Life vs business, the kids, the puppies, the chicks

Three days of travel can certainly mess up an evening work schedule. Essentially, Mama and I are trying to work two jobs. It has not been a thrilling success for us, but we are making the best of it. While I was on the road, I spent the evenings getting the notes from our three-day conference – a month ago – typed up so Mama and I can use them as a reference. The total was a collection of ten pages of single spaced, size 11 font notes. I also caught up on receipts that needed to be tagged and entered into a tracking program we are using to keep track of expenses. All the while, Mama was studying on the various states and counties we are going to talk to our coach about when we have our first meeting tonight. Also, happening in the background, USTLA has been working on getting our LLCs set up. I received confirmation of the paperwork being completed yesterday. I will have a good bit of work to follow through with the initial set up and funding of the accounts, but we should be pretty much done by the end of the month. So, even though the coordination has been a challenge, we are making steady progress.

Mama and I took time to look things over yesterday evening. The garden was in bad need of water and Daisy needed hay brought to her from the bale the calves are eating on. All my trees and plants in the back yard needed to be inspected for signs of life. The grapevine was shooting our new growth. I was pleased with that. Of the berry bushes along the back fence, three of the four were showing a spark of life. I will work this weekend on getting those replanted in a bed where they will have a much better chance to thrive. The one we planted in the raised bed with the blueberries is doing so well I will have to more it to keep it from taking over the entire bed. All the fruit trees are budding and flowering. If we can avoid a Spring freeze, we should have fruit this year – red raspberries, black raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, grapes, figs, peaches, pears, apricots, apples, plums and nectarines. My one dwarf peach tree died through the winter, but the roots are sending up growth from under the graft. Since the grafts are normally from a standard root of the same general variety of tree, I should have a standard peach tree coming up. That will give us one in the garden and one in the back yard.

Lilly’s triplets seem to be doing well. All have fat little bellies. All are getting around exceptionally well. They love the little rockpile I have set up for them in the goat area. Dolly is getting bigger by the day, but we are not expecting her to kid until mid-April. We will take Millie, our senior nanny, to Ricks next week to be bred. That will keep we from interfering with Dolly when her little ones are born. We are in the process of trying to sell two of our myotonic goats and all three of our Nubian goats but have not had any luck so far. Please keep that in prayer.

The puppies are starting to try to walk but are not getting very far at time yet. I will be cutting a door into the birthing center to allow the puppies to pass from the building to the dog kennel we have set in place for that purpose. Another little weekend project.  All the pups are fat and whiney. Mama and Victoria are very pleased.

Also, this weekend, I will be setting up places for us to house the forty chicks Mama ordered. Thirty of which are ours. Fortunately, the weather is perfect for brooding the chicks in the garge.