Pre-industrial Revival

I obviously did not think this through. When my vendors retired, leaving my customers without the product they are devoted to, it seemed sensible for me to take over the manufacturing. It became a quest. The retirees had trashed the machinery that was used to make the product as well as ALL their paperwork, including their customer list. Still I was determined. They finally divulged the source of the raw materials and gave me a release of the UPC code and trademark. I moved confidently forward.

A firm in Ohio was contracted to extrude and cut the 4" long sticks of adhesive, while I searched for packaging material and arranged for new labels. Shortly before they arrived, the company that was to have packaged them changed their minds. "Okay," I thought, "I will pack them myself."

This is when the pre-industrial revival took place at my house. In the age of machines I find myself* folding boxes, by hand; cutting parchment paper, by hand; wrapping 5400 sticks, by hand; filling boxes, ten to a box, by hand; placing inserts in boxes, by hand; and finally - labeling, by hand. The guy in Ohio asked if slave labor was still available in Georgia. I replied, "Only at my house."

(*credit to my husband for folding boxes and cutting paper and having good ideas.)

Sope Creek and the Rain

I wasn't happy to be crossing over Sope Creek, which had become a raging river. The bridge seemed a less reliable construct with the dead tree trunks pressed against it's uprights from the recent flood.

Safely home, in my house on the hill, I look down on what we euphemistically call a creek when it is actually a drainage ditch I suppose. It is always wet, fed by the springs that are so strong they almost popped the neighbor's pool out of the ground once when it was empty. Water drains from 40 acres around into our creek, which then rushes through the yard toward Katy Creek. Katy is usually low and quiet and occasionally home to beavers. This seasonal rush of water discourages them from staying. The water in Katy runs downstream to flood the yards of several neighbors, sometimes crossing our road and making it impassable, before it goes to join Sope Creek and then the Chattahoochee River.

I can only imagine that those who suffered from the awful flooding a little over a week ago have to be terrified by this new and overly generous downpour. By the time I woke, we had already received 1 1/2" and it continues raining this afternoon. It is nothing like the 20" that some people received during what they called a 100-year flood. Still you would like to see it stop. We have enough for awhile.

After two years of drought and the accompanying sacrifices, Mother Nature has nearly refilled the lake that gives us drinking water. "Near full pool," is the way the newspaper describes it. Perhaps today will top it off.

Video of Sope Creek in it's angered state, as well as just after, showed up on YouTube. What the video does not show is how it calmly meanders among the rocks in normal times, when mothers and their children can sit on the big, flat rocks and dangle their feet in the shallow water.
Just not today.