Grandpa update, other preparations, repurposing

Yesterday afternoon, Mama, Victoria, and Grandma had a very good visit with Grandpa. Grandpa was in good spirits and was teasing everyone in the room while they were there for their daily visit. It is our hope that he will be transferred to a local rehab facility either today or tomorrow. There are no rooms available for Grandpa to be transferred within the hospital, so they need to move Grandpa out the neural ICU. Having him closer would be a great benefit to us. Making the round trip daily has been taking a toll on Mama. Rather than making those daily excursions with Mama ad Grandma, I have been holding back at the farm to handle the watering of the animals which must be done more frequently while the temperatures are in the triple digits. Maybe today will be their last such trip.

Meanwhile, Norman brought the camper from the RV park to the farm so it could be set up for Grandma and Grandpa to live in as was their custom for the past year. However, it remains to be seen whether or not Grandpa can access that camper. Because it is a fifth wheel type of RV, it sits high and requires three steps to get into the camper. As additional two steps have to be navigated to get into the bed which sits over the tongue of the camper. There is a step down into the bathroom as well. Right now steps are not their friend. Living again in the camper is a possibility, just not the best solution.

With that in mind, there was a lengthy discussion Saturday night about how to provide Grandma and Grandpa a private living space. Building a small home, buying, and moving onto our property a shell that we could finish out (like those sold at Lowe’s), buying a tiny home, and setting it on our property, etc., were all discussed and eventually discounted. I think what we have settled upon is buying a used bumper pull RV and setting it near our house to meet the current need. I am mostly opposed to building a separate house of any kind because of the expense of doing so, so a more accessible RV may be a good stopgap for us. We are not looking for a permanent solution at this point.

In fact, while we were talking the ideas through, Victoria located such a camper for sale very near us. I am told we will be looking at that RV this evening. It could be quickly purchased and moved so it would be ready when Grandpa does come home. Norman could then take the current camper to West Virginia with him or sell it for what he could get out of it. I would rather not have two RV’s sitting next to the house, but we will see how those things play out. For the moment, Grandma has taken over Victoria’s room and Victoria has moved into the spare bedroom that Tres was using.  Norman is sleeping on the couch in the living room. Tres will be moving out this week after seven months with us. Mama and I got to keep our bedroom for ourselves, but that was touch and go for a short while.

I did not get to work in the hives over the weekend. I honestly got too hot to keep going in the 107° heat. I am planning on working the hives over my lunchbreak tomorrow – my one day working from home this week. It is surprising how quickly I get thoroughly soaked when I am out in the heat for a short length of time, but in less than an hour I will be wringing wet all the way down to my socks. Fun times.

The little ducks have been enjoying the nesting box built into the duck enclosure and with the built in draining for their water play, the area is far less messy. We did have a scare Saturday morning when I went out to feed – Mama was tending to Grandma. When I opened the lid to the nesting box, which we had closed to protect the little ones overnight, and the ducklings were not inside the box. I looked carefully but could not find them anywhere inside the enclosure. I did not see them outside the enclosure. They were just gone.

When Mama and I began to go through the normal morning feeding routine, we discovered the ducks under the little coop. Just kind of hanging out since the chickens had not been let out yet. To get the ducklings to come back through the fencing under to coop so we could get them back into their area, we let the chickens out. Once they duckling saw the chickens coming into the space under the coop building, they exited quickly, and Mama and I were able to get them back into their home area. It took me some time to figure our how they had gotten out of the box and enclosure, but I did figure it out and sealed of that escape route.

I also tested the water trough I had built into the enclosure. Once it was about half full, I found a significant leak in the trough very near the bottom of the trough. So, I will have to abandon that idea and probably go with something smaller. It will be too expensive to replace it in kind.  The leaking trough will not be wasted because Mama and I will use the large trough as a planter. Such a repurposing is very common in our area and will provide us with a good way to increase our vegetable production for plants that do not seem to do well when planted into our ground. We are trying to use everything we can before looking at buying anything new.

So far that has been mostly working for us.