Missed celebrations, so much to do, added work

My Mom and Dad celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary this weekend and although I was invited I did not get to go. I could have gone but I was so far behind on things that needed to be done at the farm that I opted out. Mama would have been left alone this weekend to tend to the farm and there were a lot of little things waiting on me. With the promise of rain also comes the necessary prep I had to complete to keep the shop and apartment dry – or mostly so. Rather than spending the fourteen hours driving to and from as well as attending the festivities, I stayed to work ten hours on the farm and the building.


I had left work a little early on Friday to run a number of errands which had to be done before 5 p.m. I stopped for hay I Decatur. I delivered it to the farm. I went back to a business in Bowie for the electric wire and conduit to hook the shop to the power pole we have set for it. I delivered that to the farm. Then I hooked up the trailer and drove to Gainesville to get the metal I had ordered to complete the siding on the apartment. I did get it all done before five, but just barely.

Friday ended with me trying to bury a calf that had died the night before. Whiel it was still struggling to live I had been keeping it isolated from the other larger calves so we could tend to it but on Thursday night it looked pretty much gone. Using the tractor front loader to dig a grave was a lot harder than it looks like it would when I watched Grandpa do it. The ground was soft which was good for digging. It was not good for giving the tractor traction to do the digging. After almost getting stuck twice and trying three different angles to get the hole dug. I took what I had, buried the calf and hoped for the best.

Saturday started off getting the calves their morning bottles and then cleaning stalls. I got the tractor out and used the bucket to pull back the gravel from the driveway where I was going to dig the trench to lay the conduit for the electric run. That proved much easier to do than grave digging. It was the weekend we have Trade Days in Bowie so Mama and I went for a bit before I really got into working on the building. It turned out to be an expensive weekend.

On our way in we bought a wrought iron stand for the bathroom. We not only liked the way it was designed, we liked the color also. We stopped the longest at a guy who was selling a sushi making kit. After watching and listening, we bought one. (Mama made sushi that night and it turned out great.) A little later we bought some plants for the garden. Not too bad so far.

As I thought more about it, while getting ready to get started on the my task list, I suggested Mama go back and buy one of the sushi makers for Joshua – who’s birthday is this coming Sunday. She came home with the kit as agreed but announced that she had also bought the cutest little three week old lamb. We are going to pick it up this evening along with a six month old ram.

The lamb is from a set of quadruplets. The ram is from a set of triplets. The lamb has to be fed three to four ounces of milk every four hours during the day for the next three weeks. Oh, joy! Mama and I have been talking about getting sheep to raise for meat. I just did not know it would be this weekend that we would get started on that project.

I did get power hooked up to the breaker box in the shop and I did get the porch I am putting on the apartment entry started. I would have gotten it covered but the metal I got with the last order to be used for a roof on a loafing shed did not match the metal on the shop roof so I would not use it to extend that roof over the porch. (My bad!) The best I could do is to cover half the porch roof with a left over sheet of the same metal from an earlier project.

I was a little disappointed in the shortfall, but not the sunset.