Two good days of work – one casualty, Easter

Last weekend was good. Good weather. Good success with projects and repairs at the farm. Good time with Nate, Cori and the kids. With a bit of help from Nate I was able to get the coop wire finished, get gravel put on the bare ground opened to the driveway when we moved the fence at the shop and able to do some cleanup of the flowerbeds Mama has been agonizing over. On Saturday, while Nate, Cori and the girls were on their way to Bowie to meet Victoria and drop off their vehicle to Roger – the a/c is out – Blake and Grant were playing in the rocks in the goat area. I did not think much about it until I heard Blake’s blood curdling scream. Grant was moving some of the larger rocks and flipped one onto Blake’s hand, smashing his finger in the process. It flayed the skin completely off the first knuckle of the ring finger on his right hand. I called Cori and asked them to head back to the farm to evaluate the injury. I thought it was bad enough that an emergency room visit might be warranted. We might have been able to get by without it, but on my recommendation, they went to the hospital to get the wound cleaned and dressed. It is always such a frightful expense. The finger guard they gave Blake is a badge of honor for him that he was able to show off at church yesterday – and it does protect his finger from getting banged around. We are changing the medicated patches and the gauze nightly while Cori and Nate are in Honduras this week.

It was a full two days of work at the farm. The baby chicks arrived Friday morning and Mama and I set up totes in the garage to accommodate the forty we are keeping. Zack and Alissa came over fairly early to get the dozen they had ordered. So far there has been one casualty. Fortunately, it was not one of the expensive breed Mama ordered. When Blake was injured I was working on repairing the kennel, so a tarp could be put back over it to shade the puppies – and that came out very well. When I finished that, I set up for Nate to help me get the wire on the coop – until I ran out of materials. To open the sidewalk from the garage into the back yard, I took some thin, tall rods and attached them to the raised bed in the back yard to support the blackberry bush that is thriving in that bed. When I got it set on the supports, I found a runner that had sprouted a new blackberry plant and I dug it up to be replanted. When I had exhausted all the materials I had I went to the garden and rebuilt the small raised beds into one deeper bed, so I could relocate the berry bushes from the back yard as well as the one I had taken from the raised bed in the back yard. That came out pretty well. I will know in a week or so how well the plants will do.

When Nate and Cori returned from the hospital, Nate and I took their vehicle to Bowie, so Roger could get the repairs made to the a/c. While we were there, we stopped and picked up some TEF and alfalfa from Rick. At the farm, we loaded the bales into the loft of the goat barn and I swapped the hay/pallet forks on the tractor to the bucket and went to the gravel yard next door and hauled enough gravel to cover the spot by the shop – four bucket loads. I drove the tractor and Nate spread the gravel. Having rested my back a bit while I was on the tractor, I spent an hour or so on the back of the shop leveling the gravel I had put there as well as lining out the west corner and roof supports for the little shed I am adding onto the shop.

Easter Sunday was great. We had Mykenzie, Grant, Blake, Savanna, Yilin, Cheyenne and Aubrey all dressed for the day. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures on my phone. Three Easter egg hunts later, our house is overrun with plastic eggs.

Nate and Cori left from the restaurant to drive to Houston where they will catch a flight to Honduras. Please continue in prayer for them.