MCU Gen: Fic, fanart & recs

Monday, I worked a half day, primarily running errands to pick things up for the farm. I took advantage of this and went to Wegmans and rediscovered how amazing it is. The gluten free section is huge! And clearly labeled! I gotta say though, the gf naan I got is far inferior to the pita bread I've been making. But I stocked up on things and found some new stuff to try. I was particularly impressed by the gluten free soups. 

That night during crafting, I was so fed up with how annoying it was to craft in the hallway between the spare room and my room (because there wasn't enough floor space for a 4 ft folding table to iron and assemble sewing stuff) that I spent an hour and a half of crafting cleaning and organizing. First, I took all the stuff that was stacked in my room that are important, plus all of the blankets and misc stuff that had been living on top of the box piles and tossed them all onto my bed. Then I took all of the boxes of my stuff that was in the spare room (fleeces, roving, yarn primarily) and stacked them up. I did put them in front of one of mom's shelves, but I determined nothing of urgency was on the shelf, reorganized so I could use one small shelf for my delicate keepsakes and then stacked my boxes floor to ceiling in front of the shelf. They are all light and there was enough of a corner next to my dresser that I was able to get three good stacks. this was almost every box I had in the space room. all light but bulky things

Then I took all of mom's bins that were in front of my closet, at the end of my bed and behind my door and put them in the newly cleared space in the spare room on the table there. Then moved my small shelves into my room and they are now usable! Shoved my book boxes, plus big luggage at the foot of the bed in between the bed and a shelf and then put all of my soft stuff onto the shelves. 

So in the end, I actually gained floor space in my room plus storage space plus I can possibly move my little crafting table into my room monday nights. it's so nice!

Then I had an absolutely baffling conversation with my mom which went something like: me: I cleaned my room and reorganized! her: why did you do that without me!!! I needed to look in there for a small bin!!! Me: but you'd turn it into an ordeal! and why would small bin be in my room? and you never mentioned this??? her: I told you I couldn't find small bin so you'd look for it in your room! it's gone forever!!! me: you never said it was in my room??? is that why you told me to keep an eye out for it? her: yes!

turns out I had opened small bin without ever looking at the label on it, been baffled by its contents, moved it to the spare room on top of her pile of stuff and she found it in less than a minute. if I had let her be involved, it would have been probably five hours of nonsense with lots of debate. I love her, but dear god, living with her and working with her on some farm stuff is too much. everything needs to be debated to death and back. the conversations I've had about the baked goods we're going to buy for the fall weekends is so incredibly irritating. I guess I need to get the kitchen in the church up and running so I never need to have that debate again. lol who am I kidding

tuesday night I made rice, curry chicken and roasted delicata squash and chickpeas, ate it all week, so tasty. 

Myself and employees have been slowly harvesting the first pumpkins of the season. Ours are all very late but the specialty stuff is what we need harvested, so tiny pumpkins, gourds, white pumpkins (since they go yellow in the sun easily), edible squashes. We bought a load of pumpkins from the auction to supplement until ours are ready. 

Yesterday, we had a big workday to get things done. I woke up at 4am and couldn't go back to sleep. We had five employees coming, one for her first day of work/training. There was an equipment auction, so my parents both went to the auction to see if any of the UTVs there would be good. A working UTV would be great but aughaugh. Trying to keep five people working on all different tasks that take different amounts of time and support is really difficult. But I managed. New employee is great so far, worked fast and came and found me when she finished things. I'll have her come back one night for training more. We're actually in decent shape as far as things go. My parents did buy me 11 nice new produce boxes with false bottoms, which are excellent for displays so I guess I can't complain that much. Me and the employees got a lot done so now we need the big stuff done, which I don't know how to do yet (hayfort, canopies) so I'm bothering dad about getting that done. Hayfort got done late yesterday, canopies this coming week.

Still absolutely baffled by the number of people that will come out to the farm without checking our facebook page, website, instagram page and/or answering machine to actually check if we are open, all of which I keep updated regularly. I think a lot of people just go: oh the grocery stores have pumpkins, so everyone is open for pumpkins

I have been irrigating so much. I'm trying to get the new grass seed to germinate that we no-tilled in, so I borrowed rainbirds from my uncle. Just. so much watering. I probably spend two hours a day on irrigation. Over a month without rain here and our total rain since beginning of August is around 4 inches. Pretty dire. But we have a 70% chance of rain on tuesday, so I'm hopeful we'll get something good. I guess I need to cover all of the things I've just been leaving outside because it hasn't rained in so long. There's also a 30-40% chance of rain the rest of the week, so we probably won't get any of that, or all of it. 

On Saturday nights, Jade and I have been watching the new season of Bake Off as it is releasing with text chat and then playing stardew valley on discord voice chat afterwards. it's been so nice, I miss her a lot. We go on break in October with the farm and catch up in November. 

I sent my parents away today to a n-scale train convention out in central pa somewhere. my dad sounded so wistful about going, so I decided that he should, my mom went along for fun. my dad said as he went out the door "us leaving the farm a week before opening is a sign at how good things are going because of you" which was nice to hear since I feel like we aren't ready yet but not to an extent that I can't let him go do something fun for a day. the house is nice and quiet right now. tasks for today: move rainbirds and irrigate, harvest some things, start display setup, look at phone stuff. I woke up at 4:30 and couldn't get back to sleep until 6 or so when I should have gotten up so I'm sleepy and slow to start work today. ah well.