Little things, long weekend ahead, classes, mask use today

Yesterday evening was a relaxing evening at the farm. As Mama and Victoria both went live online for their Color Street businesses, I stayed outside and worked. I have to build a small shelter for the calf so we can get her out of the goat enclosure, so I worked on that until I ran out of materials. The calf really likes the shelter and I hate to have her without a place to hide when bad weather comes over the next few months. It will not be large. I am only covering part of the stall I originally built to keep her in when she was separated from the goats early on – but it will be a permanent cover. I will have that done this weekend and she will be excluded from the paddock with the goats as soon as I am finished. That should leave me and Mama a lot less mess to clean up in the goat shelter. As the calf gets bigger, so do her bowel movements. We hate for the goats to have to walk in the manure that she liberally deposits within that shelter.

I also put the last board on the porch of the little coop. It required some special cuts to make it fit properly. Now that is complete, and I hope to seal the porch with some sealant this coming weekend. I have had a 5-gallon bucket of the sealant for a couple years now. More like five years, so I do not know if it is still usable. If it is, it will finally get used over this coming long weekend. Mama and I are trying to spruce thing up around the farm, but it is a time-consuming chore that is largely never-ending. I guess that is what I love about the farm. At some point, it may become too much for us, but for now we are able to manage the ongoing workload and still enjoy most of the activity it requires of us.

I will be teaching classes both tomorrow and Thursday. That will finish out this short week. I am looking forward to a little bit of a break from work. It is not that I am dissatisfied with work. It is only that I would like a little bit more time to get some things done around the farm. If I could routinely take two days per week to devote my attention to the farm, I feel like I could get so much more done. That time will come eventually.

There are some serious questions being raised about the use of masks to halt the spread of the COVID virus. It is more of an emotional issue than a health issue, so it is difficult to formulate an effective argument against the use of masks. However, I was sent this post this morning by someone at my work who wanted me to thoughtfully consider the postulations of the author.  Although I do not know the author, I include it because I do not think I could have said it better.

“N95 masks: are designed for CONTAMINATED environments. That means when you exhale through N95 the design is that you are exhaling into contamination. The exhale from N95 masks are vented to breath straight out without filtration. They don't filter the air on the way out. They don't need to.
Conclusion: if you're in Target and the guy with Covid has a N95 mask, his covid breath is unfiltered being exhaled into Target (because it was designed for already contaminated environments, it's not filtering your air on the way out).
• Surgical Mask: these masks were designed and approved for STERILE environments. The amount of particles and contaminants in the outside and indoor environments ensure people are CLOGGING these masks very, VERY quickly. The moisture from your breath combined with the clogged mask will render it “useless”. IF you come in contact with Covid and your mask traps it, YOU become a walking virus dispenser. Every time you put your mask on you are breathing the germs from EVERYWHERE you went. They should be changed or thrown out every “20-30 minutes in a non-sterile environment.” Ultimate Answer:
*N95 blows the virus into the air from a contaminated person.
*The surgical mask is not designed for the outside world and will not filter the virus upon inhaling through it. It's filtration works on the exhale, (Like a vacuum bag, it only works one way) but likely stops after 20 minutes, rendering it useless outside of a STERILE ENVIRONMENT.
*Cloth masks are WORSE than none. It's equivalent to using a chain link fence to stop mosquitos.
• Cloth masks: I can't even believe I'm having to explain this, but here it goes. Today, three people pointed to their masks as they walked by me entering Lowe's. They said “ya gotta wear your mask BRO” I said very clearly “those masks don't work bro, in fact they MAKE you sicker” they “pshh'd” me. By now hopefully you all know CLOTH masks do not filter anything. You mean the American flag one my aunt made? Yes. The one with sunflowers that looks so cute? Yes. The bandanna, the cut-up t-shirt, the scarf? ALL of them offer NO FILTERING whatsoever. As you exhale, you are ridding your lungs of contaminants and carbon dioxide. Cloth masks trap this carbon dioxide the best. It actually risks your health, rather than protect it. The moisture caught in these masks can become mildew ridden overnight. Dry coughing, enhanced allergies, sore throat are all symptoms of a micro-mold in your mask.”

I will do what I must to comply with the laws and local regulations, but I will not voluntarily wear a mask. You will have to make you own choice on the issue.

Yard work, meeting Leeoni, Rick

Saturday morning, what time I did not spend helping Mama with the coop cleanup, I worked on yardwork. The wheeled trimmer certainly adds to my reach as I use it versus the weed eater. I was able to trim all the fence in the yard as well as some distance on our perimeter fences before I had to start on edging the patio with the new implement I bought for that purpose. It was hot and humid, and I was thoroughly soaked by 11 am when I had to rest for a while. I got a little overheated in the four hours I worked outside. Because the medication I am taking will not allow my heart to keep up with my body’s respiratory needs during periods of heavy exertion, I have to pause and allow myself to “equalize”. Once my heartrate and my breathing balance out, I go back at whatever I am doing. I have not found a pace that will allow that balance to be struck while I am working so I have to pause from time to time. Not long. Just enough to get things leveled out. My body lets me know when that is achieved.

In the afternoon, Mama and I met Wayne to buy some hay for the calf and the goats. He would only sell is ten bales of the stockpile he had in a barn on some land he leases near Decatur, but that should get us by until we can find an affordable supplier in the area. Until we get a couple head of cattle back on the farm, round bales are not a good option for us. There is far too much waste when we use round bale for the goats. These bales of coastal hay are not their favorite hay, but they will eat it if there is nothing else so it is a good supplement. I took the time to get all those bales placed in the loft of the goat barn as soon as we got home. I gave one bale each to the nanny goats and to the boy goats with the calf. Mama and I are going to let the calf out of the paddock with the boys as soon as I have a shelter build for her. I need to get on that very soon. She is getting too big for the goats to be able to compete with her at the feed trough.

Late Saturday evening we were visited by Leeoni. She has been buying goats from Rick for several years and in the past couple years has been a great help to Rick and Nancy as both of them started to struggle with health issues. Mama had talked with Leeoni several times in the past, but we had never met her. It was a pleasant visit. She is British by birth. Transplanted into the US by marriage. Younger than me and Mama by at least 20 years and an overall delightful person to visit with. She and Mama looked over all the goats we have on the farm and she was impressed by the set up we have for our animals. She was also impressed by several of the goats – especially the little girls – but did not buy any of our stock because it is too close to what she already has on her farm.

She is looking to get new bloodlines into her herd, and we are not in a position to offer any help with that. She verified for Mama that all the nanny goats are indeed bred so we are safe to take Midas out of the paddock he is sharing with them and move our little girls back into that area. She stayed at the farm for well over an hour. Mama and I were encouraged by her visit. I was cooking burgers on the pellet grill when Leeoni and her daughter arrived. Mama and Victoria had wanted grilled burgers and I was only too happy the oblige. We had enough to feed our visitors as well, but they had other places to be.

From what we are hearing of Rick, it is only a matter of time before he succumbs to the effects of the cancer ravaging his body. He is on hospice care now but still has some good days. Leeoni and her daughter visited briefly with Rick and Nancy before she drove to our farm. She let us know that he was feeling better that afternoon than he had in quite a while. I do not know if Mama and I will get to visit with Rick before he is gone, but we are trying to make that contact. I understand that it is difficult to find the physical and emotional energy to visit during times of illness and Mama and I do not want to intrude or tire him needlessly. We will miss him. He has been a great resource for us in rearing these goats. He is a friend.

We tend to accumulate too few of those in this life.

Classes, dinner with Grandma, new equipment, weekend plans

Red, my fellow trainer, and I have been teaching classes online for the past two days. Red was the instructor for both classes. I was there as backup and administrative support. We are still experiencing some hiccups with the program we are using to broadcast the classes and I did not want to leave Red to figure it out on his own. We are now able to troubleshoot and correct the issues more efficiently than in the past few classes, but I was there to make sure things ran smoothly for Red as he took the software for a spin. On Wednesday morning I had to loan my computer to Red to get the class started.  For some reason, he was not listed as the instructor. He had only student access to the program so he could not advance slides in the presentation – a pretty important function - or swap presentations when the time came to do so. While we started, someone worked in the background to get the issue corrected. Thursday’s class went without a problem on our end but one of the attendees could not stay connected due to internet issues, so she had to drop out. Sad. Red got through it and is now far more comfortable with the presentation software and the computer setup we use to broadcast these classes.

I got home a little early and listened to Dan Bonino’s podcast as I finished up the day from home. Once I was officially off, Mama and I went to Grandma and Grandpa’s for dinner. Mama made hotdogs and sauerkraut. Grandma made beans and cornbread.  We had a good dinner and a good visit. We talked about the Lord, current events and a host of other issues – largely in agreement. Grandma played her new favorite song for us. A requisite if any visit with Grandma. We stayed for more than an hour but had to get back to the farm to feed. We had held off on the evening feeding because I did not want to get too sweaty before we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s. Besides, they were waiting on us. The animals could wait a couple hours. The chickens were already let out of the coop yard and the goats were not going to starve before we got back to them. Even if they thought they were.

We tried to schedule a visit with Rick – our goat mentor. Bu that did not work out. He is under hospice care right now. Pancreatic cancer will take him very soon and he was feeling too weak to visit with anyone. Mama and I were hoping for one more chance to talk to him about the Lord. Just to make sure. He has always been pleasant in our past discussions about God but has never committed to whether or not he knows Jesus and his Savior. We are praying that the Lord will send someone by to assure him of his salvation or introduce him to Christ. Time is short for him, but he is fully aware of that fact. There are so many more around us who do not know how very short their time is. That is why the Psalmist said, “Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom” Ps 94:12 Do we need wisdom today? [Lord, help us not to be so shortsighted that we fail to see the eternal consequences of our choices.]

When we got home, we went immediately out to feed. Once that was completed, Mama went back inside. I stayed out in the shop to assemble a weed eater multi-tool I had bought. It has a pole saw attachment, a sidewalk edger and a hedge trimmer attachment as well as a weed eater attachment. It is not heavy duty. That much was expected based on the price, but if I do not ask too much of it, it should last me a while for the multiple functions I need off and on. I tried out the sidewalk edger last night before it got too dark. It will do for now, but I will have to work slowly with it to get the grooves cut along the sidewalk edges. It has been many years since they were tended to in that manner. I will try out the pole saw this weekend or early next week. I may take the entire time set aside this weekend for yard word using the wheeled string trimmer. Trimming the fence lines is long overdue.

Other than those chores, I have to get hay from our neighbor tomorrow morning. If things have dried out sufficiently. We are in desperate need of hay for the goats. And I have to go to Bro Daniel’s to move those concrete pillars and straighten up his back yard.

If things have dried out sufficiently.

Still puny, more rain, wheeled string trimmer

I did not feel better all day yesterday. Still lethargic. Still puny. However, this morning I do feel much better. I got very little sleep Sunday night and that only exacerbated the lethargy I dragged myself through all day yesterday. After Mama and I finished the evening feeding, we went to Lowe's for a water filter for the refrigerator that has an ice maker in it. That filter is timed to be replaced every six months – exactly. When that time runs out, so does your access to ice and water. Since ice right now is a precious commodity, it is an expense we grudgingly incur. $50 per filter. Twice per year. I think they discount the fridge so they can make money on the long term need to buy replacement filters. There is no way the filters cost $50 to manufacture.

After Lowe's, we went to Tractor Supply to get dog food for Mocha – she has to have something very special to keep healthy. Fortunately, a can of the food lasts her for about four meals. While we were there we looked for nesting boxes because the middle group of chickens will start to lay sometime soon. Perhaps the middle of next month. The youngest group will be a couple weeks behind that group. All the nesting boxes were moved into the side of the coop with the laying hens and they need all the nesting boxes to meet their laying needs. Hence the need to get some new nesting boxes. By the end of July, Mama should be flush with eggs. Both Mama and I are starting to like the Banty’s more and more. They are very hardy compared to the other breeds. They are good layers and great sitters. But they can only be bought in a “straight run”. Meaning they do not determine the sex of the chicks for you. You buy a lot of chicks and take what you get – which could be mostly roosters.

Then we went to QT for fuel. I was almost on empty in the truck and we needed more gas for the mower. Since we have had so much rain over the past few days, the grass will need to be mowed by the weekend and Mama is looking forward to that chore. I did not remember the last time I filled the mower, but I knew both of the gas cans were empty. With diesel slowly rising in price, I took those fuel cans with us and refilled them as well. I was dragging along by the time we got home but there was still one thing I wanted to accomplish before I quit for the day.

On Sunday a wheeled string trimmer I had ordered was delivered. I had put the box in the shop and had not even bothered to open it until last night. I had watched a video on initially servicing the trimmer, so I was prepared when I did open the box. It was fully assembled. I had to add oil, which was included in the shipment, and fuel. I had to pull the started cord out and latch it into a ring on the handle of the unit for easy access. Other than that, it was ready to go. I debated whether or not I had the available energy to start and test the trimmer but finally give in and tried it out. It will do very well for what we need around the farm.

I have never done well with a weed eater. My back can only last a half hour with the one I have. When there is about three hours of work needing to be done, getting it done in half hour per day stretches ensures that by the time I finish the trimming, I have to start over on the new growth. Mama has not been able to help with that chore, so we bought the wheeled trimmer. Once we get used to how it cuts and how wide a swath we can maintain while using it, we should be able to get the three hours of work cut down to about an hour and a half. It moves along pretty quickly. I was pleased. It will save my back a lot of pain. I will still have to use the weed eater for some areas, but far fewer than before.

Pray the Lord will bless that trimmer with a lot of hours of service.

Victoria’s party, rain, feeling puny, one too many stings

Victoria’s Launch party went well Saturday evening. It started at 6 pm and lasted late into the evening. Only four ladies came but it was still a success in my opinion. We are still dealing with times of isolation and fear. That will not likely end until this Fall. No one wanted to leave the party. It was after 10 pm before everyone started stirring themselves to go home. For women, that is a process. Victoria did not get a lot of sales out of the party, but she did generate a lot of interest in her product. And everyone had fun. It was worth the effort and the house got cleaned again. I stayed outside as long as I could just to be courteous, but when I had finished watering and closing up the chickens, I went inside and hid out in the bedroom. It was a rather long wait.

Later that night – Friday night – we got a little over an inch of rain. We got another inch Saturday night and a third inch-plus of rain last night into this morning. We are soaked again, but in a good way. It is always better to get that much rain over a period of time than to get it all at once. But it did interrupt some of my weekend plans.

Saturday morning, after feeding the animals with Mama, I worked to get things ready for the time I needed to tend to the beehives. I was feeling kind of puny all-day Saturday but there was so much to do that I just forced myself to keep going. My plan was to work the beehives before I tried to load the tractor onto the utility trailer so I could take it to Bro Daniels to move the concrete beams he needs to have rearranged. I was sure it would fit on the trailer but I’m still a little concerned about the weight of the tractor on that trailer. Once it was safely loaded, I discovered there are two tires that I need to replace in order to feel that I can transport the tractor safely. So, it was a good thing Bro Daniel called to let me know not to come. His yard, he said, was a bog from the recent rain.

 I waited until after 10 am to look into the hives, but once I did open the first hive, I realized I should have waited until later in the day. I was instantly swarmed but an angry mob. The fliers that would normally be out foraging for nectar and pollen were all in the hive that morning. Thankfully, the new bee suit keeps them at bay, but a couple still managed to sting my right wrist. I did not think much about it at the time. Once I had rearranged the fabric of the gloves to better protect my wrists, I continued what I needed to do for my inspection all the while the bees were doing their job in trying to get me – the intruder – away from their hive. In other words, I was being swarmed.

The next time I go out to work the hives, I will look for a lot of activity to confirm the fliers are out of the hive. That will limit the response from the hive. By the way, I was a little disappointed to find that not much of the outer three frames of the ten frames in the hive had been drawn out – filled with comb. There was a bit more than a week ago, but not as much as I had expected. So, I did not put the honey supers on the other two hives even though I had spent Friday evening getting all the frames built to equip to more supers. Maybe by the end of the month they will be ready. At any rate, with all the rain we have gotten there will be plenty of fresh blooms to keep the bees supplied with the raw materials to build the comb.

It was not until I got out of bed Sunday morning that I realized I had maybe gotten stung one too many times but the closer I looked at the most angry spots on my wrist, the more is started to doubt it was just the bees that had gotten to me. The swelling and itching were bad enough that I went to Urgent Care for some help. If the swelling had stayed local – at the wrist only – I would not have sought help, but my entire forearm was swollen, red and hot. Whatever got me, I reactor poorly to it. Mama and I missed church because we made that visit and then waited for the pharmacy to fill the prescriptions I was given; a steroid shot at the office with a pack to take over the next week, an antibiotic and something like Benadryl for the itching. When we got home, I went to bed and slept until about 5 pm. I am a little better this morning. The itching is under control – but still bothersome. The swelling is receding. The angry redness of infection is fading. I hope to recover quickly, but if not, I have two weeks to get better before I have to do this all over again.

Hopefully without the stings.

Meeting Mama, bee work, cleanup

I met Mama yesterday at my lunch break to look at a wheeled string trimmer she had gotten a “rain check” for. The advertised price was very good. Far less that I had expected to pay. However, when we looked at the unit it turned out to not be what we wanted. I need a wheeled string trimmer with an offset head so I can trim fence row without having to “stab” the trimmer head into the fence line as I worked my way forward. I want to be able to walk the fence and trim it as I walk straight forward. The unit we had on hold would not do that, so we passed it up. No harm. No foul. The store will be able to sell the unit. It was not something they ordered special for us. From there, Mama went to run errands for her business, and I went home to finish out my day from there. I have to admit that it is very nice to have that option. There is a lot of training going on at the office and it can be distracting to work with all the background chatter.

Yesterday evening, I worked on assembling frames for the honey supers I want to put on the hives tomorrow. Assuming the hives are ready. I purchased the frames over three months ago and just go them last week. I purchased the foundations for those frames at the same time and just got them yesterday. The deliveries were slow, but the timing is spot on. Assembling the frames and locking the foundation panels in each frame is not difficult but it is time consuming. There is no shortcut. Each piece has to be properly glued and nailed so they will hold together when we have to pry them out of the hive box as we are work in the hives to make sure everything is okay with the colony of bees. One of the things that amazed me is how sticky all the parts of the hive are once the bees seal the cracks and “glue” everything in place with wax. It is wonderfully amazing in its simplicity and symmetry. Even the sounds of the hive are fascinating. Of course, that sound changes once I open the hive. But I can tell by the pitch of the buzzing whether or not the bees are truly alarmed. Mostly, they allow me to interrupt their work as long as I move slowly and carefully.

Mama and Victoria have a nail party at the house tonight. So, today will be spent doing special cleaning for their guests. We are praying that it will be a good party to kick off Victoria’s business. Victoria has been a great help to Mama as she (Victoria) has tried to build her nail busines. She is much more proficient in internet searches for images, games and fun things to tag her contacts with. Between Victoria and Patricia, another stylist, Mama is kept up to date with the tags and teasers she and her team send out several times per day. Mama made “Team Leader” yesterday! Go Mama! Her business is expanding. We are starting to see her income go up as well especially since Color Street has revamped and reopened their online ordering system.

I am not sure what I will do during the party, but I will find something to do. I need to spend another evening just straightening up around the farm. Picking up items that we have left lying about, raking out areas where the chickens have created their dust baths, filling in holes the dogs have dug, weed eating around the house and in the garden, scraping the dirt off the sidewalks that the dogs have piles there as they have dug their dens in the “flower beds” on the west side of the house, etc. That is a good enough list to keep me busy through the weekend, much less this evening if I do not take the tractor out to Bro Daniel’s property this evening. Or go fishing. It is not like there is a shortage of things to do.

We love life on the farm.

Online class, church, work, choices

I taught a 4-hour class yesterday morning and although we had multiple problems during that presentation, we managed to muddle through. I was fortunate to have Red with me in the room as I broadcast to the attendees scattered across the United States. Because he was in the room with me, I was able to hop on his computer when mine messed up and he was able to work to correct the presentation issues on my new computer while I carried on with the class. It was only after the class was over that I was able to diagnose some of the issues and get corrections in place to avoid them next time…hopefully. Our online classes continue to be a work in progress, but they are meeting a need for our clients especially because they are expediting the recertification of our veteran evaluators in spite of travel restrictions imposed by the companies those evaluators work for. After I entered the grades for those in class yesterday, I headed to the house to finish out my day. That was about 2 pm.

Mama and I had an uneventful evening. So uneventful that we took a short nap after I got off work. Neither of us had slept well for several nights so the nap helped. Since we would be getting ready for church in only a couple hours, we did the minimum feeding and watering necessary to get our flock and herd through the night, collected eggs, and called it good. We did not want to get too sweaty before dressing for church. Victoria came home as tired as Mama and I were, but we all gathered up the energy and headed to church on time. Once we were there, our attitudes and energy levels improved dramatically.

That is always the case. Church attendance with our church family is always reviving. So much so that Mama and Victoria spent almost an hour after church talking in the parking lot with several other women. We were the last to leave – along with the families of those who Mama and Victoria engaged in the long, winding conversation.  We ended up getting home a little too late to water the garden as I have been doing each evening.  When we closed up the chickens Mama and I took time to locate one of the younger chickens who had gotten out of her side of the coop and was taking up residence with the older chickens. I am glad Mama was there to select the chicken. I do not know that I would have been able to determine which one to remove from the larger, older flock.  It was important to get the chicken back into its younger group to avoid it being severely pecked and tormented by the older birds. That done, I changed and called it a night.

This is the first week in months that I have come into the office daily. It has been a mixed bag of good and not so good. Good because I am able to get a lot of little things done while on the internet. Not so good because it makes for a very early morning, keeps me from helping Mama in the mornings, and adds the travel time to and from work – with the added expense incurred in that daily trip. All in all, it is good to be back in the office. It makes me feel like I and actually back at work. Plus, I enjoy the company of my office mates even though few are making the effort to work from the office. At some point we will all be required to work from the office, but for now, we are allowed to choose our work location until July 10. I do not know what will be decided on the 10^th, but that is the next time our work remote status will be announced.

I hope to be able to get some work done for the bees this evening. I just received the pieces I needed to assemble honey super frames for the extra hive. Those honey supers may be installed this Saturday if the hives are ready for them. I have to choose between that and carting the tractor over to Bro Daniel’s to move some large pieces of concrete, so he can set up a burn pit outlined by those concrete pieces. Those pieces of concrete are now dumped in a haphazard pile that has served as a snake pit. Repurposing those pieces will clean up a mess left for the family when they moved onto their property. Bro Daniel and his son are going to make us a dual-purpose picnic table/bench as a thank you for the tractor work.

Talk about a win-win-win!

New computer, movie night, working, fishing

With the online teaching I have been doing and the need for a solid computer, I was issued a new laptop at work yesterday. My old laptop would flash a blank screen at me at odd times. Not an issue I wanted to manifest during a class – especially an online class.  Migrating to a new laptop came with all the electronic issues associated with reloading my desktop, resetting passwords, reestablishing shortcuts and creating new links to familiar items. It will take me most of the day today to get everything to look familiar and still be functional. I just hope I do not have to have immediate access to something I have forgotten to load onto the new desktop. It is too easy to overlook files and programs that are infrequently used. On the bright side, this is an outstanding laptop.

Added to the new laptop is the introduction of a new teaching station. It is a cart/podium outfitted with a docking station, two monitors and a high-tech webcam. It can be set up in any area available at the office. That changes daily as we get more and more employees settled back into the office. I am expected to use the new set up tomorrow for a four-hour class so as I work on getting my desktop rebuilt, I will also be training with the new teaching station to make sure I am proficient when I have to use it tomorrow morning. It is a bit overwhelming.

Victoria invited Krystal and the boys over last night to watch Doolittle. She came home and was a whirlwind of activity as she began to heat the pizza bites, chicken tenders and fries for the crew as well as vacuum the rug in the living room and set up what amounted to theatre seating. The dogs were sequestered to her room for the evening because Savanna is not enamored with animals larger than she is in close proximity. Krystal and the kids arrived about the time I was heading outside. I did not have an agenda for the night but there were a lot of little things I needed to get done. Like moving the tomato plants into the evening shade, dig around the little pecan trees growing in the back yard and hoe a bit in the garden to allow water to get to the roots of the plants.

I do not know if the movie was a good one. I was working outside the entire time. After the little items were done, I started to work on the steps to the little coop. I was not happy with the way I originally set them up, plus, I had run out of screws to secure everything properly. I bought screws yesterday to finish what I had started. As I worked on the third step – getting it cut and fit properly – I realized what was bothering me about the second step and took the time to extend it to make it more functional. I was pleased with the final results but just that small area of focus had taken me all evening to complete. Once I had watered the plants, I went inside. It was very near dark by that time. I did not realize it was 8:30.

While I was out working, the Miller family had driven over to the lake to test some new rods and reels they had bought. Since I had a few minutes before dark I drove over to check on them to make sure they were alright. Bro Steve was very flustered by the time I got there.  He had bought spinning reels for all the kids. I have always defaulted to spin casting reels (the closed reels with the button) for younger fishermen. Last night, Bro Steve had found out why. The open-faced reels are a huge problem for inexperienced users. The line on those reels gets twisted and knotted up very easily. To exacerbate the problem, they did not have heavy enough lures for the heavier rod and reel combos they had bought for the older kids. Bro Steve had spent the last two hours cutting away knotted lines and undoing tangles. He was frazzled when I showed up.

I took a few minutes to work with what they had as far as lures were concerned and got the heavier rods set up properly with heavy lures. Those reels did much better after that little upgrade. They had caught only one fish in the entire evening. I added a second catch to the tally. None were taken home. Someday soon we will catch them again. After a few minutes of successful tangle-free fishing, the kids reluctantly packed up everything as dad fished uninterrupted for a few minutes. The kids were begging to come back tomorrow. Dad not so much.

It was well after dark when I finally got to sit down for a couple minutes.

Tractor repairs, shopping, watering

Saturday morning, I took the tractor and started to brush hog the barn lot. Mama and I have been talking about getting it done for a while now. It seemed like a good morning to start. I knew I did not have much time to devote to the mowing because of a lot of other pressing issues at the farm, but that amount of time would be well spent if I just got a good start. I mowed for about twenty minutes when the tractor safety switch alarm sounded, and it died. I was at the very far side of the farm when that happened. I tried a couple things and then went to the house for a crowbar to help me disconnect the attachment on the front of the tractor so that Mama could help me tow it back to the house. That worked out better than ni had thought it would. Once we were there, I started to troubleshoot the issue. In about a half hour I started working with the safety switch on the seat. When I disconnected that switch it looked pretty dirty, so I cleaned the contacts thoroughly, reinserted the plug and was able to start the tractor once again. So, the two hours I allotted for mowing was used mostly to work on the tractor, but it is functional now.

One of the things I needed to do Saturday was to return the wiring harness and get that money back on the card. I was a little concerned because I was told that if I opened the package, I could not return it. The package was a clear package like a shirt would come in was not strongly sealed and had come open a little just by the way the package had been handled. When I got cleaned up and changed Mama and I headed to the dealer. They closed at noon Saturday and I wanted to get the part into their hands as soon as possible. The guy working the counter looked the harness over very carefully and then issued the refund. Praise the Lord.

Mama and I then headed to Academy to look at a pellet grill we had seen in an ad sent to the house. We have been looking for a grill for months and have not felt like it was the right time to get one until recently. When we got to Academy and found the grill we were interested in, we were not sold on it once we were able to look it over thoroughly. However, they did have another one for a little bit more that did impress us. We took a lot of time to evaluate the two grills and settled on the Pit Boss 1000sc2. It is huge compared to the grill we have borrowed from Bro Zach. It has a window on the lid, which I really like. When Mama and I selected the grill and talked to the staff about getting one, we had the option of getting the assembled grill or the boxed, unassembled one. Since we were in the Sequoia, we chose the unassembled one. Though I do not think we could have done otherwise, I regretted that choice late that evening.

When I started on the assembly, I read the instructions – which were very brief – before I got started. It was not until I was attaching the grill to the stand that I realized I had not followed the instructions exactly. I had to completely disassemble what I had put together in order to get each leg positioned exactly as needed. Even still I struggled to make sense of what I was being shown. I did, however, finally get the thing put together. The only casualty was a caster that collapsed as Mama and I were standing the grill up once the cabinet base had been attached. She will call their customer service this morning to see if we can get that replaced.

Once it was assembled, I ran it through a couple temperatures to see how well it could control the temperature based on the selection, and to burn off the oil that was on the parts to protect them from rusting as it was being boxed to be shipped. Now it is ready for service – which will begin tonight. It is set up a bit differently than the smaller grill so I will have to learn it’s hot spots, but that should come quickly.

With Summer dryness upon us I have had to start watering the plants every evening. Generally, just before dark. It takes me about thirty to forty minutes to get to all the plants and make sure they get sufficient water. I do not know if some of the plants we have in the garden will make it, but I will give them a fighting chance. The plants in the raised bed are faring better than those in the ground – by far. I have told Mama that I do not know if it is worth the effort for the little we receive in return, but I am not ready to give up just yet.

As for the peaches, they are about to ripen. Probably this weekend we will begin picking them. I picked one that was not quite ripe Friday evening. Thought it was a little hard, the flavor was amazing.

Mama is excited about that success.

A mostly busy day and a long evening, what’s ahead

Yesterday was one of those days that passed very quickly through the morning, but as I got closer to quitting time, it slowed to a snail’s pace. I went to Bro Zach’s house to retrieve the pellet grill at my lunch break and just as I was getting back to the farm with the grill, Steven and Benjamin Miller arrived at the farm to start washing and cleaning the vehicles. Mama had arranged with Steven to have the cleaning done and I was okay with her contracting them to do it – especially with the price Steven was charging. Since I was on my lunch break, I took the time to help them get set up with hoses and power chords. By the time they had gotten started on the truck, Mama was back at the farm. She had taken Mocha to get groomed.

She did all the entertaining and coordinating from that point on. Making sure they had something to drink. Offering them lunch from the little we had to make sandwiches. They went with peanut butter and jelly. The boys did an outstanding job on the vehicles but not without some issues. They forgot a bucket of supplies when they loaded up to come to the farm and Steven went back to retrieve the forgotten bucket and it’s contents only to arrive back at the farm without the chemical he needed to dissolve the dirt accumulated in the cup holders. Somehow it was not in the bucket as he had expected. They were very apologetic for the oversight, but they made it right when the family came out the farm later that afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon, as I waited for the clock to tick slowly toward 4 pm I helped Mama get a few things done around the house in preparation for our guests. Once I was off work, I hurriedly fed and watered all our livestock and started the pellet grill. It was such a blessing to have it for the cookout. We had chicken, hamburgers, sausages, and asparagus to cook. All on a small pellet grill. When I loaded the grill with the chicken thighs and legs that Mama had bought, it filled the grill from front to back and side to side. I had to wait until all the chicken was done to put on anything else. I crowded the sausage onto the grill as the chicken got done and I was able to arrange items to make an open space. Then I cooked the burgers. I saved the asparagus until last. It gets cold the quickest. Everyone was well into the meal when I got the asparagus done, but everyone who wanted some still managed find room in their full bellies to get that down as well. We had bought enough to feed everyone (thirteen in total) and still have leftovers. It was fun. After a brief rest we went fishing.

All of the kids went fishing. Dad came as well. When I got everything ready, we loaded into the truck and drove over to the lake. We immediately started having issues with tangled fishing lines. I mean immediately.  One of the middle boys got the worst tangle I have ever encountered in a rod and reel set I never would have expected could have been tangled. The rest of us were not even out of the truck when we began to deal with that. While the older sisters worked on getting the line untangled, I showed Steven, the eldest, how to use a spinning reel and rod. I caught a very large bass on the practice cast. It was game on then. Everyone wanted to get their line into the water. Steve Miller (dad) caught the next bass pretty quickly and as everyone took turns, we started to see some activity. I helped with lines and lures. I untangled no less than seven lines, but we were all doing well enough for the most part. Steven got his line so tangled that I had to cut it off the reel. It emptied that reel. He had just cast out when the final tangle happened and in the process of getting the line retrieved by hand, he caught an extremely large bass. He was both embarrassed and thrilled. Even the next to youngest caught a sizable fish. When I filleted the bass, they ended up with about two pounds of fish. Enough for a piece for each of them but not enough to fill them up. I suggested they come back and get some more. They get to fish some more, and they get more fish for a big meal. A win-win. It was almost 11 pm before we all called it a night. Needless to say, Mama and I slept well.

Hopefully, this evening Grandpa will be coming over to help me get the new wiring harness installed on the tractor. The way the rats chewed through the one now on the tractor forced me to buy a whole new harness. I counted seventeen points of contact on the replacement harness. It is far more complicated than I can handle on my own even if I watch every YouTube video available. If we manage to get that repair done that should put the tractor back in service and allow me to catch up on some chores I have not been able to do without its help. It will take more than one day to get that work done, but I can at least get part of those chores knocked out on Saturday if we get the tractor in service again. I am hopeful.

If Grandpa backs out, I will call a mechanic at church and beg for help.

Class, cool morning, guests, grilling and fishing

Class yesterday was an in-person class. When I got to the office yesterday morning, I found the materials for the two classes, mine and Red’s. He was assigned three students in a larger room while I was assigned four students in a smaller room. I switched the lists. Gave him the four assigned to me and took the three assigned to him. It turned out to be a great swap. All the guys in my class were unabashed believers in the Lord. We established that very early in the morning and let that theme arise and express itself wherever it manifest throughout the day. It was one of the best classes I have had in a long time. I enjoyed it. They enjoyed it. I was able to share some things with the three of them that they will be able to use in their work and in their daily lives. Meanwhile, Red had a very engaging class as well. The smaller classes lend themselves to broader interaction more than the much large classes. It is even better when those interactions can be founded on a common faith.

This morning Mama opened up the windows. The outside temperature was 62°. Quite cool for this time of year. I had to wear a light jacket starting off. It did not take long for me to warm up to the point that I had to shed the jacket, but it made for a very pleasant few minutes outside as I helped Mama with the morning feeding. All the animals seemed to be celebrating the cool temperature.  It is not often that we can hear the sounds of the farm, but this morning we can – and it is delightful. The lowing calf, the crowing roosters, the birds singing to the morning. It will quickly warm up and we will have to close off the outdoors, but for now, we are bringing a little of it inside. Something I could not do a the office.

This evening the Miller family is coming over. They are on deputation going back to serve as missionaries in Mexico. They have eight children ranging in age from 18 (just graduated from High School) to 4. Two girls and six boys. the girls are number two and three in the lineup. A fun family to be around. All the boys are outgoing and will start a conversation with just about anyone. A couple of them are real talkers. It is fun to chat with them and after this evening they will have plenty to talk about. I will take them fishing after we eat this evening. The boys in the middle of the pack are very excited about fishing. It will not be the first time they have been fishing, but close to it. They went on the men’s fishing trip a couple weekends back but none of the boys caught anything. I think I can offer them a better opportunity to actually reel in a catch at the quarry lake than where they fished with the men of the church. I have enough poles and lures to make outfit that many fishermen and we have the time to give them to get that experience. Whether or not we catch anything, it will be fun. I, of course, will not be fishing. I will be managing tackle, changing and replacing lures, getting fish off the hooks, untangling lines, etc.

Mama has bought the extra meat items we will need to grill in order to feed our guests. I will once more borrow the pellet grill from Bro Zack to do the cooking. Mama and I are looking for one of our own, but we have not found the one we want to buy just yet. She wants the largest one we can afford. I want to scale it down a bit for everyday use. we will, like always, meet in the middle-ish but more towards her side of the choice. We plan on getting the cooking started about the time I get off work, finish eating by 6 pm and then head to the lake. All of the fishing will be done from the bank. I do not feel comfortable taking anyone out in the boat – although it would be fun to do some boating on the lake with the boys. I am not there yet as far as having the boat equipped with a battery for the trolling motor or having the live jackets needed to take little ones out onto the lake. Maybe by the end of the summer. For now, bank fishing will be enough. We have been wildly successful so far at that. I am praying that everyone gets to reel in at least one fish of their own.

So, today Mama will spend most of the day agonizing over the house – cleaning and straightening up. I asked again why we wait until we have someone over to straighten up the house and clean the bathrooms? We could make it a normal practice. Like most of us, we do not. At least, it gets done at some point. Don’t get me wrong. The house is not filthy. It is just cluttered and disorganized. It is generally clean. we just tend to lay things down and then not move them or put them away until we need the space for something else. Mama wants the house to be “guest ready” clean. Something we do only as required.

I find it both exasperating and rewarding.

Busy day, acclimating, win-wins

Yesterday was a busy day workwise. I was trying to keep up from the time I signed on until the time I signed off. That made the day pass by very quickly. I even took a very abbreviated lunch. I do not have days like that very often and when I do, I struggle with my connection to the internet, but yesterday it all seemed to work out. From rework on a project I had tested in an 8-hour online class to cleaning up a complicated spreadsheet to make it service a new need as we move our training online. Tomorrow I will be teaching a class all day. This will be in-person at the office. We are still drastically reducing the size of our live classes to accommodate the still touted distancing requirements, so I will have only three participants in my session while Red will have four in his concurrent session.  To think, only a few months ago each of us would have twenty-five to thirty in each of our concurrent sessions. My how times have changed.

The hurry of the day carried over into the afternoon and evening. Mama and Victoria went to look at a small house in Alvord. Victoria is starting to get the bug to get a place of her own, but it is not within her grasp at the moment so there will be a lot of time spent looking. I did not go along for the tour. because my evenings are too short to give up an hour or more on a wild goose chase. Instead, I started building the porch for Mama’s small coop building. I used up all the lumber I had taken from other projects and repurposed it in the foundation of the porch so, I ran out of lumber about the same time that I ran out of energy. I had only been working on the porch for about an hour and a half when I ran out of materials, besides, I needed to leave an access point to the coop for Mama to continue tending the her little flock while I am getting the foundation built.

I will go to Lowe’s at lunchtime today to buy the lumber for the deck of the porch so that I can get it all done at once. I am making a corner step onto the porch so that Mama can easily get onto the porch from the front and get to the yard of the coop - which is to the side of the coop building - without having to exit the front and walk around the corner of the porch to access the coop yard. At least, that is my plan. We will see how that works out. I have laid out the foundation to accommodate the corner steps. As I put it all together, some things may have to change, but I at least have a plan in mind.

The issue with starting something like that in the late afternoon is that it is difficult to acclimate to the heat. By the time I get out – after shutting down work – I have to start in the hottest part of the day. Yesterday, by the time I started, the temperature was 97°. The humidity has been high but not like Honduras. There was no breeze. It was dead still. In the time I spent working I was soaked from the top of my head to the knees of my pants. Those are the times that wearing glasses becomes a pain. Sweat constantly dripping into the glasses as I bent over to build the porch foundation. Sweat dripping from my nose onto the boards I was working with. Sweat dripping from the end of my shirt sleeves. I was wet. At some point I will acclimate to the heat, but I am not there yet. Tonight, I will get as much done as I am able. We will see how far I get. But I know Wednesday and Thursday evenings are taken for church and entertaining a missionary family.

Months ago, I was able to get about 60 pallets from a guy down the road from us. Since I have been very slow to use those pallets, I gave about 40 of them to Daniel Wycoff. He and his son Steven are repurposing the wood into a variety of projects and they had just run out of pallets. I am happy for them to get the stacks off the farm. Those stacks have become a harbor for pest and snake by the wellhouse in the bran lot. Moving them out will allow me to keep that area mowed properly. Giving them the pallets will be a help to them as well. A win-win.

Meanwhile, there has been great progress on the houses in Lawton. we are not sure how long it will be before they are ready to be rented, but it should be very soon. Praise the Lord!

Trade Days, honey, the cover, words

Mama and Victoria set up a table at Trade Days Saturday. They were trying to market Color Street. I do not think they were overly happy about the event. They sold some sets of nails, but nit as many as they had thought they would. Besides, it was HOT. They stayed from about 8 am until 2 pm. It was a great learning experience for them. They learned Sunday evening at church, that another stylist had set up a table in the air-conditioned area just behind where they set up. Just beside Mama and Victoria was a family selling a variety of items but one that caught Mama’s attention was the barrels they offered for sale. When Mama let me know, I took the time to drive to Bowie and buy two of the barrels. We will substitute the barrels for others we can them use as burn barrels. I do not burn items too often but the barrel we had been using for that purpose has disintegrated for what use it has seen. It was long overdue to be replaced. The price of the barrels was not great but buying them there saved me a lot of time and phone calls to find the barrels we needed. As far as Mama going back to Trade Days, she will not go back until September or later when things cool down a little.

Before I left to meet Mama and buy the barrels, I spent about an hour working the hives. Earlier in the week I got a bee suit I ordered. It was considerably more expensive that the one I originally purchased and have been using but the difference in quality and functionality was amazing. It is made of a special ventilated material that was very comfortable in the heat that morning. It also is quite a bit more secure as far as protection from the bees. I did not even pay attention to the ones that were around my face guard. It was very pleasant to work with the hives in that gear.  Now I need to save up and get Mama one.

While I was working one hive, as I lifted off the syrup feeder, the I split two rows of comb filled with honey that the bees had made on top of the frames. I scraped off the comb and honey and put it in one of the jars I had available from the syrup feeders. The bees were not leaving the comb, so I blew a little smoke into the jar to encourage them to vacate. that was a huge mistake. It made the honey taste like smoke. I allowed all the honey to drain from the comb over the rest of Saturday and all-day Sunday. I hated that I ruined our first honey, but it was a good learning experience.

Later in the day Saturday, I put the metal on the roof of the new covering on the little coop building. It was too hot for me to do too much outside, but I wanted to get that done. As I acclimate to the heat over the next couple weeks, I will be able to do more, but Saturday was a struggle. I soaked two shirts through the day. When one got too wet I would take it off an hang it on the back of a chair sitting in the garage to dry. When that shirt got too wet, I would exchange it with the dry shirt from the back of the chair and repeat the process as needed. Neither of those shirts smell too good this morning. But the roof is on the little coop. Now I will work on the porch. Always something to do.

A quick note about words. The issue with the spoken and written word is that we do not have exclusive rights to interpretation once a word is spoken or written. It can be misinterpreted, misquoted, taken completely out of context, twisted to mean whatever the reader imagines. Some of the ongoing Facebook spats are a case in point. Once you have aired your opinion or “voiced” your grievance, you no longer have control of the message. It is for others to determine the interpretation of your words. They can do so in whatever way they please. You can respond in rebuttal. “That was not my intent.” That is not what I said.” But both what you said and what they said in response become permanent records in the ethnosphere. Too many people have been wounded by a harsh word quickly spoken in the heat of the moment. All exacerbated by our current angry atmosphere.

As I have said in the past, and will repeat, anger will make you feel strong, powerful – but it will never allow you to act or speak wisely. What you say or do in those passionate, angry moments cannot be undone. It will live on regardless of your adamant denials of an erroneous interpretation. It will be used against you. Speak wisely. Communicate your thoughts wisely.

You will be stuck with those ramblings for years to come.

Office needs, Bro Walker

Mama and I went to town yesterday afternoon so that I could go the office and meet our IT guy so he could look at my computer. It is flashing off and on at odd intervals. During those episodes, if I can catch it during one of the “on” cycles and restart it, it has come back to life and functioned properly for a time. With what I am doing in the online presentations that are either four or eight hours in length, I need to make sure my computer is capable of making it through the entire class. Especially since the participants are paying customers. I also needed to see where I was going to be allowed to present the class since my usual perch was taken. As it turned out. The IT guy was not able to meet me, but I was able to find a spot for the class tomorrow. I am not thrilled about the room I will be in, but I will make the most of it. It is only for the eight hours. As our schedule fills up with these online classes, we will have to designate a spot where we can maintain a setup for the presentations. Where they have me tomorrow will work with a few modifications, but I do not know if that will be the answer.

I have to go back to the office this morning to meet with our tech guy. It is a bit like taking your car to the mechanic because of an intermittent issue. That issue never manifests itself while the mechanic is available. I do not know if this is an exercise in futility, but I will give our guy a chance to see if there is anything obvious. In preparation for a complete failure, I copied by desktop – where most of my files are now housed as I work remotely – to a portable hard drive. I can make up for most of the loss if my computer crashes, but it never works seems to replicate the files completely. Something always seems to get lost. This time, I will see if we can preempt this crash.

Last night for our final service of this week, Bro Walker brought out Champ and Dixie. Champ is a 19-year-old registered American Miniature Horse that has traveled with the Walkers for ten years now. Both the animals are trained to do certain tricks that help the Walkers preach. For kids, it is especially effective, but the effect is almost as profound on the adults in the crowds. I did not video the sermonette or the actions of the animals. It was difficult to see all the action from where we were sitting, but the dialogue that went along with the antics moved seamlessly between hilarious and serious as the Bible lesson/sermon unfolded. I can see why the Walker’s have been so successful in their ministries, seeing over ten thousand persons saved through their ministry. We thoroughly enjoy them every time they are with us. This week was encouraging, uplifting, refreshing. Mama and I never regret any extra time spent at the church and the time with the Walker’s was exceptional.

This evening, I have a very long list of things to get done. Most important will be watering the garden. We have gone from being so soaked that we were constantly in the mud to being on the verge of dusty dry once again. I have not had the time to water the garden in the last few evening, but I have managed to keep the plants near the house well-watered. Tonight, I will get to rectify that neglect. Hopefully, I am not too late. I will also take down the piece of metal I installed in the small coop to keep the young chickens from getting under the coop building. When we first put them in the area, they nestled down for the night under the building. It took all three of us to get all of them out and onto the roosts, so I blocked access to that area until they had adapted to the building and the roosts. It has been a week now since they were introduced to their new home. I think they are ready.

Tomorrow, I will be teaching all day.  It will be our first 8-hour online class. I was able to get the room set up for tomorrow as I waited on the repairs to be done to my laptop. I needed to have Mikel, our IT guy, set up a network switch so Red (who will be in the class with me) can connect to the internet via a DSL cable. There is no wireless access in that particular room.

Now I feel a little better about the presentation.

Passing the days, picking, stuck fast

Working from home has its blessings, but it also has its downfalls. One of the things that I struggle with is fitting my work into Mama’s daily life. In Mama’s world being in sight means I am available for chores, for conversation, for company in general. That is not always the case. She has adapted well enough to my constantly being around as she tries to give me space and some semblance of quiet while she goes about her day. One of the primary struggles on my part is having to share her phone conversations – whether I want to or not. Mama never takes a private call. All her calls are taken on “speaker”. The volume is usually maxed out and she responds to that volume in kind during her part of the conversation. With the calls she gets from our children and the calls she has to make for her business, it can be very distracting. She tries to tone things down, but it is still a challenge to work through those conversations. Then there are the times when she starts a conversation with me as I am working, concentrating on the writing I am working on, and I have to stop and find out my part of the conversation. I don’t really mind. Mama is my life’s most pleasant distraction but I still like to focus on the fact that I am actually working.

Mostly though, the days simply pass by uneventfully. As uneventful as things can be at the farm. I help Mama with the morning feeding almost daily. The calf is a bit much for her to feed since she has grown bigger. All bottle babies butt the bottle as you feed them. Our little one does so with a vengeance. I am often surprised that her nose is not bruised after each bottle. We give her only one bottle now. A morning feeding, for which I have been available for almost the entire time we have had her. That has been a blessing to Mama even though it shortchanges her on her steps for the day.

Tonight will be our last extra service this week. Tomorrow evening will be catch-up at the farm. Mama and I have enjoyed the extra preaching. I hesitate to call the extra services a revival. I do not sense a revival within our members, or within myself. Maybe I am not ready or willing to be anything more than is minimally necessary in my service to the Lord. Maybe I am too distracted or perhaps over-committed in areas of my life that make it difficult to allow the Lord to use me as purposefully as He would like, but I am willing to ask where those issues are and corral them to have more time for the Lord. All too often the personal constraint required to pull back from our commitments is emotionally taxing. An uncomfortable rearranging of priorities that displace or entirely replace familiar, comfortable activities. That is where the extra services help. If it is difficult to make the time to go to church for a couple of extra services, it only shows how little I am able to accommodate the things of God in my life. Sad.

Very quickly before church last night I picked the ripe blackberries from the wild bush in the fence line along the driveway. It was too loaded to let the opportunity pass. I was able to fill a bowl with the ripe berries. For now, Mama and I are freezing the berries to save them for cobblers or smoothies. So far, we have seven quarts of blackberries in the freezer. It has been worth the extra effort. In only a few days we will be picking peaches. Our little tree is loaded to the point that some of the branches are bent down dangerously. I am not sure if they will make it to ripening but there is no way to help them support the weight of the ripening fruit. I will prune the tree heavily this winter to see if I can get the tree to thicken those branches in case the tree does as well next year.

On the way home from church, we got a call from Alex. He and Leslie and their friend Andy had gone fishing at the quarry lake yesterday evening. Trying to find a more accessible spot to access the small upper lake, Alex had driven into a ditch and was stuck fast. He sent Mama a picture of the truck. Since my tractor is not operational right now all I had to offer was the truck. Unfortunately, he was stuck so badly that my truck could not budge his truck. As I looked more closely, I found that his truck was sitting with its frame on the ground because the ditch he had driven into was that deep. The sides of that ditch were straight up and down. I am not sure my tractor would have been able to pull him up and out of that situation. Darkness was falling fast so we abandoned the truck and I took the three fishermen home.

Mama called Ricky, the property owner, to let him know we had left the truck on his property and he offered to pull Alex out in the morning. He has two large tractors available to get the job done. Hopefully, they will work out the timing this morning. If I had know last night that the tractors had the keys in them I could have used one of them to pull the truck out, but it is better to have that done in the daylight in case there are issues in putting that much strain on the front end of the truck.

We will know how it all worked out later this morning.

Uploads, services

Last night was revival service at church so we had a short evening for a Monday. It was made even shorter by the need to upload some items to the company server. Victoria needed some good internet as well. So, Victoria, Mama and I went to my office to use the internet before church. On the way we stopped at our favorite Thai restaurant and picked up some food to eat while we worked on the electronic projects we needed to finish. One of my bosses was at the office when we let ourselves in but left soon after, I am not sure if she knew Mama and Victoria were in the building with me, but it did not seem to alarm her if she did know. Right now, I am not sure what is acceptable or not. It all worked out as far as I know now. Neither Victoria nor I were able to complete our projects. Mine was an upload to the company server. Hers was a download from the cloud to her computer. Both of us left our computers at the office as we headed to church, planning to return for them afterwards.

We had a great service. Bro Walker preached on prayer. Serious, submissive, specific, and steadfast. That was his outline of the passage in 1 Samuel when Hannah prayed for a son. Most of us are only serious in our prayers when there is an urgent personal need. There is nothing wrong with that, but we can pray urgently about so much more. One of the things that soured me to the charismatic movement was their insistence that God was bound by His word to the point that we could force Him to do our will by claiming His Word in prayer. God is perfect. Holy. He will not do that which opposed His Word or His character. How could we possibly understand His will to the point that we could “bind” Him to do our will?

The un-submissive nature of that approach to God was anathema to me. How could I order about my Creator? No one in that church seemed to understand my concern. And though I loved some of them dearly, I had to leave. As far as praying specific, many of us do not. It is too much trouble to pray specifically when we can often provide for ourselves what we need in one way or another. Rarely do we pray specifically for others. Erring on the side of generality, we ask God to bless, to help, to direct, etc., versus asking for specific help, blessings or direction.  Few of us are steadfast in our prayers – unless the need is urgent and remains unmet. we get distracted, discouraged when the answer to our prayers is delayed (in our way of thinking). It was not a guilt producing sermon. It was simply an outline on how to accomplish what we need to do to pray effectively. Mama and I certainly took it to heart. we have been praying together before bed almost every night. Those times of prayer have gotten more and more specific as we practice what we have learned about prayer.

Once we were out of the service, we went back to the office and checked the computers. Mine had finished what I had set it to do. Victoria’s had not. From what we could figure out, I had gone to sleep fifteen minutes after we had left it. Once we woke the computer, it started the download again. I sent Mama and Victoria to Braum’s to get the ice cream Victoria wanted while I stayed at the office and monitored Victoria’s computer. It was still only half done by the time they got back to the office, so we will have to reset the program tonight at church. They have good enough internet there to finish the download. If we start the download before the service begins, it should be done by the time we are out of the service. This is one of those times that we are disappointed not having internet at the farm, but these times are few and far between. The ongoing expense of installing and maintaining internet at the farm is not an expense I am willing to stretch our budget to cover at this time. When I no longer have the option of working at the office for those times when I need internet, we will have to consider signing a contract with a provider, but not yet.

Everything is on hold at the farm while we spend our evenings at church. It is a good tradeoff.

Dead as she sits, Declined, new porch, church

Early Saturday morning, I went to the equipment shed where we had the tractor parked and climbed into the seat, put in the key and turned it. Nothing. I checked the placement of all the gear shifts and the brake. Tried again. Nothing. Then I started to really troubleshoot. As I did, I found two groups of wires in the wire harness for the safety switches had been chewed through. I tried to repair one of the two breaches, but when I finally looked at the second, I discovered there was no way to repair it. It would have to be completely replaced. The rat or squirrel had chewed it through right above the connector. I gave up hope of any immediate repairs and called the tractor service center near us. They have to order the harness; $140. Not overwhelming in price. It will be overwhelming in the work required to install it. Hopefully, Grandpa can help. But it will be Thursday evening at the earliest before we can work in it. So, the tractor is dead where it sits. I told Mama I have had two bad experiences when parking the tractor under the equipment shed. I will not do so again. I feel badly leaving it out in the yard, but I have far less issues when I do.

With my plans for the morning shot, Mama and I headed to Costco. We had nothing particular to buy there but it has been a while since we had been in the store. There are a few items we knew were available there, but nothing urgent. Of course, it was very crowded when we got there. Saturday morning, just after opening. We ran into an issue at the door. Costco was not allowing anyone in the store without a mask. To be fair to Costco, everyone was required to wear a mask. No exceptions. Fair enough. It is certainly their prerogative to do so. I immediately turned back to the car. I had had a bad morning and did not want to say anything to the persons at the door to voice my objections. There is nothing they can do  and everyone else was complying. Mama, however, was not going to leave without saying something. Fifteen minutes away was Sam’s. They are not requiring masks to be worn to shop in their store, so we shopped there. You may ask why we did not comply? Not only is there no efficacy to wearing a mask, it is actually harmful for healthy people to do so. That truth will slowly come out over the next few months, but it will be hidden for as long as possible. It is a symbolic gesture. Nothing more. If Costco had required me to put on a red arm band in order to enter the store, I would not have complied. Sam’s has everything we need without the imposition of restrictions. It is like a fancy restaurant requiring a certain type of clothing to admit a patron. I have no issue with that, but there are lots of other places to eat if I do not choose to meet their demands.

Once we got home, I was not immediately focused on what to do. My tractor was down and all the plans I had for that were shot. So, I wandered around the shop looking at what materials I had. It dawned on me that I had enough pieces to start the porch on our little coop building. Since it is permanently (at least as much as we do so here on the farm) set, it needed a porch. I had a choice of facing the coop building either East or North when it was built several years ago. I chose North. It made the building more accessible and easier to watch relative to the house. The little coop was set to match, but since many of our storms come in from the North, it needed a porch with a cover to block some of the rain that will surely come. I got to the point where I needed more materials to complete the project. That will happen later in the week because we have church every night through Wednesday.

The Walker family is with us for the services. Yesterday’ services were great. We met in the fellowship hall, properly spaced out to maintain our imposed distances – sort of. It all worked out. DW, the eldest son gave a Sunday School lesson yesterday morning. It was as humorous as it was impactful.  Aimed at the children but speaking to the adults some Eternal truths as well. We sang one congregational which I was asked to lead. But after the first verse I had to ask those playing the instruments to lower it because it was way too high for me and singing it an octave lower would have been too low for the congregation. I found it is a bit harder to find my starting note when singing with instruments versus hearing the piano. No one minded the hiccup. In each service the Walkers sand a couple additional songs and Bro Walker preached. It was relaxing, enjoyable and uplifting. It was reviving.

Tonight, we will go back for more.