Summer soon, please?

The lazy fucking farmer is writing with fingerless mittens on, drinking rooibos tea, listening to the eminent Brenda Fassie and dreaming of African sunshine.

The lawn

The lazy fucking farmer really can't be arsed to cut the lawn. That should go without saying really. Of all the things to spend time and energy on, mowing the lawn is so far down on the list it drops right off it. If I had to mow the lawn, I wouldn't have a lawn.

Truth to be told, I'm slowly increasing the area used for vegetables at the cost of lawn area. Carrots taste better than grass, so I think this a logical step. On the other hand, one need some places around the house to just trample around on. If everything was garden, getting from A to B would quickly be some kind of crazed combination of slalom and hurdle.

The lazy fucking farmer is stuck with at least some lawn.

Happily we have a horse. A horse is superior to a lawnmower in many ways:

1. Grass gets magically transformed to horsepower and fertilizer.
2. I do not need to buy fuel, as the grass itself fuels the horse.
3. Hence I don't use gasoline and thereby reduce my carbon footprint (although I suppose the smug levels I might have gained by this are mostly eaten up by the diesel required to keep the old pick-up truck going).
4. Operating a lawnmower requires work. First I'd have to earn money to buy it, then I'd have to walk around behind it and when it breaks down I'd have to pay someone to fix it. Arguably maintaining a horse also requires work, but they smell better.
5. You can convince a horse to give you a nice massage. A massage by lawnmower would likely be the end of you.
6. Having a lawnmower requires time. Okai, so does a horse. This point is totally invalid when I think about it.
7. Time spent with a horse is incredibly much more rewarding than time spent with a lawnmower. Being with a horse might even heal mental illness. Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy may be contested, but Lawnmower-Assisted Psychotheraphy doesn't even exist. 
8. You know the annoying grass that grows in nooks and crannys that you just can't reach with the lawnmower? A horse can.
9. When I lie in my bed munching apples (an activity very high on the list of what I like to spend time doing) I can just shout for the horse and throw the apple cores out the window instead of taking them to the compost.
10. A horse will often greet you with a whicker. If a lawnmower greets you at all it is with infernal noise.
11. Horses simply have a lot more uses than a lawnmower. Getting shitfaced on ale and mead, dressing up like a viking and riding a horse about actually feels rather epic. Getting shitfaced on ale and mead, dressing up like a viking and riding a landmower just isn't the same. To illustrate: 

The most epic google result of "viking on a horse"

The most epic google result of "viking on a landmower"

Okai, the posture of the guy with the lawnmower is pretty epic. It could have been Túrin Turambar right before he decide to fall on his sword (grass can do that to you. I spent a summer working in the park department in Hafnarfjordur, Iceland -a place with too much grass and too few trees, and the feeling of defeat when you realize that grass grows back and you have to cut it all over again is excruciating). But the presence of the lawnmover is totally ruining the mood of an otherwise great picture. Which kind of proves my point. Also, it should be taken into consideration that while the other pictures of vikings and horses were almost all epic, the people with landmowers just looked like twerps. Admittedly, they also looked like they were pretty high on something (possibly on the mixture of fresh cut grass and exhaust fumes); but it's a pleasure I find myself quite willing to forgo. I bet it doesn't taste half as good as ale anyway.

The only instance I can think of when a lawnmower will be more useful than a horse is in a zombie apocalypse. After all, I've seen Braindead. But while zombie apocalypse is something we all prepare for, just in case, how likely is it really to happen? And even if it did, I'd rather pick up a chainsaw or a shotgun than a lawnmower anyway.

So having concluded that horses totally pwns lawnmowers, how do you mow your lawn using a horse?
It is quite simple really:

1. Fence off everything you don't want the horse to eat.
2. Let the horse loose.

This might of course not work if you live in a place without sufficient distance between you and the neighbours. If so, the lazy fucking farmer recommend that you start looking for a new and better home.
If that is not an option, perhaps a herd of well trained rabbits is something to look into?

Horses only munch on the lawn of course.
They never start on the berrybushes.
Ever.

Sometimes I hate it here

Last spring, all my squash and cucumber plants froze to death. A few other things died too. Despite living a protected life in a greenhouse. So this year I took steps to give the poor sensitive things some more protection, adding a thermostat oven to the greenhouse. Despite this, Jack Frost have crept in and offed my most promising darlings. Some of them might survive, but others look like they have definitively moved on (I do not really know where plants go when they die, apart from the compost, or even if plants have souls. That would possibly be worth a post in itself. But I strongly feel that having struggled on in a harsh environment from an early age my brave squash plants had deserved better than this. A plant heaven of everlasting summer, reincarnation down south in more gentle climates or somesuch). They had itty bitty flowerbuds on them and everything *sob*.

Also, I have been pondering where to put all the tomato plants I have, making odd plans like for example portable tripod mini-greenhouses from old fenceposts. As of this morning, finding space for tomato plants is not something I have to worry about any more.

It's a really annoying dilemma. If I sow too early the plants get too big for the living room, I move them out in the greenhouse and they die. If I sow later they survive the spring, but they don't get ripe before the autumn frost kills them. There are occasional nights when the temperature creeps under zero until midsummer, and winter (i.e. snow) is usually here in October.

Being an organic farmer (I went to organic agriculture school and everything) I'm supposed to work with nature, but..
THE LAZY FUCKING FARMER IS NOT CONTENT WITH ONLY EATING POTATOES!
I want some variation in my diet! I want to gorge myself on melons and pears, but I accept that it is near impossible in this frozen mountain hole. A little tomatoes and cucumbers though, perhaps a hardy little apple tree? Is that really too much to ask?

Fuck you nature, this is war. Next year I'm moving the greenhouse to a more secluded part of the farm and putting in a bigger oven.

20 bottles of mead

Twenty bottles of mead on the workbench. The mead initially turned out extremely dry, so I added a little bit lot more honey. Now it is perhaps too sweet. I have a sneaking suspicion that drinking too much of this stuff might make one ill.

On the bright side, I measured it to 14%  and it taste like honey and liquid sunshine.

Some spruce was also added, but no matter how much I sample this, I can not detect any hint of it anymore. Odd. I wonder where the spruce flavour went? Perhaps if I keep drinking I will find it....

It's such great weather everyone said. Go outside, get an Easter tan and rosy cheeks! Now I look like Rudolph the red nosed reindeer.

Peeling fish

The world's laziest fucking farmer does not have the patience to go fishing. Happily, my mother does.
Today my mother have been ice fishing and brought home some perch. Not exactly my favourite fish, but fresh fish is fresh fish.

Unlike nice fishies like trout, who got skin that you can fry into crispy deliciousness, perch got nasty thick skin. No point in frying that, so it's time to peel 'em.

Start with making a cut along each side of the dorsal fins.

Then rip off the dorsal fins, starting from behind. Shoo away any cats that might have turned up at this point, the dorsal fins have stingers. Not good for kitty, throw them in the compost. The fins that is, not the cats.

This done, you can start loosening the skin from the fish, working down each side. At this point I briefly wondered if I should have saved the skins and cured them, waste not want not, but I couldn't think of anything to use tiny perch fish-hides to so that will have to be an experiment saved for another time.

Is it a banana?
 Is it an orange?
 No. it's a perch!

When the skin is loose, it's time to start peeling!

Again, starting from the back, the guts should come off with the skin. And the head. Weird things fishies. 

Then you can just clean out the blood and stuff as usual, put them on a plate, put on salt and pepper, write a blogpost about your fishy adventures, come to terms with the fact that your hands -and now also your computer- have a fishy smell and fry them in the pan for dinner. Or perhaps make a ryebread-and-perch-sandwich (remember to get rid of the bones, otherwise it will be surprise-ryebread-and-perch-sandwich) Nom.

More energy -here and now!

The house I live in is an endless treasure trove. A.k.a. it's full of junk and general stuff in total chaos so I never know what might turn up when looking for something else. Okai, strictly speaking  it wasn't me who found this one. It was my mother who found it lying about in a box of books. It seems to contain some kind of tablets that promise more energy. What fun! And I have been feeling a bit tired and lazy lately. Okai, lazy is a permanent trait, but spring is in the air and I expect that the amount of stuff that needs to be done isn't exactly going to lessen from now on.

But obviously I'm not the kind of person who just try out mysterious tablets found lying about the house, so let's see what I know about them:

• They are from Sweden. Our brethren to the east. Surely a sign of quality.
• They are called "Chisandra Adaptogen". A reassuring name, it's immediately unrecognizable and something ending in -gen must be healthy.
• They contain Chisandra fruits, or rather some extract called "schisandrine". Which kinda rhymes with "caffeine".
• It also contains Russian roots. I guess there is only one kind of root in Russia.
• Shouldn't be used by children, pregnant women or people who breastfeed. Nothing fun ever should.
• It's coated with shellac. I know shellac is used as a wood finnish, but I guess it have other uses too.
• Have been used by peoples of the East as a an invigorating substance, I assume that "peoples of the East" means Swedes and Russians.
• The combination of the two substances it contain is particularly effective. This makes sense.
• It was on sale almost ten years ago.
• The tablets look like brown-somethings. Lumpy brown somethings. Brown means natural, natural means it can't harm me.

I went to bed with sensible intentions of getting up with the sun tomorrow. I was just going to listen to a couple of songs first to lull me to sleep. But this gave me an idea: wouldn't it be swell to make a playlist with songs that can lull me to sleep? A ready made little collection that would save me precious time previously used searching for suitable lullabies?
 It was a great plan. I immediately started browsing the music on my computer for suitable songs. I only have about 111GB of digitalized music, and a mind as easily distracted as a small child. What could possibly go wrong?
Now it's half past three in the morning and I'm listening to

Icelandic new-wave.

......and Scottish salsa

.....and Ukranian ska-punk

...and Peruvian heavy metal

I guess I might as well start making a morning-coffee compilation. It does not really matter when, or if, I go to sleep. The animals will still want their food in the morning.

The Lazy Fucking Farmer is too impatient to wait for spring, and is sowing carrot seeds in old milk- and juice-cartons. The snow can melt in it's own sweet time, I can haz carrots with fancy names. ("Deep purple"? Whoever comes up with calling a carrot that have watched too many porn films. Or maybe I have. There is no paraphilia like dendrophilia.).

It is possible that I do this because I'm grumpy after reading a garden magazine from England. They were gushing about "all the lovely things that sprout in March" and "Enjoy springtime relaxing in your garden". Accompanied by delicate pictures of flowers and pastel garden accessories.

Where I live there's one metre of snow outside now, and March is usually an awful month of sleet, slush and surprise snowfall. The only delicate flowers I'm likely to see are frost roses on the windows.

But if I'm lucky I will have strange goth-carrots in my windowsill before midsummer.