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.