More travel, lots more work

I took the day off yesterday to drive to Rogers, TX to pick up some cabinets I ordered several months ago. They have been in a warehouse near where my sister Sarah lives but neither she nor I have had the opportunity until now to retrieve them. It was a full pickup. Two of the cabinets are oven cabinets and they weighed a couple hundred pounds. My back is hurting today because of the way I was forced to help load them. The young man helping me was not a good communicator and he was far stronger that I am. I ended up being yanked about a bit in the loading process.


The real unfortunate part is that the hardware – drawer slides and hinges required to assemble the cabinets - was not with them. That will hopefully be sent separately. It had mistakenly been given to someone else. I am pretty confident that I got my entire order but if not the remainder of the cabinets that the warehouse had been trying to sell were donated to Habitat for Humanity in Austin. I may be able to get some matching cabinets from them if needed. Otherwise we will make do.

Mama and I got home pretty late. It was a full twelve hour day because we made other stops both on the way down and on the way back. On the way down we stopped to pick up some AgGrand and Amsoil from the warehouse in Dallas. That added about an hour to the trip. On the way back we stopped for kolaches in West, TX and again at the outlet malls on Hillsborough, TX. The stop at the outlet malls was mostly to delay our arrival in Fort Worth until after the rush hour traffic had dissipated. It proved to be a good decision. It was a productive trip.

Now the work on the apartment begins in earnest. I am hoping that with the time change (leaving me two hours of light after work) and the warmer evenings I will have the energy to do at least a little every evening. I have found that if all the work waits until Saturday it becomes frustratingly slow, but that is what I have been consigned to this point. Maybe things will start to move faster now. I will order the metal today or tomorrow for the exterior walls for both the apartment and the shop. The garage doors will be on hold for the moment.

We have someone from church coming today to look at the two most recent calves we have on the farm. They are also interested in raising several little ones. He asked for the name of our contact at the dairy and Mama would not give it; telling him instead, if you want them you can buy them from us. This man’s brother will be coming this weekend to look at some of the 300 pound steers we have for sale. He is interested in as many as five. We will see how that plays out.

Maggie and Aaron will be coming through next weekend on their way to Alaska. We are looking forward to that visit. I am pretty sure it will be Maggie’s first visit to the farm. The next week Grandpa and Grandma will be leaving for West Virginia. I keep asking Mama if she is ready to “man” the farm by herself and she assures me she is. By the time we get to that point we will have sold most of our larger calves and be down to less than six on the pasture. I am not sure how many we will be bottle feeding. We are currently waiting on more to arrive.

Who said farming was a slow paced life?