Animal updates, classes, the weekend

Yesterday afternoon Mama took our little boy goat, she calls him Splash, back to the vet for a third follow-up appointment. In that appointment the vet removed the cast he has been hobbling about with for the past three weeks. Mama was asked to limit his activities for the next two weeks, expressly told that he should not jump. Not! Mama’s response was that he is a goat and will do whatever goats do. I assured Mama that he will take a couple weeks to resume use of his injured leg so there is very little we have to worry about. We will monitor his activity and ensure he begins to use the leg more over the next few days. If we do not see that use increase, we will take measures to enable him to gain confidence in the leg, but not until we have to intervene. For now, I am seeing him touch the leg to the ground very tentatively. As he gains confidence, we should see that use expand to what we would see as normal. I am not sure how much, if any, pain he is experiencing, so we will let him decide how quickly to adapt to having the use of all four legs at his own pace.

Also, yesterday, Mama took Mocha to be groomed. In the process of grooming Mocha, the groomers discovered that she had fleas – not a few. So, now we begin the process of ridding our animals and the house of fleas. A tedious and difficult process. Fortunately, we had the house sprayed only a week ago, so our expectation is that the fleas were killed for the most part in the house, but we do not know for sure, so we must assume that at least a portion of the population of fleas has recovered from the treatment and we must now do the treatment again. I told Mama just a few days ago that I am ready for a dog-free home whenever we can arrange that. That was before the discovery of fleas on our inside dogs. It will not be happening soon, but I am pressing for it to happen at some time. I am just really tired of the continual hair being shed. Mama and Victoria sweep regularly, but it is not enough to keep the hair from accumulating in masses in corners of rooms, on every rug in every room, and on my computer. Oh, well. I love Mama and she loves her dogs. Besides, Victoria is wholly unwilling to rehome her dogs and they are the reason for all the hail blowing about in the house.

Teaching three cases this week is proving a challenge for my voice. It may not seem like much to say I teach a class, but the presentation of the classes I teach require me to talk for three hours in the morning portion, take a break for lunch, and talk an additional three hour for the afternoon portion of the class. Six hours of continuous talking, regardless of the subject matter, is a challenge. Typically, by the 2 pm hour, my voice is wearing out. So, a day of rest between classes is almost required for me to be ready to teach another class. So far, that day between has been scheduled into the mix because those in the company that have taught classes realize the challenges of speaking for hours at a stretch.

After every class, I am wrung out. Yesterday evening, after I got home, as Mama and I were waiting a bit before we went to tend to the animals I laid back in my recliner and slept soundly for almost a half hour. Mama told me as I was wakened – so that I did not oversleep – that she was amazed how quickly I went to sleep. Almost the instant that I laid my head back. That is how tired I usually am when I teach an eight-hour class. Fortunately, tomorrow is a four-hour class. I will finish early, but I will have to talk for four hours straight to cover the material in the class. So far, I have been able to get the job done and the participants have enjoyed the presentations. A win-win for me, the participants, and the company.

This weekend I have not made any plans, but I will tend to the beehives again. For those hives where I removed the honey supers, I will begin treatments for Varroa mites. It is forecast to be brutally hot, so time outside will be limited – especially when I am wearing the bee suit. With Vacation Bible School next week (Monday -Thursday) we will be passing out flyers Saturday as we also cover our normal routes for our bus routes. I try to participate in bus visitation/soul winning every other Saturday. I have only Saturday to get thing done at the farm, so I have to limit activities that bite into that time, but I enjoy going with the teams on our outreach for the church.

Every weekend we see the dividends from that outreach; those Eternal dividends that matter most.

Mrs. Patrick, Miss Donna, heat, losing our fishing hole

Our very dear friend in Amarillo, Mrs. Patrick went home to be with the Lord last week. Her funeral is today. Mama and I debated going over for the funeral but in the end, we decided not to. It would have been an over and back trip – five hours each direction with the funeral sandwiched in. The motivation for the one-day trip to attend the funeral was that I have a class to teach tomorrow, and I wanted to honor that obligation. It is not a difficult drive, and we could have done it, but it was not the trip itself that caused us to make our decision not to go, it was the commitment we had made to the Wycoff’s to care for Noreen’s mom, while the family traveled to Georgia to attend the funeral of Daniel’s dad.

Miss Donna, now 92 years old, came to stay with Mama and me Thursday evening as the family made the necessary arrangements to travel over to meet with Daniel who had already flown to Georgia to help with the final plans for the funeral of his father and to help settle the family accounts. Daniel’s mother is still living but will require constant care because of her failing health. Fortunately, Daniel’s twin brother is close by to provide that care. The death of his father was expected. He had been in the hospital for several weeks and was not expected to leave the hospital. So, Miss Donna came to stay with us. She is not a difficult person to provide care to. She gets around mostly on her own, but she requires a lot of help when it comes to meals and showering. She maintains a busy schedule of word search puzzles, knitting, reading, and napping. She also needed Mama to take her to her swimming classes several times during her stay. She does that for exercise. I think Mama likes that idea. But today her family should be back in town, and she will go home to sleep in her own bed. Overall, she has enjoyed her stay with us, Mama mostly, but there really is no place like home.

Our normal summer heat has finally arrived. For the next weeks the temperature will hover near 100° F. We have had a few days where the temperature topped out at 103° F, but for the most part we have been slightly below. There has been no rain for a couple weeks now and none is in the forecast for the next ten days, so I have had to begin watering every night I am available just to keep the plants and trees alive through the heat. At the moment, I am trying to keep a couple pumpkin plants alive in the garden. They are all that is left of the vegetables we tried to grow this year and I am not sure if I can water them often enough to survive through the heat. Time will tell, but Mama wants to see if the pumpkins we have on those plants will grow into full sized fruit.

Working outside has been miserable. I generally wear one shirt per time out working in the heat. In other words, I will put on one shirt and work for a couple hours on a task and when I got into the house to rest, I will change to a dry shirt. It is far too cold inside the house to wear a wet shirt for the time it would take to dry in the airconditioned environment, so I change. When I go back outside, the dry shirt I changed to will get totally soaked and upon returning to the house to rest for a bit, I will take it off and put back on the shirt, now dried in the sun, that I sweated up earlier. It works out well enough to allow me to dirty only two shirts through the day. Of course, my pants are partially soaked but that does not chill me as much as standing inside in a soaked shirt.

As Mama was contacting Ricky late last week, the owner of the property next to us where we go fishing, he let Mama know that we may be losing our access to the lakes. He told Mama that he is leasing the property starting the first of next month. It will be up to the person or group leasing the property whether or not we will have fishing privileges at the quarry lakes. We are praying that we do not lose that fishing hole, but such is life. Our pastor is really sad at losing those fishing privileges, but all we can do at this point is pray. As we are waiting to find out what we need to do to contact the lease holder Chester called. He is a friend who helps Ricky run the cattle on the property in question. He told us that he knows nothing about Ricky leasing the land. So, we will wait and take as many opportunities as possible to fish while we do have access. For now, it is way too hot to go fishing, but we may have to go anyway.

I will be teaching a class tomorrow and Friday. Busy week.

A Texas Tea Party, finding joy, Blake’s birthday, surgery

Sunday night after church our Pastor’s wife, Joyce, approached Mama to see if she would be opened to having a Tea Party for Aliza and Gracie. Aliza is with Granny (Joyce) as her parents are participating in the VBS in Nazlini. Joyce was telling Mama that she wanted to do something special for Aliza because she was a little displaced because as soon as her mom, dad and brother had gotten back from a three-day youth conference, they loaded up and took off for a weeklong trip to Nazlini. Aliza was feeling left out. So, Mama and Joyce put on a Tea Party along with a Nail Party for the girls. Mama got out her special Korean Tea set and laid aside some nails for the girls to pick from. Both Gracie and Aliza seek out Mama at every church service to see how she has done her nails. They love Color Street. (If only Mama could find such interest in some ladies who could join her group.)

Each of the girls got a special lunch followed by a mani and peti. Mani and peti; that’s how Mama refers to them to sound well versed in the world of nail appliques. I was teaching a class through the morning and working from the office through the afternoon, so I did not get any update on the little party until I got home, but Mama assured me that the girls were very pleased with the luncheon and nail treatments. As for Mama, she was worn out, but happy with how well things had gone. Putting on such an event is among her many gifts. Joyce was thrilled with the way things worked out. For her it was a very relaxing time spent with the girls. Just the interlude she had been looking for. All in all, it is something that all five of the participants will not soon forget.

Special events like yesterday’s Tea Party interrupting our daily routine are what give dimension to our lives and make the mundane daily grind worth the effort. Too many times we look for big events to revive the interest in life and spark the excitement that makes us look differently at how we spend our efforts in tolerating the ordinary. It does not take much to inspire joy when you take time to look at the very little things that emphasize that joy. It can be found in most all of the inconsequential, routine, uninteresting moments in our lives. For instance, as I was driving to work yesterday morning, the sun was coming up. The haze in the morning air gave enough filtering to what would normally be too bright to look at, to allow those of us who were up and out, to see the huge orange orb in the sky in a unique way. It was beautiful. Something that does not happen every day. Something that made my morning commute a little more enjoyable than normal. A tiny expression of joy in an otherwise monotonous routine.

Today is Blakes birthday. Another happy interruption to life. He is eleven as of today. The real celebration for the birthday will not happen today because of church and children’s related events that take precedence. They will celebrate the birthday tomorrow. The plan is to go to Chuck-E-Cheese in San Pedro Sula. Blake is excited. It is worth the wait. Also attending the festivities will be a couple children from the home in El Progresso. Blake mentioned them all by name but the one that stuck out to me was Tigre – pronounced tee-gray; emphasis in the first syllable. Blakes accent when pronouncing the name was exact for the area where he is learning to speak Spanish. That is exciting to hear. It makes me slightly jealous of his immersion in the culture there. Not just the way he will learn a language but the way his life will be affected by growing up on the Mission field. That immersion provides a sense of purpose, a unique focus for life that is not easily duplicated by those of us who do not serve in that way.

Maggie will be having carpal tunnel surgery tomorrow morning. The plan is to do one wrist, wait a couple weeks and then do the other wrist. Please pray for her to heal quickly and to have a manageable level of pain. I am intimately familiar with the process. I had the surgeries many years ago and got a great relief from the surgery. Mama and I were living in Kansas City at the time. This was prior to Victoria being born. I had my left wrist done first because I could not lay out from work, and I wanted to test the recovery time before I got the right wrist done. The day after I got the surgery the fuel pump went out on the Pontiac Bonneville Mama and I were driving at the time. So, Mama and I worked together to replace the fuel pump. My right hand. Her left hand. It was not efficient, but it worked.

I will be teaching a class tomorrow and as I talked with one of the leaders at our company yesterday, I had to admit that I like what I am doing for this company.

The bees, the mice, the squirrels, and the goats

One of the primary chores I wanted to get done this weekend was to look into the hives to see if the bees had made any progress on the honey supers. So, after I went to get feed for our animals, I got suited up to have a look. What I saw was a little more encouraging than a week ago. In one hive we have four frames full of honey but some of it has not been capped. Meaning that the honey is still too high in moisture content to seal off. The bees know how much moisture the honey can have in order for it to keep from fermenting. How they know this is beyond me. They know because God taught them to know, but how they determine that the honey is dry enough to seal off for later use is a mystery. When the moisture content is low enough, the honey will keep for years.

That uncapped honey should be ready in a week or so. In the other three hives, there is noticeable progress in the supers. The bees are starting to draw out the comb so the honey can be made and stored. Whether or not they will make enough in the weeks to come to allow us to harvest the honey remains to be seen. At the very least, we will get a couple quarts of honey from the hives. If there is not enough to harvest, I will leave the honey in the hive so the bees can feed on it this winter. Once the harvest time is over the process of treating the hives for mites and getting the bees ready for the colder months that are coming will be the goal of our continued care. Hoping for the hives to survive over the winter and come back strong in the spring.

The mice this year are invading to an extent to we have not seen before. Nothing I have tried to control, to catch, or to dispatch them is working effectively. This morning Victoria was freaked out by a mouse jumping out of her sock drawer as she opened her dresser. We routinely hear them scratching and munching in locations we are not able to clearly identify. When we investigate and get close enough to open a cabinet door or pull out a drawer where we think they might be, we rarely see anything except the mess that is left behind. So, unlike Victoria, we are not often able to see them. We will continue to try to get rid of them, but I am exasperated at the lack of success so far. Mama would rather have a snake in the house than to have mice to deal with, but we have not elected to let a snake loose in our house yet.

Meanwhile, on the outside of the house we are battling the squirrels. Although they are fun animals to watch in their playful antics, I worry when they get too comfortable with the house because it will not be long before they decide to take up residence in the attic. That is always disastrous. So, I routinely set out live traps to catch them. Once caught in those traps the squirrels are dispatched and fed to the coyotes. The few I remove from the property every year do not seem to negatively impact the overall population, so mama and I do not worry about negatively impacting the squirrel’s ecosphere. Yesterday, I caught one in a trap I had intended to reposition. It is set up on the front porch of the house. That is too close for comfort when they are investigating that close and the dogs are not bothered by their presence. That squirrel will no longer bother us, and I will set up the trap for the next curious uninvited visitor.  

Our little goats are growing quickly. They are such fun at this age. The scamper around as quick as a rabbit. Hurling themselves from the barn to the rock pile, shooting up and over the rocks. Taking Mama’s breath away as they frighten her with their antics. Our little injured male is trying to keep up with his sisters but falls behind quickly because of the cast on his leg. He seems to be adjusting well to the limited use of that appendage, but it does put him at a disadvantage. Hopefully, he will be well enough to have the cast removed by the first week of August. Mama is taking him for a follow up appointment Wednesday to see if the leg is mending properly, but the expectation is that the cast will remain for another two weeks at a minimum.

I will be teaching classes on my normal Tuesday and Thursday schedule this week. Next week will be on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Those are busy weeks. Tomorrow’s class is internal, so it will be a lot less formal and hopefully a lot more interactive. It is only a four-hour class – typically. When I present the class to our folks, there tends to be a lot more discussion which can push the class into the afternoon, but that does not happen every time.

We will see how it plays out tomorrow and go with the flow.

Investing, a look ahead

Yesterday, I spent the evening with a friend discussing real estate. His main question was how borrowing and the leverage it produces within real estate investment is the right way to go. We talked about owning and mortgaging as the two primary options for investing and the pros and cons involved with each strategy. I have used both and have not operated at a large enough volume in rental properties to know for certain which is the better strategy in the long run. I do know that if an investor is heavily mortgaged (borrowing money from the bank and making mortgage payments on the rental property) the time the property sits vacant is a hardship on the investor since he is still responsible to make the mortgage payments even though no rent is coming it.

But the investor that owns his properties outright has tied up a lot of money in the property. Money which will not be available for future investing. If you have plenty of cash on hand and a good supply of cash coming in, owning properties outright is a pretty sure thing. If you have just enough cash to get by, borrowing on the equity of the property is a prudent option. He is not a fan of owing anyone anything, but he wanted to know at least what I could tell him from my point of view. We ended up talking for several hours. Mama, who did not go with me, ended up texting his wife to ask if I was being held hostage. It really helped me to talk it through.

This weekend we have a lot to do but nothing that is a huge task. Just the farm chores that come up on a recurring basis. I will be on my own for most of those chores since Mama is still feeling poorly. For the most part, I am on my own for anything that falls outside of the house and the yards at the house. I do not mind. It gives me time to work, to think and to pray. I am working on clearing the fence lines along the road and will move to the back of the property when I get those done. Clearing the fences will help me make the repairs needed to the fences. Right now, I am hard-pressed to see where the breaches are that allowed our calf onto the neighbor’s property. Once identified, I can make the upgrades and repairs needed, but it is a lot of work.

I cut fifteen little trees out of a portion of fence at the far end of our property in just a small space. Once the heavy stuff is cut and pulled from the fence, I can go back and trim the weeds and thorns from the fence area where the big stuff was removed. It is a several step process to get the fence exposed. Largely, the fence is a barbed wire fence with some woven wore fencing attached to the lower portion of the fence. I assume that helped keep the hogs off the property I the beginning, but the wiring of both types is in less than fair condition. Much will need to be replaced. As I clear it for inspection, I will be able to see just how much new will be required. If I stay with the project, I might finish by the end of summer. That is a lofty goal. I can only work on the fence for a couple hours at a time before the heat wears me down.

We have a group of twenty leaving for Nazlini, AZ to help with a Vacation Bible School at the Navajo reservation there. Our church does this every year. I have thought about going several times but have not been able to follow through. One day I will. Our church members will put on the VBS Sunday through Thursday evening while having games and activities, crafts and Bible lessons through the day at the church on the reservation. They always have a great time. They always come home worn out but excited about what the Lord did during the week. Some of the young people going have made the trip for several years running and have developed friendships with the children on the reservation. For them, it is like a family reunion. Two of the return volunteers are children of the man I was visiting with yesterday evening.

I hope to take my little craft onto the lake this evening to tomorrow evening to check out the changes I made. That will determine if I keep the craft or sell it and outfit the Jon boat I have with some sort of wheeled transport system. Hopefully, the winds will die down to the point that I can make the test run. Mama and I are enjoying the fish I am able to catch from the lakes. We ate some last night.

Fish, is seems is the only beneficial “meat” for my blood type. That works for me.  

Otherwise occupied, sickly, invaders

This has been a week full of classes for me. Monday and Wednesday were online and in-person classes respectively, while Tuesday was a day in the office preparing for the class I presented yesterday. That is not a heavy load, but the time away from the computer takes the time I would ordinarily spend writing this blog. Yesterday was an interesting class because it was mostly my coworkers who attended the class. There were two participant who were from client companies, but neither of them had yet taken on the responsibilities the class teaches about. That leveled the playing field, so to speak, across the class and gave me the opportunity to start the newbies out right when they are required to do those activities at some future date. It was a little longer than usual class because there was a great deal of discussion. I welcome that. No one was in a particular hurry to leave the class when we were done so we got the chance to continue our informal discussions after the class. It is always amazing to see how everyone relaxes once the test is over. I was pretty tired when I finally got home. Not only from the hours spent talking and standing, but from a very poor night’s sleep the night before.

After Mama and I took care of the evening feeding, I took a short nap before getting ready for church. Mama stayed home since she was not feeling well – an ongoing cough has her feeling puny. We had a missionary on deputation headed to Nigeria last night. He was delightful. He preached about the disciple’s reaction to Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well. Not only was she a woman, but she was a despised Samaritan. When Jesus told the disciples to look on the fields which were white unto harvest, perhaps Jesus was seeing the many persons responding to the woman’s testimony of her conversation with Jesus as they came out of the city to see for themselves. His question was, do the differences you see in someone else hinder you from sharing the Gospel with that person? How big do those differences have to be to cause you to stay uninvolved? It was a great message.

I was given the liberty to work from home this morning because I have fulfilled my obligation to spend two days in the office by teaching two classes already this week. There are actually a few things I could do at the office that I cannot do from home, but I will catch up to those administrative tasks at a later date. Mama needed my help with the morning chores here at the farm while she tries to rest and recuperate. On the very sad side of this illness, she refuses to kiss me while she is sick. We will catch up at some later point, but I am not used to being so avoided.

This morning we had the house sprayed for insects. Our focus is on fleas, but the organic recipe used by the man doing to treatments offers a broader protection against multiple invaders. Although the smell from the treatment is not overpowering, it is definitely noticeable. With the cough Mama is dealing with, the addition of the vapors of the treatment to the air we are breathing is not a pleasant combination. It could be worse. The treatment is made from crushed chrysanthemums. Not wholly unpleasant, but we will need to light a few candles as well as opening the windows. Right now, the outside temperature is 81° F. also not unpleasant.

On the funny-how-things-happen side of life, when Mama opened a window in the kitchen, she did so by lowering the top windowpane. When she did we discovered that wood ants were starting to invade our house. Since the man was in the house to apply his treatment for bugs, he was able to identify the invasive species, spray and kill them and let us know what to do if they come back. Now if we could discover a workable way to keep the wasps from building their nests everywhere, I would feel like we were making headway against our insect invaders.

Speaking of invaders, mice are really bad this year as well. Since we are focused on protecting the chickens and the dogs, it is proving difficult to get ahead of the mice. We cannot set out poison. We have to use sticky traps. So far, those have proved minimally effective against mice although we have caught a chicken, multitudes of grasshoppers and a poisonous snake. We have eliminated only four mice with the traps. I can safely assume our population of mice is significantly higher than that.

So, the fight goes on.

Workshops, disappointing discovery, Mama’s meetings

 

Saturday, I attended a workshop for our beekeeping club. There were about thirty in attendance. The workshop was set up in a large barn, so we were out of the sun, but it was still very hot. We learned about treatment techniques for parasites and other invaders in the beehives, about labeling laws, about extracting honey and how to process it after it is taken from the comb. We spent over an hour in an apiary looking into six hives, finding the queens, looking at the frames of brood and checking for Varroa mites in three of the hives. We watched the beekeeper who manages those hives treat the hives for mites and saw a little of the evidence that would lead us to conclude that the mites are an issue in the hives. They fed us lunch between the morning and afternoon sessions. It was a good deal of information which I am still processing, but the time in the hives was the most enlightening for me.

On a humorous note, the veteran beekeeper who was providing the demos in the hives for us had to take off his bee suit at one point to let a bee out of his hood. It seems the bee found an opening in the sleeve where the elastic at the cuff of the sleeve was loose enough to allow the bee access inside the suit. It eventually worked its way up to the hood of the suit and had to be dealt with. Once it was let out, it went back to the hive where it had come from. Neither the beekeeper nor the bee were injured in the incident, but it provided a moment of levity and helped us all to realize, we are not that far apart in our abilities to care for our bees.

Charged up from the workshop, I looked into our hives once I was back home. I have hesitated to open the hives while there was a chance there was honey being made but had been assured that that was a good thing to do. So, I put my bee suit back on and looked into all four of our hives. What I found disappointed me as far as honey production was concerned. In three of the hives there is no honey in the honey supers. In the fourth, the bees have filled about four frames and are working their way outward. We will be able to get some of that honey in a few weeks. For the other three hives I looked over the additional boxes that were added a month ago and removed the additional box from one of the hives. They had not started work in the box at all. I left the additional boxes on the other two hives because the bees had begun working to draw out those boxes, but they were focused there and not on honey.

Hopefully, on the one I took the box away from, that will motivate the bees to start working on the honey super. The real issue is that there is not much nectar for them to draw from right now. So, we may have to start feeding the bees just to keep them healthy. The concern is disturbing the hives often distracts the bees from their honey production and puts them in a defense mode. Using in-hive feeders definitely disturbs the bees. At any rate, we will give the bees until the end of August to get the honey produced, remove the honey supers from all the hives and we will harvest what we can. As soon as the honey supers are removed from the hives I will treat for mites and begin feeding the bees with the candy boards I used last year. It seems there is a long learning curve in beekeeping.

While I was at the workshop, Mama was at a gathering of some of the local Color Street leaders attending their conference virtually. She had spent the better part of Friday watching presentations from the same conference from the comfort of home, but the get together Saturday added a little more personality to the day’s activities as they participated from afar. She came away very excited about what is going on in Color Street – opening up sales in Canada, providing websites and materials in Spanish, developing new convenient ways to pay stylists, etc. She spent the better part of Monday making contacts with her group and reaching out to potential recruits. She is pretty excited.

All our baby goats are doing well – even out little injured male. He is becoming more used to his cast and is beginning to paly as best he can with his siblings, hopping, jumping and running about on the rock pile that is the focus of all the little ones we have born on the farm. We will take him back to the vet next week to evaluate the break, but our expectation is that he will need to be in the cast for at least a month.

I have to teach a face-to-face class tomorrow. I do not get that opportunity often, so I am looking froward to it.

 

Kid updates, new glasses, the weekend

On Wednesday Mama took our little boy goat to the vet to see if they could identify the issue he was having with his leg. By x-ray they were able to see that the tibia in his lower leg had been broken. We were told it was a clean break and that the prognosis is that he will be fine once the leg mends. To aid in that mending, the leg was splinted and wrapped. That bandaging will have to be on his leg for at least a month. The issue is that the wrapping makes that wounded appendage longer than his other three legs, requiring him to drag that leg about as he struggles to move.

While he was able to hold the broken leg off the ground when it was bare, he is now forced to allow constant contact with the ground as he stands and moves. For that reason, his movements are limited. I cannot imagine how much pain that is causing him. Mama and I are a little concerned about him being able to access his mama when feeding time is announced, but for the moment, he appears to be doing well. We will have to be very vigilant to ensure he gets enough milk to stay healthy while he drags himself about as he heals, but that healing is a fair stretch of time away from where we are now. Meanwhile, his sisters are doing excellently.

Nate, Cori and the kids have been helping with a medical team at the surgical center in Honduras this week. The team is doing eye exams and outfitting, as they are able, those patients with glasses. All the glasses have been donated to the Medical Missions Outreach group for just such opportunities. Cori was telling Mama how incredible it is to see the joy of those who are able to get proper glasses when those glasses are put on and they are able to see clearly. As a wearer of glasses, I can sympathize with that elation. What is a simple expectation to us in our culture is a gift of immense value to those patients.

Cori, who has not been feeling well was thrilled to be able to fully translate for the mission’s team. That is no small feat to master the language to that proficiency and interpret on the fly for someone who does not understand how the English words they pick can affect the fluidity of translating those words into workable Spanish conversational vocabulary. Cori also shared with us that Mykenzie was able to help translate for the group. Mama and I were as thrilled to hear that as her proud mommy was to share it. As the clinic wound down yesterday, Cori sent us a picture of the new glasses she and Savanna were fitted for. Cori was obviously far more excited than Savanna.

Mama and I went to our beekeepers meeting yesterday evening and were reminded of a clinic that is going on tomorrow. I need to attend because they are going to be talking about harvesting honey as well as how to label the jars of honey for sale. There is a legally required verbiage for the labels and Mama and I need to adhere to those legal obligations.  Since I have no idea what the requirements are, it will be nice to learn. We will be spending time in hives at the farm where the clinic is being put on, so I am excited about getting the opportunity to see what is needed for Mama and I to get our honey from the hives and into the jars. I have all the equipment at the ready, so this is the final information I need to get the work done. I have been neglectful of the hives for a several weeks, so I need the gentle push to get me doing the maintenance that the hives require. So, tomorrow will be all about the bees.

Mama will be attending a conference for Color Street today and tomorrow so she will not be going to the bee clinic with me. Today, she will attend online from the house. Tomorrow she will meet with a small local group to attend the conference – still virtually – but in a group setting. The actual conference is happening in Orlando, FL. Which, by the way, is where Grandma and Grandpa are at the moment. (Be praying for them. Their situation is not good.) I think Mama is looking froward to the conference. She, like me, needs a gentle push now and then to keep moving on this business. Like al true growth opportunities, it is outside her comfort zone.

Next week I have classes on Monday and Wednesday, so it will be an off week for me. As I tabulated the numbers for the classes taught over the past quarter (April-June), we taught 24 classes. I taught 18 of those classes in the twelve weeks of that quarter.

No wonder I felt like I was constantly busy.

New arrivals, Mama home, fishing

It has been some time since I last updated this blog, so let me catch you up. I worked only one day from home last week, Thursday. Other than that, I was at the office. This week is a little more standard fare with the exception that Monday was holiday. The one day I was able to be home last week, Lilly delivered three healthy kids.

Two girls and one little boy. At least that is what I thought until I went back out later to check on any cleanup that needed to be done and found a very small little boy that had been stillborn. It was the last of the kids to be delivered. Since Mama was with the girls in New Jersey, I recorded a couple of short videos to show her and the girls the new babies.

Unfortunately, I am not able to figure out how to include those videos in this blog. As I write this the three are doing well but the little boy has a displaced hip from some rough treatment from Lilly shortly after birth. Mama and I will get him to the vet to get that corrected as soon as we can, but he should be fine.

Friday, I taught a class but, in the evening, I took my little pontoon craft out onto the quarry lake and tried it out. It did not work out as well as I had hoped because I did not have it balanced out right. For my weight, the trolling motor and the battery to be supported properly I discovered that the seat was too far to the back of the rack it sits on, making the back of the craft too heavy. I also had not inflated the pontoons sufficiently for the weight I expected it to support. I was able to fish for a bit before deciding to get off the water. No sooner had I left the lake when a thunderstorm rolled over us and the winds were over forty miles per hour. It was only the Lord that got me off the water before that happened.

Saturday, I worked around the farm doing a lot of little things. It was brutally hot, so I limited my time on each chore to keep from getting overheated. Victoria went to a party at one of her coworkers homes that evening and I went to pick up Mama at the airport. I arrived at the airport only a few minutes before her flight landed and I was certain I was at the right baggage claim for her flight, but I started to doubt myself as I watched passengers accumulate around the already moving baggage claim with Mama yet to arrive. So, as I waited, I watched the door all the passengers had come through and the luggage being sent for pickup. I spotted her suitcase and retrieved it from the belt a few minutes before Mama came through the doors to the baggage claim area but at least I had confirmed I was in the right area. I had to have her soften her embrace because I was very swollen from the extraction of the tooth that had happened Thursday. (By the way, that went well after seven shots to numb the jaw.)

Sunday was wonderful and Monday was a holiday. I got started on clearing the fence lines Monday. I lasted only a couple hours mostly because within that time I had broken the weed eater, the chainsaw and the string trimmer. So, I packed everything in the bucket of the tractor and did a few rounds of mowing with the brush hog before hauling the equipment back to the shop for repairs.

Later that evening, Mama and I went fishing in the smaller upper lake. It was an absolutely beautiful evening. On her first cast she caught a whopper. The picture we took shows me with the fish because Mama does not handle the fish, she only hooks them. All together, we caught two very large bass and five smaller bass in a little over an hour.

Since my outing on Friday evening, I have not been able to get my little craft back onto the water. The winds have been too high. I am looking forward to checking out the changes I made to the seat and pontoons to see if it makes a difference. If not, I will sell the craft and make an attachment for the aluminum Jon boat I have here at the farm to mount a wheeled attachment to it so I can transport it more easily to the water from where I park the truck. Without that help, I am not able to maneuver the boat to the water without hurting myself. It is not very heavy, but it is very awkward.

Tomorrow I teach a class. It is a 4-hour class, so it will go quickly. Next week I have classes on Monday and Wednesday. Mama and I might go to Victoria, TX for Lillianna’s wedding next weekend but we are not sur if we are invited yet. Lillianna is Joshua’s eldest stepchild. Our oldest grandchild.

Other than that, life seems pretty much back to normal here at the farm.  

Classes, safe travel, homecoming

This has been an unusual and busy week. I typically teach two classes per week however, this week I was scheduled to teach three classes as well as participate in a team building activity at the HQ house. That required me to be at the HQ house for the first three days of this week. Not a bad thing, just unusual. So, today, when I would normally be required to be in the office, I am working from home for the only day this week – and that for only a half day. I will be heading to a dental office this afternoon to have a problematic tooth pulled. Tomorrow I will be teaching the third class of the week. It will be a small class, but sometimes that is better because there is no ability on the part of the few participants to avoid participating during the class. Hopefully, the extraction will not interfere with my ability to talk as I present the 8-hour class.

To keep things going on the farm I have been going out to open up the chickens and ensure waterers and feeders were full before I left for the office each morning. The chickens are a little put off by the change in routine, but they adapt. During the current time arrangement, it is getting light as I am getting ready to go to work, so there is enough light in the early hours as I have been ensuring the chickens are set for the day. This morning, I was a little later than the 6:15 time I had opened the coop doors on the previous three mornings and the chickens were upset with me for the late arrival. As for the goats, I have only been feeding them in the evening versus trying to get that done in the limited time I have before leaving for work. It not only stretches out the feed, but it saves me a good bit of time. They are no worse off for the single feeding since they tend to not eat as heavily during the hot days. But that does not stop them from fussing at me as I open up the chickens each morning. So far, we have no kids born to our nanny goats, but it cannot be very much longer before we see out little ones arrive.

Mama and company arrived in New Jersey safely on Tuesday evening. Yesterday Brittany and Andrew were able to close on the house and because of the expense and disappointments with the hotels in the area, they may stay the next several nights in the empty house. It would definitely save Brittany and Andrew a lot of money, but it will be very difficult for Mama without a proper bed to sleep in and nowhere to sit through the hours not spent in errands and sleeping. Mama is obviously distraught with the decision, but it is probably the right one for the situation. At any rate, Mama will be flying home Saturday evening. So, the inconvenience of staying in an empty house will only last a couple days. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. The great news is that all the miles that were covered in the days of travel from Kansas to New Jersey did not present any problems to our travelers while providing Mama with an unusual opportunity to spend a lot of time with the girls.

Mama was able to go to Somerset Bible Baptist Church last night. She was warmly received. Especially by the now grown-up children in the church that we taught in Children’s Church through their three- to five-year-old years. To see some of them now, almost twenty years later is a blessing for us. To know we had a part in their Spiritual development as young children and to see where they are now is a great reminder of the how the Lord can use us to influence the next generation. It makes me miss having those opportunities in our present church to work with the children, but others have taken on that ministry and are doing a fantastic job in doing so.

I am looking froward to a long weekend. We are off on the 5^th, and I am hoping the extra times allows me to get to the work I need to accomplish with the bees. I have not been able to look into the hives to check the progress of the honey production because of daily rain showers. I can assume from the activity at each hive that things are okay, but I am very curious. I have bought an extractor and the buckets to collect and strain the honey I am expecting to process. So, I feel like w are ready to collect our first crop of honey.

All my coworkers are ready to but as much as Mama and I are willing to sell.