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.