November 8, 2023
Dear Friends,
First Episode: We all have personal lives and things going on. For us at Fox Country Quilts, that applies to Penny & James, Kim, Donna and me, some good and some not so good. Thought in this e-mail I will share with you some of the stuff Donna and I are dealing with.
When you get a flat tire, you sometimes question whether or not you really have one, based on what the car feels like while driving. I think it was last week Friday while on the way home from Walmart shopping, coming up the hill on Culver, the car was starting to squirm a bit. Made me wonder. Then oliver sudden I had a blowout on my left-rear tire. Same place stage coaches and buckboards always lose one of their wheels if they are in a western movie.
Welp, now I’ve gotten myself advanced in age, plus have my own medical problems, both of which have fixed me up to where I don’t have the strength to do things like I used to. So I gave Donna at the shop a phone call and asked if she would please send someone bigger than me to come help me out. Change a tire and get me going again. Didn’t take too long before James arrived on the scene. I’ve always carried a hydraulic jack in my car because they are so much better to work with and less scary than the jacks that come with cars. Once James got the tire off and we looked at it . . . Man, I hadn’t seen a blowout like that in many many years. Both sides of the tire were so shredded I thought I was the victim of the Slasher. James put the donut tire on (yes it still had air in it), and that would suffice until Monday. Monday came, got the new tire put on, but then the repair folks showed me two more of the tires. Worn to the bone. You could see some of the metal banding at the edges of them, both on the outsides and insides. Only one tire was in good shape. Not wanting to risk running on rims again, I went ahead and got those two replaced as well. So, that was an extra unexpected expense. And James gets 10 extra points for conducting an effective rescue in my hour of need.
Second Episode: Some time ago, I moved Bailey and Zeus (shepherd and golden doodle) into a different enclosure. In their old enclosure, we had a Mennonite shed. I had cut a hole in one of the walls and built a dog house inside the shed. So now maybe three weeks ago, I had the shed moved to right behind the retreat center. We’ll get it electrified, and then move our freezer and a refrigerator into it, plus a lot of general storage, like machine boxes. This past weekend, I got a fence installed to make a new enclosure for the dogs. Had a dog lock (like an air lock) added in the fence so I can more easily get out one dog at a time as needed, without the other escaping. This coming Saturday, Jackie who sometimes works for me and who built the fence, will re-build the awning over the dog entrance in the shed. After that I’ll get the dogs moved. Their new enclosure is maybe 50' by 250+ feet, so it will give them a nice big run.
Third Episode: A month ago, coyotes came and killed my last four chickens. Don’t think I will get any more chickens, so am going to clean out the chicken coop and use it for storage. In the mean time, I’ve been working to clean out our trailer of all the relatively portable stuff, much of it related to quilting, and we also have books, knickknacks, tons of misc. I’m taping Post-It Note tags on the furniture in the trailer to tell the movers where to put stuff, which is either to the dog shed, retreat, chicken house, or trash. Then I’ll call up Jeff Shook, a local mover, and ask him to please move out all the bigger things out of the trailer and put them where their tags indicate. Then the final act will be to sell the trailer (double wide about 36' x 67') and get it hauled out. I don’t think I can get all that done by Jan 1, but if I could, it would take a big chunk out of our future property tax assessments.
Call to action for this e-mail: Be kind to one another and think of Christmas gifts to buy for each other or yourself, from Fox Country Quilts. Classes make wonderful gifts for people, as do sewing machines, or gift coupons.
Chip
