It was a really gorgeous morning out, while I was doing my rounds.
The trees were covered with frost – but only the tops! :-D
It was not a very productive day today, unfortunately. I think I spent too much time on the computer yesterday, leaving me with a weird headache all night, making it difficult to sleep. I was also getting up to check the computer to monitor a download. I wanted to use the electronic files to type out my defense response to the suit our vandal has filed against us. They are available in Word documents, but I allowed my subscription to MS Office lapse, long ago. I decided to start that up again.
The first fight was trying to go through the process of paying for it, which kept looping back to the step one, every time I tried to use my Debit Visa. I finally started up a chat request for assistance.
It took over an hour for someone to respond.
I had no idea there was an Xbox launch that day. :-D
He was very helpful. It turned out there was a whole bunch of stuff needing to be updated, but my card kept getting declined. That’s why it was looping when I tried before. All he could see at his end was that it had something to do with it being a Debit Visa, instead of a regular credit card (I haven’t had a credit card for many years). I finally used the card for an account I have in a different bank, and it worked just fine.
So that took about 2 hours in total.
Then I had to download it. A 10 gig download, on satellite. After another couple of hours, I think it got to almost 40% before it completely stalled. It decided my computer wasn’t online. Our signal may indeed have kicked out; it does that fairly regularly, but our systems log on again automatically, and it typically is working again so quickly, whatever we are working is not affected much. Whatever happened, the download just died. I finally had to end-task it and tried again. It was still frozen. In the end, I had to restart my computer, then start the download all over again.
It still took most of the night, but it worked!
Today, I spent time time getting the various parts of the suite set up, then started working on my response. When looking up the form online, I found a similar one that could be used.
Defense and counterclaim.
!!
If we were under different circumstances, I could counterclaim for all the stuff that disappeared from here that we know is at our vandal’s place. Except 1) it happened before we moved here, so I don’t actually know much about what has gone missing and 2) this all belonged to my mother, so I can’t make any claim for it, nor would I be able to claim on her behalf. At least, not for this.
I’ve been talking to my brother, however, and he has a much better idea of what has gone missing, so he agreed to start a list, including estimated value. I may not be able to claim it, but I can include it. It actually fits in with the email I am including to show he could have taken stuff he claims as his own at any time, if he had only produced proof of ownership.
Well, I got a partial list today, and I must say, I was shocked. I knew a lot was taken, but I was still not prepared for this!
Almost $45,000 worth of stuff has been taken from here – and that’s just the stuff he knows of, and has remembered so far.
Looking at the list, I found myself thinking just how much easier our job of taking care of this place could have been, these past few years! We wouldn’t be having to scrounge through the junk for whatever isn’t too badly damaged, for starters. And the tools!! Oh, my goodness! I had no idea many of them were even here in the first place.
By the time I finished reading the list, the trees were not the only things that were frosted!
I remembered to ask my brother about the insanely heavy-for-it’s-size object I’d dug out of the grass.
He called it a worm drive.
Inside are gears that convert the energy from high speed rotation into slow speed rotation with high power.
I did some searches and found it under terms like worm gear box, worm reduction drive, worm gear reducer, and so on. I even found some similar to ours, though none quite like it. It even looks like the Ohio brand is still around.
Another one of those “ah, one of those things I understood but didn’t know the name of.”
Definitely something we want to try and protect from further damage!
I made a much delayed trip to the post office (using my face shield for the first time).
There were several packages waiting for me, including one that had these – being guarded by a Susan!
That gouge will allow me to carve much deeper than the curved blade of the sloyd knife in my carving kit. I have a couple of practice pieces in mind before I try carving a cup or small bowl, with some maple and apple wood pieces ready and waiting to try.
Besides the gouge, there is a sharpening kit for curved blades, including polishing compound. The other side of it has a matching recessed area, and the sandpaper can be affixed to it using 2 pieces of wood that slide out.
I look forward to using it to sharpen my sloyd knife!
Then there was the other thing in the mail.
The thing I had to sign for.
The return address was our vandal, so I knew I was being served… something. But what could he come up with?
When I opened it and figured out what it was, all I could do was laugh. What an abuse of the court’s time!!!
Our vandal is claiming a number of items around the property, in the amount of $13,000. I actually can’t tell if he’s asking for the stuff, or if he want’s the money. Probably the money. I’ve already sent a copy of it to my lawyer. (My Legal Shield membership, paying off again!)
Here’s the thing.
We don’t own the property or anything on it. When we moved here, my mother said we could use anything on it as if it were our own, but also made it VERY clear, that she was still the owner and called the shots. I’ve also gone out of my way to make that line of owner ship clear, even as we talk generically about “our house” our “our place”. It’s “ours” in that we live here, but we do not own any of it.
What’s on the farm, belongs to the farm, so now that the property belongs to my brother, it’s his. We have the same deal with him as we did with our mother. He knows this, because he contacted my brother to get written permission to go onto the property for “lumber” he says he paid for. Except there is no “lumber”. Unless you count the scrap and salvaged wood, all of which is damaged in some way. Lumber is one of the things listed. I have no idea what he believes is still in that barn!
On top of that, with a number of things listed, I don’t even know what he’s talking about. Others, it could be any of a number of things. It’s pretty vague. Still others are just laughable. Like the TV. He’s never claimed ownership of the TV before. I supposed it’s possible that he bought it for my late father, but if he did, it was a gift, and ownership went to my mother when my dad died.
So he’s demanding (most likely) $13,000 cash from me, for mostly junk, when I don’t even claim ownership of any of it in the first place. Besides, if I had that kind of money, we’d have a new roof by now.
There is, however, one final kicker. I have an email I sent to him, more than a year and a half ago, where I told him that if he wanted to take stuff he was claiming (some of which I already confirmed was never his), he could do so – after providing proof of ownership. He never responded. He couldn’t. He has no proof of ownership.
There is a court date, by teleconference, in February, but I’ve got 20 days to file a response.
Today is supposed to be our last warmish day in quite some time, and we are very fortunate to have it. Just yesterday, a major system passed through. To the north of us, they had near blizzard conditions. To the south, it was rain instead of snow. Yet, there on the weather radar, was a clear spot in the system, passing over our area!
I am quite grateful for out continued mild weather! It gave me one last day to patch the other window in the pump shack.
Here is how it looked before I started.
In the forefront is an old forge my dad made. My brother told me he’d cobbled it together using an old blower that the tray of coals is attached to.
I’d already cut away the bigger saplings that had self sown in the area. Before I could start, I had to cut away some more, move the steel bars and that flat piece of metal with a slight curved shape to it (it turned out to be partly buried), out of the way.
I also pulled this out of the grass.
I don’t know what it is, but it’s in the pump shack now. My brother had said something about it in passing, but I just can’t remember. I understood that he felt it was worth salvaging and protecting, so that’s what I’m going.
After clearing things away, I was able to pick up all the broken pieces of glass.
As I looked more closely at the window itself, I realized it was just held in place with three bent nails. All I had to do was rotate them, and I could take out the whole thing!
So I did.
It’d hard to see, but each piece of glass has tiny little metal things holding the panes in place. They have pointed ends driven into the wood frame. The glass was then caulked to the frame, but most of that has long since fallen off, revealing those metal bits in the process.
I decided to use some rigid foam insulation to fill in the hole, as well as support the wooden pieces that were holding the remaining glass in place. I trimmed the inside edges of the insulation so it would fit more flush into the recesses of the wood.
Everything was very loose. Even the corner joins. Though the thickness of the piece of insulation would help keep things from moving around, there was still a pretty high chance other pieces of glass could fall out.
So, I got out the silicone caulking I had left and caulked it all, then put the window back in place.
It looks horrible, but it’ll do the job for now.
Here is how it looks from the inside.
Any work done on this building is just keeping it going as long as possible. It really needs to be replaced completely. Even the concrete floor is cracked and heaving. But it still keeps things inside dry, and it isn’t collapsing, like other buildings, so it’s worth it to keep patching things.
That done, I turned my attention to the old forge. Now that things were cleared away under the window, I wanted to move it next to the wall, for a bit more protection from the elements.
It had sunk into the ground and, as I was looking around to see what I had to work with, I found the plug for it! :-D
I tried lifting and shifting, and while I could move it a fair bit on one end, the end with the coal tray was much heavier. The tray itself has only two screws holding it to the metal, so I couldn’t even use that as a grip to lift.
I ended up grabbing one of the steel bars I’d set aside, using it as a lever. The ground was pretty soft, so I also tried using bricks, as well as another, shorter, bar I found in the grass, as support.
I was having a hard time getting things under it, though. There was something blocking me.
Did this thing have legs?
No!
Are those… wheels???
By now, I realized I would need to tip it over onto its side, because I just could not lever the heavy side out of the dirt and over the overgrown grass.
The coal tray had stuff on it, though, so I took that off.
It was asphalt shingles, covering the coal. The yellow metal piece was on top, but the round metal piece was something I found under the shingles, lying on top of the coal bits.
I then tried to use the bar to lever it around some more. There was really just one place solid enough to put the bar. The piece you can see under the coal tray is hollow, which I discovered when it started crumbling when I pushed the bar against it.
I did, eventually, manage to get it on its side.
Yup. Those were wheels! But they weren’t attached to the forge!
There was still some rotted wood attached. It was like a little wheeled scooter that the whole thing was resting on.
It wasn’t until I uploaded the pictures that I realized where the motor was. It is on the light end!
I kept trying to shift the forge, but the weight on one side made it very awkward to do anything.
I’d opened it before and saw someone had stuffed some inner tubes inside. Maybe I could take the blower pieces out or something, and lighten it?
There… is no blower in there.
What on earth was I seeing in there? Hidden away, under the inner tubes?!!
Dear Lord in Heaven.
It’s a grinding wheel.
Why on earth did someone put a grinding wheel in there?
Not that I mind too much. This might be the one I remember as I child. The log building it was in had been burned to the ground to get rid of it, and as far as I knew, none of the stuff inside had been removed, first. So I’m actually very happy to see this.
After moving it away, I started pulling other things out.
There was just so much stuff!!
I found 4 inner tubes, a gas can, a lawnmower blade, the throttle cable from a lawn mower, and even a spoon.
There are also blacksmith tongs, though one has the handle broken off. A couple of objects with lots of pivoting pieces on it. A couple of old metal legs, like off an old-style bathtub. Two ax heads, and more odds and ends
Two things in there really excited me. I don’t know what they are called, but from videos I’ve watched of people using carving benches, I recognize them. One end goes into a hole drilled into the carving bench, and the other holds the item being carved in place. It was something I realized I could really use, if I plan to extend my carving repertoire. I just had no idea where to find them – a hard thing to do when you don’t know the name of what you’re looking for – and some of the carvers whose videos I watched, commented on how expensive they are They’d made their own, instead.
Now I have two!
So I’m pretty excited about that!
Once empty, I was able to right the forge again.
After seeing the remains of the wheels it was on, I decided to take some of the glazed bricks I’ve been finding and put them under the forge.
Even empty, it was still hard to move! The light end, I could grasp and lift, but the heavy end was harder to get a grip on. I ended up using the bar to lever and shift that end, to get it onto the bricks.
I did finally get it in place!
You can see the bar I used to lever it.
The coal tray looked like it was cracked, but I think it was there for a purpose. The “crack” extends to some holes in the middle of the coal tray. Under the holes is the squared pipe. The air from the blower was directed under the coals through there.
I considered throwing away the wheels, but the frame they’re attached to looks like it might actually be salvageable, so I am keeping it for now. I just knocked the dirt and roots out of the spokes, first.
After that, it was time to clean up where the forge had been sitting.
I’d found a few metal bits and wires. Then some nails.
Then more nails. And screws.
And more nails!
I think a container full of nails, screws and other odd bits had spilled there. The last thing I wanted was for someone to step on them and get sepsis or something.
So I dug out what I think is the original lid for our septic tank, to use as a tray, and magnets.
Along with the nails, I found bits of spark plugs, a gas cap, the tooth of a hay mower, and miscellaneous other bits!
Once that was done, and my younger daughter helped me tuck the keepers I’d found into the pump shack, I enlisted her help to move the other thing I don’t know the name off. One of the pictures below is from when I first dug it out from beside the fuel tank, yesterday. This is another of those things my brother said was worth salvaging and protecting, so I wanted to move it into the pump shack.
In the older photo, you can see what looks like a completely sheered piece of steel, in the middle.
There was dirt and roots jamming one of the pieces sticking out the narrow side – in the first picture, it is completely hidden by grass. It now rotates freely again.
Between the two of us, we could not lift it! Not without risking injury, anyhow (and I think my daughter might have hurt her back trying, but isn’t telling me, so I won’t worry. :-( ). I’m astounded by how heavy this thing is.
One thing we noticed after trying is that some ?oil? leaked out.
I ended up rolling and flipping it, end over end, until it was under the coal tray of the forge.
We could hear fluid sloshing inside!
So that’s tucked away as much as it can be, for now.
My goodness, what a lot more work there turned out to be! But it’s done now, and we don’t have to worry about this stuff as winter comes in.
Today, my goal was to board up at least one of the broken windows in our old pump shack.
Which was not an easy job. (Photo heavy post ahead!)
You see, in order to fix the window, I needed to be able to reach the window.
In order to reach the window, I had to cut back some self-sown maples growing in the way.
To be able to reach the trees, I had to clean up this.
You can see part of an old freezer, over on the left. Next to the old furnace is a partially dismantled modern washing machine, next to part of an old wringer washer, and beyond that, a second fuel tank.
It’s hard to see in the above photo, but there is a black electrical cord coming out of a hole under the eaves, about in the middle.
This cord is eventually buried, and extends to the storage shed, which used to be my late brother’s workshop. Though the cord is plugged in inside the pump shack, it was actually easier to plug my extension cord into the other end of this cord, in the storage shed!
I… don’t know what this is.
I’d moved it aside, only to realize I needed to clean out the stuff I’d just put it on top of. It’s quite heavy, so I just moved it by the old freezer for now.
While following the cord until it was buried, I found all sorts of things. Including this old wiring, which I just put on top of the old furnace for now.
I went to move one of the tanks, and found another mystery item was propped against it. No clue what it is, but it says “Ohio” on it. :-D
I also discovered the electrical cable was not actually buried where I thought, and was still on the surface, under the tank!
The tanks were quite light, so I rolled them completely away, near the storage shed.
Under the big white tank labeled “purple gas”, I found this.
It was on top of those two tires flat on the ground, and propped up by the other stuff.
While cleaning up around the tires, I found the window pane! It had simply fallen out and didn’t break!
Once I moved the big tractor tire, I found a collection of seats from old farm equipment under it.
I ended up having to cut away that tree to get them out, because it had grown around some of the metal pieces.
I decided they could be salvaged and wanted to put them somewhere out of the elements. I decided the old chicken coop was the best bet for now.
I am not looking forward to cleaning this thing out! But, if we have any chance of salvaging the building, it has to be done. The beam across the doorway is sinking, and a board that used to be above the door is now over the door. There’s room enough I can move the door to one side, but it can no longer be closed fully.
Also, there is another maple at the corner that needs to be cleared away.
To get to the old coop door, I had to first clear away a forest of burrs with the loppers.
They attacked me.
Actually, just one of them. Once it caught on my sleeve, that was it. Before I knew it, I had burrs all over the front of my jacket, both sleeves, my pant legs, my butt, and even my hair!
I had to ask my daughters to help get the burrs out of my hair! The burrs did NOT want to let go!
That tractor in the background is another thing I need to clear. It has trees growing through it. :-(
As I was getting the old seats out, I found…
… a cast iron frying pan!
I ended up putting it in the pump shack. Where the wood burning stove used to be, there is a tiny electric stove (I doubt it works) that has only 2 elements on it. I just had to put the pan on it! :-D
There was one last seat I was struggling with. It was still attached to something, which was buried, and part of it was stuck in the tree I had to cut away, and other parts stretched out further.
I was eventually able to drag it all out.
I… have no idea what this is. Or was, I should say.
There was no way that was fitting through the old coop door, so it got set aside elsewhere.
Once it was cleared enough, I took a look at the old kitchen sink, leaning against the corner of the pump shack.
I love this thing!!! I have got to find some way to use it somewhere. :-D
For now, I just tucked it closer to the building. I don’t dare move it until I have someone to help. I don’t want to chance breaking it.
After clearing more stuff away, I found this bar sticking out of the ground.
I don’t know what it’s attached to underground, but it was not moving. It could turn a bit, and I could wobble it a bit, but that’s it. I could not pull it out,
No clue why it’s there.
I made my way to the old furnace, moved another tire and found and an old kettle! LOL Then I went to move the old steel… container of some sort, and found more stuff in it. It doesn’t show in the photo, but at the very bottom, there was a roaster lid.
Just the lid. :-D
As I pulled more stuff out from under the dirt and leaves behind the old furnace, I found some other odds and sots.
Score!!!!! Oh, I was so excited! That bar with a point at one end is solid steel and very heavy for its size. I could have used something like that in the past few years! There used to be a bar like this, except more like 4 or 5 feet long, but it is among the things that disappeared. This is a bit short, but it’ll still be very handy.
The other stuff joined the hub caps and other weird scraps on the junk pile.
This is as far as I could go, though. That metal is under the old furnace. I’ll have to, at the very least, tip the furnace to be able to get it out.
Not today.
This is as far as I got today!
Under the window, coming through the concrete, you can just see a pipe. That is a drain pipe. Back when we were still using the well under this shack, and had no running water in the house, we had a claw footed bath tub in here. We would heat water on the wood stove for our baths, and this is where the bath water would drain out. I have no memory if there was more pipe, so it wouldn’t drain right at the foundation.
There’s a bit of stump in the middle that I am leaving for now. My poor little reciprocating saw was really starting to struggle by this point!
I could finally fix the window!
The glass pane fit perfectly in a recess in the frame. It looks like it was held in place by a single nail at the top! The metal side, where a stove pipe used to go through, has about a dozen nails holding it!
As the cats go through that hole, I screwed scrap boards across both halves to hold them in place.
Also, I’m short. I found the cinder block by the storage shed to stand on, so I could reach the top of the window. When cleaning up later, it joined the 5 or 6 glazed bricks that I’d also uncovered by the old furnace.
I keep finding those, absolutely everywhere! I would not be the least surprised if I move the old furnace, and find more of them under it.
One of these days, I need to remember to ask my brother if he knows where they all came from, and why my parents got them! Or maybe my mother might remember.
Now, what am I to do with all the tires I dragged out?
Why, drag them back again, of course. :-D
The stack on the left is covering that bar that’s sticking out of the ground, so no one will accidentally hurt themselves on it. Those tires all have rims. The others are by the window so the cats can still get in through the opening. The ones lying flat have no rims, so they can potentially provide critter shelter.
Yeah. I’m a suck.
I am keeping a fair bit of the maple I cut. I’m sure I will be able to find something I can make with them! :-)
There is still a small window at the end of the shack that needs to be fixed. It’s made up of 4 squares of glass, framed by a + of wood in the middle. One of the three squares is gone, but I have yet to find it on the ground, so I don’t know if it has broken or not. I’m just assuming it’s broken, since I saw the cat that jumped through it.
Tomorrow is going to be our last warmish day for quite some time, so I’m hoping to be able to get that done. I might end up just boarding that one up completely. We’ll see.
That’s assuming my body is up to it. I’m feeling pretty sore right now! :-D
One of the things I’ve been wanting to get done in the outer yard, was to clear some trees from what used to be a chicken coop, when I was a kid. Getting things done in the outer yard has now been pushed back another year, but the last wind storm we had left more damage to the roof. It’s a job that needed to get done sooner, rather than later!
Since this involved some rather larger trees, I figured I would finally use the chain saw I got repaired last year!
Of course, I had to test start it, first. It’s been a very long time since I’ve used a gas powered chain saw, so I appreciated that it has each step written out, right on the machine.
Oops.
Yeah. I pulled on the knob, and the whole piece broke off!
So much for using a chain saw.
This meant dragging out a 100 ft extension cord and the reciprocating saw, instead.
This is what it looked like before I started.
Someone went through all the effort to cover the original roof with corrugated steel, only to have so many pieces get torn off, because no one cut back the self-seeded maples.
This is not a small tree, either!
Yeah, I had to cut my way through burrs, first, just to reach it!
The other corner had tree problems, too.
You can see how both sections of tree are rubbing against the corrugated steel. On the side, it at least bent into a more rounded shape…
This one was growing around a sharp end!
I started off cutting the lower branch that was tearing the metal sheets off on the south side, then trimming it back, bit by bit, until I had to cut the trees from this side, to be able to reach the rest.
This is where they were rubbing against the roof.
Once the smaller ones were clear, I could reach more of the larger tree and get that one clear, too.
I had to move other things around, too. The sheet of metal is still buried somewhere; I could only lift and bend part of it to get access. I am not sure, but I think roots have grown over the buried end. !!
After I reached this point, I spent some time trimming branches and cleaning up.
This is where I stopped for the night. I might not take the rest of the trunk down. I haven’t decided, yet. Left alone, all of the stumps will start growing again, and I really want to prevent that. This log building is remarkably solid, and it’s the only log building left that isn’t collapsing outright, so we really want to protect it as much as we can, until we can possibly even restore it.
I don’t know what to do about this section of roof, though. We might have some sheets of metal roofing material large enough to use, lying about, but no safe way to get up there. I will have to consult with my brother. We likely can’t do anything until next year, but with the branches gone, it will at least not get ripped apart in high winds, anymore.
It’s hard to see, but in the tall grass are piles of smaller, thinner branches I trimmed off.
These larger branches have been set aside to be trimmed, and I will keep the larger pieces.
Some logs are already trimmed and set aside – including a pile of wonky shapes, in the back!
Maple is quite a heavy wood to drag around! That last, biggest piece of trunk was pretty awkward to move, too. It is, however, large enough that I might be able to get some long, shallow bowls out of it. I’ve ordered a gouge that I can use to carve deeper than with what I have now, and I hope to be able to carve some cups as well as small, deeper bowls. I might be able to do some small dishes, too.
I clear branches off differently now, compared when we were first clearing trees away. I no longer cut smaller branches right at the main branch. Now I leave longer pieces that may end up being the handles for ladles, or long handled spoons, with the crook of the branch being the bowl for ladle or spoon.
A lot of this wood, in a variety of sizes and shapes, will end up in the basement for potential future projects. Some pieces will join the apple wood by the fire pit, and what’s left will go into the piles for chipping.
I was losing light by this point, so I will continue tomorrow. By the time I put all the tools away, it was full dark – and only 5:30 by the time I got inside! It felt like 8 or 9. :-D
If all goes productively, I’ll be able to clear more, smaller, maples that are growing up against the pump shack, giving access to the windows the cats broke. Some of the mamas have had their kittens in there. One of the windows was only half a window. The other half had a board with a hole cut in it for a stove pipe. My brother took the stove itself away, because it was getting damaged. The cats had been jumping through the hole for the stove pipe, but over time, the stress of that finally broke the other side. Meanwhile, another window lost its pane when I walked into the pump shack, not knowing a cat was in there. The poor thing panicked and jumped through part of the window. :-( At least it was an old, single pane window that was barely holding together already, so the cat was completely uninjured.
We’ll see what we can find to patch those up, tomorrow.
I got a couple of bigger jobs done in preparation for winter. The smaller one was taking care of a window on one of the sheds. This is the one my brother and I had patched the roof of earlier in the year, and is one of the few sturdier sheds left.
My original intention had been to simply board it up, but the window is pretty much the only source of light in the shed, and I had a vague memory of seeing a window in the barn that was about the same side. So I took some measurements, then went looking around.
I found the window, and it turned out to be almost exactly the same dimensions!
And when I say “almost the exact dimension”, I mean the hole in the wall. The frame makes it just barely bit enough that it doesn’t just fall through!
It also looks like it came off of a storm door.
I grabbed a piece of salvaged wood and cut a new “frame” for the window.
If you look at the first photo, you can see the parts of the window that would have been used to slide it up. One of them is flush with the outer edge, the other is flush with the glass. The one flush with the outer edge will be resting on a piece of wood at the top.
This is the window opening. It is, literally, a hole cut in the wall, between two joists.
I also picked up as many pieces of the old window as I could, and some of the bigger pieces of glass. I couldn’t get all of it, though. They are too buried in the grass. This concerns me, as the renter’s cows could hurt themselves. I’ll have to do something about that.
Since I didn’t feel like fighting with an extension cord to the barn, I pre-drilled holes in the wood and put the screws partway through, before I brought everything over. I even cleaned the dirt off the glass, too! :-D
I forgot about the cladding creating gaps, though. I ended up having to replace the screws in the top and bottom pieces with longer ones. I didn’t bother changing the screws in the side pieces, since they don’t need to support anything; just cover any potential gaps from the uneven cut of the opening.
I ended up moving the side pieces in a bit, butting them up against the metal strip on top of the bottom piece. It made them a bit more secure.
There’s one screw at the top right hand corner I couldn’t screw in all the way. I think I hit something in the joist; probably a nail.
Speaking of nails, if you look around the window, you can see several bent nails. There’s two at the top, one on each side, and two at the bottom. I’m pretty sure they’re all that held the old window in place! Well, that and the board hammered onto the wall underneath. No wonder it fell off!
I’m rather happy with how this turned out – and very happy not to have to board it up.
Now I just have to board up some windows in the pump shack. I don’t think I’m going to luck out and find old windows to fit, like I did with this one! That, however, will wait for another day. For today, I had a much bigger job to move on to, and that one will get it’s own post! :-)
I had to bring the van to the garage for 9am, so I was outside, doing my rounds, earlier than usual.
I usually wait until it isn’t dark anymore, but of course, it’s staying dark much longer now.
That didn’t stop the kitties from coming out for an early breakfast, though!!
Things didn’t quite work out at the garage, though. When I got there, I asked if it was okay if I could stay in his office/waiting area. With all the restrictions, there’s no place to just sit, and it’s too cold to stay outdoors.
It turned out, however, that he somehow double booked. My appointment wasn’t written in his schedule! He remembered what I was booked for, but he had someone else scheduled.
On top of that, the lift he needed to be able to access my tires was occupied by a truck that was supposed to have had only hours of work, but has instead been there for days.
Considering he had my mother’s car on a lift for almost a month, I could only appreciate the situation.
He asked if I could come back in the afternoon, but with my needing to go to the court office, it wasn’t an option. I could have gone in the morning, but I had no way of knowing how long it would take. I might not have been able to get back in time.
So we re-booked me for Monday. A quick stop top
pick up breakfast at the grocery store, then the gas station before driving the 30-40 minutes to the small city it’s in. While I was inside, nowhere near anyone, waiting to pay for my gas, a masked customer came up to me – so much for physical distancing! – telling me that there was a sign at the door saying we had to wear masks. There is no mask mandate in this municipality, but I just told him I was medically exempt. He slunk away with a snarky “isn’t that convenient” type of comment. I told him, “… and that’s harassment.”
At least he had the decency to seem embarrassed.
The clerk behind the counter wasn’t wearing a mask, either.
A tree, keeping watch over my van in the parking lot! :-D
When I got to where I needed to go, the court itself, in a different area of the building, was in session, so there were two security guards in body armour at the door. Though the mask mandates were supposed to expire two days ago, they got extended (is anyone surprised?). The guards were wearing cloth masks that matched their uniforms. I got questions about why I was there, if I had any symptoms or have been around people who tested positive, etc., and about masking. They accepted my exempt status, though I don’t think they believed me. I was the only person I saw, anywhere in the building, without a mask. Since I had everything prepared and needed only to have things signed, witnessed and to swear on the Bible, that part went by quickly. The lady behind the counter was surprised by my typed affidavit, and I explained I was told I could do that, so she accepted it. I then had to wait outside the doors until someone came to me.
The chairs had been taken away since I was there on Monday, so I tucked into a little cubby in the wall next to the pay phone, opposite the security guards. Which was… interesting.
One of the guards, who was wearing thick cloth gloves, kept pulling at his mask and adjusting it. Because of this, I could see that it wasn’t even layers of fabric, but little more than a single layer of interlock knit (t-shirt material) over his face. Cloth masks are confirmed as being the most useless type of mask to begin with, but this was about as flimsy as could be! Still, they satisfied the mandate. :-/
Then I saw him repeatedly use hand sanitizer.
On his cloth gloves.
It was the strangest thing!
I think I waited for about an hour before someone came out and handed me some printouts.
The application was denied.
The letter explained why. It came down to two related things; one of which I might have been able to dig up old emails to meet their standard of evidence, but the other… I just don’t have it. Since I’ve cut communications off with our vandal, I am not in a position to know those sorts of details. At least not to the extent they need.
So that is that. Unless/until something else happens, I will not apply again. As much as he needs the help and won’t get it himself, there is a reason these mental health applications are hard to get, and I do appreciate that. Too many people already abuse the court system for their own personal vendettas. To force someone to have a psychiatric evaluation, the application absolutely must have the evidence to back it up.
I really should have done this when it was first recommended to me, 2 years ago, when the worst of it was still happening.
Ah, well. Live and learn.
One thing that helps is, my family is very supportive of me in all this. When I got home, one of my daughters made lunch for me. As I spent time writing related emails and making a call to get legal advice (I love my Legal Shield!) for the court date, my husband and I had a chance to talk about it, and I updated my brother. As he now owns the property, what our vandal is doing is against him as much as against us! Later, my daughters put together a charcuterie board for us to share for supper, as we watched an episode of The Edwardian Farm. That did get cut short when my lawyer called back. We didn’t talk for long; he asked me to email him copies of the court form about the peace bond, will do some research, and get back to me next week.
Among the things I need to talk to him about is that our vandal has been dropping hints for some time that he’s planning to sue… someone… not sure who. When I first heard of it, it was in a voice mail directed at my mother, but now that my brother is the owner, perhaps that who he plans to sue? Of course, we are “making” him do this but I have no clue what grounds he thinks he has that he can sue any of us for. He apparently still thinks everything has been “given” to me, and by “everything”, he means all the stuff on the farm he feels entitled to because he helped my parents, way back when. It seems he honestly believes he owns it all. When we moved here, my mother expressly stated that we were to treat everything and use everything here as if it were our own, and my brother is on board with that, too. Even so, the stuff that’s here belongs to the farm. It’s not “ours” any more than the farm or house is. It’s a sort of package deal. :-D Of course, there’s more to it than that, which I can’t get into here.
What a mess!
With all the stuff we’ve discovered since moving here – like needing a new roof and a complete renovation, possibly needing a new well, not having the tools and equipment we should have had had to take care of the place, and so on, in the end, this is really the only major problem with living here. In the end, that’s really not too bad. It’s still better than what we left behind.
A few more weeks, and we’ll be celebrating three years of living here.
Three years and 2,324 posts! That’s a lot of documenting our journey, and recording how things have been changing in our lives since moving out here. As of today, we’re even up to 410 followers, which is amazing to me. Thank you to you all for joining us on our journey, in our little corner of the world! :-)
Our journey has certainly taken some unexpected turns. Among them, I was not expecting to spend this day filling out the form and typing up an affidavit (then editing, tweaking, and editing some more!) to get a mental health order for our vandal. I’ve given him several days to respond to my email, asking him to get help but, at this point, it’s time to take the next step.
I’m also realizing that I’ve forgotten to eat both lunch and supper today. *sigh*
Time to grab a quick bite, then head to bed early. Tomorrow, I drop the van off first thing in the morning to get the winter tires put on, along with an oil change. From there I’ll head back to the court office and finish filing for the mental health order. Hopefully, I’ve included enough information this time.
Let’s start with some adorable kitties, having breakfast!
They’re just a great way to start the day! :-D
As for the rest of the day, things were just… tiring.
I got a phone call early in the day. Well, any phone call at all is unusual for us. ;-D
It was my older brother, letting me know he got a phone call from our vandal. My brother was at his work office, so he didn’t answer, but once he heard the message, he wanted to let me know about it, right away.
Amazingly, after making some nasty digs about not being allowed in the property anymore, he had the nerve to request written permission to come on the property.
There are some 2x4s in the barn, and he’s building a shed, so he wants them.
Unbelievable!
My brother was able to send me the file and I got it transcribed before I had to head out. So that was helpful, though ultimately, I never made use of it.
My first stop was at the garage to get the broken shield on my mother’s car fixed.
The tip of it was broken off. The shield had been held in place with a plastic clip that was still holding the tip in place. Since the length was changed, he ended up having to drill and screw into a new hole.
The whole thing, including the time to drive the car in, use the lift, fix it, then drive it out again, took 5 minutes.
I offered to pay, but he wouldn’t bill me anything for it.
What an awesome guy!
Since it took so little time, I was able to drive to the nearer small city and go to the court office to apply for a restraining order and involuntary mental health assessment for our vandal.
The municipality the court is in is under a mask mandate, so I had to go through the usual questioning about my not wearing one, but there were no issues when I said I was medically exempt. I explained why I was there and got the two forms explained to me, but I had to leave the space to fill them out, since the area around the counter was small, and they could only serve one person at a time. I ended up standing at a garbage/recycling station to have a flat surface to work on. Which was fine by me.
I wasn’t able to pass on any of the printouts I brought, but I was glad to have them, since as I filled out the forms, I could use them to get exact dates and remember key details. Not that there was room for much.
After passing the completed forms back, answering a few questions, swearing on the Bible (which was in a clear plastic bag, and got sprayed with sanitizer first) and getting my signatures witnessed, it was back out the door to sit and wait.
Surprisingly, it was the mental health order that was dealt with faster.
Someone came out to talk to me and, in a nutshell, she could not grant the mental health order. She did, however, tell me exactly why and what I needed, then gave me a new form to take home, so I could reapply. The biggest question was whether or not he’d been told to get help, and refused it, very recently – as in, within the last 24 hours or so. I’ve certainly told him to get help before, but I haven’t had direct contact with him in ages for a reason! All in all, she was very helpful. I think, even with how little I could fit into the form, she could tell that this was a real issue.
Then I had to wait about the restraining order. When I got called in for that, I was given the sheet that would go to the police to go over; after some details were corrected, I signed it.
I now have a court date in November.
He will be served by the police some time soon. Which means we will have to double down on keeping an eye on things, because this is likely to trigger him.
The whole time I was there was very stressful. I’ve actually had to go through some of this before we moved, but it’s very different when the person is not someone you used to be close to. My body was so tense, I had to go to the bathroom three times, just because of how much my abdomen was cramping up. My hands were shaking so bad, I could hardly write, and I felt like throwing up, all from being so physically tense. And yet, I was actually pretty calm about the whole thing, mentally. There is still that physiological response to stress, and I just had to push my way through it.
I am glad to have at least been able to get the process started. I have steps to take, and can try again with the mental health order once I get those ducks in a row.
The next while is going to require being on high alert. I thought I knew this person very well, but now, I have no idea how he will react once he’s served with the court date.
It has to stop. The process, however, is so very slow.
The Re-Farmer 