"Logged in" and ready

People are predicting that this will be a bad winter weather-wise. Dad and I spent some time this morning getting a workout. He ran the chainsaw and I lugged or rolled the firewood to the final destination.

Our piles might not be pretty, but they are functional. This stove at the shop takes some pretty big logs, so I was sweating pretty bad after moving them. Some of the big round ones were a bit too big for my arms and back, so they got rolled over there ;-) My dad and my husband should stay warm for at least a few weeks with this load of logs!

What?

So this isn't farm-related, but it does relate to my art teaching career. I was sitting in the doctor's office yesterday admiring the artwork while I waited to see the doctor. My husband and I both really like the artwork in this particular room.

However, yesterday I noticed something that made me laugh. There is a set of four paintings obviously done by the same artist. I love the colors and elegance of them. But I think the artist must have gotten tired on this one. All of them except for one have beautiful faces. Either the artist got tired of faces or they got mad at their model ;-)

 This is an example of the others. It actually is probably my least favorite, but I wanted you to see the typical detail of the faces the artist painted.

 

Here's the other one.

See what I mean? No face. My back is usually to it, so I hadn't noticed it until yesterday. It made me laugh because it is so contrary to the other three paintings. Typically I would say the artist is making some sort of statement with it, but considering it was one of a set of four and the others all have faces, it just kind of makes ya wonder. Silly moody artists ;-)

Innovation At Its Roots

Innovation in today's world is something that is talked about so much. Coming up with an original idea to solve a problem is something that farmers have done for longer than anyone can probably figure out.

All you need to do is look around a farmer's property to find ingenious ways to solve simple problems. An example of one of those problems might be keeping the milk bucket full of fresh milk from the milk cow away from hungry barn cats while finishing chores. This is how our family solved that problem years ago. It was actually probably used for something before that, but that's what I remember my dad using it for when I was a kid.

We no longer use the hanger/antler for milk buckets (we haven't had a milk cow since I was in junior high), but now we can use it to hook the egg bucket on when it is full of eggs. I don't even know how many years I have used this to hang a bucket on, and I just take it for granted. But for some reason the other day I looked at it with fresh eyes and though, "What a cool idea."

After living and being around our farm all my life, it is still neat to see how four generations of our family have used common sense and the resources at hand to solve problems along the way.