New phones, blessings

I spent a few hours in the office yesterday late morning to early afternoon. Each quarter I prepare a report of the instructor led classes we have given through that quarter. Doing so at the office is much easier with the internet available there as well as the multiple screens I have at the office. Anyway, I got the report done and submitted. It shows a lot of activity on my part as well as on the part of three other instructors. In twelve weeks, I taught eighteen classes and the other instructors taught twelve classes. A total of thirty classes in the first twelve weeks of 2021. A busy schedule for all of us. Next quarter looks even more packed than the first quarter. It should be interesting. There are steps being taken to increase the number of instructors for the classes we are giving most often, but that ill not happen quickly. I would be shocked if we have that done before the end of the year. Until then I will continue to average two classes per week.

Victoria was off early yesterday having gone to work at 6 am. Once she was home, she met Mama and the two of them went to the AT&T store in Denton to get new phones. I hate getting new phones. Even though the process of cloning the new phone from the old phone is helpful, it still takes a long time to get the apps now indexed on the new phone downloaded to the new phone. With three of us doing so last night, none of our phones completed the downloads required to install and activate all the apps – mine especially. Fortunately, we have our old phones for a couple days while the downloads are being completed so that I have access to the apps I need via the internet. Cellular service is active on the new phone, but very little else is working. Or should I say, everything else is a work in progress. It will eventually complete the downloads, but I am not sure when. Maye today. Maybe tomorrow.

The other thing I do not like about cell phones is the expense of the phones. Whether or not they are worth the exorbitant price is questionable but there is little alternative to having one. I feel constrained by the requirement of cell phone use. Work requires it. Life demands it. I dislike it. I do like the convenience of having a computer at my service in almost any situation, but I still wrestle with the requirement to be constantly connected to that service. Constantly available. Constantly expected to be available. It is hard for me to find the balance between the requirement and the convenience. Were it not for the fact that there are apps that are of immediate benefit to me, I would be more than willing to carry the phone with me only during work hours. Sadly, that is not going to happen regularly, but I might try it from time to time.

Victoria is carrying four phones on her account. Hers, mine, Mama’s and Grandma’s. I am not sure how much she pays per month, but I am reasonably sure her first bill is going to be a whopper. She will let me know our portion when that time comes but it reminds me of the time that I was paying for seven cell phones on one plan. In those days texting was a separate charge. No free ride for alternate forms of communication. I would get bills totaling more than $600 on a regular basis. I was not the one texting. I was barely making phone calls. An iPod was required for all the extra features because cell phones could make calls, take and send pictures – they were not quality pictures – and send and receive texts. Oh, how far we have come. The phones we were using almost twenty years ago cost less than $100 each. Now each phone costs far more than the sum of all seven phones I had to buy to meet the “needs” of our moderately well-connected family. It was an ongoing issue with me to pay the bill which was a fun surprise each month since I could never anticipate the cost in advance. After twenty years of having to do so, paying for a cell phone still stings.

Meanwhile, our children and grandchildren are healthy. Mama and I are relatively healthy. The goats are getting bred. The pig is gaining weight. The chickens are laying eggs. The garden is growing. The sun is shining. All is well. If not, I do not know about the problem yet so I can relax for a moment and enjoy the blessings of the Lord we have right now.

Honestly, right now is all we have so we might as well try to enjoy it.

Mama’s treatment, hay run, wins and losses

We were unsure if Mama could drive herself home from the doctor’s office after getting the shot in her knee, so I dropped her off and went to the office for a couple hours while she went through the process to get the treatment. In the visit she got to meet the orthopedist in that office, and she was impressed by him on multiple levels. We may go back to him when the time comes for her knee replacement – after we get her back on my insurance at work. The shot was relatively painless although she suffered some pain later that evening. We will know by the weekend how effective the shot was. I believe it was a shot of steroids versus a cock’s comb treatment. Regardless, we are holding onto the hope that it will give her some relief from the continual pain.

Meanwhile, the Lord is really blessing Mama’s business. She has had three or four ladies sign up to be stylist in her group and will make it to the Director level this month. She will squeeze into that spot on the last day of the month, but she will still get the recognition for the achievement – as well as the financial benefit. I have to admit that she has put the work into the business to get there although she still agonizes over Facebook challenges in setting up parties and making the required contacts to keep everyone involved. Having met her challenge this month, repeating the process next month should be somewhat more doable. At the very least, she knows the path forward and the process to accomplish her new goal for the month of April. Stirring participation has been her greatest struggle, but that comes with broadening the group where the ten percent participation normally achieved is significant enough to impress the algorithms Facebook uses to gauge the worth of any group.

As soon as I signed off from work, I drove to Muenster to get hay. The seller we usually meet is in the hospital with some ailment the doctors cannot identify. His son who helped me get the bales loaded told me that the doctors would get the cultures back today and hope to get a handle on the pathogen they are confronting. Mama and I are praying for him and we let his son know that we were doing so. When I asked, I got a non-committal answer from the son as to whether or not he was saved. That is the main focus of our prayers. His health is secondary, important but secondary.

Once back home, I ate a light meal and transferred the hay from the back of the truck to the loft of the goat barn. It was nearly dark by the time I had that done. One bale remains to be moved into the goat shelter on the east side of the shop where Julian is being kept by himself as Midas is visiting our nanny goats. When Victoria and I got Midas into the paddock with the girls he went crazy for a little while. Tongue hanging out, making those funny noises he does when he is excited and chasing each female in turn just in case any or the four needing to be bred were ready for him to perform his service on them. Lilly is definitely bred by Julian. Millie is questionable even though she spent a month with Midas a few weeks back. Now we have second shot at getting her bred. Hopefully, Midas will be successful this time if he was not the last time.

Saturday night Mama and I clipped the wings of our chickens in order to keep them from flying over the fence into the garden and it seems to be working. They can wreck a garden especially when the tender shoots are just pushing through the soil into the sunlight. We are keeping the hens closed up in the coop yard and only letting them out in the evenings when we go out to feed. That gives them a few hours out of the coop while limiting the time they have to seek and destroy our young plants. They protest the time being cooped up by limiting the number of eggs they lay, but we still get enough to have an ample supply for our faithful customers.

I am a little disappointed in the lack of life I am seeing in the fig trees I separated from the main fig tree. I am more disappointed that I am not seeing any sign of life in the root tree I cut all the other figs away from. Of the fourteen potential plants, I see leaves coming out on only four. I will give the others until the end of April to show life before I pull them up and discarding them. All the ones that are leafing out are in places where they can stay to hopefully produce figs for me and Mama. The grape vine is starting to leaf out so I will keep an eye on it and trim away all the non-viable vines as it shows me the vines it still provides life to. I am really hoping we get grapes this year.

I am going to talk to the pastor to see if I can get a cutting from his apricot tree to graft onto mine so that I can get some cross pollination. I am thinking that is what I am lacking to get fruit from the tree – now five years old. I will not waste many more years on the apricot tree is it remains fruitless.

Thank God He is more patient with us who are too often fruitless through the many years of our saved lives.

Moving day, signs of life, treatment

Saturday morning, I was planning on going to Muenster to get hay but that fell through because the seller was not available to meet us. I will go instead today or tomorrow. In going to Muenster, I was also going to get a bag of feed for the hog. We are taking her to be processed this weekend and had run out of feed, so we improvised. She is getting the sweet stock we had bought for the calf and some goat feed – both of which she likes better than the store-bought feed we had been trying to get her to eat. The stock trailer is in place at her pen so that she can be loaded Friday night for her trip Saturday morning. The feeder we have used to feed her has been placed inside the shelter so that we can close her into the shelter on the evening we intend to load her. Our hope is that she will simply walk into the trailer without too much coaxing. We will see how that works out when we try it. Patience is the key to getting her into the trailer. She is large enough that she has to make the decision on her own. We will not be able to force her to go but we can gently coax her into the trailer – hopefully.

With the morning given back to me, I started moving the little goats out of the paddock and into the small enclosure we have behind the shop. I tried carrying one of the babies from the paddock to the shelter and it was all I could do to make all the way across the farm to transfer her that way. She only weighed about forty pounds, but the walk from point-to-point took more effort than in had anticipated. The second one, I told Mama would have to wait until I had rested a bit. As I let my back and arms recover, I thought about getting the tractor and a dog crate to make the transfer and as I went to get the crate Mama and Victoria teamed up to make the transfer, but it was not a wasted trip to the barn to get the crate. While I was over there, I got the trailer and moved it to the hog pen. Making the repairs to the lights on the trailer will be easier with it closer to the shop. Plus, the hog will get curious about the trailer and maybe want to investigate once she has access to it.

I have been checking the fig trees and the grape vine for signs of life and am finally starting to see those signs. I have only two fig trees right now that have put out leaves, but I am obviously hoping the other ten start to show me that they are still alive. I have been concerned about the grape vine. I was not sure at all if it survived the brutal cold, but it too is starting to put out leaves. In the garden we have potatoes, green beans and a couple types of squash breaking the ground. The blackberries are fully leaved out and putting out flowers that the bees are diligently tending to. Same for the peach, the pear, the nectarine, and the apricot trees. I also planted the contents of a box of seeds we had bought several years ago, and they are sprouting as well. Supposedly the flower they produce will be attractants for bees and butterflies. Things are looking up for our little garden. We have more plants in containers than in the ground, but all are doing well so far regardless of where they are planted. How the plants mature and fruit will tell us which is the bast way to get a harvest in the future. At least the plants in the raised bed and the pots will not have to survive assaults by the rabbits.

We had great services Sunday. I think we take for granted how necessary it is to have a church family, how reviving it is to meet together to sing, to pray, to hear the preaching and to visit. Last Sunday we had five young people baptized and this Sunday we had a couple join the church. Although I was feeling very poorly yesterday, I made it through the song leading and sang a special before the sermon – only by God’s grace. When we got home, I laid down and slept for a few hours. I felt better that night. Mama did not. She stayed home due to some severe sciatic pain, but she listened to the online broadcast.

This morning Mama is going to the orthopedist to get a shot in her right knee. We are not sure if the treatment will give her any relief, but we are praying it does. It has been eight to ten years since she has gotten such a treatment and the last time she did so, the relief was amazing, but we are a decade past that, and things have changed as far as the cumulative damage to the joint is concerned.

We will know soon if it was worth the money, but we have to try since we have been given this opportunity.

A busy week, chickens and gardening, weekend chores

I had a very busy week this week. Three days of classes and a day of travel made it a full week. All the classes went very well and the day in travel yesterday was a good experience for the team I traveled with. We went to Abilene to meet with a client who specializes in evaluating other client’s performance on tasks associated with working on a gas pipeline. We left the office at 6 am and returned to the office at 7 pm, making it a fairly long day. Most of the thirteen in our group had not been in a “field” setting before so it was a great experience for time to do some hands-on applications on the very things they have written training materials for.

We had some hilarious moments as several of the ladies in our group tried their hand at the various types of bonding of plastic pipe. Several of the techniques require quick action once the plastic fitting and the pipe to which it will be bonded have been heated and the heating element has been removed. It was in those moments that the urgency of the task got the better of a couple participants. The panic they expressed caused the experienced person helping them to do the task to lose his train of thought for a moment and almost panic as well. From the outside looking in, it was a very funny moment.

Although I was not teaching a class today, I was overseeing a class. One of my former colleagues – now retired – was teaching the class. We were both at the office early and he got all set up for the class. Or so I thought. When it was time to begin the class, he was still visiting at the office with people he had not seen in quite a few months and as he tried to begin the class, he discovered his computer was not allowing the class to see him. He did not see that he was not logged in properly for the instructor role. For some reason the class had not been set up for him properly. I had to give him my computer for the class – all day. I had planned on going home over lunch to get my home computer, but Mama was taking Bro Plumley to the nursery to buy some vegetable plants, so she brought my home computer to me at the office. I could not do as much work on that computer as the one being used for the class, but I managed to get some productive time in while the class was being taught. It all worked out, but this is the third time we have had to work things out in this way. Not a good pattern of success.

Late Tuesday evening I noticed that the chickens had scratched up all the bean seeds Mama planted a couple weeks ago. They had totally decimated the zucchini plants we had put in the raised bed the afternoon we planted them. They left us only one plant. So, Mama and I are going to clip the wings on our chickens, so they are not able to fly over the fence we have around the garden. We are hoping to do that tomorrow evening. As I looked over the garden fencing this evening after feeding, I noticed the places the chickens which cannot fly are getting through the fence into the garden. I have corrected that since Mama and I planted new cucumber and spaghetti squash plants in the raised bed just after we fed the animals. I still have six or seven fig trees in the raised bed and am waiting to see if the small cuttings survived the hard freezes we had a few weeks ago. If they did, I will replant them in other locations opening up the raised bed for more vegetables as the nights start to warm up.

Meanwhile the baby chicks are doing well. Mama lost one and had to nurse another back to health. They can get crusted over on their backside limiting their ability to poop. Mama has to warm and clean the chick with soapy water to loosen the crust. The one she treated this evening seems to be doing better than the one she lost earlier in the week. It was our first loss in several years.

I have a full day tomorrow getting hay and feed in the morning and cleaning up the coops, the goat barn and the corral when I get back to the farm. Mama and I are putting Midas with the girls so the remaining girls can get bred. We will take out the two very young does and house them separately while the buck is with the girls. That change should not take long nor require too much effort. I will also relocate the stock trailer to the goat pen so the pig can get used to it near her area otherwise she will be very difficult to coax into the trailer. I have a minor repair to do on the lights on the trailer because a squirrel or rat has chewed through some of that wiring. Next weekend, we will load the pig up into that stock trailer and haul her to the processor. Hopefully that process will go smoothly.

Mama will miss her. Me, not so much.

Steps goal exceeded, cattle issues, a sad loss

Early Saturday morning I started a fire in one of the voids we have in the patio in back of the house. There are three seven-foot open circles in the patio. One has Cana Lilies growing in it on purpose. One had become our burn pit used for roasting hot dogs and s’mores. The third has some of the Cana Lilies in it as well but I have wanted to get rid of those bulbs and find another purpose that circle. Since I had a great deal of limbs to burn from a tree trimming spree I had a couple weekends ago, I started a fire in the pit I wanted to empty of the Cana bulbs and over the course of the day gathered all those limbs and burned them in that circle. I do not know if it killed out all the lilies, but I am sure it killed most of them, saving me the effort of digging them up and discarding them. Plus, it provided a lot of pot ash for the soil in that circle.

My plan is to ring that circle, fill it with good soil and give Mama a flowerbed to decorate as she sees fit. Hopefully, we will get some type of small ornamental tree as a centerpiece for the flowerbed, but we have not decided. In all the hauling of limbs and gathering of items to burn I registered 19,747 steps for the day. As I lay in bed that night, I told Mama I should have walked once around our circular driveway and gotten to 20,000 steps but I lost that opportunity. I was sufficiently worn out and lying in bed felt too good to abandon – even for a worthy cause.

Sunday was not a good day for us. As Mama and I went about the morning feeding, I went to check on the calf because she was lying down in what looked like an awkward position. She was in distress and it looked like she was not going to make it through the day. I had fed her the night before and saw no signs of her feeling badly. She had cleaned up all her feed and hay, so I was not sure what the problem could be. Mama called the vet and stayed home that morning to wait on the vet while Victoria and I went to church.

Victoria and I headed out reluctantly, but as we left the farm, we found a group of three young calves on the road and we were not able to get past them. As we drove toward the main road the calves stayed in front of the vehicle to the point that we were driving them ever closer to a busy road. So, I backed the vehicle up and met up with Mama who was in the barn lot, watching over our sick calf. Mama, in turn, called a few folks to alert them that we had cows in the road and to see if any of them would mind driving down the road toward us to herd the claves back to safety into our property. When that happened, it happened all at once. First our neighbor turned onto our road and headed the calves our direction. Immediately behind him came the vets – the wife in one vehicle and her husband in a second vehicle. Once the cows were through an open gate onto our neighbor’s property, the vets went to look at our cow and our neighbor headed to church. As did Victoria and I.

The vets, a husband-and-wife team, were not able to determine the cause of our calf’s sickness but gave her a shot of anti-inflammatory medicine and a shot of Penicillin. They checked the barn, the feed, and the hay to see if they could find anything obvious. They found nothing that could help them determine the cause. By the time they left, it was too late for Mama to get to church, but Victoria and I enjoyed being there. The fact that we arrived after the Sunday School class had started caused the pastor some angst, but we at least made it in plenty of time for me to lead the music for the morning service. That was not the case Sunday night.

By late afternoon it was clear that the calf was not going to make it. I was very hesitant to put her down, so I delayed as long as I could and by the time I could wait no longer, I went over armed to put her out of her misery, but she was already dead. Meanwhile, we had called the neighbor that owns the large property to our east and he told Mama he had a particular area to place the carcass of the dead calf where the carrion eaters can dispose of the remains. That was a blessing since Mama and I have nowhere to put an 800 pound carcass on our ten acres. In waiting on our neighbor to show us the spot to place the carcass, we missed church that night.

As Grandpa and I waited, to our surprise, our neighbor came to the farm with his large tractor prepared to haul the calf to the drop spot for us even though Grandpa and I had prepared to make the transfer once we were shown the spot. It was fairly easy for him to load the calf, but it was good for Grandpa and I to be there to help get it positioned for him to access. Our neighbor let us know that when he had deposed the carcass as required, he thought Mama and I ought to check the water the calf had been drinking in case that was the cause of her death. I am pretty sure it was not, but we will check. He suggested that because he said the calf looked like it had been very healthy and well cared for and could not see any reason for the death. Neither could we or the vet.

It was a sad loss, and we may never know the reason.

New arrivals, packing, Pastor Parrish in Honduras

Mama took the twins to Tractor Supply yesterday and got a few chicks. The store had received a fresh supply of chicks, but Mama had to buy from those chicks that had been left from the last shipment. The new arrivals were kept in the back for 24 hours before they are set out to be sold. So, Mama will go back this morning to purchase from the stock offered in the most recent shipment. Yesterday, the six Bantam chicks she bought were enough to excite the girls. Today, Mama’s additional purchase will excite them further. Mama is planning a very early morning trip to Tractor Supply to make her additional chick purchase because if we wait to late in day the or hold ff until tomorrow, all the chicks he wants to pick from will be gone. I do not know who is buying the chicks as such a fast rate, but the inventory from today will be mosly gone by this evening – tomorrow afternoon at the very latest. The person in charge of the chicks told me and Mama that they sold twelve thousand chicks between March and October last year during what was considered a pandemic. No telling how many they will sell this year but what they receive is always sold out in 24 hours. What a great commodity to be dealing with.

Victoria is off today so she will be available to help Mama get the girls back to Brittany and Andrew. Mama always appreciates the help and the company when she has so many miles to cover. Making sure we get all the items we need to return with the girls is the challenging part. Not the clothing per se, but the shoes and other foot ware, the bedrails needed for the girls, the specialty toys that were brought with them, jackets and coats, special travel cups, etc. I will be at the house to help, but I am not fully aware of all the items we are expected to send back on the return trip. It is always interesting to reassemble the contents of a transferred lodging to ensure those contents are available when arriving back home. I am not sure how many things we have left as a family in our travel at sundry locations across the United States, but I do know they would outfit at least a couple people if they were regathered. Hopefully, we do not force Brittany and Andrew to repurchase any items that should have come home with the girls.

Pastor Parrish, our pastor in Victoria, TX, is in Honduras to preach at the Mission’s Conference for the church there. It was touch and go as to whether or not he would be able to make it to Honduras, but all the details finally worked out at the very last minute. The difficulties started with an outdated passport. The passport agency told him that the new passport would take three weeks to issue. He only had a week before the conference. He bought the tickets to go anyway, and the passport was ready to be picked up the day before he was scheduled to leave. They arrived at the office to get the passport only a few minutes before the office was closing – the evening before he was going to fly out. Talk about cutting it close. But he is there now. The Mission’s Conference will begin tonight and continue through Sunday. Hopefully, the curfew has been lifted and more people will be able to attend the conference. This should be one of the unique experiences of his life. Something that will influence his prayers and mission’s focus for years to come. That is how spending time in Honduras affects me and Mama.

This weekend will be spent finishing work on Mama’s cedar wardrobe. I am a little disappointed with how the shelves turned out. The cabinet is not square, and the shelves are square, so the fit is a little off on each shelf I made. Some wood filler and a little extra fitting work should minimize the substandard effects of the misfit, but I could have done better if I had used other materials for the shelves. I just could not overcome the prices being asked for those materials. Additionally, I do not like the color of the stain we picked for the shelves, but I could not find a color that would match the dark color of the seasoned cedar wood of the cabinet. I am tempted to start over, but I do not know if that is a better solution than just going on with what I have. I will decide that this evening.

Mama will need to rest some this weekend. She has had a very busy week. As she kept the girls she also tried her best to keep up with her business – as well as having parties for other people who are selling other products. Sometimes she gets overbooked. This week we not too bad until last night when she had two parties to attend online and an online training. Fortunately, Victoria and I were here to help with bath time, teeth brushing and finally putting the girls to bed.

This morning they are off.

Brittany and the girls, busy schedule, class tomorrow

Mama met Brittany and the girls in Oklahoma City Monday afternoon. From there they drove back to the farm, arriving about 6 pm. Brittany drove her vehicle and Mama followed so that she was able to help with potty breaks and meals in transit. This morning, Brittany will head back with Audrey. Zoe and Sophia will stay here with us until Friday afternoon when Mama and Victoria will reconnect with Brittany. Friday, as was Monday, will be a long day for Mama. The trip is about three hours each way. Some of it through heavy construction on the interstate. This visit was a welcome and unexpected visit and may well be one of the last times we will see the girls before Brittany and Andrew relocate further north. So far, I have not been welcomed by Audrey, but Mama and Victoria are able to hold and snuggle with her. Zoe and Sophia are very including of all of us. It is fun to have them close for a few days even though I will have limited time with the girls due to my teaching and working schedule.

We did not have much time with the girls Monday night, but Mama and Victoria made up for that Tuesday. I was teaching yesterday, so I only got to interact with the girls in the evening. Mama and I went out to feed with Zoe and Sophia in tow. That was a spectacle to behold. Mama broke up bread for the girls to feed to the chickens. Fortunately, the chickens are not at all particular who has the bread. They will follow the source until all the bread is spent. The girls made much of the cluster of chickens around them as they dispersed the bread. When it came to feeding the pig, they were very intimated and steadfastly refused to pet Rosalita. Not at all surprising. She is a beautiful 350# hog that stands eye-to-eye with the girls and not the type of animal that inspires warm cuddle feelings. At the goats, they got involved once again. Mama and I keep animal crackers on hand to feed the goats. Zoe loved the feel of the goats pulling the cookie out of her hand with their lips. Sophia was not so brave, but she did not mind being in with the goats.

After the feeding was done, we packed everyone up and went to Moua’s for dinner. The girls – all three of them – ate very well. Our original intent was to go to Casa Torres, but there was a twenty-five-minute wait (at best) and that is not a workable situation with three young ones. Moua’s was a great alternative. As we wound down in the late evening and were gearing up for bed, Sophia had a brief meltdown which had to be dealt with, but it was over shortly. Our only concern in the hysteria was that her very loud protest would wake Audrey who had been put to bed only a little while before the protest began. It all ended well. Fortunately, all the girls sleep well. Audrey was in our room for the past two night while the twins slept on the bed in the spare bedroom. Brittany slept on the couch. That sleeping arrangement made it a bit of a challenge for me to get ready to teach a class on Tuesday, but Brittany is a very sound sleeper, so I was able to get all my things and get out of the house(at 6:30) without disturbing either Audrey or Brittany.

First thing this morning, as I was sitting at the dining room table working on my computer, I looked out the window and saw Julian – one of our Billy goats – wandering in the front yard. I alerted Mama and we both went out to herd Julian and Midas back into the enclosure. They were enjoying their freedom and were in no hurry to go back to their area.  I had left the gate unlatched when I fed last night because I left the enclosure from a different gate. The hard winds in the storms last night blew the gate open enough for the two goats out. My bad! I hurried to close the gates on the driveway, so we did not have to chase them down the road. Having done that, we guided them back slowly, circuitously to the enclosure. They both seemed to enjoy their brief visit with the girl goats. Once they were inside their paddock, I fed them and moved on the feed the other goats.

Brittany left with Audrey, headed back home fairly early this morning. Mama left with the girls as soon as Grandma and Grandpa arrived at the farm for Mama to guide them to a doctor’s appointment in Decatur. Grandma had an appointment with an orthopedist to get a shot in her knee. I am not sure which knee, but she was not looking froward to getting the shot no matter how much Mama reassured her that it would help with the pain – at least for a time. I encouraged Mama to get a shot in her left knee as well if we could afford it, but I am not sure she will do so. If she does, she should also get some relief from the constant pain she is in.

Tonight is church. Mama will get to show off the girls. She is looking forward to that. Tomorrow I will be teaching an 8-hour class.

Busy Grammy and Papi.

Another busy Saturday, a busy week ahead

Friday evening Mama and I went to Lowe’s and Tractor Supply. To Lowe’s for lumber and to Tractor Supply for chicks. At Lowe’s I passed on the lumber I had intended to buy and purchased a backup style of wood for the cabinet I was working on. We also bought mulch and potting soil and some plants for Mama’s flower beds. I was not sure what work I would be able to get done on Saturday, but we had plenty of materials to get started. Tractor Supply was a bust as far as buying chicks was concerned. They had sold out the day they got chicks last week. Mama will try again this week.

After making some final measurements for the shelves I want to install in a cedar wardrobe Mama and I have had for many years, I started cutting the shelving boards to length. My original intent was to make the shelves out of particle board, but the sheet of particle board was so heavy that I did not think I could manage it by myself through the process of loading, unloading and then handling it for the several cuts I would be required to make for the shelving cuts. In my best days handling an eighty-pound piece of particle board was a struggle. At this point in my life, it is a two-person job.

So, I bought the same material I have used in making the parts for the beehives. Pine boards that are a true 1x6, treated and planed smooth on all edges. I cut those boards and used my biscuit joiner to get either two or three boards joined for the depth I needed for the shelving. That took some time, but I got all the shelves made by lunchtime. Today I will take them out of the clamps and stain them before mounting them in the cabinet. I have yet to install the cleats that I will mount the shelves on, but that should be a simple process – albeit time consuming. Nevertheless, Mama should have her cedar wardrobe repurposed into a craft cabinet late this week.

While I was waiting on the assembled shelves to dry, I got out the pole saw attachment for the multifunction weed eater I bought last summer, and I tried it out. I had to make several adjustments and even refit the bar to get it to function properly, but after an hour I had it working. It worked surprisingly well; however, it is a fixed length. I cannot extend it, so I had to make due with what it offered. To get to some of the branches I was trimming at the garden – to allow more morning sun onto the raised bed – I was required to use a ladder. I had to be careful to keep the branches from striking the garden shed roof as I trimmed them off, so positioning was important, especially when using the ladder. It was while I was trimming a large branch in the garden which overhung the raised bed that I got into a bit of trouble.

I tried to position the ladder to keep myself clear of the path I expected the branch to take as it fell but I miscalculated. As I finished cutting through the branch and I began to fall, I hesitated before I made the final cut. I was pretty sure I was okay where I had set up to make the cut. As I cut through the final portion to sever the branch at the tree, its outermost parts began to contact the ground and as the heaviest portion of the branch broke loose, it bounced back and hit me squarely in the chest. I had the pole saw in my right hand, so I used my left hand to lift the branch off my chest and redirect it to the ground. As I did, it sprang back just enough to hit me very hard in my left thigh. That blow caused the ladder to start leaning and I had to hop off the ladder – pole saw still in hand. I had to take a few minutes to recuperate after that incident. My chest and my leg are both still bruised and hurting. I was praising the Lord that the branch did not hit me in the face or head. That would have been far worse. At least I was positioned to avoid that type of strike. I still have two branches to trim out, but I will require help to get those removed.

Since I was moving slowly after my incident, I worked on filling containers for Mama to plant vegetables in. I hauled compost from around the area where we confine the residue from the coops as we clean them to put into the containers and filled the last several inches with the potting soil we had bought. That turned out well and hopefully this week we will get the plants set out that Mama plans to grow in those pots. Using pots for certain vegetable plants has worked out very well in the past, versus planting those plants in the garden. Mama and I also planted beans and butternut squash seeds in the garden.

Late this morning, Mama will drive to Oklahoma City to meet Brittany. They will caravan to the farm from there. Brittany is staying with us for a week so Mama can help her with the girls as she continues to recuperate from surgery she had a couple week ago. Andrew is spending the week away from home in training. So, this should be a fun week for us, plenty of activity as we enjoy the little ones in our home.

I will be teaching a class tomorrow. 

Change of schedule, moving fast, vacation planning

In a slight change of schedule, I have to teach an in-person class tomorrow. I was not originally scheduled for the class but that is the way things worked out. So, I will be teaching tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. My only concern is my voice since I seem to lose my voice in the course of an eight-hour class. Teaching three back-to-back classes will be a challenge. I am not sure what happened in the scheduling, but I am glad I found out yesterday rather than Wednesday morning. Also, in a slight change of schedule, we went last night to pick up a chair from Grandma and Grandpa’s since Norman was available to help me load the chair. That was done after I had gotten the tires Norman passed along to me mounted on the truck. The tire work took over an hour, but now it is done. Same with the chair. Mama and Victoria are very excited about the chair. Me, not so much.

Today is the only day this week that I will be working from home. As predicted, these days of working remotely will get less and less. There is a company-wide meeting next week which I will not be able to attend that will more than likely address how we are to coordinate returning to the office. The challenge to our management is to house an additional fifteen people into the office when we do not have space for those additional people. There has been some talk about sharing desks – as in working one week in the office and one week from home. During my week working remotely, someone would be sitting at my desk in the office. So, every Friday we would have to pack up our desk and vacate our office space. Not a good psychological approach if we are interested in promoting a sense of permanence. I am not sure if it would feel more like being a contract worker. One week on. One week off. It will probably work, but it will not be a good solution. My worry is that we will be more fractured as a company than we currently are but I do not have a workable solution to offer.

By the time we complete this week, we will be halfway through the month of March. That is to say, we will be nearly through the first quarter of 2021. Fortunately, this year is passing quickly. I am not always looking forward to the year flying by, but this year seems different. We have to suffer through at least two year of the current administration before we have the chance to change things – if we have the gumption to do so. I am not looking forward to gas prices being over $3 per gallon, which it will be by the end of the year. I am not looking forward to one million or more illegal alien coming into our country, which will happen through this year. Certainly by the end of two years. I am not looking forward to our loss of liberty as it is eroded by executive order and judicial overreach, which is happening right now. I am not looking forward to our religious freedoms and our free speech being taken from us, which we will start to see very obviously in the months to come.

We will stand against all these infringements every step of the way, but we are stuck with what we have in the highest offices in the land for now, with very little options to win in that opposition. I can say that I will no longer support the Republican Party. I am wholly on board with Donald Trump and his Save America PAC. I can at least do that with some confidence. The only thing we have on our side right now is that the Liberal crowd always pushes too far when they are in power. The fact that they had to cheat on a massive scale to gain that power is making them more feverish to get their agenda instituted as quickly as possible by whatever means possible. For a long time, we, as conservatives, have lacked a definitive voice and a recognized leader. Now we have one and we should rally behind that leader. Like him or not, we need someone fearless to lead the advance to reclaim our republic. Enough on that.

Mama and I have been talking about taking a mini vacation. I am not sure where we will go – or if we will go – but we are taking about it. We need a break. Some time for us. The daily needs around the farm will keep us from going away for too long, but I feel like we need to go somewhere special. For many years Pensacola had been our default and we will probably look there first.

Time will tell.

A busy Saturday

Mama and I went shopping Friday evening. I had to exchange a saw blade I had bought at Harbor Freight and she had to check out Hobby Lobby. We did not stay out long and were back home a little after 7 pm. When we got back home, I went to work getting the swarm traps ready to set out. It is a little early, but I thought I should get it done since the colonies in all our hives are very busy right now. I spent an hour or so in the shop rearranging again and was very pleased with the new setup.  Early Saturday morning I set one trap in a tree at the East edge of our property and since I had enough frames to do so I set a trap near the active hives at the South side of the property. This time, I will check the traps several times per week to ensure we do not let the bees they attract get too far ahead of me in building their new home. I only have one hive available so I will keep only one swarm, but I have plenty of people in the Bee Club who will take the other swarm should I be able to attract two swarms. I consider it part of our conservation service to get as many swarms into domestic hives as I am able to catch. When I checked the trap nearest the hives yesterday evening, I saw a lone bee checking out the trap. I will check the one I hung in a tree this evening.

Mama went to Trade Days so I took on the chore of cleaning the coops. I also cleaned and sanitized the boy goat’s shelter. It was long overdue. In order to house the waste from the coops I expanded our compost bin. Now we have the extra capacity we need to keep things clean. Once I was done scraping the floors of the coops, I got the tractor fired up and swapped the hay forks for the bucket and attached the brush hog to the tractor. That took a lot longer than I thought it would – almost an hour – but I did get it done. I was able to get in the garden with the tractor and shred a lot of the accumulation of leaves near the raised bed. I do not have room to maneuver the tractor in all the areas I needed to take care of the piles of leaves, but I got what I could. I felt a little better about it. One of the issues with having the leaves cover the ground is the possibility of snakes hiding in those leaves. Especially copperheads. That is why I like to get them all removed. I have waited a little longer than I usually do to get them cleaned up, but I will get it done eventually.

I moved on to taking apart pallets I had stacked behind the pig pen, but I only got three of those pallets disassembled before I needed to shift gears. Trace, Krystal and their crew were coming over for a meal of burgers, sausages and hot dogs. I took the boys fishing for an hour or so just to keep them occupied while Trace went to pick up Krystal and Savanna. Trace and the boys had been working at BBTI. Leo was the only one of us that caught a fish. It was a good one, but we released it back into the lake. No sense getting all the required tools to clean only one fish. Mama seasoned the burgers and they turned out great. I had not eaten since very early in the day, so I was hungry when the food was finally served. We sat around and talked for quite a while as the boys played outside. They were in no hurry to leave and we were not in a hurry for them to go.

When I went out to close up the chickens, I found all the chickens roosted at various places near the coop. The boys had closed the gate to the coop yard and the chickens could not get back inside – so they did the best they could. We have repeatedly cautioned the boys to keep the gates shut – and they did. We just forgot to make clear that that one gate has to remain open. It took only a few minutes for all of us to get the chickens back into the coop and close them up properly, but it was a hilarious few minutes. None of the boys wanted to touch a chicken so they were more in the way than they were a help to me and Mama, but Trace managed to catch a few and get them into the coop. It all ended well.

Sunday afternoon we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s to meet Norman. He had set aside a set of five tires for me to use on the truck. They are not new, but they match, they are a very good brand, and they have twenty or thirty thousand miles left in them. I will get them mounted as soon as possible. Having five will allow me to replace the spare tire also. They should do me for several years. We were supposed to pick up a chair also, but for some reason I was not informed about that, so we left without it. Mama and I will go back this evening to retrieve the chair. It will replace the one recliner we kept from the pair we bought years ago in New Jersey. Mama is thrilled about that upgrade. I am pleased with the tire upgrade. A win-win.

Norman is vacating the place where he has been living in West Virginia and moving to Florida. So, all his belongings are being brought to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. If that move actually happens, Grandma and Grandpa will go with him. They are excited about it, but they are trying not to show it.
It would be a good move for them, and it would help Norman to protect his homestead as he works his business hauling for hire.

Another win-win.

Having a worthy vision, forever cleaning up

Mama has been getting a lot of coaching lately and much of that coaching focuses on vision – a clear, specific image of your future. In one training the coach said, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” So, to reinforce the training I asked Mama what her vision for the day was. Instead of giving me her vision, she gave me a long set of goals for the day. Goals are set milestones or targets that move you to a strategic accomplishment. Hopefully, those goals move you toward your vision, but they are not vision. So, I began to think, how do I make the concept of vision work in my thought life? It is not as easy as supposed, especially for those of us who are believers.

We are hesitant to visualize or create a mental image of our future because it goes against the grain of allowing us to be led daily by the Holy Spirit. So, concentrating on the temporal – as we typically tend to do – is a path we try to avoid. But what if we let the Holy Spirit give us His vision for our future? If we focus on the Spiritual vision God has for each of us, all the things we need in this daily walk in the world will be provided for us – as promised in Matthew 6:33. The promise is that if we seek first the things of God, all the necessities of life we spend so much time agonizing over will be added to our lives as needed. So, that is where my focus is going to be because I believe God wants me to have a vision for this life, a Godly vision. Something that motivates me to press through difficult times. A vision that encourages me to remain faithful to the end. Something more than just surviving day to day, enduring this life as I wonder if I am making a difference. I still have some praying to do to get there, but that is the path I am set upon.

Mama was supposed to go visit with Kimberlyn today, but those plans fell through. She will still have to go to the feed store to replenish our stock of feed, but she is not pressed to do so at any particular time. Being home for the day will facilitate her business goals for today. I have to admit, even though she is having trouble verbalizing it, she has caught a vision for her business, and it shows in her commitment to grow this business. Honestly, we are not seeing the fruit of those effort but if you continue to do the right things, the right results will come. Another Bible principle we take for granted. It is the principle of sowing and reaping. Whatever seed you sow you will reap – later than you sow, more than you sowed. We just need to make sure we are sowing the right seed…in thought, in word and in deed.

Speaking of sowing, Mama and I are going to get started on our garden this weekend. There are not many things we can plant in the actual garden plot, but there are several plants we can get started on in pots and tubs which will be kept in our sunroom until the weather is right for them to be set outside. We already have one row of potatoes planted. They were not bought as seed potatoes, but they were not eaten in time to keep them from turning into seed potatoes. By the way, most of the fig trees I separated out last year survived the deep freeze they were put through. The blueberries and blackberries seem to be showing signs of life as well. All the fruit trees are starting to put out buds and a couple seem to be far more alive than last year. Maybe the freeze helped them. At the very least, it did not kill them.

This weekend will be spent on cleaning coops and barns. I have neglected the small goat shelter for too long and with the outbreak of lice in that area, I need to clean and sanitize it thoroughly. Of course, I would rather be doing other things, but that will take precedent. I also have to add to the compost bin we have overfilled with manure from the coop. I like being able to put all that mess somewhere where it can be managed, but we have exceeded the capacity of the 4x4x4 containment I originally set up. It will not be difficult to double the size of the bin so it should not take me too long to get done.

To assist us in cleaning up, I am going to hook up the brush hog to the tractor today so Mama and I can chew up the accumulation of leaves from last Fall. Somehow it seems to be more than we have dealt with in the past. As far as mowing, we need to mow but the clover that is covering the back yard is being fed on by the bees, so it will stay until the flowers are gone. It looks ugly to us, but they are needing the pollen and nectar so we will endure the ugliness for the sake of the bees.

A small sacrifice for a big gain.

Busy schedule, lifting restrictions, missionaries

Last week I taught three classes. This week I have taught two and am attending a practice class today getting an additional instructor ready to teach for our company. It has been a busy schedule to maintain. Not because the classes are difficult to teach, but because there is a significant amount of prework before each class is presented and several hours of follow-up administrative work for each class. Next week I have three classes to teach and the following week I have two classes to teach and one to attend as an auditor. Mama is not enjoying the schedule too much. She has gotten used to me helping her with the morning feeding while I have been working from home. I have enjoyed that routine as well, but all that is about to change as our governor had declared an end to the COVID impositions starting next Wednesday.

I am anxious to see how the populous in general responds to the lifting of the mask mandate and the restriction of maintaining a 6-foot distance from others. Some have gotten so used to the masking and distancing that there will be a good deal of discomfort on their part to go back to the way things were before the panic drove us to submission through largely unfounded fear mongering. I watched an awkward moment in church last night as a missionary wife offered to shake hands with someone in our church and was demonstrably refused. The refusal was verbally apologetic, but the refusal was shouted out through body language.

I have come to the conclusion that the person refusing to shake hands had never liked the custom (they are very cleanly) and now have a “valid” reason to avoid the gesture of friendship altogether. Based on how much people were willing to shame others for not wearing a mask, I am wondering how they will handle the lack of legal requirement to do so. Time will tell but it should prove very interesting to those of us who are willing to look for the signs of awkwardness from those not quite willing to give up the isolation – or the empowerment of shaming their fellow Americans. Also, it will be interesting to see just how many at our church will begin attending the services in person now that the restrictions are abolished.

The missionary we had at church last night is headed to the Philippines. He has been the children’s ministry director at his church for over twenty-five years. His presentation was superb. He had a short video presentation followed by a long series of slides which he used as a topical guide for the work he has done and plans to continue to do in the Philippines. There are over 1.8 million street children on the main island in the Philippines and he is going to try to reach some of those abandoned children. What a ministry! He did a couple of tricks for the congregation and he called them tricks. Not magic tricks. He said he is careful to do so because he uses the idea of tricks to tell how the Devil tries to trick each of us into not believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. The kids at the service last night were all ears. So were the adults. His wife, who is Filipino, was a gem. Mama and I will keep up with the two of them as they are quickly progressing in their support to get onto the field fulltime.  

One of the young ladies at church has been very faithful to set aside money for us to get to Nate and Cori for their ministry and their home. So far, Nate has been able to buy a nice weed eater and is gaining the money to buy a power washer. Both will be tools for use in the ministry as they help families in the church to clean up their homes and properties from the flooding caused by the two hurricanes that struck Honduras last year. Just this one person’s sacrifice has made an enormous difference for the mission’s work being done in Honduras.

It is amazing to see that happen.

A great visit

 Mama and I had a great visit with Brittany, Andrew, Zoe, Sophia and Audrey. Peter, Andrew’ s brother and their mom were also there for Audrey’s birthday celebration. Mama and I traveled up on Friday. We were in no particular hurry but made the drive in less than six hours with a couple stops. We got to visit with Brittany for a couple hours before she and Mama went to get Zoe and Sophia. Just before they left to get the girls, Andrew got to the house with his family and took over with Audrey – who was not overly welcoming of any of the additional adults. Brittany refers to Audrey as her COVID baby and it is an appropriate reference. She has been at home with mommy and daddy and no other adults to speak of for almost an entire year. She finally started to warm up to Mama about the time we were ready to leave Saturday afternoon. She was still very hesitant about me. I could hold her as long as she was in my arms facing forward – not able to see my face.

Friday evening, Peter bought us Korean food from a local restaurant/store. It was excellent! We just lazed around that evening and allowed Zoe and Sophia to wallow us as they went from one thing to another in their uninterrupted play. All the time Audrey scooted along behind her two older sisters trying to get involved in whatever had attracted their attention. It was a fun interaction to watch. Everyone went to bed by 8 pm and we started to set up the dining room for the party coming the next afternoon.

I got to get the girls out of bed Saturday morning. That was a wild event. They know they are not allowed to get up until someone comes to get them up but by the time I went up to release them from their room they had been awake for a good amount of time. I stood outside the door for a moment listening to them argue with each other about something I could not understand – but they were each set on their difference of opinion. When I opened the door their first words were, “Papi, you didn’t leave!” Brittany had muffins and fruit for breakfast and the girls were hungry. Each of them ate almost an entire muffin in small stages and a large amount of fruit. When they started to get silly, I called them “muffin heads” and that set off the goofiness that followed through the morning.

We played. We decorated. We cooked. We just enjoyed being busy. When Brittany and Mama arrived with the cakes all attention shifted to those sweets. We ate a simple lunch before getting to the cakes and again, the girls all ate very well. One of the cakes Brittany brought home was a smash cake. One that was made as a miniature of the formally decorated birthday cake for Audrey to smash all by herself. It took her a minute or two to get started but once she figured out how soft and sticky the little cake was, she demolished it with gusto. I got several short video clips for Brittany so she could post them as desired. She ate only a couple bites of the cake, but she had a great time flattening it.

Once Audrey was cleaned up and redressed in her traditional Korean costume, we let her go through the tradition of selecting an item from a variety of items laid out in a line in front of her. A microphone, a football, a ball of yarn, a pencil, a dollar bill, a stethoscope, a calculator and maybe one other item I have forgotten. Once she was placed on the floor in front of the row to pick from, she picked the pencil and held onto it for the remainder of the morning. I think I was told that means that she will be an intellectual – teacher, a writer, or something along that line. Time will tell.

Mama and I said our goodbyes to the girls before they went down for their naps and left about 3 pm Saturday afternoon. The drive home was spent listening to a coach/mentor whose training Mama had signed up for. It was helpful but somewhat repetitive. It gave me and Mama a chance to talk about what each of us see as challenges she must overcome to succeed in this – or any – business. March will be a telltale month for Mama and her business. We drove through some light rain as we traveled and a lot of fog, sometimes heavy, for the last couple hours of travel, but we were pulling into the garage at about 8:45.

Sunday services were wonderful and there is talk about our governor ending the mask mandate and lifting other restrictions so we can begin to function normally. We had a fellowship after church last night. Everything was individually packaged – sub sandwiches, chips, soft drinks and cupcakes. Somewhat sterile, but at least we had a fellowship. More and more people are coming back to church as the panic begins to subside. That is encouraging. Maybe soon we will take the tape down limiting access to every other pew in our auditorium.

Patience!