Repairs are the them of the day at Bedlam Farm. The thing about repairs on a farm is that they are never really done. There are perhaps 20 things on the farm that urgently need repairing –  holes in barns, holes in rooftops, and  there is never enough money to do them all.

Some get to be urgent, like the slate stones on the back porch. The cement holding them together rotted out this winter and it looked dreadful back there. Jay fixed them the other day. And the big holes in the Pole barn urgently need repairing, we are trying hemlock wood which donkeys generally are not crazy about eating. Can’t leave a hole that big open for the winter.

And today, my precious Canon 1Dx stopped working the batteries no longer powered it up. It’s on the way to Canon’s New Jersey Service Center, I have my 5D as a back-up. I miss the 1DX, the camera is never away from me, and it feels lonely and strange not to have it.

At the first Bedlam Farm, I had plenty of money and I fixed everything the second it needed repairs. The house and barns were spotless, like Vermont barns. Here, it’s different. I tell Jay Bridge to come and fix the barn while we have some money left over, and he does, that way he’ll get paid.

Repairs make me nervous, they come under the budget  category of life, and they ought never be surprising, but they are.

One thing I love about where I live is that nobody has any money, everybody understands and we all sympathize with one another and help each other out. I went to my new pharmacy yesterday, my Rite-Aid, and it was fine. I miss Bridget, for sure, but Nicole gave me a flu shot and I got a goodie basket for new customers – some hand disinfectant, a toothbrush, some Ibuprofen.  They pretended to be shocked when they learned I was 68, they gave me a stronger flu shot that for people who are 65 and under. They said I didn’t look 68 at all.

If they also tell me they love my photos and my blogs, we will be fine. Rite-Aid will organize my medications so that I can make fewer trips to the pharmacy, and are altering some of the prescriptions so that they will last longer and require fewer refill visits.

A good start. So today, a day of repairs. Lots of checks going out the door. It is true that you can’t get ahead, you can only keep a nose above water. And we still have the tree to get chopped up in the backyard. I think Ed Gully is coming Sunday to do it. Sunday, Maria and I are heading out for a three-day vacation, the only kind we take anymore. We will be back Wednesday morning. No blogging.

I can’t speak for Maria, but I am brain-tired, an intense writing time these past few months.

The Canon, purchased from a Kickstarter campaign last year, should be back in a week or two, if all goes well. By the end of the day, Jay will have built a new doorframe for the stall in the barn, the donkeys have gnawed it almost out of existence. And we can even pay him.

I don’t understand why it is that I was so unhappy when I had a lot of money, and am so happy when I have no money. There is a message there, for sure.