Rearranging furniture, power woes

Cori, Mama and Victoria have taken on rearranging furniture in the house and eliminating unused pieces in order to open the space, eliminate clutter and increase functionality. For the most part I have been pleased with the changes, but in such an effort we all make sacrifices and mine was one of the two recliners we have had for many years; since we first moved to New Jersey. It was still functional and did not look bad but Mama had wanted to get rid of it for some time. I was not opposed to getting rid of the chair, but I was holding out for a replacement. So, when I came home from work Friday evening and saw the chair dumped onto the porch, it was a little bit of a shock. Not terrible, but unexpected. When I saw the arrangement of the furniture in the living room I immediately understood the reasoning behind eliminating the chair from the floor plan but I am not certain it is a good overall plan – especially for two rapidly aging, pre-geriatric parents. It is certainly more suited to our current situation with four grandchildren in the house. To me, to discard the chair in the process seemed a little rash, but it is only a piece of furniture; one that did need to be replaced. Much of what we tend to accumulate has little value outside of our narrow application so I have to ask if there is a real need to have those items – antiques especially? I am very much in favor of getting rid of clutter, putting items to the most functional use possible, and opening up floor space. I just want to make sure we are planning for the long-term use of space – especially if we are permanently eliminating furniture items from the space. Maybe the chair will find a good home soon.

Meanwhile, outside the house, Kira successfully delivered ten puppies. I think the count was seven girls and three boys. That is a good mix and should be easy for Victoria to sell. They are doing fine in the birthing center; however, Victoria went out this morning and found there was no power to the building. It turned out to be a bad connection between the extension cord and the plug in the well house. The cord is a very heavy cord and the weight of what was near the wall had pulled the plug end partially out of the outlet. I plugged it in and moved the cord so that there is not as much weight at the outlet. It turned out to be a good thing I had to check in that cord because the heater I had in the well house had been unplugged to open the outlet for the new extension cord. I moved my little heater to another location and restarted it. Now I will not have to worry about keeping the well house from freezing – or find the water frozen off in the well house because I did not check the heater. Such is the challenge of getting power to all the places we need it during the winter months. 

Things should be easier once I get the well house in the barn lot completed. I can have lights and plugs in the goat barn and the cattle barn as well as having proper power run to the coop. That will at least give me more places to pull power from during the months we struggle to warm animal habitats as the outside temperatures drops. Fortunately, we have had only a few days of what would be considered very cold temperatures. Mostly we are hovering around freezing every night with the days warming into the high forties and low fifties; sometimes into the sixties. So, we can recover each afternoon before going to freezing each night. It will get easier at some point in the future.

The sad news is that there is not much chance of those projects being completed before this winter is over.