I did have a great day at work today. Giving away stuff from the garden is fun! Everyone ohs and ahs about the size of the zucchini, and I am very proud to have grown it myself, organically with horse manure as the only fertilizer. I had promised one of the girls at work I would lend her my cat carrier while she moved today but I couldn't find it last night so I found a tote that would serve the purpose. I hauled it out and dusted it off, and as I peered inside I was rewarded by the phony smiles of a dozen Barbie dolls in various stages of dress and undress. I hadn't seen them for about 17 or 18 years, and I immediately knew what I was going to do with them. I knew someone who came into the store who had a four-year old, and she would be delighted to be their new owner. And indeed she was. It is nice when you can make someone's day with such a small gesture. We all should do it more often.
It got busy near the end of the day and I wasn't able to finish up and get out of there as early as I had hoped, knowing I would likely have to listen to sarcastic comments from Nick about working late. The implication was that I had stopped somewhere on the way home. I don't think he meant stopping for turnip and sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.
He was in the barn when I pulled into the yard and the horses were pacing back and forth along the fences anxious to come in for the night, and eager to have their evening meal of oats and hay. He was sitting in the feed room texting someone. That's when I realised he hadn't even finished shovelling out the stalls yet, which was done every day and always before the horses came in. I hadn't expected a whole lot to be done as it was Saturday and Nick kept his Sabbath on Saturday, but he did make allowances for work enough to take care of the daily needs of the livestock. Not wanting to be in the barn too late after working all day, I went into the house to change to come back out and help to finish up the evening chores. I was greeted by the two dogs, who were looking hopefully at my movements to see if I would lean towards the leashes. I decided to change my clothes first, but one of them started to whine, which meant he really needed to go out, so I clipped them to the pieces of rope tied to the porch instead of taking them for a walk, to save a bit of time.
We finished in the barn and on the way inside Nick turned to me and announced that his daughter and her husband were coming to the farm on the Thanksgiving Monday to help him chainsaw and bring in some wood for the winter. This was going to be our fourth winter here and the fourth without firewood to burn to heat the large house. We also had an oil furnace and electric baseboard heating, but with sixty acres of in-cleared land, the plan had been to cut and use our own firewood while at the same time making a trail or two for riding. But each year so far we had had to spend hundreds of dollars on oil and power to stay even halfway comfortable. I found it very hard to crawl out from a warm bed when I could almost see my breath in the bedroom. I didn't like the heat on in the bedroom during the night but I sure didn't mind it during the day and there was no reason that made any sense to me why I should have to be cold in my own home when I was making more enough to pay heating bills. But the fact of the matter was that we were spending way too much money on feed for the horses and we had been doing this for three years and four months now.
After filling me in on the details of where they planned to cut and how much they hoped to bring in, Nick told me that there was almost a cord of wood missing from the back trail where they had felled some trees early last spring and had cut a lot of them into four-foot lengths. Just in case we ran out of wood this winter, he was making sure that there was no way it could be blamed on him. It was the fault of whoever had taken this wood and thus left us short. Nothing was ever Nick's fault. Someone else was always involved.
Nick had had a farm with horses before and I assumed and he assured me he knew all there was to know about owning, training and raising horses. And I am still certain he does know all we need to know, but knowing how and when to do something is quite different than actually getting right down to doing it. Nick was a master at telling everyone what should be done but he was a slave to procrastination. Stuff would break around the house and never get fixed. It was incredibly frustrating because I knew he knew how to fix whatever it was. But his reason for not fixing things was that the tool or tools he needed for the job had been stolen and that he was too sick of this happening that he refused to replace the stuff any longer. I cannot verify that nothing has been stolen, I don't know what a lot of these missing tools look like in the first place and I have to take his word for the fact that they are now nowhere to be found, but some of the ones I am familiar with have turned up here and there where Nick has set them down and failed to put them back after he has finished using them. We found one his missing tape measures in the woods under the apple tree a few weeks ago while we were picking up apples to give to the horses and I found about a half of a roll of barbed wire down at the back of one of the pastures when I had been there taking some pictures of the horses.
He still leaves the garage door wide open all of time, actually I think he told me it is off its track and is something else that needs to be fixed. Anyone can look inside and see what there is to choose from. And anyone could choose what they please when both cars are gone from the yard.
So I don't doubt that there were a few tools and such that were stolen, but it didn't stop at that. The RCMP were called by Nick and he filed a complaint against our next door neighbours alleging that they had stolen these items. And apparently when the officer paid a visit next door to ask if anyone could offer an explanation, the officer was told that I had given permission for these neighbours to "help themselves to anything they wanted". And also apparently, the neighbours hinted that they "knew me very well". So when the RCMP gave their report to Nick, they admitted there was nothing they could do as it wasn't theft as long as they had permission, and in addition, they felt it "was a domestic matter".
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