How did we get things done before Youtube?

Yesterday I woke to find James had already gotten out of bed.  I asked him what he'd been doing.
"Watching videos on how to build a picnic table".  We have a wood shed overflowing into our garages with scrap lumber from our addition being built.  So he built this.  All of it was built with scraps.  Even the screws came from other projects we had taken apart.  Can you say hoarders?

He also replaced boards on our old picnic table.

I too relied on Youtube so I could check one more thing off my to-do list.  Many months ago, maybe even a year ago (or longer) we had our main water line to the house repaired.  They had to cut through our asphalt driveway to do it.  I kept meaning to repair it but.........you know how that goes.  I watched a few videos and they all did it the same way.  Cut straight edges on the hole, clean out unwanted dirt, grass, etc.  They added small gravel to the bottom but only the part where the pipe was in our hole needed that because under most of ours was an old layer of driveway that had been paved over so ours had a solid base for much of it.  I put some old dry concrete mix where it needed a more solid base, tamped it then filled it the rest of the way with asphalt repair stuff (can't remember the name and I don't want to touch the bags again because it's messy stuff), tamp and tamp again.

Note our tamping bar.  It looks nothing like the ones used by the professionals (This Old House) used when they did the job but I wasn't going to purchase a metal tamper with a square base just for this one job, so I made one out of an old fence post I hadn't thrown away yet and a cut off piece of cedar leftover from rebuilding our pergola.

Done!  Thanks Youtube and all you people who post how-to videos.

When I asked James how we used to do things before Youtube he reminded me that we went to the library to get a book out and read about it.  What?!!!

Macy's a mommy

I'd given up on Macy having kids this year.  I chalked it up to being young.  My due date for her was April 10th.

James and I went to the field tonight to look at the sweet potato garden he planted and to repair a downed electric wire the bulls had probably removed.  I went into the barn to see if the power was on in there because our GFCI  couldn't be reset at the outlet where I plug the electric fence in.  Boy was I surprised to find Macy in there with a little boy and girl.  At first I thought she was babysitting for
someone else's kids but then I realized they were too little.  They were already dry and walking about so they'd been on this earth at least a few hours.  James now remembers hearing screaming while he was planting sweet potatoes.  I feel badly that she was alone for her very first kidding.

Here are a few bad pictures.  I'll try to get some better ones tomorrow when it's light out.

She seems very nervous but she's allowing the kids to nurse so she's figuring it out.  I still think of Macy as a baby herself since she's the only kid I kept from last year.  She's a real sweetheart with a very gentle way about her just like her mom, Mrs. Butterworth.  I haven't named the kids yet but they'll probably begin with an M.  Maybe Mia and Marley.  I'll chew on that a while.