Incompetent Farm Woman
Posted on 29. Jun, 2008 by Laura-Jane - Whimfield in Outdoors
I am not completely incompetent. I can dig holes with a shovel and I can bake my own bread. I can wield many types of saws and I can tell you exactly how to plumb an entire house. However, I have just discovered that I can’t dry laundry.
Now, I have hung laundry out to dry before with great success.
When I hung up yesterday’s load of laundry I thought all was well. I strung a nylon rope across the yard, and attached it firmly between the house and a giant tree.
After a number of hours on the line, the clothes were dry!
I know this because I happened to be outside, and I felt them–yes, very dry. I looked them over and said, “I am sorry, clothing, but I don’t feel like dealing with you right now!” I then went inside and fiddled around with my computer for, oh, the rest of the entire day. Then, I went to bed!
Upon waking in the morning, I looked outside at our clean socks and pillow cases flapping in the wind. Oh yes, I saw the sky threatening to turn; I saw the clouds rolling in. “I am sorry, clothing, but I do not feel like dealing with you right now.”
And then the rain began to sprinkle. “Clothing, stop bothering me!”
After three hours of heavy rain, not only are the clothes soaked from top to bottom, but the sheer weight of all this water has weighed them down to such an extent that clothes are now dragging on the ground. And for the life of me, I cannot lift the rope more than two inches, no matter how much I yank and strain.
A few months ago we received a glorious super-heavy-duty steel clothesline as a gift, and I think that it’s about time that we made time to set it up, so that I can ignore our clothing in peace– without fear of the drag-effect.
Andrea >> Become a consultant
Jun 30th, 2008
Oh, Laura-Jane! You must read Roughing It in the Bush, if you have not.
Laura-Jane
Jun 30th, 2008
No, I have not, and I am certain that I should!
Others topics on which I require guidance: how to let bonfires burn in the yard without having panic attacks, how to drive out of one’s driveway when it is full of ruts, how to get bats out of the house, and how to work hard when sometimes one just wants to watch youtube videos.
Yes, some serious reading is definitely in order. :)
Laura-Jane - Whimfield
Feb 12th, 2010
I am writing this a year later! Yes, I did read it. To anyone who is reading this, you should read it too! It’s a wonderful book. The author is Susannah Moodie. It was written hundreds of years ago but it’s a great window into what life was like in the “olden days,” as my mother says.
Sayantanee from India
Jun 30th, 2008
I happened to be discussing your blog with my husband (a electronic engineer in EDA industry), and he said that if you guys, one of whom is a computer engineer, can write some crap code better than what he did yesterday, he’d settle down in PEI! Ofcourse I dont remember what the damn code was about…. But your blog ought to be a in a fiction! :-)
materfamilias
Jun 30th, 2008
I’ve just spent some time reading through your delightful blog from its beginning after being directed to it by a friend of your mom’s, who lives on the same little BC island that I live on. What a wonderful adventure you’re on — thanks for sharing it with us.
Laura-Jane
Jun 30th, 2008
Sayantanee, ah yes, computer engineers and their dreams… PEI is desperate for computer experts , so you never know, perhaps you might find yourself here someday… :)
Laura-Jane
Jun 30th, 2008
Thank you for saying hello, Materfamilias. I’ve just been perusing your site; I love your Wednesday shoe talk! I haven’t dug in to your blog yet, but I have added you to my links and I look forward to reading over the next few days.
I’ll have to thank my mom for indirectly leading me to your site!
Jen Cluff
Jul 2nd, 2008
Hi, it’s Marjorie (your mom’s) music friend Jen here.
I wanted to share a vision of laundry-doing at the old commune I used to live at, to compare and contrast with your wet-mud-saggy-line experience.
At the commune, to avoid trees being made into paper towels, someone came up with cutting out square cotton rags as hand-towels out of all the old clothes, so that they could put in all the bathrooms and later be collected and laundered once a week. It was about an hour’s work, and the squares could run through the big industrial washer and dryer. This was logically worked out.
However, on her first laundry day one very earnest new comer decided to solar dry the hundreds and hundreds of four-inch-cotton-squares by delicately laying each one on a nearby bush or twig, until about 50 square metres of the laundry courtyard was filled with tiny drying cottons. It took her about three labour-hours to lay them out. They were too small to clip to anything. :>)
Well the summer sun dried the little hand towels almost instantly as those of us observed when shortly afterward, the afternoon August wind picked up to a howling dust storm and the poor earnest gal came running to collect the towels from all over the cow fields.
Just had to share. :>)
Love your blog.
Jen
Laura-Jane
Jul 2nd, 2008
Hi Jen,
Thank you for reading and writing. I remember you well, flautist extraordinaire! (And I’ve just checked the spelling of flautist versus flutist, and I see that this is an interesting controversy that I was not aware of!)
Love your laundry story; it’s a great image. It seems that there is such admirable intention behind “poor earnest gal” (perfect descriptor), but that sometimes, as you said, things are logically worked otherwise.
Great to hear from you and thanks for sharing. Be well!
Jen Cluff
Jul 2nd, 2008
Dear Laura-Jane,
Lovely to know you’re sensitive to the issues of the “earnest gal”. The same young person once spat out home-made lemonade not because she’d detected, in the middle of a horrible-heat-wave Aanimal-rights-march, that it contained white sugar, as we suspected, (since several got hit with the spray as they were standing nearby), but because it represented the Enslavement of Bees as it contained honey. That gal was earnest. Happy to hear from you. :>) And the flutist/flautist controversy is HEAVILY HOT. Jen :>)
chem
Jul 9th, 2008
Hi, it’s chem from over at PEIinfo. I’ve been loving your blog entries!
There’s actually been an entire book written about clotheslines, no joke. Ok, so I just googled to find out the exact name and there’s been more than one. Anyway, it’s called “Fine Lines: A Celebration of Clothesline Culture” and it’s available through the library. Believe it or not, it’s quite interesting.
I grew up in the country and have spent most of my life in the sticks and I’m still working on the “not freaking about bonfires in the yard” bit. =)
Laura-Jane
Jul 9th, 2008
Chem,
Thanks for saying hello! This book sounds great and super interesting. I am all for books about one specific topic. Anything is interesting if you look at it very in-depthly; I find that the more you know about something the more interesting it becomes.
Re: bonfires, we had a ton of old wood that we took out of the house that we needed to get rid of (and some of it was infested with the powder post beetle), so we decided that we should have a big bonfire. One calm evening we started a small fire in our yard, and we keep adding wood to it, and so it grew and grew and became huge. I just stood there standing by the hose with my eyes bulging out of my head while Cameron laughed maniacally and threw more wood and old furniture onto the fire.
After it was over, I think I had a giant stress-pimple on my forehead. :) I guess there are some things people never get used to (and perhaps that’s a good thing!).
Thanks for reading!
Laura-Jane
Laura-Jane
Jul 14th, 2008
Jen, do you know what became of “earnest gal”? Her convictions sound unsustainable. If ever there was someone that should be looked up on Facebook..? :)
Laura-Jane - Whimfield
May 17th, 2009
By the way, Andrea, I have now read Roughing it in the Bush by Susannah Moodie. GREAT BOOK, highly recommended!
Carol
Jul 5th, 2009
Sounds like you need a 2×4 with a notch cut in one end (for the clothes line to sit on) to support your line and reduce the dragging of your clean clothes in the red mud!
Sal
Oct 11th, 2009
Are are books devoted just to Hammocks! ;-)