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Friday evening, I put the racks on the truck so we could haul a goat to the sale early Saturday morning. Once the truck was ready, I had Norman wait on the outside of the paddock as I got the collar on the goat. That generally happens inside the shelter as I offer feed to attract the goat to the trough. What I do is put the dog collar around the neck of the goat to be moved and wrap the leash under the front legs to allow me to grab both the collar and leash on top of the goats’ shoulders like a halter. That enables us to hang onto the goat as we steer it to the proper destination. With the youngest of our bucks, I assumed there would be no real problem, I was wrong.
When I tried to get the collar over the head of the buck, he reacted very decisively and almost managed to get his head free of the collar before I could get the leash behind his front legs. He was struggling against me so fiercely that I lost my balance and was dragged on top of the buck out of the shelter and almost all the way around the shelter before Norman caught up to the two of us and lended his weight and strength to mine in corralling the buck. Once we had the buck under control, we headed for the gate out of the paddock. As we were heading out of the paddock, Julian, one of the larger bucks repeatedly tried to mount the smaller buck so Norman and I had to fight off the older, larger buck as we continued to keep the smaller buck headed to the gate. It was a real clown show. We did eventually get the buck into the truck but nor without a lot of effort and a bit of comedy. I was exhausted and hurting for the remainder of the evening.
I was expecting to get only $120 for the buck from the stock sale but to our very pleasant surprise, I was offered $197. The market where we took the buck changed their practice and instead of doing a head-by-head auction through the day simply buys the livestock themselves at a fair market price from 7am until noon then separates the livestock per buyers requests and offers the stock for buyers to purchase after 2 pm the same day. With that set up, I walked away from the market with a check in hand for the goat we sold. I liked that arrangement really well. The one sale will net us enough to buy feed for the farm animals for one month. That is a great tradeoff.
Saturday evening, I went with Norman, Mama, and Victoria to look at a couple RV’s. I was shocked that Victoria was even considering any of the RV’s Mama and Grandpa had looked over because the one they were most interested in Victoria considering was being listed at $42,000. Granted, it was a very nice, very large and very well-equipped RV, but it was still a travel trailer. I cannot imagine going into that much debt for temporary housing. Something that is not built for constant occupancy – to be parked and lived in for months or years. These are built for weekend use. Not for permanent dwellings. I was staggered by the price and fortunately, so was Victoria. Grandma and Norman were all in on the purchase and I tried to bite my tongue until Victoria asked me to offer any advice. She did not need to. She was able to make what I felt was the right decision on her own – much to the disappointment of some.
Sunday was unusual this week because our Pastor from Amarillo, Bro. Chadwick came to our church to preach. It was good to see him and his wife after almost nine years. Mama and I moved from Amarillo to Bowie in 2013. I loved the teaching style Bro. Chadwick had in pastoring the church we attended in Amarillo, so it was good to hear him once more. Because of our connection to the Chadwick’s, Mama and I were invited to have lunch with them and our pastor and his wife Sunday afternoon. That gave us even more time to catch up and visit. Both Pastor Chadwick and his wife are entering into their eighties but still going strong. They are a great example of loving the Lord, loving each other and loving life together after more than sixty years of marriage.
This morning, part of my work team got together to watch one of our peers do some welding. It was a fun way to spend the morning. Claude, our experienced welder, gave us a chance to not only watch him do some welding the company had requested him to do, but he used the morning to give us tips on welding as well as a chance to take some photos and videos of the project. Many of those images will eventually find their way into our training courses. I ended up in several of the images and am sharing a couple of those. Several small things I learned this morning will serve me very well as I continue to weld on fences, braces, and equipment repairs around the farm.
When everyone in our group had left but me, Claude and Russel, my compatriot instructors, I was asked about retiring in June. I had to answer honestly that I am not sure. I would like to, but I do not feel peace about it yet. They would just as soon I did not retire, so it is good to know that there is still a spot for me to continue as we have been in sharing the responsibility of instructing classes.
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