Goats

I am making pretty good headway on the goat barn. I got all the heavy sheets of 3/4” treated plywood up onto the loft joists last night before I quit and this morning as I was putting the last two pieces of plywood - both of which required special cuts and therefore careful measurements I fell through the joists. (Pictured is the center of the barn.)

I was making my way to the far corner where I was going to measure for the opening to the loft and stepped on a 2x6 that I had not fastened to the stringer when I was putting them up. I caught myself with both arms and across my chest before I let go and dropped to the ground. It pretty much knocked the wind out of me.

It was only when I got back from kneeling on the ground that I realized that I had bounced off of the supporting 4x4 in the center of the building.

I have an abrasion that covers my entire chest and both arm pits from left to right or vice versa depending on your orientation. I am not confident that I did not break a rib because the constant state of pain is impressive. It does not hurt to breathe but it does to cough.

The knot on my hip looks like someone hit me with a baseball bat. It is more limiting than the pain across my chest. Mama asked me if I wanted her to take a picture but I told her to hold off until the bruising peaks. It will look far more manly at that point. Tomorrow should be fun as the swelling sets in overnight.

I was headed to the church to work on my business training when Mama was getting in from taking a cow manure sample to the vet. Daisy needed to be checked out to determine if the worming she got a couple weeks ago had killed off the infestation that is keeping her too thin. So Mama fed the cows this morning and waited in the barn lot for Daisy to poop. Her intention was to catch the fresh offal as it fell but I advised her against that so the sample she obtained was fresh but dirty. The vet was okay with that.

It was while she was waiting for Daisy to give her a sample that I failed my little gravity challenge. So far, gravity has won every time; albeit, with more wounding this time than I have had in many years.

Anyway, I had to work from home today since the internet was nonfunctioning all across our area. (Mama found that out as she was at the feed store on her way home from the vet.) Working from home is not nearly as productive, on many levels, as when I am able to put in several hours at the church. But it was better than nothing and Mama got to hear some of the training I am getting on “traffic”. 

This evening we walked the goats into the lot I have been setting up for them. Initially they were excited about the new digs but as the night has crept upon us they are less excited because I do not have a building that they can hide in for the night. Mama and I put out the dog Igloo and a large crate for them to shelter in but they do not seem enthused about the accommodations.

Hopefully they will adapt.

Life

I am having trouble understanding how I can go through a days activities, busy every hour, and fail to see that I got anything significant accomplished. At least, not enough to suit me to have traded an entire day for the output I have to show for it, but I suppose that is the tradeoff when you divide your time among so many competing projects. I certainly am not “leveraged” at this time. When everything I am doing depends on me to get it done, I begin to see the timeline for each and every project stretching further out. Oh, well. I will eventually get it all done. Lord willing and I live long enough.

While I am working to get this marketing business off and running, I am bottle feeding goats, building a barn to house our goats, watering our struggling plants three evenings a week, participating in church activities Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The week soon runs into overload if just one more little chore gets written on the todo list. If that is what operating a farm is all about, we are deep into it. (And loving it, by the way.) But honestly, that’s just life.

Just when you think you have everything under control and can cruise along in autopilot - the system is in place and working well - a baby goat turns up sick and everything has to be adjusted to compensate for the outlier. Someone once said that life is what happens while you are making plans. Yep. we are definitely enjoying life at it’s fullest.

Meanwhile, each of our children are having growing pains of their own; Joshua with multiple competing distractions while he seeks a clear direction, Cori and Nate with beginning deputation and the life changing dynamic of getting the needed support to move your entire life to a foreign country (leaving your house, church, friends, family and almost everything familiar behind) to do mission work, Becky with seeing life for what it has become to her, Victoria with balancing needs, wants and obligations, Maggie with medical tests and halting breast feeding her very big baby boy, sooner than expected, Brittany and Andrew with getting ready for the coming relocation back to the US, and Chase and Makaila - well, Chase and Makaila seem to really be on autopilot for now.

Is there and easier way to do all this? Yes; one day at a time; one solution at a time. God will never give us more than we are able to bear, but will help us as we trust Him to guide us one step at a time. He made that promise to us. I have often wondered what I would do if I knew what would happen in my life five years from now; five days from now, for that matter. But we are not privy to that information. Most times that is a blessing in itself.

The peace comes in knowing that we are loved by the One who does have that information and additionally, knowing He has our best interests at heart.

Do I really believe that, you ask?

Absolutely. My life has proved it true countless times…and so can yours.

Building and business

I began work on our goat barn this morning and was able to get further than I thought I would. I started with the idea that I would maybe get three of the six 4x4’s in place with the 2x6 top rail attached but I was able to get all six posts set and the 2x6’s strung for what will be the bottom of the loft.

Lindy Lumen and her children came out for a visit Mama when I was about halfway through what I was able to finally complete. I had asked Mama to alert me when it was 12 pm so I could wrap things up and move on to my training but when she and our visitors went out to feed Boomer, our male bottle baby, I knew I had been forgotten. Boomer gets his second feeding at noon each day.

But I did get remembered when Mama found a hatchling with the hen sitting in the Banty house. Mama was getting pecked too badly to get to the chick so Daddy had to come to the rescue. That brings our total to five Banty hatchlings since the process began about a week ago. The mean mother hen is still sitting on six eggs. So there is an expectation of a few more chicks in the next several days.

I was a sweaty mess when I came in to get showered and changed to go to the church and work on my internet marketing assignments. I offered Mama a loving hug but she flatly refused - in front of our visitors. I was stung to the core.

Lindy is trying to get a milti-level marketing business of the ground so when Mama told her just the little she knows about the business I am starting Lindy was very interested.. She left her email with Mama and asked if she could be one of the first ones to get an email when I have my website set up. When the choice is between making one hundred ten dollar commissions to make one thousand dollars or making just one sale to make a one thousand dollar commission, the choice is pretty obvious.

I got in about three full hours before I had to vacate the old fellowship hall so the ladies could set up for a ladies meeting this evening but in that time I had finally completed all the required 21 steps of training to get my online marketing business up and running. 

Tomorrow I should be set up with the web landing page that will allow me to market the training products offered by this company. I am ready.

How soon will I start making sales and the related commissions? We’ll see.  

What a day!

Mama and I have had a busy day. The day started with the discovery of three newly hatched Bantam chicks - one of which was already on the ground with a very protective mother hen. We have no idea how it managed to survive the fall from the little chicken house to the ground. It is only about thirty inches of drop, but then you are only an inch tall that is an impressive distance. The other two chicks were safely deposited in the nursery tote with the chick that hatched in our incubator last week. It has not enjoyed the company.)

Then we headed to Bowie to pick up the truck we left with the mechanic last week. I had two dog crates in the back of the Sequoia because we were going to pick up a nanny goat and her twins from our goat farmer friend in Bowie. The nanny is the mother of the little girl we got a few weeks ago but the little one we took was the smallest of the triplets and might not have survived if we had not taken her home to be bottle fed. Unlike in the Disney movies, there was no recognition of reunion when we got them all together. It was really disappointing.

I headed to the church soon after I got home because I try to spend several hours per day on the marketing business I am working to develop but I had to shorten those hours today because we got off to a late start and we were scheduled to meet a buyer at the farm to sell our baler.

It turned out that I could have spent a good deal more time at the church on the internet completing more of the assigned training because the buyer arrived about two hours later than he had predicted. By the time he did show up Grandpa and I had the baler hitched up to the tractor and had run two bales through it by taking the loose hay from the round bale the cows are eating and feeding it into the baler. 

That was good practice because Grandpa and I ran three more bales through the baler when the buyer did arrive so we could show him how to operate it. He was very thankful for the demonstration. Then we schemed on just how to load the baler onto a trailer that was too narrow for it to fit. 

We ended up backing the baler onto the finders of the trailer by parking the trailer against the berm of our little pond in order to give us a downhill approach. Using ramps made out of lumber I had on hand Grandpa slowly guided the baler into place.  It was a tricky process and if we had not had Grandpa to do the maneuvering I do not think we could have succeeded; in fact, I am sure of it.

Grandpa and I were worn out by the time the buyer, Marco, got the baler secured to the trailer and felt it was tied down safely enough to make the four hour drive to his home. Overall, the loading process took about two hours. It was 7:45 before I got to sit down and cool off enough to finally take a shower and relay a bit.

After feeding the goats their bedtime bottles it was almost 9 pm.

Then we thought about the little chick in the Banty coop.

So I changed into some farm pants and got down under the little chicken house and lifted the hen off of the chick so we could put it with the other chicks in the makeshift nursery. Without that rescue it would have died within a few days - in spite of the mother hens attentiveness.

Lots of work but so many blessings in the process.

Oh, life with Mama.

Normal Life

Today was a pretty interesting day business wise. I spoke for about thirty minutes to my “coach” and got a lot of valuable information which I should be able to put into practice generating an income next week. More on that when I see results.

I did take the plunge and sign up for a weekend of online marketing training in Charlotte, NC mid next month. It will be interesting to see how difficult it is to coordinate the time away for Mama - with goats to feed and water (bottle feeding one four times a day and one twice a day), chickens to feed and water, cattle to feed and water, dogs to feed and water and let out for potty breaks, etc.

I suppose that at some point our lives will assume the simplicity that is supposed to characterize farm living but we are nowhere close at this point. I am not sure if we will ever be; nor do we ever want to be.

I have the goat lot fenced in now and will begin the barn for the sheep and goats on Monday. The construction projects have slowed down based on lack of finances and the time constraints of taking on a business.

On the good side, we were able to sell our disk mower for enough to pay for the goats we are purchasing this weekend. We have had calls on a couple other pieces of equipment but have not changed them out for cash yet. We are still praying for all of them to sell.

Grandpa came by yesterday to fill in the hole that had been dug for us when the septic system was being put it. It was five feet deep, twelve feet long and about seven feet wide. We have some dirt piled on the center part in the hopes it will settle in over the next few days but it is still too soft to do the finishing touches.

We even have the cattle closed off to that lot - that will eventually be for the goats - because i am concerned that it is too soft for them to walk in; and, sure as the world, they would walk on it as soon as we let them in. I do not want to get a stuck cow out of the mire.

Mama and I are headed to RU tonight. RU is a drug rehabilitation program that our church offers every Friday night. Four to six noisy, active, sugar energized four and five year olds keep us company during the two hour adult program.

It is a normal Friday night for the two of us.

Farm Life

It has been some time since I wrote last - over seven months to be exact. To say a lot has happened is a horrendous understatement since about 2800 hours of life have been lived out in that time. (I subtracted out sleeping hours for that time period.)

We have been without employment other than a short stent working with a friend from church as a plumber’s helper. Needless to say, the job was too difficult for me to do for a long period of time. It seemed that all the positions required to do the job properly are the ones that cause my, once broken, back the maximum amount of pain. I did not mind the conditions or the messiness of the job, but I could not keep up with the working under houses or in attics in difficult positions for long periods of time or digging hundreds of feet of ditches. So since mid-April I have been at the farm full-time living off of our saving.

That has been a blessing because so much has been needed and if the Lord does give me a job again I will look back on these months as a major blessing - getting ready of goats, getting places set up for the chickens that are hatching, getting the cows to the vet for issues we are dealing with there. It has been really great for Mama. I think she is getting really spoiled to my uninterrupted help.

Lately, I have quit praying for a job and start praying for an income. With that in mind, I started looking at small one-person franchises for a home-based business. I shopped several and put in applications to only two but once I really investigated the cost and the time commitment I set them with aside.

About two weeks ago I sent my email to a marketing website that has proven to be a better than average opportunity for me. I will let you all know more as I progress through their introductory program. I can say at this point that it is the best system I have ever seen put together. More on that later.

Speaking of the cattle issues, Mama and I were somewhat disappointed earlier this year when one of the three cows we purchased in January lost her calf - a little bull calf. And we did not get overly excited about the next two calfs born to us here on the farm; both bull calves. Mama and I had been praying that at least two of the calves born to us this year would be heifers. Oh well, we thought, at least they are healthy calves. So healthy, in fact, that we are never able to get very close to either of them.

Well, last week we loaded up Daisy and her calf because Daisy (she is our bottle baby) was not looking very healthy. We also loaded the other calf because she had a huge abcess on the left side of her face. There was no hope of getting her mother loaded. She one of the most skittish cows I have ever seen. The last time we loaded her she broke through the head gate on the loading chute. In the work we asked of the vet we planned that the two calves would be castrated during this visit.

Once at the vet we unloaded the calves and the one Mama cow and Daisy’s calf was the first into the squeeze chute. When we had confirmed the procedure we required the vet laid out the necessary tools and lifted the calf’s tail. “I cannot castrate this one.” He told Mama. She was a little taken aback and asked why he had said that. “Well”, he smiled at Mama, “because this one is a heifer. And so is that one.” (Referring to the other calf.)

Mama explained that we were greenhorns and the calves are very flighty and  they both had such big umbilical cords and swollen naval at birth. I just told the vet, “It’s difficult for me to tell the difference between girls and boys these days.”

Everyone got a laugh out of the incident but Mama and I were thrilled to know that God had answered our prayer - even though we were too ignorant to see it.