mercy when it comes to what we are willing to kill and what we are not.  Most humans will kill ants in and around their food.  House flies also die with great regularity in people's homes. Some people refuse to kill meat to eat, but will eat soy products, meaning they are indirectly responsible for thousands of rabbits and birds dying when harvest comes around and the big combines take to the fields, cutting down everything in their path. 

It seems that death is impossible to avoid.  Even plants have been shown to react when they are pulled out of the ground.

I cannot, as yet, shoot squirrels or anything larger, because their mammalian family hierarchy and tendency to frolic and play touches me, so I will relocate them instead of killing them whenever possible.  Squirrels also have the distinction of learning where I do not want them to go.  When I fill in a squirrel hole on our property, the squirrels do not come back.  So I let them have the lower 1/5 of our property, and patrol the rest to gently turn them away. So far its working, but I make no promises as to the future.  But I will, in general relocate before I kill, if I can.  I even catch house flies and turn them back outside, when possible.

I hated killing mice until they became a serious issue around the coops, and then I did so with a very grim efficiency, using a humane electrical trap that killed instantly. With country property comes a greater necessity to (and therefore exposure to) killing vermin.  I don't like it, but some creatures cannot be easily trapped and relocated. And if you have to kill, I think you owe it to whatever you're killing to dispatch it as humanely as possible.

This morning I shot a gopher in the chicken coop.  I went out and noticed the large hole and a small head popping in and out of it, and knew immediately what it was.  Gophers are vermin, carrying fleas, worms, mites, and disease with them, so allowing them near our live food source was not an option, both for the hens health as well as ours.  I stepped inside, loaded Big Ag's .22 with hollow-point rounds, and took it back outside to the coop, standing silently over the hole until the gopher appeared again.  And then I shot.

 The one I shot did not look like this.

It was a clean, quick kill, and I'm pretty sure there was not more than a second that elapsed between the gopher closing his eyes in this world and opening them up in Gopher Valhalla, or wherever gophers go in the afterlife.  I'd love to tell you that I felt regret, or sadness, but as I've done it more and more, I feel those things less.  

I did have the satisfaction of doing it in a way that was quick and humane, but to me there was no question that it had to be done. You cannot relocate a gopher or even trap them humanely.  It's impossible.

Even so, I'm kind of amazed that this city-born and bred girl is able to do something like this.  In the city parks where I grew up, a gopher would have been a curiosity, a creature we would have sat on the grass and observed, talking about how cute he was.  To go from that to being willing to stand over a gopher hole with a shotgun is coming a long way.  I'm not sure if its spiritual progress or not, however. But when your food sources are in danger, you do what you have to do, whether it's black ants in the sugar or a gopher in the chicken coop.

Life and death go hand in hand with growing or even just storing food, and I'm proud that even if I cannot avoid causing death, I can at least bring it to pass in a swift fashion.  Sometimes that's the best you can do, and it has to be enough.