Powering through, packing and repacking, voting, duck weather finally

Some days it seems like a major accomplishment to just power through without experiencing any upsets in the household. Not that things are always troublesome in our interpersonal interactions, but day to day fluctuations in emotions are challenging. With the change in weather – it is getting colder – Grandma and Grandpa are more likely to spend the entire day in the house versus enjoying some outdoor time on the porch. Because of Grandma’s need to have background noise incessantly, usually Christian music – which makes it tolerable and even enjoyable if it did not take our focus away - it is often impossible to think clearly. Though it may not seem too bad to have music constantly playing on her phone, it is a distraction to Mama and me as we are trying to work. Grandma’s continuous commentary on songs that actually catch her attention add to the disruption as we work. Mama on her business and me at my job. I can close the bedroom door if it gets to be too much. Mama does not have that option, so the struggle to get through her requisite tasks is a bit more difficult. We will make it, but some days are harder than others.

Besides the music as white noise in the house, when Grandma gets a phone call, she does not ever put the phone to her ear. Each call is put on the speaker at full volume and Grandma’s part of the conversation follows that same volume requirement. Hence, we all get to participate in her conversations – every one of them. When it does not satisfy Grandma that we can all hear the entire conversation for almost anywhere in the house, if we walk through the room where she is taking the call, Grandma will prompt those who enter the room to include themselves in the conversation. She will say. “Janie, say hello to Kim.” as Mama passes by. Janie, Grandma’s older sister will play along with the request and wish whomever well. Mama, thus distracted, will often forget why she entered the room and have to start her quest over.

Grandpa will often exit the bedroom when Grandma takes a call there. If the conversation seems way too loud when Grandma is sitting in our living room with both her voice and the phone at full volume, I cannot imagine how loud it is when that process is carried out in the small bedroom they occupy. Mama always answers the phone in speaker mode as well, but she is more aware of those around her and tends to keep both her voice and the phone volume turned down. None-the-less, Grandma will try her best to participate in every conversation Mama has on the phone if she is within earshot. Thus, Mama tends to be careful when she takes a call from me. I do not necessarily enjoy three-way conversations.

With her trip to Honduras coming up next week, Victoria is packing and repacking her suitcases. She is taking most of the items she will need for the month long stay but must also include in those suitcases many things Cori has had delivered to the farm recently. Once done, all the bags have to meet the weight limit imposed for travel. It is a daunting chore. I am sure she will be able to meet the expectation before she heads to the airport, but it will take a couple tries to get it right. She has done so before but not when she needed to be gone for a whole month. On the Honduran side, Cori and the kids are excited about her coming. On the Chico Farm side, Grandma is already lamenting Victoria’s absence. Although Grandma and Grandpa insist they have no favorites, If they did, Victoria would have the honor.

Monday evening Mama, Victoria, and I voted. Early voting opened up here on Monday the 24^th so we took advantage of the opportunity to get our vote in. There have been times that circumstances in past years made it impossible to get to the voting booth on election day, so we try to get to the polls early if we can. Mama took Grandma and Grandpa to vote yesterday. Since they have Bowie addresses on their licenses, they could not vote with Mama and I, but they made sure to cast their votes. Grandpa feels that this is perhaps the last election he will get to participate in. He may be right. Only God knows for sure, but Grandpa wanted to ensure he and Grandma did not miss this one.

It is duck weather here today – finally. Storms began to roll through our area at 4 am and the rain they brought continued through most of the morning and afternoon. A light rain most of the time with occasional heavier rainfall. As far as the ducks are concerned, that is perfect weather, and they have all spent the day out of their covered pen letting the rain wash them clean. Well, at least their tops are clean. They are filthy on their undersides because they like to use their bills to “drill” holes in the mud and then preen their chests with their filthy bills. But it makes them happy.

It makes up happy as well. The ducks are almost as fun as the goats.

The Men’s Retreat, ducks, rain

We left the church at about 8 am Thursday morning to make the seven-hour drive to Rose Bud, AR in our church bus. We refer to it as a “people mover” and it had a lot of extra room for the eight of us who rode in the bus, but it was a rough ride even though there have been improvements made to the suspension. So, we bounced and shook for the entire stretch of road we covered, but we had a great time just visiting – spending a relaxing time just anticipating the retreat. The wide-ranging conversation among the riders with me on the bus was amusing as the hours were filled with general conversation, outlandish and humorous stories and any jokes that could be remembered, but current events were the primary focus of our hours of sharing concerns, plans and faith in the Lord’s providence.

There were, of the thirteen total going to the retreat, only six of us that had been the Triple S Campground for the yearly event. We knew the other seven were in for a very pleasant surprise. It is an atmosphere of relaxed competition in various challenges and no-holds-barred preaching. Skeet shooting competition, .22 caliber shooting competition, a 3-D archery competition, ax throwing, a team golf challenge, a potato gun competition, and a corn hole tournament. All of those take place on Friday, which makes it a full day when breakfast, lunch, and dinner are part of the day as well as morning, afternoon and evening preaching services added into complete the schedule. The evening service featured two preachers.

The weather was perfect other than being a little cold Thursday night and most of us were thoroughly chilled by the time we headed to our cabins. The preaching was great. Our old pastor, Mike Norris was there as well as two other preachers who split up the preaching duties. The messages were aimed at us men – without any apology as to the content of those messages. It was what we often refer to as “hard” preaching. Something we do not get of often today and it was well received by all in attendance. It was not accusatory. It was honest, brutally honest. A reminder of what we have been missing in living out the convictions of our faith as boldly as is now necessary in our present world.

In those messages, I received the answer to a prayer Mama and I have been praying for several weeks now. We have been challenging ourselves to reflect on our time raising our children to see if God would reveal to us what we did wrong in guiding the spiritual lives of our children. Over those years, we were very careful to have our family is good churches, under good preachers, surrounded by good friends and yet several of our children are no longer interested in seeking to please God with their own lives nor in the raising of their children to be lovers of the Lord. It will take me a couple days to put the information into words, but I am confident that we have an answer. Now, it is my responsibility to act upon that insight.

Yesterday, in the evening service, many of the men gave a testimony of their experience. Two of those that got up in front of the church to give that testimony was, in itself, a proof of the impact the preaching had had on those men that attended. Those normally reserved men would never have stood in the pulpit in front of the congregation to speak even a few words, but there they were, and it was wonderful to hear how the Lord had touched their hearts during the past three days. All of us who spoke met on the same theme of leading our children and grandchildren by walking in and witnessing of our faith more boldly.

When I got back to the farm, somewhere around 5 pm Saturday evening, I immediately started feeding our animals. Mama had been all day at an event about an hour away, so Grandpa had made a circuit around the coops and paddocks to ensure waterers were refreshed – per Mama’s instructions – but feeding still needed to be done and I needed the activity, having sat for the past seven hours in transit home. That took about an hour but once accomplished, I reworked an outlet/switch I added in the coop to give light to the quail we have caged in that alcove.

Since we purchased the quail, they have not been laying. I believe it is too dark where we have them. Mama was concerned that they were too crowded in the single cage. So, for my part, I got the outlet working and plugged in a night light to give a bit of light for now. I will rework the switch to power the light fixture I placed in the alcove. Additionally, yesterday, Mama and I split the quail into two groups of five and four. We will know in a few days if those new arrangements have benefited the birds. We will know it worked if they begin laying again.

Tonight, I will take three Jumbo Pekin drakes to the restaurant to process them. Mama will be happy to see them gone and I will be happy to see them prepped to eat. I do not know if Alex will take two of the ducks or only the one, but we have three that need to go, so I am looking forward to getting them ready for the table. For Alex’s part, he is very excited to get the duck meat. He has told us repeatedly that his family really likes duck and fresh is best. Maybe, I can get some recipes for cooking the fowl.

It began raining this morning and has continued to do so off and on all day. We have needed this rail desperately. So, despite the inconvenience, we are elated.

Honey harvest, poor egg production, overnight freeze, Men’s retreat

Monday evening, I tried to extract the honey from the frames taken from the hives Saturday, but that did not turn out well. When the Echeveria’s showed up to see the extractions process, we rapidly discovered that the coolness of the building made the honey far too thick to be spun from the cells on the frames. Mama and I were able to cut some of the honeycomb from a frame and get it into a small jar, but even though the frames were absolutely full of honey it would not flow freely enough to collect by spinning in the extractor. Apologizing to the family for the less than successful demonstration, I put coverings on the extractor with the two frames in it, covering the bucket with the other two frames in it as well, and started the heater we have in the well house to warm it us as much as possible overnight and through the class I was teaching yesterday.

When I tried again yesterday evening, I had a little more success, but even then, in the warmed-up atmosphere of the well house, it was still a slow process to coax the honey from the frames. I gave up after two hours but in that time, I had been able to get about twelve pounds of honey into the bucket I use to transfer the honey into jars. I should have been able to get double that amount. Perhaps if I had been able to warm the well house to ninety degrees, but that did not seem practical. The special five-gallon bucket I catch the spun honey into was placed in the house on the table hoping the temperature in the house would be enough to warm the honey to the point it could be drained easily into the accumulated jars, but that was not to be.

When I tried to work with the honey over my lunch break, the honey in the bucket seemed stiff, almost congealed. So, I put the bucket into our bathroom and set the heater to high. It will be hours before the entire mass is warmed enough to work with – maybe after church tonight. Otherwise, it will be late Saturday night before we can put the honey in jars for final storage and I am sure Mama will not allow the bathroom to stay hot for the next three days and nights.

We did not experience this problem with the honey we took from the hives in the Spring. Whether it was the hotter weather or the natural viscosity of the honey that had been produced at that time, it flowed very freely. In fact, it seemed too runny to be good honey. It tasted very good, so we worked with what we had, which turned out to be much easier than what I am currently trying to extract and move into jars. Next week I will place the frames back into the respective hives so the bees will have a head start on their Spring honey as well as use the honey I had to abandon efforts to get out of the frames. With what I left in the hives initially and what I will be placing back into the hives, my bees will be well fed through the Winter.

Over the past few weeks Mama and I have tried everything we know to increase the egg production from all our laying birds - chickens, ducks, and quail - without success. So, after doing some research, Mama and I have decided to feed the flocks fermented feed. The process of fermenting the feed is straightforward. We only have to put a set amount of feed in a bucket, put enough water in the bucket to cover the feed with water to about an inch above the feed and allow the feed to sit for a couple days. The feed, we are told will naturally ferment. We can only do a couple days’ worth of feed at a time because the fermented feed must be eaten within a couple days or it will spoil. Small batches are the key – so the instructions say. We will try. We have plenty of feed to experiment with at the moment.

Yesterday evening, in addition to getting the honey extracted, I spent a lot of steps getting faucets covered in preparation for an expected overnight freeze. The freeze did not materialize, but I prepared, nonetheless. All that work will have to be undone today to allow us to properly water the flocks and herds. We did get close to freezing but did not reach that temperature. However, we will be back in the nineties within a couple days. Thankfully, that will give more time to properly prepare things for the cold weather we know we have coming. It was a good practice run, but it made for a very hectic evening.

Tomorrow morning, I will be leaving for a Men’s Retreat in Rose Bud, Arkansas. I am looking forward it. I did not get to go to the retreat last year but the year before I thoroughly enjoyed the days we spent at the retreat and in the travel to and from. The church has fifteen or so men going to the retreat, so I anticipate that we will have a great time together. The weather is supposed to warmer than it was some years ago but should be pleasant. Cool and dry.

We are all looking forward to it.

Mama’s event, a lot of little things, harvesting more honey

Early Saturday morning I got Mama set up at the square in Chico. We were there in the company of a pretty large group of other vendors also setting up for the day. Neither me nor Mama had huge expectations for the day since there were several other similar events in many of the localities near us, so the competition for buyers to travel to little Chico was going to be fierce. That turned out not to be an issue. Mama did better at that venue than she has done setting up anywhere in the past. She was very excited about the sales she had made as well as the numerous contacts collected from those who had bought from her. She will be at another event this Saturday for which she has much higher expectations. Supposedly the clientele for the coming venue is a little bit more well off than the Chico shoppers. Time will tell how that plays out, but her efforts Saturday paid off well enough to truly encourage Mama.

I am not sure if Grandma’s presence at her booth helped or not, but Grandma spent the entire day with her. It was a very long day out for Grandma and seemed to wear her out thoroughly, so she spent the entire day in bed yesterday. I know Grandma enjoyed the day of catching the attention of total strangers and slowing them down for a minute or two while she regaled them with some words of wisdom or a humorous comment – at least, humorous in her way of thinking.

Many times, I miss Grandma’s humor, so she has to tell me what she said was supposed to be funny. But, yesterday, Mama enjoyed Grandma’s company and the moments of actual help with manning the booth. They were ready to come home about 3:30, so Victoria and I went to Chico to take down the shelter and load up tables and wares. Grandma was ready to get home even thought it took her several stops to leave the area as she said her goodbyes to those who she had met that day.

Saturday, I got almost 18,000 steps. I got a lot of little things done – from cleaning up in the garage to adding a timed light switch for the duck area, to relocating the quail, to harvesting honey and moving some panels Norman had placed at the fence beside the tractor into the garden shed. It was a good day. Most of the chores I finished were not overly important, but they were all useful items to cross off my list. The ducks, Mama had learned, needed about sixteen hours of light to make an egg. Since our days are significantly shorter that that, we have to supplement the light to encourage egg development. The quail were relocated to a larger cage in a larger area within the coop, albeit a darker area. I did not finish getting their light hooked up, so we are leaving the coop exterior entry door open for now. Since that door is normally closed, the chickens are enjoying the extra area to explore.

I have held off working in the hives for a while now, but I used Saturday afternoon to make a thorough inspection. I added beetle traps to both boxes in each of the two hives and I did a frame-by-frame inspection of each hive box to gauge the amount of honey the bees had produced over the summer. What I found in one of the two hives were eight frames of honey, each weighing about twelve pounds. I harvested three frames from that hive, leaving those bees five frames of honey as food for the coming winter.

In the second hive, I found six- and one-half frames of honey. I harvested only one of those frames in order to leave those bees sufficient winter stores. Mama and I have enough for ourselves with a little extra so I did not want to take everything. Some beekeepers take all the honey and feed the bees through the winter with substitute foods, as I could have, but I did not want to rob the hives this year. Maybe next year when we try to sell the honey I will take more of their stores, but we did not need it so I left it for the bees.

Just those four frames of honey weigh about fifty pounds. We will collect the honey from those frames this evening. I waited until this evening so that Joseph Echeverria will be able to observe the process. He expressed a lot of interest to Mama and his mother to see how that part of the harvest is done. Mama and I try to take every opportunity we have to teach anyone interested in what little we know. I do not know how much we will get from the frames, but it will be a good bit. Additionally, Mama wants to collect some comb from the frames as well as spinning out the honey. That will be a first and I am not entirely certain how to do that, but we will muddle through somehow.

I will be teaching a class tomorrow and at a Men’s Retreat in Rosebud, AR Thursday through Saturday. I am looking forward to the retreat; far much more than Mama who will be on her own with the feeding chores for those days. It is always better when we are able to share those responsibilities, but she does not begrudge me the break.

At least, I do not think so.

 

More ducks, and now quail, Victoria, learning a language, shopping

Since we purchased more ducks last night as well as four quail, Victoria is accusing us of starting a bird farm and she may have a point. The reason for the duck purchases was to pick up enough older hens to get at least sex or seven eggs per day in the weeks to come. If we are going to sell duck eggs by the dozen, we need to accumulate that number of eggs in as little time as possible. Currently it would take us two weeks to fill a container with the dozen eggs. Meaning that some of the eggs would be two weeks old before they were sold. That is not a plan we thought was marketable. So, to overcome that delay, we are attempting to have enough hens laying to accomplish the accumulation in a more reasonable timeframe. We will see how that works out, but that is the plan. Right now, we have two drakes and eleven hens in the duck area. That will be our flock through the winter.

Also, since the sellers we purchased from over the past two evenings are trying to sell off the majority of their flock, we also bought a couple Jumbo Pekin drakes to process. I believe Mama has me scheduled to meet Alex next Monday evening to dress out a couple ducks. Alex and his family are very excited about the ducks. Turns out that is one fowl they really like but are too expensive to buy at the market. A small duck in the Chinese market will sell for about $35. Some are priced a $50 each. Having access to fresh ducks to process is exciting to him. The drakes we bought were sold to us for $5 each. We will in turn sell them for $25 each. Not a bad deal. We will certainly pay more for future meat ducks, but for this purchase, it seemed like a no brainer. From here, we will raise up from our flock ducks for meat as well as to sell.

In our trip to the seller, we also picked up four quail for ourselves and six for another interested friend who goes to church with us. They were sold to us for $5 each regardless of sex. So, Mama and I bought a male and three females. For our friends, we bought two males and six females. Since that family is interested in rapidly raising a brood of quail, they will be excited that on the way howe to our farm, their little beginner brood laid two eggs which are almost sure to be fertile. Mama and I only bought four because we contracted for a male and four female quail from the young lady that sold us our first ducks. That will enable us to start with two males for seven females – a good ratio.

Victoria learned at a recent doctor’s appointment that the two lumps in her breasts that she has been trying to ignore should be investigated further. We are not sure at this point the if nature of the lumps are of imminent concern but some tests have been set up to see if the doctor can arrive at a prognosis. We are concerned even though Victoria is pretending to not be so. Her most immediate fear is that a bad diagnosis will hinder her sabbatical in Honduras next month, but that should not be an issue. Even if the prognosis is bad, the worst-case scenario being cancer, the remedy will be somewhere out in the future versus happening immediately. Fortunately, Victoria has been granted a paid leave of absence from work so insurance coverage will be uninterrupted, should that become an urgent need. We covet your prayers.

On a humorous note, Cori sent Mama a message relaying a funny event in their lives that happened around dinnertime the other day. Since soup had been the main course for that dinner, Savanna asked, “Mommy! So, I have to drink the bra?” Since all her siblings immediately broke out in uproarious laughter, she knew she had said something wrong. Then to admonish her scoffers, she explained, “Well that’s what it sounds like when you say that word.” Mommy pronounces the word properly, “It’s called broth.” Now properly instructed, she re-asked the question. No, she was not required to drink the broth if she did not want to. Sometimes learning a language from conversation presents its own challenges.

Mama and Victoria are out shopping today. I believe the focus in on shoes. Victoria has been having some foot problems stemming mostly from the shoes she has been wearing. My advice was for the two of them to go to a store where they would be fitted properly by someone trained to make that determination and recommendation. Even if they choose not to buy from that store, they, especially Victoria, would know what they were needing in shoe sizes and styles. Knowing rather than going only by “feel” is a good point of reference when trying to buy shoes.

Over the forty years of our marriage, I cannot begin to count all the times Mama has been horribly disappointed with a shoe purchase. Sometimes the poorly chosen shoes were returned. Sometimes they were stored in her closed for years to come. Never to be worn. Rarely has she been truly pleased long-term with any footwear she has purchased. It happens. Just not very often.

If they do take the time to be fitted, maybe that will change.

Mama’s weekend, my weekend

Friday, I spent the majority of the day at a conference in Denton. It was a fun time. I had been conscripted to give a short presentation – only an hour – to a group of attendees. It turned out that none of the attendees even use the processes that are our special area of expertise, but the thirty in the session with me gave me their full attention as I explained what we at Energy Worldnet do in the realm of qualifications of personnel. Ten of the participants were my colleagues, but the other twenty told me they enjoyed the discussions and the presentation – even though it was information that had no application in their work lives, they were glad to hear there was a process by which workers were qualified to do the work they do on regulated pipelines. After the presentation was over, I visited a few moments with my peers and then did some shopping for Mama before heading home and finishing the day from there.

That evening, Mama and I went to Bowie to see if the vendor who is there every month with his collection of fowls had any ducks for sale, specifically hens - female ducks. He did not. There were a lot of drakes – male ducks – but only one hen. Mama was not interested in that hen, so we left emptyhanded. On the way back home, we stopped by the house of the young lady that had sold us our original ducks and we bought two more hens from her. From that seller, we made contact with another duck seller who has a flock she is needing to disperse before the family relocates later this year. I do not know if we will get a special deal in her need to sell off her flock of ducks, but she has several hens of the breed we are looking for. As long as we can keep our little flock to about eighteen, we should be fine with the space we have set up for our ducks.

While we were at the seller’s house looking over her ducks, we arranged to purchase a few quail to raise in our coop. I have a cage set up for that purpose in the west side of the coop, but since we were picking up ducks in the only cage we had brought, we will have to go back for the quail some evening this week. What our future plan is for the quail is not settled, but those we are buying will be near the age of laying eggs that can be eaten like any other egg. In the spring we will hatch many of those eggs to raise quail we can them process for meals.

Saturday morning, Mama and I were both up early. Her so that she could meet a Color Street partner in Pilot Point, TX, about an hour away. The event turned out to be a good one for Mama and the stylist she shared the booth and the day with. They ended up selling more than Mama had ever had the chance to sell at any one event. We do not know what her percentage of the sales will be, but it was a good day. Mama also learned some additional pointers in the use of her Square. From this point on, she will be far more proficient in getting those credit card sales. During the day, Mama had several unique encounters during the day, one of which was a pair of pet lemurs in the company of their owners. Mama was home a little after 10 pm. Having left the house at 7 am, it turned out to be a long day – especially since the sales receipts showed they had only four sales after 5 pm.

While Mama was at her event, I went to Nocona to pick up the beef from the calf we had processed. As I paid the processing fee, the frozen meat was retrieved and loaded in the back seat of the truck. There were only four boxes, but each one weighted about sixty pounds. From Nocona I went straight home to off load the meat into our chest freezer. It was a tight fit to get all the packaged cuts of meat into the space even after I pulled out a couple items we had placed in the freezer and forgotten about. I kept out two roasts and a package of T-bone steaks. The roasts were for Sunday lunch. The T-bones for dinner tonight.

In the ranging conversation with my fellow employees Friday morning at the conference, I was offered a free goat. One of my peers has a sister who is no longer enamored with the goat she has raised and is desperately looking to rehome the animal. Over the past several weeks I have been praying for an extra animal to take with the goat we have raised for processing. Our little male will only give us about forty pounds of meat so to make the trip worthwhile I wanted a second animal – lamb or goat – to make the trip and expense provide more meat. I just did not want to pay too much for a second animal. Free is a great price, but I am not sure what I will end up with since I have not seen the goat in question. So, sometime late this week or over the weekend I will pick up the animal, or at least inspect the goat, at the farm where he currently resides which is somewhere near Gainesville. Maybe Mama and I can make the trip more enjoyable if we can coordinate a visit with the Cantrell’s.

We had great services Sunday. Grandma went to church with us Sunday night. Mama spent the majority of the service trying to curtail Grandmas comments and vociferous agreements with our pastor as he preached. She enjoyed herself before (we always get to the church an hour early for choir practice), during (as she emphasized her ascent to the message), and after the service (as we pried her away from anyone she could stop to hear her say whatever had come to her mind). She needs that time out to spend her insatiable need to just talk to anyone in earshot and Grandpa need the time of solace whenever we can provide those respites. It is a win-win. Most everyone at church enjoys Grandma’s rambling conversations – mostly about herself – so she is never short of someone to talk to when she goes with us.

It was a good, productive weekend.

Little things, little extras, too much stuff

Sunday afternoon on our way home from church, Mama and I passed a house where a trailer full of square bales of hay was set up to sell the hay. The sign advertised the hay for ten dollars per bale. A really good price for this area right now. So, Mama and I got changed and went back to look the hay over. The bales were heavy, tightly packed, and freshly cut. It was high quality coastal hay. There was a bit of broom grass in the hay, but it had not matured or seeded out, so it will not interfere with the goats eating the hay. We bought ten bales which I put in the little shelter next to the buck’s paddock. That should carry us through until Norman comes from West Virginia with the bales he promised to haul to us from there. Tomorrow we will begin feeding out that hay. Since there is absolutely no grass in either of the paddocks, the goats will not turn down the offering and we will be able to gauge their interest in the hay. I do not foresee a problem, but time will tell. Sometimes the goats are a bit picky.

Grandpa and I sat together Monday evening in the chairs set up on the front walk for him and Grandma and talked in general. As we both looked over the front yard, I mentioned that if Grandpa would like, he could scrape the dirt area in front of us to level out and fill in the areas where Samson had dug a huge hole over the past several years. Grandpa is much better at that type of tractor work than I am, and I told him so. My concern is that the hole fills with water when we do get rain and it makes for a muddy mess in our front yard for extended periods of time. It is unsightly in dry times, but much more unsightly in wet times. Well, yesterday he did just what we had discussed. He scraped down the high spots, filled in the deep hole, and raked out the area to make it presentable. More so than it has been in years. Those kinds of little things are a real blessing to both Mama and I as well as to Grandpa who gets to produce some valued service for us all.

Mama will go Friday to pick up our meat from the processor. I called yesterday evening and was told that the two halves had been cut and wrapped and put in the freezer. Most processors require two days in the freezer to be certain the meat is completely frozen before being pickup by the clients. We were also told that the two haves were about one hundred forty pounds each, meaning our calf weighed about five hundred pounds. Small but tender. Mama and I could have fed him out for a few months, but I did not want the expense and we do not need a huge amount of beef to store in our freezers. We should end up with a little less than two hundred pounds of beef. That should last us a fair amount of time and we have a little buck to process next month which will net us about forty pounds of ground goat to add to the mix.

When Mama went yesterday afternoon to get feed for our animals, both Grandma and Grandpa went along. I could not figure out why until almost four hours later when Mama got home and told me they had made four stops in the drive. Once for Grandma to get chicken nuggets. A second time for Grandma to get a coke to help her swallow her chicken nuggets. A third time for Grandma to purchase cinnamon rolls and other packaged sweets to go with her morning coffee and a fourth time for Mama to look in a store for a particular item. With that kind of progression, I am hoping Grandma and Grandpa do not go with Mama to pick up our beef. The processor is an hour away and if any additional stops are made, the meat will be thawed by the time they finally get home. All those little extra trips and stops do not normally make a big difference, but sometimes they do,

Tomorrow evening, I will prepare the freezer for the boxes of meat Mama will fetch from the processor. I have conscientiously begun limiting the items we put in the chest freezer where we will keep our newly processed beef, but I want to make sure what is in the freezer really needs to be there and that what is oldest of the freezer contents is put on top to be consumed first. We have so much in the three freezer spaces available to us. Some of it needs to be thrown away. Deciding just what that is, is a difficult process for Mama.

Speaking of too much stuff, Grandpa spent over one hundred dollars on totes and as much again on shelving so he and Grandma could go through their accumulation of personal items now in a storage unit Norman wants to empty next month. The shelves were assembled in the well house and the totes were hauled to the storage unit to be filled as both Grandma and Grandpa go through the things Norman boxed up (rather haphazardly) and stored when he unpacked Grandma and Grandpa’s camper for sale. Grandpa is still a bit peeved about Norman selling the camper while he was in the hospital recovering from his stroke, but in the long run, it was a proper decision. Nevertheless, all their stuff will be coming to our property this month, filing up our well house. Oh, well.

I will be teaching a full-day class tomorrow and presenting at a conference Friday. It has been a busy week so far and continues to stay busy.

CEM, Grandpa, Grandma

Mama and I traveled to Glen Rose Saturday to attend the dedication of the new lab recently build onto the Creation Evidence Museum. It was a wonderful event. It took longer that planned, but it was well presented. There were a series of lectures, special presentations, recognition of specific individuals whose generosity have made the lab possible and a performance by a virtuoso violinist as well as a mini-concert by a world renowned pianist. There were no breaks offered after the ceremony started at 11 am and as Mama and I slipped out about halfway through the piano performance we passed through a slightly upset growing crowd of individuals who were waiting for the museum to reopen once the ceremony was concluded.

We sat through the ceremony with a couple of ladies who turned out to be sisters and in our conversations with them, they shared a recommendation of a local restaurant. The Loco Coyote Grill. It sounded interesting so Mama and I headed that direction once we were out of the museum. The sisters had left a bit before us, and we wondered if they had followed their recommendation for lunch. We followed the directions on our phone to find the restaurant and were just about to give up the search when the restaurant came into view around a sharp curve. We had thought we were being led astray since the road we were on seemed too remote to have a business on it – much less a famous restaurant. But it was there, as promised.

The place was packed. I let Mama out before I parked and by the time, I had found a place to park, Mama had arranged a table for us with the caveat that we would share a table with a couple ladies already seated. Those two ladies were the sister’s we had sat beside at the ceremony. So, we continued our conversation about the museum and some of the various points shared in the lectures presented. We ordered fish on the recommendation of our new-found friends. The food was good. The portions were huge and since Mama and I had been forewarned, we shared a three-piece fish dinner. It was almost more than Mama could finish, but we put forth the extra effort to consume the entire meal.

We got home about 6 pm and immediately got changed to feed the animals so, by the time we were finished with that, Grandma needed some attention to catch up on the events of their day. Through the recitation Mama discovered that Grandpa had not really eaten anything that day. She immediately set about to rectify that. He is hesitant to ask Grandma to fix anything, but he also does not go too far out of his way to fix anything for himself. The two of them largely snack through the days and if Mama does not fix something acceptable for a meal, they eat things they can unwrap and eat directly from the package. Fortunately, neither of them is talking about getting a place of their own. Possibly recognizing that they are in no condition to do so.

Partly because of a poor diet and partly because of growing health issues, Grandpa has had more complaints about a lack of energy and a complete lack of strength. That is troubling to me and Mama. Grandpa does not complain or even voice concerns about his health, but it is becoming a pretty regular topic of conversation. Most of his time is spent sitting in a chair on the front walk of the house, getting up only to use the bathroom. Grandma fills many of those hours with rambling chatter. Music blared from her phone or talking on the phone to those who keep up daily conversations with her – none of which Grandpa participates in despite Grandma’s insistence.

As for Grandma, she has fallen twice in as many weeks. Most recently, she tripped on a rug in their bedroom and hit the floor face first, busting and bloodying her nose. Both of those falls required us to physically lift her up onto her feet. Not an easy task. That fall required Mama and I to remove the rug from the floor of their bedroom – also not an easy task since it was tucked under two heavy pieces of furniture. We rolled up and moved the rug in the hallway as well. We will see how long it is before there is another fall, any one of which could do Grandma great harm. Caring for the two of them, has become a passive oppressive task. We have to be constantly on guard for any hint of issues and we must allow them to do as much as they can for themselves, so they have a sense of freedom in their lives. They cannot be left alone for long, yet they cannot be smothered by constant obvious supervision. It is a delicate balance that requires a lot of patience and a lot of love.  

Fortunately, Mama is very good at it.