I had to zoom over to the farm yesterday to meet the satellite guy. That was what I thought to be the final fix from the tree-falling fiasco of last week. The farm is really rural and there was a county-wide planned power outage yesterday from 7:00am to 1:30pm. This happens fairly frequently as they work on what is often quite old infrastructure. When the satellite guy arrived, the power was still off and didn’t come back on till after he left. He said we were doing this job on faith. Faith that he did the job right and it would work once the box rebooted. Sure enough, the power came on, and the TV worked. However…the internet would not come back on. I called and there was an outage at the main hub. Hopefully it comes back on and we don’t have to have another service call.

I arrived at the farm before Mr. FixIt. When I pulled up at the house, I noticed the sheet metal “lean to” that protects the gas meter was crushed. When I looked closer, another tree had come down and just narrowly missed the gas meter by a couple of inches. I cleaned up the branches and threw them up behind the barn. Then I lifted up the tree. It really wasn’t too heavy because it was dead and pretty well dried up. I moved it to the side and dropped it…right on my foot! Let me tell ya…that thing was a little heavier than I thought when it landed on my toes. Just dinged them up pretty good and I’ll have some decent bruises out of the deal.

We mowed and did the laundry and ate a lovely lunch on Grandma’s table. I cannot do anything there without feeling her love…for the place…for me. I know without a shadow of a doubt that she would be so incredibly pleased that I take such good care of her house. One of her kids complained to her once about this dusty old house. She told them in no uncertain terms that this house was like the Taj Majal to her. She used to cook on a hot plate on the stair landing of a boarding house. This place is the Ritz compared to some of the places she lived.

Oh, she’s showing her age, this old house. She’s going on a hundred years old, I think. The kitchen floor is off kilter with a hump in the middle that makes you feel like you’re heading downhill when you cross over it. The refrigerator is on shims to keep it level. There are rain stains in the ceiling tiles my uncle put up back in the ‘60s. The house has four kinds of linoleum on the main floor. The walls are plaster and lathe on the main floor and a kind of cardboard looking stuff upstairs. I think the same curtains are up that Grandma hung when I was a little girl. 

Grandma was a frugal woman. Having survived the Great Depression with six children, she learned how to make things last. I remember washing sheets in the old wringer washer downstairs and then she would take bits of material and sew up any holes or worn places in them. She used her treadle sewing machine and she made that needle fly. I always wanted to learn how to do everything she did. She wasn’t always a patient teacher because she had work to do, but she taught me a lot. It would be my highest complement to be even just a little like her. 

We ended the evening mowing a little here at the Ponderosa and gathering a shirt bottom full of ripe tomatoes from the garden…still warm from the sun. I cut them in wedges and arranged them over cool cottage cheese with a couple good twists of fresh ground salt and pepper for Mr. FixIt’s supper. It seems like I am always busy doing something, but it feels like a much simpler life than I’ve ever lived before. I think it’s because it’s here…in West Virginia. Time is a little slower here…a little gentler…a little sweeter.

❤️

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:19 NIV