All Bad News

That is not a very encouraging title for a blog post, I know. And although most of this is not good news, it is not all bad either. Some is even cause for thanksgiving.
It's all in your persepctive, I think.

1. Lou and I went to Minneapolis last week for the CHS annual meeting. We have gone each year for nearly as many years as Lou has served as a board member on the Connell Grain Grower board. This year he was a candidate for the national CHS board from our region -- a pretty nice salary with full benefits. He's never worked for anyone but himself/the family before, so there would have been changes in our life had he won the election. He put over 3000 miles on the van in a little over a week in late October, driving around the region and meeting with as many co-op managers as he could get to, campaigning. It was a learning experience, that is for sure, but by the tense of the previous two sentences, you might have figured out already that he did not win the election. Of the 4 candidates, he came in #2. We have a suspicion that he may even have been leading until the last ballot (it took 3; they dropped a name each time), when the man who had once held the second board position from this region when it used to have two, finally got the needed 50%. It is possible he could try again in 3 years, maybe not. A lot can happen in that much time... And so he is still a farmer, self employed, and doesn't have to set aside 100 off-farm days each year for that job.

2. I read in the newspaper tonight that our neighbor, Heber Hellewell, died on Saturday at age 90. Considering those 90 years were lived as an apparently fully functioning healthy man, that is not all bad. It wasn't that long ago that I saw him out getting the mail at the box across the road from his house. We didn't really know him well -- they are an LDS family -- but our kids went to grade school with his grandkids way back and he'd wave when we drove by if he was getting his mail. It is just another neighbor who was here when we moved here 22 years ago that is not here anymore.

3. We got a phone call at 7 AM on Sunday asking us to forward prayers of thanksgiving at church -- the man who called just found out that his son's house had burned down that morning. That doesn't sound like something one might give thanks for at all, but considering it started while everyone (3 + 3 visitors) was asleep and there were no injuries, he was very thankful. We, in fact, have been farming about 15 acres of their ground down there this year (the place with the goats, see Kelli's blog from this summer), so it was of some extra interest to us. Here is what is left of the house, taken from the top of the gravel road hill on Road 5 just east of us, looking down:
It was quite an old house, with who knows what sort of wiring (or maybe we now know), but it was insured. With any luck, the insurance will be enough that they will be able to build a new, decent house now and have more efficient use of square footage, etc. -- something this young family was in need of anyway. They think bullets kept on the step got hot, went off and woke them up ... it could have been so much worse!
I think our church will help them out with some things once we know what their needs are and when they have space for clothes and toys. They are staying with family now, and have one 3-yr old daughter.

4. Saturday night the wind just blew and blew, and it continued all day Sunday and into Sunday night as well. It really gets loud when it is blowing that hard (+30 mph) so I can imagine what a tornado must sound like sometimes. When we got home from church on Sunday we noticed this:
The wind had ripped the roof from the Outhouse. Not good. There are no pigs in there at this time, however, so that is good. The decision to be made now is whether to completely tear down this +20 year old building and put up two hoops for pigs in its place, or to replace the roofing. Hog houses technically have a life span of about 10 years, so this one and the others have been on borrowed time for a while -- the hog air is so corrosive that any metals rust out in that time. We think that is what happened to the screws that held this roof on. The winds were from the NE, which is not the normal direction for wind here. so my blinds on the front window didn't survive either:
But they were old and in need of replacement too.

So now I am trying to get into the Christmas spirit ... but not finding the time to shop, clear out a space for the tree, or address Christmas cards. I do own a Christmas tree -- it was delivered by the Science Olympiad kids from the high school last Monday, but I wasn't ready for it so I put it into some water in the back yard, where it promptly froze solid. Lou put it into the scale house today to thaw out. Maybe once it's up I'll feel more in the mood. I haven't even made any fudge yet! I do always seem to get it done (mostly), but if I don't start soon, that track record may be in jeopardy!