The Good Clean Fun of Making a Big Dirty Mess

It is no wonder that we have such trouble keeping our house spick and span.  Every one of us here on Gael Glen Farm simply loves to make a mess.  Five concurrent messes can make for one very disorderly house.

Discouraged by the unexpected blizzard that plagued us all morning, Liam and Seamus have decided that it is high time for spring to come.  To emphasize their position they pulled out all their rain boats from storage and tried them all on to make sure that they still fit.  They explained that they needed to be ready for puddle jumping - remember this was as 10 cm of fresh snow was blanketing the farm.  Even better was the old mud that was caked on all these boots.  Too bad the white tile floor was just washed yesterday.

I cannot complain too much, though, because I was right beside them making an even bigger mess of the kitchen floor.  I finished skirting my fleeces today and got everything packed up into boxes.  The mail carrier should be here Monday to pick them up.  In the meantime, I will need to clean this floor again also.

This is one giant fleece!  Go Abbott!

Not one to be outdone, Ian is currently processing maple sap in preparation for boiling this weekend. Ian's preferred place to make a mess is the garage, except that it is still too cold out for that.  Instead, he has moved his messiness into the mud room - yes, that mud room with the perfectly clean floor that you could eat off of. 

Ian has engineered a reverse osmosis system that he uses to filter the sap.  By running the sap through the filters, the "waste" product is a highly concentrated sugar solution that requires much less boiling time in order to reduce down to maple syrup.  There are definite advantages to being married to a maple syrup making engineer, even if he is a messy one.  Ian's system, while more efficient, is also messy; it requires a lot of pouring sap into various buckets and moving around sap filled hoses that sometimes get loose and dribble concentrated and very sticky sap onto my previously spotless floor. 

While the rest of us were otherwise occupied, Alistair got busy in the adjoining room gleefully making a gigantic mess of his toys.  He has discovered throwing and gets an immense amount of joy out of chucking his toys across the room.  Baby giggles and a smile like that are totally worth cleaning up some toys.

These are busy, productive and very enjoyable days here on the farm, though there is no denying that they are also very messy ones.  Luckily we are all able to appreciate the good clean fun that comes from making a big dirty mess!