Shoemaker's Elves

Foxtail Farm has been open two weeks and we already have bookings for 72 room nights with our first guest arriving on April 9. I never expected to see this happen so quickly and I am elated that it has. In preparation I have been in the kitchen every morning practicing. Today was Danish Ebelskivers with our own Foxtail Farm Wild Blackberry Jam.

As I get ready for our first guest, I have been working on landscaping aesthetics and this weekend I was completing a stone wall on the west side of the house that I had started a couple of months ago. This past Sunday while hauling stones with the tractor I happened to look up at our power pole (also on the west side of the house) and saw that the top of the pole had split and that the lines coming from the road were sagging and hitting one of our trees. I called Pacific Gas and Electric's emergency hotline and they said they would send someone to take a look. I nervously went back to work.

Our split pole probably caused by woodpecker activity.

The PG&E representative arrived within the hour and in his words, “Oh that’s not good.” He indicated that it would need to be fixed and the pole replaced. I asked would this happen Monday or later in the week? No, it would be today, Sunday. And how long would it take? Six to eight hours.

It took some time, but the PG&E crew finally arrived at 6:30 PM and here I am doing the math, 12:30 to 2:30 AM they would finish? And to top it off the crew foreman was yawning when I spoke with him and he was telling me that he had been working since 4:00 AM that morning. Oh boy.

They got started, they cut power, having solar and backup batteries and a generator meant that we didn’t lose power. We had dinner, watched the PG&E crew for a while and later went to bed, and PG&E continued their work.

Monday morning arrived, and the PG&E (read Shoemaker) Elves had done it again. The pole was up, all the equipment attached, and we had power, yah!

So I got to thinking about the landscape aesthetics, I wonder if I could convince PG&E that landscape work constituted an emergency and would they be able to send a crew (read Elves) to do that work at night so I could wake up and find that all the landscaping had been done and that I was ready for our first guest.

Probably not.