Away for the week, plans and timing

I am working from the Borger office this morning so I do not expect to get a lot of work done other than spending time visiting with the folks here. Today is moving day for six of the employees here. To some it will not be a big deal but to others it is a huge change. One person in the move has officed out of Borger for almost twenty years. To her this is life changing even though it is not a job change. She will still be doing the same work, just from a different location.

In some instances I can understand because Dumas, where the new office is set up, is at least thirty minutes away. For those working moms who have younger children it will make things extremely difficult at times. It adds at least an hour to the work day for everyone living in Borger having to drive to Dumas. I am used to those hours on the road getting to and from work but it is far more common for employees to relocate so they can have a ten minute or shorter commute. I cannot sympathize with that crowd.

Mama is on her own at the farm this week. In ways she enjoys the solitude – but only in limited doses. There are a couple of things I left undone that will cause her a little more work but none of them are of great importance. The horse knocked down the feeder we put hay in for her. When we are able to use the rack to put her hay in there is much less waste. It will have to wait until I get back to be reattached in a more secure manner.

When we put hay out for her on the little concrete pad we have in her current feeding area she will only eat a portion of it. Even though she eats grass from the ground she will not clean up the hay left scattered about as she tears apart the fleets of hay we set out for her. I am not sure how she tore her hay rack off of the wall but horses can be pretty rough. They often do not know their own strength and they are curious about everything often biting and pulling on everything within their reach. That is why we cannot keep her where there is any equipment – not if we what to be able to use it.

We will be starting the garden soon so I need to lay out the area we will use for planting and separate it from the area I plan to use for an orchard. Mama is looking over our seed inventory this week so we can start planning the layout and timing of planting for this year. I had hoped to put up a fence to protect the garden from the brutal summer winds but I may not get that done this year.

 I hope to start on a new hot house with a chicken coop attached to it in the next couple weeks. It is more about money than anything else but I need it for special plants and to start an aqua-ponic garden. It will help shade the garden from the evening sun if I set it up as planned.

 I have three projects pressing me at the moment – the large part of the shop, the hot house and the barn. I need to get all of them done this year but I do not yet have the vision of how to best coordinate the projects – especially since I have to do all the work myself. It is another instance of the Lord teaching me patience and persistence.

I am not a very good pupil at times.