another day in paradise

or in hell if one is so inclined.

Regardless of what day and age it is, and where one happens to be in the world, what it feels like is mainly about personal choices. Do not know about others, but I most def­i­nitely prefer to be in the more uplifted state of mind.

Why even mention negative states of mind? Well, some may have reasons to feel more than a little bit “down” these days, and ignoring that fact does not seem right to me even if I and mine are feeling mentally and otherwise fine this Easter.

Life is good here on the farm, and as we routinely only take the ten minutes drive to our nearest town a couple of times a month to gather supplies for us and our animals, we observe few problems with “social distancing” and other restric­tions that for the time being are in place in our country.

Of course we are as well connected and informed as everybody else these days – media are literally over­flow­ing with infor­ma­tion from all around the world. Keeping required physical distance to others in day to day life, is not much of an issue when the nearest neigh­bors live nearly half-a-mile away. Haven't seen any of our neighbors in more than a month, and that is not because we do not get along just fine. For now phone- and video-calls will have to do, and then physical distance does not matter.

no bull here

Right, there is no bull on our farm, so to turn our heifers into milk-cows they must first be artificially inseminated with the help of a veterinary or inseminator, with hopes that all goes well around and after calving 9 months later. With all that is going on in society right now, we have decided that the entire process will have to be postponed till the situation clears slightly, even if those heifers are more than ready.

That is one of the advantages of running a small farm like ours: we can relatively easy adjust how to run things for a while, without risking too much eco­nom­i­cally and otherwise.

farm routines

Two meals a day come rain or shine, that is one of the many fixed routines on a farm with animals. Picture shows the old John Deere Gator we use to transport silage and con­cen­trate out to the feed-station along­side the pasture – shown on picture higher up, and the animals come when they hear the Gator's engine start.

We have made good use of the el-generator we bought last year, as the mains have fallen out a few times this winter (reportedly because the company had to perform necessary maintenance of high-voltage lines and equipment in the area). Backup batteries keep our most essential equipment going for a while, long enough to fire up the generator and continue pretty much as if nothing has happened.

Our generator is not big enough to run all electric farm equipment simul­ta­ne­ously, but that was not a requirement when we chose model anyway. Balancing use of power for a while in order to keep essentials running, isn't a problem.

a few more days…

… and I will offic­i­ally be one year older than I was a year ago. Jokes aside; I'll pass my 67th birthday, which means I will have reached “official” retirement age here in Norway. Can hardly wait…

Actually no big deal, as nothing much changes with the passing of such a “mile­stone”. Same farming activ­i­ties and same most every­thing else, for as long into the future as I can manage and find life funny enough to stay around.

image text: 80 years ago, on April 9th, German military forces attacked Norway. Days pass, but we will never forget.

Memory is a strange factor in life, as a specific memory does not even have to be our own for it to stick in our minds and guide our line of thoughts and actions.
Some times it is the collective memory of an entire people that becomes the strongest and lasts the longest.

Our minds are not in lock-down these days, and history can not be rewritten or erased – even if some try to do just that. Blücher still leaks oil at the bottom of Oslofjord, after being hit by our old coastal guns and torpedos all those years ago.

Let us all hope history does not repeat itself – with new players and sce­nar­ios, but if it does we are men­tally prepared for it.

sincerely  georg; sign

Hageland 09.apr.2020
last rev: 10.apr.2020



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