Fires, close calls, FBI

Over the past couple weeks Maggie and Brittany have separately shared similar events. In the recent past, Maggie’s oven caught on fire. As I understand from Mama’s story, it was an actual fire that had to be put out. I am not sure of the details, but the situation was corrected without further incident. In Maggie’s apartment living environment, that sort of fire could have been devastating to a lot more families than just hers. 

In a similar incident, Brittany called me on a Sunday morning to ask advice about a burning plastic smell in her house early that morning. She told me she heard a pop and then smelled the unmistakable scent of hot, if not burning, plastic. The furnace seemed to be the culprit so all that was shut down until it could be inspected. There was little she could do but wait. 

It was several days later before I followed up with her, and by that time the furnace had been replaced. The breaker had overheated – the pop she heard – and allowed some of the wiring to also overheat to the point of catching on fire briefly. It self-extinguished so there was no threat to the house, but the overnight temperature following the loss of heating in the house was 5 degrees above zero. Fortunately, her house was above freezing Monday morning, but just barely. It just struck me as a bit odd that both Brittany and Maggie would have experienced those similar events in a short span of time. 

As I stated in past notes, we have been seeing the return of the hogs to our area. They have given us a three- or four-month reprieve, but last night they were back. When Mama and I went out to feed this morning I found that one lone hog had traipsed through the garden to root under a tree at the East end of the garden. The rows of potatoes and onions had been spared. It was a close call.  However, the leaf-covered area just outside of the garden towards the barn lot had been thoroughly searched by a large group of hogs. It looked like Grandpa had plowed it up. In the long run, it is a benefit to us, but we praised the Lord that He steared the hogs away from the garden itself. I put in the posts required for the fence Friday afternoon but was not sure what fencing Norman and Grandpa wanted to attach to those posts. We will erect some kind of fence today. No sense tempting the goodness of God.

Mama and I thoroughly enjoyed church yesterday. I had at least enough voice that people could hear me, but it is not a pleasant voice to listen to at the moment. I have a true pirates voice. Deep, hoarse and gravelly. Most unpleasant. I am under doctors’ orders to try and talk with a normal volume as I speak, but I found out that I still have to force the volume a bit to get enough sound out that I do not have to constantly repeat myself. By the time Mama and I retired for the night, my vocal cords were sore, and my voice was very raspy. I do not think I am much better this morning, but I am a poor judge of that. 

Mama has not complained. She can at least hear me now. It is a bit disheartening to sound the way I do, but I am told it is part of the process.  I just try to bear in mind times in the past when a sore throat or some respiratory ailment changed my voice temporarily. It always returned to normal at some point. I am a bit overanxious to be able to sing again. Right not I cannot even sing softly. Or make any king of musically related sound. Maybe soon.

Mama and I have FBI class tonight (Faith Bible Institute). It is our second time through the classes, but the amount of information covered in the classes is still almost too much to take in, even in our second iteration. Both Mama and I have enjoyed the teaching as we are going through the book of James. What a humbling spiritually and intellectually challenging training it has been so far. We will complete our study in James in our class tonight. I find myself wanting to go back and replay all the hours we have completed and see what more I can get out of the presentations. Galatians is next on our course list, and I am certain it will be just as interesting to do an in-depth study of that Epistle as well, but studying James has blessed us both. Now, if we can just remember even a little of that information. 

We are experiencing a very warm February with nights in the mid-forties and days in the mid-seventies. I am not complaining, it is most pleasant. My concern is that this Spring will be short leading to a long, very hot Summer. No one knows for sure if that will happen, but it looks likely. For the moment, we will enjoy the weather we have been given. 

Hope, Hogs, Visiting, Staying

It seems that after ten or more consecutive years of failed gardening attempts here at the farm, hope springs eternal. Grandpa and Normal once again planted potatoes and onions in the old garden spot just west of the wellhouse. Fifty pounds of potatoes were planted along with about one hundred onion sprigs. I am not sure how this garden will turn out but based on past experience, I do not have high expectations. 

Every year the potatoes and onions have gone into the prepared ground and have looked like they were actually going to thrive and produce a crop for us. And every year the early summer heat, the hogs, the rabbits, the raccoons, the birds, or the bugs have destroyed the plants before any fruit could be realized. But once again, last week, Sunday to be exact, Grandpa and Norman, plowed, tilled and planted the cut potatoes and onion sets. 

Today I will work on setting a fence in place to keep most of the ground critters out of the garden. To facilitate starting the garden Mama is keeping the chickens confined to their respective enclosures through the better part of the day. Letting them out only an hour or so in the evening to forage for a short time before they go back into the coop to roost for the night. At some point, Mama and I will clip the wings on the chickens to keep them from being able to fly over the fence into the garden. Then they can be allowed to roam more freely through the growing season.

All this labor could be for naught, but it keeps Grandpa puttering about. 

There is some urgency to getting the fence in place because we are starting to see signs of the feral hogs on the property once again. Several months ago, Norman and I shot and wounded several on the large hogs. We did not shoot to kill because we wanted them to run off into the woods to die. That seemed to discourage them from foraging on our little property for a while. Now, it would appear, they are back to including our farm in their circuit. 

If we do not fence the garden, they could easily destroy it one night. The hogs travel in groups of twenty or more. Mamas with six to eight babies each are not uncommon. And they grow so fast. At six months the piglets are ready to start reproducing, so keeping the population in check has often been a challenge. Since I do not enjoy shooting the hogs for sport, I have to force myself to kill them out of a sense of preserving our home and property. 

It has been fun having Victoria visit. She, of all our children, interacts with Grandma and Grandpa best. It is her willingness to play along with them in their banter. I tend to get lost in the game, but Victoria seems tuned into the repartee and can make the conversation fun for them, especially Grandpa. As far as conversation goes, Grandpa tends to be reserved. Not so with Victoria. So, her visit has been especially good for him. But also was an encouragement to all our friends and family at church. She, Grandma, and Mama went to the Wednesday night service. I stayed home still recuperating from my surgery. But I got several texts from church family about how good it was to see Victoria once again. 

Victoria will be flying home tomorrow morning. At least that is the plan. Thunderstorms are forecast for our area in the morning, but we will just have to see if that affects her return flight. Her flight is a direct flight, so it is not like a delay would interrupt her travel plans too much. It will be sad to see her go, but we have had a great visit.

Norman was talking about leaving for Florida next week and staying there for a couple months, but those plans seem to have fallen through. I believe it is for the best. Grandpa depends on Norman to keep him involved in the variety of ongoing projects he accumulates. Right now, Grandpa is focused on helping Norman repairing a truck he traded some labor for. It turned out to be a bigger project than either of them realized. As is the case with most of Norman’s projects.

It will be well worth the effort should he and Grandpa succeed on resurrecting the truck, but I am not holding my breath.

Surgery, Traveling, Bible Reading

After having slowly lost my voice over the past year, I finally went back to the ENT to see if there was a remedy. Turns out there is. All I needed was a new doctor to look at my vocal cords. I had the required minor surgery yesterday morning. I am told everything went well, but it is hard to tell based on how my voice now sounds. The doctor reiterated several times to me and Mama that we must “trust the process.” Full recovery may not happen for several more weeks, which is a little disconcerting since we were also told that the gel inserted directly into my vocal cords may be absorbed by the body in only a few months. Six at the most.

The pain from the injection is not at all difficult to bear, but the pain of talking is worse for the moment. I have explicit instructions to speak in a normal voice – no whispering and no shouting. The second of those two admonitions will not be difficult to abide by. The first, speaking in a normal voice, is proving a bit more difficult.

Once I found out that surgery was required, I had originally prayed that I would get the surgery prior to leaving for Honduras. My thinking was that I could spend the time there with a stronger voice as I recovered. I am glad that did not happen. I did just fine whispering to everyone in English and Spanish. Savanna was extremely attentive when she did not have earphones on. 

Mama and I had a wonderful time with Cori, Nate and the kids. We went to the beach in Tela the first day we were there and stayed fairly busy throughout our stay. Mama and Savanna gathered about ten pounds of small rocks from the huge piles on the beach. All of them were taken away from her as we went through security. We were disappointed but not shocked when one of the four agents insisted that we could not take any of the rocks or glassware Mama had in our borrowed checked bag. She was the only one who had an issue with the items, but she persisted until everything had been confiscated. 

Come Away was great. It seems to get better each year. The weather was mild, towards cool. Most of the Hondurans were dressed very warmly. Pleasant morning walks in their neighborhood were one of the daily highlights of their new home. Back on the farm, the weather was extremely cold. 

The ice that kept Norman, Grandma and Grandpa housebound for five days accumulated to the point that the roof of equipment shed attached to the barn collapsed. Norman estimated that there was over five inches of ice sitting on top of the roof. I did not build that roof with that kind of burden in mind. The repair will be difficult but not overly so. That is the only damage we suffered on the farm. Praise the Lord!

Mama and I got back to Texas about 1:30 Friday morning. We were in bed about an hour later and up at six a.m. to take care of our animals. Mama was anxious to see her recently hatched chicks. Needless to say, we took a long nap that afternoon. Saturday was catchup to all the farm and household needs. Sunday was church. Monday was shopping for essentials and a pre-op appointment with our ENT. Tuesday morning, we picked Victoria up at the airport. I have to say, “Thank the Lord” for the online flight apps. Victoria’s flight was delayed twice, and the arrival gate was changed three times before we met her. Those updates got us to the right place at the right time, otherwise I am not sure how things would have worked out.

Yesterday was my surgery. We had to be at the Denton Surgical Center by 6 a.m. and so we were up at 3:45 for me to get cleaned up, showered and shaved before we headed to the surgery center. I slept for several hours after we got home letting the anesthetic ware off and fought severe dizziness for most of the evening. The dizziness was the residual effect of a narcotic based pain medicine I was given before I was told what it was. All in all, it has been a good experience. Though I do not look forward to repeating the surgery on a semiannual basis, if this does restore my voice, I will have to plan accordingly. 

For the first time in our married lives, Mama and I are using the same Bible reading program to read through the Bible this year. It is nice to share ideas and questions with each other as we read the same passages in our Bibles each morning. I highly recommend it. I am not exactly sure why we have not done so before except that I did not like the program Mama used in the past. We had each been using our respective printouts for years. At least since we lived in Amarillo twelve or thirteen years ago. But as we looked over a Bible reading program put out by Victory Baptist Church in Milton, we both were attracted to it and have been using it since the start of the year. 

Good times.

Planning, Norman, Victoria

Mama and I spent about an hour at a friend’s house last night looking at her set up for her freeze dryer and it really augmented our desire to get one. The long discussion with Jan built in Mama’s and my mind an application for a freeze dryer that would allow us to justify the expense. I made the commitment to the Lord, however that I would not buy a freeze dryer until we had the cash set aside for that particular expense. At this moment, we do not have that money in hand, but there is no urgency either. We will continue to pray and see what God will do. It’s exciting to see God work in our lives and to see our prayers answered. We have had a freeze dryer on our prayer list for a while, so maybe we are close to getting one. After last night, it seems far more practical than over the past few weeks. 

One of the issues I have been wrestling with is where we could fit the large appliance. It is not necessarily a quiet appliance to operate and the cycle of freeze drying can be as long as 24 hours. The vacuum pump for the freeze dryer can also generate a good bit of heat, so the placement of the unit needs to take into account that additional temperature in the room where it is placed. 

So, when we got home, Mama and I began to look for a place. I believe we settled on removing a set of upper cabinets from the west wall of the chef’s pantry and setting the freeze dryer on the counter on that wall. That would allow us to run a dedicated circuit to the plug on that wall. That solves two of our problems. Now we need to settle on what size unit we need and focus our prayers on that. 

Today I spent most of the morning finishing up what I had started last night on a course review project for Energy Worldnet. But this morning, Word messed up on me so badly I lost everything I had done the night before. As I reworked the document, Word messed up on me again. I thought I had lost, for a second time, everything I had done. I finally got the bug worked out and got the document review completed and sent off for updating by the author, but that rework took me almost 3 hours to get done. This one revision will open the door for me to do many more projects of this nature for Energy Worldnet. The money that I earn doing this sort of review is not insignificant. It actually pays pretty well just to do course revisions as a subject matter expert. I’m not sure how many courses might be available for me to help with, but at least the door is open. 

Friday afternoon, the Lord began to open up doors for Norman to find enough work to stay here. As of today, that opportunity seems to have expanded quite a bit. As always, with Norman it’s difficult to tell what the outcome may potentially be, but for the moment it looks like there may be enough ongoing work for him to do his renovation, remodeling, landscaping, and handyman work, and earn enough money to more than meet his needs in our general area. If things work out that way, that will be a great relief to Grandpa. And admittedly, it’s a relief to Mama and me as well. It is not what Norman said he wanted, but that seems to be what he has gotten.

Victoria let us know today that she has an interview with Florida Health System for an opening as a pharmacy tech. That is a wonderful answer to prayer. It is only an initial interview, but it is a great opportunity. The interview is set for Thursday next week at 9:30. Please be praying for that to go well. What she is doing now does not suit her physically. It is a huge strain on her knees, back and wrists, but she is doing her best to apply herself to the scope of work she agreed to do for Walmart. She is obviously younger than me but walking over twenty miles per day pulling grocery orders in not an easy daily routine to meet. Then she will go home and take Kira and Kobe for a long walk…at a much more leisurely pace. 

Again, please pray for Victoria. 

Mixed blessings and total blessings

After months of praying for Norman to find a job he could be happy with, our prayers seem to have been answered today. It is not wholly confirmed, but it looks like Norman will be reporting to a crew tasked with building fences around some government facilities. Firstly, in Ft Lauderdale, FL. The pay is good and the per diem is excellent. As I am told today, he will be needed on the job by the first of May. This project is slated to last nine months. That is a mixed blessing because he has been a huge help to us here. We will be sad to see him go, but thrilled that he has this opportunity. 

Grandpa will miss Norman’s constant movement here at the farm. Norman’s drive to keep Grandpa stirred up has had a profound effect on Grandpa health – for the better. It encourages Grandpa and motivates him to be on the move doing what he can to support Norman’s endless schemes to earn a dollar. Grandpa’s finances have taken a bigger hit in supporting Norman than ours have, but everyone is still doing relatively well, other than Norman. He really needs this job.

Mama is concerned that she and Grandpa will not be able to keep up with the garden, but I know otherwise. Mama and Grandpa will do fine with the garden. We will all need help with the harvest when it comes, but the daily tending will give Grandpa something to do. My biggest loss in Norman’s leaving is all the help he has provided with the maintenance and repair of our vehicles. Neither Grandpa nor I can do what he does in that regard. My prayer is that all the required repairs have been accomplished. 

We still have two weeks to get help with trimming and felling trees about the property, loading the trailer with Victoria’s stuff and getting all those items to her when she closes on her house. Two weeks to square away the barn that has been filled with Norman’s stuff and sell off the many extra items he has accumulated. Two weeks to complete the repairs on our backyard fence. Two weeks to set the steel pipe for the shed we are adding to the shop. We will see what we can actually get done, but we have a pretty tight list. 

Honestly, I consider myself six to eight months ahead of where I thought I would be at this time as related to projects that have been finished on the farm. Other than the short list above, Grandpa and I can pick away at the other projects we have planned. Norman’s help has allowed me to rest a bit easier as I spend two days per week at the museum in Glen Rose. 

At the museum today, I was able to define some structures in a couple bone slides that had been used for the polarizing microscopes. I was a little disappointed that the images I was able to capture were not as clear as I would have liked, but I am hoping to learn some techniques to do better on image capture. The folks in the lab are ecstatic with the progress I have made in the past two days. I am pleased, but not a willing to celebrate just yet.  

Our last pregnant doe gave birth as I was driving home today. Mama called me as I was turning onto our road to tell me that she had needed to pull the little girl out of her mommy because the mommy was not able kid without a little help. Mama had been able to get a firm hold on the hooves of the front legs that had showed along with the nose of the kid and pull pretty firmly on the kid. Once that movement starts, it is not difficult for the nanny goat to finish the kidding. I have had to help several times, but this was Mama’s first. Happily, both the nanny goat and her kid are doing well. 

Since Mama had misgendered one of our little ones before she got a good look at the kid, we moved the total count a bit. We now have seven little girls and three little boys. Five of the little ones, three does and two bucklings, are blue. What a blessing.

Tomorrow is our first unencumbered Saturday in three weeks. We have so much to get done. As always, we will do all we can and let the undone things wait until next week. Since I am not teaching any more classes until late in the month, I will have the early part of next week to pick up what is left from tomorrow. 

Retirement is mostly good. God is always good.

Successes

I spent the day in the lab at the Creation Evidence Museum today. During the hours there I was able to get the help I needed. I talked through the issue I have been having with the SEM and it turned out to be a minor mechanical adjustment was needed to realign the beam through the gun. Once that was accomplished the tech had me go through a series of complicated steps to reset the beam alignment on the microscope. The tech was in California but was sitting in front of an identical model of SEM as he guided me through the calibrations. Since we made the adjustments several times in the last hour we talked, I was mostly certain I could reproduce the adjustments when needed.

When I got off the phone with the tech, I placed a bone fragment from a Amargasauras into the sample port and took a look. It turned out that I needed to repeat the adjustments to get the image to display. But I did get an image! None of us looking at the image had a clear idea of what we were seeing in the bone, but it was a magnification of 2,500 times whatever we were looking at. That was exciting. Tomorrow we will make a better sample to look over and really begin exploring. For today, I feel like we made huge progress. 

Taking a step back, it turned out that the problem I was having was a simple fix to something that should not have needed adjustment. The adjustment I had to fumble through was minuscule, but the outcome was grand. No one is sure how the misalignment happened, but it is corrected now. Fortunately, the tech knew what to do to eliminate potential issues one by one until he had the problem isolated. In so doing, I learned a lot. It was a good day.

Meanwhile, Mama and Grandpa went to the cardiologists today and Grandpa got a fair report. He still has an irregular heartbeat but is compensating well enough. So, the treatment he is under will continue as normal. There is not much more we can ask at this time. Grandma, seems to have had a major medical turnaround today. For two days she has confined herself to bed, getting up only for very brief spells which required someone help her make it back to the bed. Today, she is up, laughing and joking and having a great time. We are not sure what happened that made the difference, but I suppose we are glad for it?

On the farm, another of our nanny goats gave birth this evening. Mama has been watching her all day expecting the kidding, but we did not see the little ones until we were headed to Decatur for a visitation for our Pastor’s brother who died Sunday night. When we did spot the new little ones in the goat barn, Mama and I turned around to get a better look before we left the farm. Once again, they are Little Boy Blue offspring. Both of the little ones this time are boys, but that is okay since they will fetch a really good price in the Myotonic market. We have one more nanny yet to kid, but that will happen by this weekend. So far, we have four little girls and four little boys. One of the little girls we were nursing along died Tuesday night.

Our realtor In Lawton has been helping us replace the roof on our property there. I tried for several weeks to contact the insurance agency to get the roof inspected, but the agent that had been helping us, and the only contact I had available, died of cancer. Sad. So, our realtor made the contacts we needed got the roof inspected. The roof was totaled, and we should be receiving a check shortly to cover the expense of that roof repair. Our contractor, who’s become a friend of ours, told us that he would make sure everything fit well within the budget of the roof replacement so we should at least break even on that and end up with the brand-new roof on our property. 

One of the things that he told us specifically about the rental property, one of those praise the Lord moments, was that he was very impressed by the renters, he said the house was immaculate inside and out. That the renters are taking exceptional care of the property, which he rarely sees in his rental properties. So, he was extremely impressed, and we were very pleased, because we’re hoping to sell that house later this year.

God is good!

Reasons for praise

I apologize to anyone who may be following along on this humble blog, but for a while, I just could not drum up the emotional energy to take the time at the end of the day to sit down and write out the events of the day. And that is really a big shame-on-me, because the Lord has been doing so much in our lives here, recently, that it’s irresponsible of me not to take time to praise Him for all the little things that are happening around us. 

As we have helped Victoria pray through buying a house in Florida over the past six or eight weeks, she has finally found one that she would like to pursue and has been approved to do so. We will see how that works out in the weeks to come, but the prospective closing should be the end of this month. So, by the first week of May, we may be making a trip to Florida to help Victoria move into her home. That’s a huge praise the Lord. 

Also, I have been able to work for my old employer, Energy Worldnet, and do some classroom training for them. That has worked out extremely well. They have been very gracious in getting me set up with the computer and programming I need to make that happen and paying me a very fair rate to do so. I’m not sure how long this will last but I will take it as far as they’ll let me and will hopefully put some money in the bank based on that. 

We have now had our third kidding on the farm. All of the kids (baby goats) that have been born to the three nannies on our farm in the past two weeks have been the progeny of Little Boy Blue. His coloring is coming through in phenomenal ways on those little kids that he fathered. Two of our goats that kidded first were two that we had bought as rescue animals and we have had them for a year, but finally were able successfully to get them bred. We did not know that Blue Boy was the father of those offspring because he was only with them for a couple of days. The rest of the time they were in the presence of one of our male goats they were with Midas, but he never got to do his work on them because Blue Boy beat him to it. Blue Boy, we are finding out, is an extremely amorous little Billy goat. The person who sold him to us, told us that she was having trouble keeping weight on Blue Boy, because he had nothing on his mind, but getting in with the feamles and creating offspring. He has done so extremely well for us. 

It’s hard for me to remember since the last time I wrote in the blog a lot of the little things that God has done in our lives that just worked out miraculously, but one of those things that I do not want to take for granted is the fact that in every project we have begun lately, I have not had to buy any material for any of those projects. I had all the materials required for those projects just laying around the farm. The metal that I needed to redo the duck pen roof and sides. The fencing that I needed for the redo of the yard with that duck pen. The metal that I will now need for the new pen that I have built for Midas and his two ladies to stay in for a couple of months. Even the siding for the little shelter that I am building for them. All of those are materials we have laying around the farm or have been brought here by Norman. 

So, in spite of the diversity of materials needed, we have been able to do we have without needing to buy anything to get all of that done. It’s a real blessing when God works things out that way. When I was installing the fencing for a new lot we need for breeding, I was able to use two pieces of fencing that had been cut to section off the goat barn the last time we did this. One of those two pieces fit the length with about six inches to spare. The other section of fence fit with about sixteen inches of overlap. You may now think that is anything special, but it is. When we have exactly what we need when we need it, that is God’s way of showing us He is always supplying our needs ahead of time. We just have to be willing to look carefully at what we already have that can meet the need.

We took two hogs to be butchered and at the same time we lost our upright freezer. So, Mama gave away a good bit of meat and vegetables that we had in different freezers to pare down the contents of the chest freezer we have out in the well house. We recently bought a small upright freezer that has nothing but drawers in it. It is small enough to fit in our chef’s pantry. I wasn’t thrilled about that purchase when Norman and Grandpa brought it home. But it turned out to be an extremely good purchase for us. When Mama picked up the meat from our hogs, everything fit with room to spare. It’s just little things like that that add up to real blessings in our lives. 

Also, in reconnecting with my old employer, it has been neat to see the impact God let me have on my coworkers and other people associated with the company. It is nice to know that my witness for the Lord really had an impact on those around me at work. Nothing we do as we live for the Lord is done in vain. With that thought in mind, we need to be careful to do our very best in all we do so our witness in not tarnished as we are being watched. 

Norman has been struggling for several weeks to find a way to make money. Mama and I have had to cover a couple expenses on his behalf, but he has repaid us in spades for the little bit of money that we spent on him. I say a little bit of money because it has not been a significant amount, but at the same time it does take away from what Mama and I need to do, adding to our overall financial burden. What he has been able to do for us, either in repairing the vehicles that he’s worked on or in fixing up the property that he and Grandpa have worked on has more than compensated for what we have been able to do to help him keep his insurance current, or to help him keep his bank account solvent, or to help him to keep fuel in his truck. We’ve tried to be an encouragement to him without being a source for him. It has made an impact, but he still needs some type of full-time employment so that he can begin to cover all of these expenses on his own. 

Grandpa over the past few days has had some days where he was hurting a little bit more than normal, but he has always forced himself outside onto the tractor, walked around the property, hoed or watered the garden, pulled up weeds, taken care of flowerbeds, etc. Just anything to keep himself moving. Everything he does in that respect is a blessing to me and Mama. So, the fact that Mama and I are supporting three families right now on a fixed income is a little bit challenging, but at the same time we are managing to get a whole lot more done that I had anticipated. 

So, I just wanted to say, praise the Lord!