Travel, our own trailer, windows, tags

Last time I spoke to Mama, she and Victoria were visiting with Maggie. They were only two hours short of their destination. The last time I spoke with Cori, they were half way home from where ever they had been attending the wedding. The best I could figure things from those two pieces of information, both parties of travelers would arrive at Cori and Nate’s home in Pace, FL at about the same time – or very nearly the same time. I am anxious to hear this morning how it worked out. It will be a busy, exciting day in that house.


Saturday morning, pretty early, Grandpa and I took off for Holliday, TX to look at a trailer I had found for sale. It was very cheap partly because it had no floor in it. When Grandpa got there and looked it over we went ahead and bought it. It did need a floor and one of the two axles had no tires on it, although the man selling it to us gave us a new tire on a rim and two empty rims. The lights did not work with Grandpa’s truck, but we took it home to the farm that day.

By the end of the day, both axles were complete, the safety chains were in place and Grandpa was working on the lights. He will go this morning to a saw mill here in Bowie to get the creosoted lumber to put the floor it. We will have some detail work to do when I get home, but I am expecting it to be mostly done. You can always tell if Grandpa likes a purchase by the amount of attention he gives to it when we get it home. He really liked this one.

After we got the trailer home, I started working on cutting the windows into the apartment. When we buildt the apartment walls, I elected not to build the walls with the windows already placed for several reasons. The first is that I did not know for sure how I would place them. (That turned out to be a good decision since we changed the arrangement several times.) The second is that I wanted to get all the materials used to build the walls up and in place because I could not protect them while they were lying on the slab. We covered the wood and OSB with tarps but you would have to spend some time here to realize how futile the winds here make that effort seem.

The time to cut in the windows was right and I started the project with the idea that I would like to get at least two windows placed. I ended up getting four of the five cut in. It was rather amazing how it changed the looks of the apartment. If all goes well, Mama and Grandpa will go and get the metal for the siding on Thursday. My hope is that by Saturday evening we will have most, if not all, of the siding on the shop and apartment.

I could have gotten the last window in but was called away to help Grandpa and Mama tag the calves we will be taking to the market this Wednesday. That was an experience. We are required to put tags in the right ear of any calf to be sold so it can be tracked to our farm should that ever be necessary. We were given enough tags to last us for quite a while. We were given the tool for putting in the tags also. None of us had ever done it but it turned out to be pretty straight forward.

Grandma recorded the tags by calf since Mama insisted we be able to relate the market weight to the particular calf. While we had each one penned for tagging Grandpa used a tape to measure the calves. The tape is designed to give an estimated weight based on the girth of the calf. We will see if it is as close as we have been told.

We also sold seven smaller calves to some people at our church. They were very pleased with the little ones…and I got some money to reimburse me for the stock trailer.

It was a busy weekend.