Farming, coaching, living

Mama had quite a day yesterday. She took off early from work to get an MRI done in her knee. I think we started on the left knee last time and we are taking the same approach this go around. Doing the MRI is never an easy exercise for her because of the time required for her to lay in a position that strains her already hurting sciatic nerve, but the attending technician lavished her with praise for doing so well throughout the imaging test. She had allotted an hour of her day for the test but it took over two hours in total. She left the doctor’s office about 3:30. We had swapped vehicles at lunch, so she would have the truck to take run Muenster to get feed and that is where she headed after the MRI was done. Forty minutes each way. Ten to fifteen minutes to pay and get the feed deposited in the truck.

I had spent quite a bit of time with the cows getting alfalfa to them instead of cubes. (We keep bales of alfalfa in the loft of the goat barn.) Daisy is still losing weight so Mama and I will have to doctor her at some point soon, but for now she is getting by well enough to allow us to investigate what to do for her weight loss. I was just stepping into the house after feeding the cows and the two sets of goats when she drove into the driveway at 5:30. She spent almost her whole paycheck on feed, but we should have enough to carry us through the end of May. By the time we got the feed unloaded, refilled empty feed barrels at strategic spots on the farm and finished the tedious part of watering and refilling feeders for all the baby chicks, it was time to leave for our coaching session.

Our coaching session was very encouraging. As I learn to pay close attention to what Theresa is saying – and she talks very fast – I am picking up on some very clever and helpful insights on how to make this business work the way we need it to. Mama and I are very confident that we will be placing bids on at least three properties next month. We cannot be sure we will get the properties we bid on, but we will at least be confident enough to place the bids. There are so many more properties to investigate that we will probably spend the next month in one state evaluating the after-auction properties list of those counties before we move elsewhere in our searches. Right now, we are concentrating in Arkansas, but in our next coaching session, we will begin to look at Florida. Our coaching sessions are from 8 pm to 9 pm. That is a strain on Mama sometimes but, so far, we have managed to make it work. More often than not, we leave the sessions charged up about getting this business going.

It was a good thing we left the session energized last night because we had to spend some quality time at Walmart before heading home. Mama has been in a hurry to get home after work each day because she worries about the big dogs and the puppies. The big dogs need to be let out of the house and the pups need to be let out of the kennel. Both having been cooped up for the day while all of us are at work. Because of that, and the fact that she has been getting the mission house at the church set up for the missionaries we will be hosting for the Mission’s Conference this coming week, she has not gotten the shopping done for the extra meals we have to prepare for Mission’s Conference. So, we squeezed that shopping trip in last night. We ended up getting home at a little after 10pm.

It was a little after 10:30 before we got in bed; the non-perishable groceries still sitting on the table. We were worn out.