Hatchlings, Mission’s Conference, rain

The eggs that the Banty hens have been sitting on are now hatching. The first hatching happened in the little coop and Mama has left that chick to be mothered by the hens in that coop. So far there are two hens providing that mothering oversight. The eggs Mama collected from the hens a few days ago – they were trying to sit in too many in the cool weather – were placed in an incubator. Yesterday those eggs also began to hatch.
So far, we have two out of the shell and a third trying to escape the shell. Mama was concerned that the third chick had died in the hatching process, but when I shuffled the eggs, I saw movement from that hatchling. Whether or not it does succeed remains to be seen, but for the moment, we are hopeful. There are eleven more eggs in the incubator that could be hatching, but we will wait on those results before making a final count.

Additionally, I stopped the automatic egg turner in the incubator holding our six duck eggs. As with the chicken eggs, we will just have to wait and see how many of those will hatch. By the end of next week, all that are viable will have come out of their shells. Not that we need any more Banty chickens or ducks, it is just somewhat addictive to participate in the process of hatching the eggs. So much so that as soon as the larger incubator is available, I will fill it with Quail eggs to see if we can achieve any success hatching those eggs.

Our Mission’s Conference ended last night. So much good preaching and instruction. The theme was how the four Gospels and Acts 1:8 together present to us the full picture of the Great Commission. Each Gospel ends with an admonition, a commission to preach the Gospel, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, each of those commissions represent a portion of the commission we have been given. Taken together as a whole, they represent the Sender, the Scope, the Strategy, the Subject and the Spirit required to participate in the Father’s mission to reach “all nations” with the Gospel. Each Gospel, because of the disparate individual focuses of those Gospels as the writers separately relate the life and ministry of Christ, provided a specific portion on the commission we have been given.

To make all the information digestible, we were given a study sheet that could be filled out to keep pace with the points being made as Dr Fielder preached. I was filling in the blanks as required on the study sheet and taking additional personal notes as well. It will take me some time to process all the nuggets of truth that were given sermon by sermon. The intent was to not only make us aware of our responsibility of presenting the Gospel to those we are able to reach right now, but to give us an operating principles for doing so. We are called on to participate with God by the power of the Holy Spirit to share what God has done in our lives because of the salvation He has given to us.

Mama and I have talked for some weeks that we need to start participating in Soul Winning with our church. We have lapsed in doing so because of the needs of the farm. At least, that has been my excuse. Saturday is the only day I have to dedicate to those needs and chores, so I have justified my avoidance of participating because I did not want to give up that time; generally speaking, half the day is gone by the time we get home from Soul Winning. But the reality is that there are more important things to do than working around our little farm, and I have found in my walk with God that He will repay that time in so many interesting and useful ways if we are willing to put Him first. So, we will once again join those going out on Saturday mornings to call on our bus kids and to share our testimony with those we are given opportunity to speak with.

I do not have many years left and in the timeline of my life, what occupies my attention on the farm is not as important to the Father as it is to me. C.T. Studd once famously said in a poem, “Only one life will soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” One day in the not too distant future, Mama and I will give up the farm so neglecting God’s for a short term gain will possibly steal from me a long term gain. So, we are going to shift our focus to those things that are important to the Lord. We will see how that affects the outcomes here at the farm, but I know God is good and I would rather have His blessings on my life than any gains I can accomplish outside of those blessings.

Over the past couple days, we had a little over an inch of rain. What a blessing! The garden and all our trees got a much-needed long drink of water. The rain fell over the course of seven hours. Gently most of the time with only brief periods of heavier showers. Not only have we been in great need of that rain in general, but I have been waiting for the rain to soften the ground somewhat. I will be driving forty Tee posts into the ground to reinforce the fences in the barn lot and to date the ground has been far too hard. Now, I should be able to begin driving those posts along the fence as needed. I will not be able to do all forty in one weekend, but I hope to get half of them done. Grandpa has been chomping at the bit to get those posts set so we can fix the fence line in the barn lot.

What comes next in his mind, he has not shared with me yet, but it should be fun.

The cat, eggs, 13k steps of piddling, cleaning up, lost items, Mission’s Conference

It appears we have another feline visitor at the farm. Mama is trying to encourage the cat to hang around by putting out food for her/him. We have not gotten close enough to tell if the cat is male or female, but I do know it is fast as lightening. Yesterday evening, as I was feeding the goats on the East side of the property, the dogs chased the cat up a tree behind the shop. When I approached the tree to take a photo of the cat, it leapt from the tree and shot to the back of the property – Gemma within inches of gaining hold of the fleeing animal. I was not entirely certain that the cat actually made it to a safe position, but Gemma did not seem to complete her attack. We will know soon enough if the cat still lives, but I have high hopes it beat out our vigilant guardians in its hasty flight yesterday.

Mama and I checked the eggs in our incubators twice this weekend. In one incubator we placed the eggs Mama took from the Banty hens that had been diligently sitting on those eggs for a couple weeks already. Of the original twenty we collected, we had to discard four in our initial candling of those eggs. That left sixteen, however as I did a little bit of studying about what to recognize in candling the eggs, we looked once more and discarded another two eggs. That leaves us with fourteen. Our dilemma is that we have no clear idea of when to expect those eggs to hatch since we have no idea when the hens laid or began sitting on any of those eggs. So, my proposal to Mama was that we remove the egg turner from that incubator Thursday morning when we had planned to remove the egg turner from the incubator with the six duck eggs. Those eggs were candled this weekend and we pared down the count to six from the nine we started with. We will not count our ducks or chickens before they hatch, but we have made our best attempt to ensure we have viable eggs remaining to be tended to.

When these hatchlings are out of the eggs and out of the incubator, we will quickly run out of spaces to house the newcomers. What is fun is that all these hatchlings will have come from our little farm. At this point we must stop hatching out either chickens or ducks because we are getting overloaded. However, I have been setting aside quail eggs to be incubated once the larger incubator is available. My plan is to place thirty-eight of the eggs I have saved – they are in the refrigerator awaiting their turn in the incubator – and see how many successfully hatch. With all that do hatch I plan to dress out the little birds once they are sufficiently grown. We certainly do not need any additional quail. The twelve we currently have are giving us between six and ten eggs per day. Plenty for pickling or eating hard boiled.

Meanwhile, Mama is getting between twenty and twenty-four eggs per day from her chickens and four to six eggs per day from the Banty chickens – when they decide not to sit on them. More than she has a market for at this time. Plus, we are getting five to eight eggs per day from the ducks. We are flush with all types of eggs. An interesting note is that one of the Cayuga ducks is laying a black egg. It is probably one of our newest additions to the pen, but it has been interesting to see the very dark egg among the other white eggs.

Saturday, I registered over 13 thousand steps as I piddled around the farm. Most of my efforts were focused on cleaning up and reorganizing the garage and the shop. I have been looking for weeks for two items that have been either taken from the farm, been thrown away, or just placed somewhere I have not yet looked – as impossible as that seems. To date, although I have found a lot of other things I was not seeking, I have not found either of the items I was trying to locate. It is frustrating to have so completely misplaced them. I am beginning to hope that they have found a different home by some means – i.e., Norman claimed ownership of them – or they were thrown out. That happens with frightening regularity as Grandma takes it upon herself to “straighten things up” in the kitchen or dining area. The issue is that she does not remember when she helps us out in her own compulsive way.

On the bright side, in looking so urgently for the lost items, I have cleaned up, straightened up, reorganized and thrown out items from multiple areas in both the garage and the shop. Unfortunately, there is a lot left to discard to gain the image I want in for final setting of the over abundance of things we plan to keep. All this with the express goal of greatly limiting what we even consider placing in the storage container we are planning to buy. That space is to be reserved for Mama’s plethora of craft items which currently occupy large spaces in Grandma and Grandpa’s bedroom, one side of the living room, a massive number of totes in the garage and well house and a portion of our bedroom. The two wardrobes, the dressers, the tables and totes will not be enough to fill a forty-foot container but it will make the container look comfortably full once the furniture items and shelves are placed inside it. Mama is really looking forward to getting the container to the farm but the seller we are dealing with has not been easy to deal with so far.

Our Mission’s Conference started Sunday. The preaching has been fantastic! We will be eating at the church with the missionaries each evening tonight through Wednesday night. It is a busy, difficult schedule we have to keep to attend all the services, but we will manage.

It is always worth the extra effort.

Visiting, what we leave behind, duck hatchlings

Mama and I spent the evening visiting last night. One of the elderly gentlemen in our church who is a dear friend is in hospice care due to an inoperable cancerous tumor in his lung just behind his aorta. He is nearing his 90^th birthday and he is ready to go home. The prognosis is that he has less than a few months to spend here with us, but the actuality is that his body is giving up more quickly than that. When we are looking at nearly nine decades of life, a few months is a very short time. He is in good spirits and in good company as each of his children spends extended amounts of time with him in his convalescent state. His children, adults our age, are delightful people so our visit with Bro Stallard was a very enjoyable one. Mama and I plan to repeat those visits at least weekly for as long as we have that opportunity. Soon enough we will all be in Heaven together where our timeline for visiting with each other will extend out into eternity. The way the world is looking today, Bro Stallard may not be there too far ahead of the rest of us.

After leaving Bro Stallard, Mama and I went a short distance to visit another octogenarian in our church. Lola is a widow who lost her husband late last year. What prompted the visit was that Sunday evening at church, Lola asked me if I needed any tools. A dangerous question to ask a man. So, with that invitation, Mama and I spent about an hour in the garage at her house going through some of the accumulation of tools her husband had left there. It was a mess. Much of the tool inventory was well past its usefulness and many of the electronic items were antique and unserviceable. I picked out a good quality BB gun, a couple unique hammers, a die set for threading pipe and a floor jack. There were ten or more safes of various sizes, a wide variety of hand tools, battery powered tools and corners filled with a great variety of items I did not recognize. All flat surfaces were piled with testers, screwdrivers, fittings, parts I could not find any use for, multiple small vacuum cleaners, etc. It was a mess and Lola was still a bit overwhelmed by the clutter. She, and her son, who came over to price the items I had pulled out of the clutter, encouraged me to find a lot more, but I passed. Maybe later, but not last night. Even I was a little overwhelmed by the disorganized accumulation of items that had once been important enough for her husband to keep.

As we traveled home, I was sharing again with Mama that I do not want to do that to her and my children. So far, the only real clutter I have is in the barn where Grandpa and Norman have deposited some of the junk, they did not feel that they could part with. That area will be cleaned in the next few months as I load it without reservation in the bucket of the tractor and drive to the dump to get it off the farm. I suppose there may be some way I could recover some money from the junk, but it is not worth the time and effort to do so. It is simply safer and more efficient to throw it out – even when I have to pay the dump for the privilege of leaving that junk in their scrap trailer. From my perspective, I have organized my tools in a way that keeps them clean and accessible, but I still have a lot of stuff. On the bright side, most of the items I have in my inventory are easily recognized and functional. Even at that, I still need to pare down what I intend to keep longterm to a more reasonable stockpile and eliminate those tools that I no longer use. As difficult as that may be, I do feel compelled to do just that.  

Next week we should see our duck hatchlings. I have to make calendar announcements to time the removing of the automatic egg turners for each batch of hatchlings, and I have that noted as being required on the 25^th. By the 28^th we will see how many of the ducklings hatch. The duckling that hatched while Mama and I were in Honduras are now in the grow out pen where they will stay for about a month, maybe less. When Mama thinks they are large enough to be integrated into our flock, we will simply move them over to that area. The last eight we integrated are doing very well. We are now getting six to eight eggs per day from the mature ducks and hope, if we have sexed the new arrivals properly, we will be adding a potential five eggs per day to that number. My overall goal is to have a dozen duck eggs per day. Now, we just need to find a steady market for those eggs.

I will be teaching classes tomorrow and Friday. Tomorrow is an in-person class. Friday’s class is online. Both are full day classes. I still prefer the in-person classes to the online version, but we do what we have to do to meet the needs of our clients. The class on Friday is for a specific customer who requested the class to be presented as soon as possible. They made the request yesterday and we offered three potential dates, the earliest of which was Friday. It will require some urgent work on our part to get all things ready for the class, but since it is online, that can be organized fairly quickly.

It keeps us on our toes.

Feed/hay run, barn loft door, chick moves, a quick look

Friday I was up at 5:15 so I signed into work an hour earlier than normal. Because of that early start time, I was able to get off an hour early which allowed Mama and I to make a run to Muenster for feed and hay. Over my lunch break, I hooked up the trailer to the truck and rearranged bags of feed in the shop to allow space for the feed we were planning to buy that would need to be added to the stock left from the last purchase. All went very well with the trip over and back. The feed store had ample access for trucks hauling trailers, so it was not an issue to get into place for the feed to be placed in the back of the truck before we headed to get hay. Since Mama was getting hungry, we pulled into Sonic for a bite to eat. I had to park along the driveway because of the trailer and in getting situated with the truck and trailer I happened to notice that one of the tires on the trailer was nearly flat. That was not an urgent issue, but it was something I needed to take care of before we headed home. At the farm where we got the hay, I had to back the trailer into a barn in a tight area but managed to do so with limited trouble.

The thirty bales of hay were loaded in a few minutes, and we headed out to find some air for the low tire. That took two attempts to accomplish. The first gas station I stopped at did not have an air station, but the second one had one that was easily accessible to me, so I lined the trailer up close enough to the compressor station to reach the low tire and added the required air to inflate the tire. I added some air pressure to its mate on that side of the trailer and after Mama used to bathroom, we pulled out and headed home. It was an easy drive home, but I made a detour in Alvord to circle back to a realtor sign at a house on the main drag so we could call for information on the property. Back at the farm, I parked the trailer near the goat barn where I would offload the hay into the loft of the barn and unhooked from the truck so I could offload the feed at the shop. The hay would wait until Saturday.

It took considerably more time to move the bales of hay from the trailer into the loft Saturday morning. I am able to take five bales at a time in the bucket of the tractor, lift them up to the loft opening and stack the bales in the loft. Once the six trips from the trailer to the loft were done, I lifted the door I had built for that side of the loft and fitted it in place as I used the bucket of the front loader as my scaffold. That took some time to line up properly and anchor in place, but it is now in place as should have been done long ago. Better late than never. There is still some work to be done to seal up both ends of the loft, but having the doors hung at each end is a major improvement for storing hay in the loft. Blocking off the loft will also limit the amount of air that blows through the barn from those large openings. This winter, it will be a major improvement for our goats.

As the day continued, I helped Mama get two cages set up in the coop areas so we could relocate the chicks out of the garage into the coop. I had to do a bit more work on one cage to make it snake-proof, and once that was done, I cut away a portion of the roost in the area where we decided to set the coop. In addition to that cut, I had to move the nesting boxes a few inches to allow the cage to fit, but eventually we got it squeezed into the designated spot. Now the chicks are split up in the two cages to allow them room to grow for a few more weeks before we try to integrate them into the flock. Hopefully we are not going to house any more chicks for awhile other than the ones our Banty hens are sitting on in their coop. We think there are at least four eggs under each of the five hens squeezed into the three nesting boxes in their coop. By next week, we should see those chicks hatch out and by the end of the month we will see how many of our nine duck eggs hatch. Additionally, I am gathering thirty quail eggs to try once more to hatch them. I am not sure what we will do with the hatchlings, but there is time to make that decision over the next couple weeks.

I looked quickly into the two beehives Saturday afternoon. In one hive, the bees have cleaned up all the sugar in the feeder. In the other hive, there was quite a bit left of their sugar supply. So, I added sugar to the empty feeder to give me a few weeks to get the bees into the nectar flow- which is almost here. In both hives, the colonies look healthy. I had four frames from our collection of honey last Fall, so I took those frames and put them in place of four empty frames – two in each hive. Those frames should be very easy for the bees to repair and refill with honey. I will look more closely at the hives later this week or early next week to see if I can take a split from each of the hives to start two new hives. I also will bait the three swarm traps I have available at the farm to possibly catch any local swarms. Each swarm will potentially allow me to start a new hive. My eventual goal is eight hives. I have not made any real progress toward that goal to date, but I am in no hurry. My retirement will facilitate maintaining the larger number of hives.

It was a good weekend from my perspective, although my back hurt badly Sunday morning.

Grandma’s mini-stroke, more planting, help

About 7:20 this morning, as Mama was getting the bottles ready for the baby goats, Grandma got up and sat in her wheelchair. This is her normal perch when she first gets out of bed most mornings. However, this morning, she sat in her chair staring vacantly forward. When Mama tried to interact with her there was no response. Mama tried for several minutes trying to get a coherent response from Grandma to no avail. Grandma was not able to raise her arms, wiggle her toes, or answer any simple questions as Mama urged her to do so. We hurriedly fed the baby goats their bottles and Mama called for help as I finished up the morning feeding.

The paramedics arrived within fifteen minutes of Mama’s call to assess Grandma’s condition. All vitals were normal, and as she was assessed, Grandma began to grow more aware of her surroundings. By the time the medics had been with her for half an hour, Grandma was speaking and interacting almost normally. Her responses were coherent albeit a bit slurred, as if she was very tired. The paramedics left about 8:10 and Grandma and Grandpa ate their normal breakfast, pecan swirls and coffee, before Grandma was helped back to bed. We are not entirely sure what happened, but we are assuming she experienced a ministroke. Time will tell, but all appears to be “normal” for the time being. I am not sure if Grandma even knows what happened to her, but it was a moment we will all remember.

I think Grandpa was more concerned than he let on to either Mama or Grandma. He has been very concerned about Grandma’s mental decline for some time and it is often that his insight into that decline help us deal with the more upsetting interactions we occasionally work through. But, for her part, Grandma is not hard to deal with. She is a very loving person. She can seem quite harsh at times, but her intent is not to hurt anyone, it is, more often than not, that she cannot figure out what to say to get her point across – and she will always get her point across even if she cannot remember the point she was intending to make. So, sometimes it is impossible to follow her line of reasoning because it tends to stray from a central focus. When that happens, we just smile and go on.

She was focused yesterday. She called every person on the contact list on her phone. She asked each of those who talked to her, “If the Lord were to come back in the next five minutes, would you be ready to meet Him?” As you can imagine, most of her contacts are believers so the response was typically positive, but later in the evening she was convinced that there was one person who had given her pause in the way they answered that question. The problem was that she had talked to so many that she could not remember who she was concerned about. It was really frustrating her and there was no way Mama could help her other than to repeat all those calls. Grandma did not want to do that, but she stewed about the issue all afternoon and all evening. By this morning, she had forgotten all about it. I will not be surprised if she repeats all those calls later this week. Maybe that way she can deal with the one person that she thought was unsure.

With some of the recent successes under her belt, Mama is determined to expand her plantings. She is now concentrating on herbs. With that interest, she has purchased several little planters that she will use for window boxes for the many herbs she is planting. Both Mama and Victoria have done a bit of online research to see what herbs can be planted together, what herbs are detrimental to chickens, what herbs can act as an insect repellent, and so on. Since Mama is mostly starting with seeds, we will not see any benefits from the plants for several weeks, but she is excited about the possibility of what the various herbs are purported to accomplish. At any rate, we should have access to many fresh herbs and those that can be dried and stored for Winter use, will be harvested with that purpose in mind.

Days have been pleasant enough that we have been leaving the windows open. A couple days this week are forecast to get hot enough that we will resort to air conditioning at some point during the warmer part of the afternoon, but even those days are perfect for Grandpa to sit outside on the front porch to rest between sweeping the walks, hoeing in the garden, mowing or brush hogging, or whatever else attracts his attention. Each of the chosen tasks are not done for long periods of labor, but a little here and a little there has really begun to add up to visible results. Everything Grandpa chooses to work on is something I do not have to spend time doing which frees me up for so many other little things only I can do while so much more gets done overall.

It has been encouraging to have his help – especially for Mama.

Weekend updates

Friday, Good Friday was a holiday, so I got an extra day to work around the farm. I had a long list of little things to do which kept me busy through the day, but the main focus of my efforts was to cut out some of the larger saplings growing through the fence at the front of our barn lot. That type of work requires a lot of bending, kneeling, pulling, and balancing in difficult postures to accomplish so I was not able to last but about two hours. However, in that time I got a truckload full of little trees and vines that had to be hauled off. I was pleased overall, but so much more remains to be done. It is one of those ongoing projects that are never really completed. An ever-present challenge. Grandpa and Mama are wanting to tackle the back fence of the barn lot, but I have resisted because it is horribly overgrown with large thorn trees and various other varieties of five- to ten-year-old trees that will need to be dealt with to fully repair the fence. We must get it done at some point, but I have not come to a point where I have put together a plan to accomplish the work, especially since much of the physical labor will be my responsibility, but I will work with Grandpa to see what his vision is for the work. He has a good eye for that type of rework.

Saturday morning, I helped Mama set up on the square in Decatur for the Glitzy Girls event. It was forecast to be a beautiful day and, for once, that forecast did not disappoint us. It was indeed beautiful. The set-up took less than an hour, the canopy, the tables and coverings, and all her stash of nail strips were out and ready to go by 8:30 AM. Mama and I had hurried through the necessary parts of our morning routine letting the chickens and ducks out of their coops and enclosures, saving the more lengthy portions of the morning chores for me when I got back to the farm. Mama’s normal neighbor for the event was setting up beside her as we were getting all Mama’s items ready, so we visited and helped each other as has been our custom for three years in a row now. I was back at the farm a little before 9 am to complete our morning chores. Mama had a very good day at that event. She made several hundred dollars throughout the day. More than she has made at any recent event, so she was very encouraged. She also made a couple large online sales not related to the event, which added to the overall earnings for the day. Having wrestled with whether or not to continue marketing Color Street over the past few weeks. This was an especially timely success.

I was to be available at 11 am to meet Alex who was coming to the farm to buy two ducks and two older chickens from our flocks. To make sure we sold the right ones, Mama and I had gone out after dark Friday night to find out which of the newer eight ducks were male and which were female. That required catching and banding the younger ducks, now equal in size to our more mature ducks. That process caused quite an upset in the duck enclosure as the frightened ducks rushed around the enclosure to avoid the net, we were using to catch them. All the noise the ducks made upset our guard dogs and alerted all the coyotes in the vicinity to sing out in hungry anticipation of an easy meal. That did not happen, but I am sure the coyotes closed in on the noise to see what was happening.

The upset we caused among our ducks has limited the egg production for the weekend, but we are so far ahead on those eggs that a slowing in new egg production is not an issue, but rather a benefit to us. In the final tally of our ducks, we determined that we have three males and five females in the new additions to our flock. So, we sold Alex one young female and one young male to process, leaving us with plenty of males and females in our flock. Additionally, the four ducklings in the cage in the garage are getting large enough we will need to move them to the grow out pen by next week. That is a good thing because we have nine more duck eggs in the incubator that should be hatching in about two weeks. In the future we will continue to band all our males so we can quickly determine who is who when all the ducks are mature.

Grandpa has continued to tend to the garden. He waters, hills up the ground around his vegetables and potatoes and keeps the weeds at bay. I am very appreciative of all his efforts. He will only spend an hour or so on the days when he does work in the garden, but those efforts are noticeable. Grandpa also keeps the front sidewalks swept clean and the bird feeders filled. For the past few days, he has been able to sit on the front porch in quiet solitude. Grandma has spent more time in bed recently, but she did summon up the resolve to go to church with us Sunday morning.

It was a good weekend.

Car shopping, little things, grandma’s pain, Dr report

At the moment, both Victoria and Brittany are shopping for cars to replace their current vehicles. Brittany is in a slightly disadvantageous position because she wants to downsize her larger Sequoia for a more economical and less expensive vehicle. That is a difficult proposition in our current economy. She is also having to do all the research, negotiating and dealer interface on her own. She really needs our prayers in this. Victoria is simply looking to unload the vehicle she recently purchased. She was rushed into the purchase and has been uncomfortable with the outcome from the first few miles she drove the vehicle. Both will lose money on the exchanges. Both are praying to minimize that loss as much as possible. I am sure they would covet your prayers as they both press forward with these sales and future purchases. Fortunately, for Mama and I, we are pleased with the vehicles we have though neither is an economical vehicle and, for the moment, are not looking for alternatives. Our hope is that we can drive what we have for several more years. That is a matter of continued prayer as well.

Grandpa continues to do many little things around the farm. Mowing for an hour. Brush hogging for an hour. Working, watering, weeding in the garden for an hour. Raking up sticks and leaves in the front yard in periodic intervals. Resting for a bit then picking up those piles of debris and hauling the refuse off with the tractor. Sweeping the front sidewalks. Chasing the blackbirds from the bird feeders. Vacuuming the hallway and living room at regular intervals to keep up with the shed hair from Kobe and Kira. Helping with the feeding of our bottle babies. Yesterday, he “hurried” over at the 5 pm feeding to help corral two of the six-month-old goats that meandered out of the gate as Mama and I were entering to feed the bottle babies. Mama and I typically open the gate to the paddock and expect the anxious little ones to shoot out of the gate as we bring in the chair and bucket we sit on to feed the babies their bottles. That is not normally a problem since they follow the bottles back into the paddock to be fed; however, yesterday, two of the bigger goats used the opened gate to go exploring. They we not anxious to return to the paddock. Grandpa saw the struggle Mama and I were having as Mama carried the bottles of milk (the three little ones were mobbing her) and I carried a bucket of feed (the older goats were mobbing me). It was quite a spectacle but with Grandpa’s help we got all the all goats back into the enclosure and fed. The goats never wander far, but they are not always receptive to the idea of reentering their paddock. So, there is no real urgency when they get out, it is simply a matter of coordinating to have the gate opened when the wanderers are in a position to go back through the gate. That often requires more than two people to accomplish. Although Grandpa does not move quickly, he has an intuitive sense of where he needs to be to help, so he is a big help in situations like that one.

Late yesterday evening, Grandma woke after sleeping most of the afternoon and early evening and was not able to rearrange herself in the bed sufficiently to get herself out of bed. When Grandpa and Mama tried to help her, she screamed in pain. In situations like that, it is difficult to know what to do. Any help that could be provided which requires someone to pull or to lift her in order to maneuver her to a better position is met with a scream. Not a moan or a protest: a scream. I generally do not engage in moments like that. I rely on Mama and Grandpa to do what they can to help. I am available but I wait to be invited into the incident. Eventually, Grandma calmed down, fought through her pain and got situated so that she could get up and go to the bathroom. Sadly, we are having more incidents like this one where Grandma’s pain freezes her in place. So far, we have escaped any issues we could not overcome. We are at a loss to know what to do other than advise her pain management doctor of the struggle and trust that between his understanding of her pain and Grandma’s decision on how to take those prescribed medications, Grandma can make it through her daily pain. Mama and Victoria do not exercise any control with her pain meds, so they are at a loss to know when each of the meds is taken. Grandma, for her part, simply cannot remember what she has taken or when, yet she will emphatically insist that the empty pill bottle is not her fault when there is still three weeks left before the med can be refilled. It is a huge challenge.

What I learned in my visit to the ENT specialist is the my vocal chords are significantly swollen, but otherwise clear of any defect. The doctor recommended I take a couple sessions of voice lessons to see if there is anything I am doing as I speak or sing to cause the obvious swelling. Acid reflux was mentioned, but not considered a contributor per se. The truth is that, like the rest of my aging body, my voice may simple be wearing out. That was both good news and bad news. On the bright side, I am being required to teach less often than in the past and I will be retiring from even that at the end of this year – hopefully. All things considered, a good report. Secondarily, I need to decide if I should give us leading the singing at church. It is becoming more difficult for me to do and I do not want the strain I feel in leading the singing to become an issue. My difficulty in leading certain songs is clear to all who are listening – especially those listening online when my voice is the only voice they can hear. The difficult part is that there does not appear to be anyone to take over that ministry.

It will require much prayer to make that shift in our services, but God is certainly able.

Cages, gardening, goat transfers, power

Since Mama is trying to grow out chicks and ducklings in totes in the garage and those totes are proving inadequate, I took on the project of wrapping a larger rabbit cage we have with wood to make it both easy to access from a standing position and to make it more snake-proof. The issue we have with the rabbit cages we use for chicks is that the doors on those cages do not close in a way that prevents snakes from squeezing into the cage. To remedy that, I built a wooden frame around the cage which included a tighter sealing door to access the cage. Mama was very pleased with the cage once retrofitted and quickly moved the ducklings into that cage - which I placed in the garage. Since that was a success, I used the pattern and built a second such cage from scratch that could be used for the chicks. I was more pleased with that cage that the retrofitted one, but we will use them both. Now the chicks and ducklings both have larger areas to grow while we decide what to do with them in the coming weeks. For now, both cages are in the garage so Mama can tend to them more easily and keep the little ones in a warmer area than either of the coops provide.

Mama and Grandpa worked several hours in the garden Saturday. After I tilled a couple large areas for them, they planted corn in one fairly large area and multiple vegetables in another area. The garden is now full except for an area that has been set aside for corn to be planted in a couple weeks. On the advice of a friend who has a large truck garden, we are spacing out the corn so, if we do get any to harvest, we can have two smaller harvests versus having to deal with all the corn coming at one time. Peas and green beans were also planted and I will need to purchase a couple fencing panels to allow those two plants to climb as they grow. There was some urgency to the planting because the forecast predicted thunderstorms for Sunday afternoon. Those forecasts were accurate and we had almost an inch of rain in a couple hours along with marble sized hail. That gave the garden a thorough soaking. Any watering through this week will have to be done by Grandpa and Mama. I have left the gardening to Grandpa and Mama because when I involve myself in any portion of that labor, Grandpa tends to back away thinking he may offend me by doing things differently than I would. I would not be offended, but in order to keep him in charge of the project, I stay on the sidelines. In truth, he is much better at those labors than I am, so I do not want to discourage his help in any way.

Saturday morning, with the help of Grandma and Grandpa, Mama and I transferred our four nanny goats into the paddock with Midas. I let Mama try to make that transfer her way, using feed attempting to lure the nanny goats across the yard to the buck paddock. That was a “do not attempt this again” type of failure when the nanny goats bolted in all directions after seeing Midas in close proximity. We eventually got them back into their paddock and made the transfer the routine way, by loading them into the back of the truck, driving them over to the other paddock, and offloading them into that area. Midas immediately mounted Dolly. The rest of the nanny’s ran about as if they were in a playground or on vacation.

However, Mama realized that night that she had made a serious mistake. Two of the female goats we placed with Midas were actually his offspring. One was his daughter and the other his granddaughter. Not a good thing to do in any breeding program. So Sunday afternoon, after church, Mama Victoria and I moved those two into the small enclosure beside the buck area. Mama is trying to locate a buck to put with the two of them so they can be bred as soon as possible. We will have to wait to see how that turns out, but she has already drummed up a couple strong leads. We did not put the larger nanny goats back into their normal paddock for two reasons. One, we want to give the bottle babies and six-month-old does time to grow without the larger females bullying them. Second, we want to see if we can get a buck to put with them. Keeping them isolated means we do not have to move them again to do so.

We lost power in the thunderstorms Sunday afternoon. That happened about 4 pm. Mama was outside when the nearby lightning strike and thunderclap happened. It was one of those horrifically loud thunderclaps that make you jump in surprise. It rattled the house, the windows, and our bones. The lightening appears to have struck the substation very near us, putting us and our neighbors in the dark. That is not so much an issue when the ambient temperature is seventy degrees, but it does shut off water to the house since we are relying on a pump in our well to get us that water. Without water, toilets can only be flushed once or twice, depending on the residual amount of water and pressure in the well tank, so it is something we needed to pay attention to. More concerning to Mama was the fact that without power we could not warm the milk to feed our bottle babies.

Mama stayed home from church to wait for the power to comeback on. It was restored to us a little after 7 pm. That made for an interesting evening for Mama, Grandma, Grandpa and Victoria, but we made it through.