Worn out Mama, pens, loose birds

Mama and Jake got home a little after I did yesterday afternoon. They had been to the Dallas Zoo for most of the day. It is about an hour away from us in north Dallas so Mama came home with a tension headache – like she always gets when she drives in traffic of any consequence. Jake was charged up because he had slept part of the way. Mama went and lay down for an hour. Since we had church that evening I did not want to get into too much outside so I sat and read while Mama napped.

When Mama did get up she discovered that the a/c was leaking water onto the living room floor again. We began to mop that up and make plans to submit a service request with the Home Warranty company to get it looked at and hopefully further inspected and thereby resolved. All that will be on Mama today as she and Jake rest up to gather the energy to go tubing tomorrow.

I am taking tomorrow off to take Mama and Jake south for the tubing trip at a recreational camp about an hour away. I am not totally enamored with the idea because I see it as a great way to get a sunburn but she and Jake are very excited about the idea so that is how we will start our day tomorrow. We will have to be back in time to go to RU that evening but that will give us several hours on the river before we have to get back home. It will give us a chance to check it out for potential future use when our kids and grandkids visit.

I should be able to spend Saturday working on a hog pen for the feeder pigs. With pallets it is more of assembling prefab pieces than any type of true construction. But I should have sufficient pieces to put together a pretty large, somewhat durable enclosure for this batch of pigs and hopefully for future purchases in the feeder pig line.

I really need to start on the chicken coop. Mama is expecting her chicks to be shipped next week and I am ready for that. By the time they get big enough that they will need more space than the cage we will start them in, we should have Victoria’s coop cleaned and ready for the chickens we currently have at the farm. With the possibility of having thirty chickens at the farm I would really like to keep them contained in a set area. They are very destructive creatures.

Mama feels sorry for them when it is hot so she lets them out of the coop every day so they can tear up the flowerbeds and throw dirk onto the front sidewalks as they scratch through the front yard digging up everything I keep watered, all because she believes that somehow they will be more comfortable in the same heat they would be in if left in the coop and it’s adjoining yard. They do like to roam the farm but I do not think the freedom garners them any greater level of comfort. It is not really that big an issue but the nightly cleanup from the chickens and the dogs makes for a frustrating routine.

Everyone is happy with it but me.