Weekend update, a productive day

Saturday was a rainy day, but that allowed me to do a lot of things that I had not taken time to do before. I completed working on our taxes so that we can set an appointment with our accountant to get that done. I worked on several things in the shop and in the house making minor repairs to items I had left in need of repair for longer than necessary. I was able to install some of the parts that I had ordered four different upgrades to tools in the shop and got those in tip top shape. One of those being a battery powered band saw that we will need for the shed we are adding to the shop. That shed will be made largely of metal pipe.

Sunday was a typical Sunday. Our pastor preached exceptionally well. The choir did a phenomenal job on the song that we sang for service Sunday morning and Sunday night there was a great spirit in the church. We are praying for revival, but I sometimes get the feeling that we're too late for a national revival, so I focus on a personal revival. Asking the Lord to change me and make me more of who he needs me to be for him, so that I can do more for him in these last days I have to offer him.

Today was pretty exceptional. I started off in the shop cleaning up behind the shop where I had let things accumulate to my own discredit. Once I got all of the junk that had been placed there moved, I found out I had a lot of room in which to place trim that had been lying on the floor on the floor of the shop, always in my way for months. Late last year as a business was going closing its doors, I bought enough trim to do the base throughout the house. That's a lot of board feet of half round and I had laid it in the shop next to a worktable and had been stepping over it as I went from one side of the shop to the other for way too long. When I emptied the specialized lumber rack I had installed in the back of the shop I was able to put all of the trim on those shelving racks and got it off the floor of my shop. Now my shop is open, the trim is safely stored, and far more easily accessed. I was very pleased with that.

When I finished organizing in the shop, I began making the prepares to the duck pen that had been damaged when a tree fell on it late last year. Fortunately, when the tree collapsed on the roof of the pen, we had already sold the ducks. Because there were no ducks in the pen, and because we did not immediately need the area for anything specific, I had put off making the repairs needed to fix the roof and the structure that held up the roof over half of that duck pin. Once I got the busted-up roof panels off and tore out the structure that had been broken, I started rebuilding everything. At about 3:00 today I had to stop. My back was hurting so badly I just couldn't keep going any longer. Altogether, I'm about 1/3 of the way done with the repair but I lack three boards to finish the structure. We will go to town and purchase those tomorrow.

I have enough metal roofing to completely redo the roof, so once the structure is in place it will only take me an hour to put all of the roof back on, and then the area will be ready for goats to be weaned. Since we have four more nannies who will be kidding in the next three to five weeks, and we have 4 babies already on the ground, I will need multiple areas to separate boys from girls and to separate them according to their size. That way cousins that are a month older will not be able to dominate the smaller third ones when we pull them off their mommies. It is a challenge every time we have a large group of kids born at the farm, but it is a wonderful challenge. 

With the little girl goat that Mama was so worried about, we have seen some major progress. For several days we gave her shots to help her deal with whatever was hurting her. We assumed she had been stepped upon. It was either that or she had a virus that was causing her joint pain. The virus would have been fatal in a few weeks, but that does not seem to be the case. Anyway, Mama took her to the vet and the vet prescribed antibiotics that we have been giving her for several days. Today she is greatly improved. In fact, we were not able to catch her to give her a dose of antibiotics tonight. That's a mixed blessing. She's strong enough that she may not need the antibiotics, but she may still have symptoms that the antibiotic would have helped with. We will know more in a few days but for now she seems to be doing well.

Please pray for Victoria, she's going through some challenges right now that are proving difficult for her. She definitely needs a change in work, but she's willing to do what she has to to make this current assignment work out until she can find something better. To that end she has put in applications at several other jobs that would use her past training to better advantage than what she is doing right now. All in all, she is doing pretty well, but she certainly would appreciate your prayers. 

And so would we.