Pigs, chicks, goats, finding my voice

After months of complete silence from the parties who purchased the quarry beside us, Mama made contact last night to see if we could get help with the hog overpopulation we are dealing with. Michael Brennan returned Mama’s call for help and said he would get in touch with the owner of the property today. Please pray that happens. It is so bad that Norman drove through a group of about one hundred hogs (his estimation) Saturday evening as he was coming towards the farm on our county road. We have not seen them since but are constantly discovering the damage they leave in the wake of their foraging on our property. They are more of an inconvenience than a danger to us, but the longer they reproduce unchecked, the more of a danger they pose to us and our animals. 

I will be meeting with our Pastor today or tomorrow to get his council on Mama’s and my plans to sell the farm and relocate. Pray the Lord will give him wisdom. There are times when we are too close to a problem, a trial, a decision. So close that we cannot sort our own calculations, plans, expectations, or personal desires from the Lord’s leading. We can start to read too much into the happenstances related to a difficult decision and move in the wrong direction. We will say to ourselves, “This or that happened, so it must be the Lord directing us in this direction.” Maybe, maybe not. Hence the need for council to evaluate if we are seeing things properly. Plus, I enjoy the Pastor’s company.

Our urge to seek council was strongly reinforced Sunday as our friend Dan Martin, an evangelist, preached on following your heart versus following the leading of the Lord. A timely message for me and Mama. In considering our situation here on the farm, neither Mama nor I have any urgent desire for a certain outcome, but we still must decide what to do. It must be a wise decision, since three families will be directly impacted by that decision – Mama and I, Norman, and Grandma and Grandpa. We only get one shot at it. The great news! The Lord has already prepared the way for us. When we are certain we know that way, we will pursue it. Not until then. For now, we will enjoy the farm…even with the rampaging hogs. 

On Saturday Mama got fifteen chicks, hopefully female chicks. I was not overjoyed but I was not opposed. Plus, she is planning to hatch out another group of Banty chicks as well as allowing a sitting hen to hatch the clutch she is hording. If all those come to fruition, we will have plenty to deal with in the coop for months. If we are moderately successful raising the chicks to maturity, we will have twenty or so new laying hens. Unless the ratio of hens to roosters is like the last batch we hatched. There is only one hen in the lot of seven we are now watching grow up. 

The only apprehensions I have to augmenting our flock is the number of hawks we have circling the sky above our farm and the warming weather coming. Warming weather always portends the return of snakes to our farm. If we can get these chicks to the point that they are too large for the rat snakes to kill them it would be better, but we may have started too late in the Winter to do so. Time will tell.  

Mama is thinking about selling our two male goats. We no longer have need of either of them and it would be nice to see them rehomed. With the approach of kidding time, I would like to refocus our feed expenses away from the males and onto the kids we are expecting soon. We have five nanny goats bred, and all are showing signs of their pregnancies. One or two will be giving us kids in three weeks or so. The remaining three will take a little longer. Perhaps five to six weeks. By then, the weather will be considerably warmer so Mama will not fret too much when the newborns come.

My voice is recovering nicely. It now resembles the voice I used to have, but I am still not able to sing. That is not too bad as far as recovery goes. This Wednesday will be two weeks since the surgery. 

As rough as it was that first week, this one has been much better. 

Sad but necessary, Grandpa, Swap meet, Gracious offer

Last night as we were all going to bed, I decided to step outside and listen. When I did, I clearly heard the hogs in the yard beside the shop. It sounded like several hogs were there and just me being on the patio startled them. Bear in mind that the moon was not up, and no lights were on, yet they knew I was there. I held still for a moment before I turned and went back into the house. Hoping not to scare them away.

I got Norman out of bed. He was still on his phone getting comfortable for the night, so when I told him about the pigs nearby, he quickly got on a pair of shoes and his rifle, and we headed outside. I had a flashlight in hand as we snuck around the front of the house towards the garage. We were halfway there when we realized that a sow and her little ones were only thirty yards away from rooting for acorns in the front yard. 

Norman got off one shot as I held the light on the sow. He resighting for another shot because, clearly confused, the sow was in no hurry to run off. He sighted more carefully, pulled the trigger and realized he was out of ammo. (He brought his Barny Fife rifle to the hog hunt.) We watched as the sow led her eight little ones toward the woods behind our house. I am not sure he hit the sow with his only shot, but he was confident he had, so, we will see if the family quits tearing up our yard. It is a sad necessity to kill the hogs to stop their destruction of our property. Not something I enjoy, but something that must be done. 

I have mentioned lately that I have not been feeling well. More important is that Grandpa has not been feeling well either. He has never been one to complain, but it is easy to see how drastically he has slowed down over the past few weeks. He still spends as much time as possible piddling around the farm and working on the truck he and Norman are trying to resurrect. He enjoys each day as best he can, but he is struggling more and more to do so. He has shared his struggles with Grandma, but she is not understanding his concerns. Her mind is unwilling to allow Grandpa to diminish. He is still her rock. I can understand that.

Grandpa has said some things to me and Mama concerning his increasing struggle to walk. He has not been able to feel his feet for several years, so walking is a concerted effort for him. That has been slowing over the past months, but he still prefers to walk to the barn and opposed to driving there. His biggest concern is losing the use of his legs. He has vivid memories of his father, who died from complications of prostate cancer, being bedridden in his final days because he could no longer use his legs. Please continue to pray for him. Like me, he plans on living until the Lord takes him home. 

There is a swap meet going on in Decatur this weekend. It is a very big deal. Auto enthusiast from all over the United States travel to either sell or buy hard to find parts for the projects they are working on. For the last four or five years our church has set up a booth with parts donated from church members just so they can be there to pass out Bibles and tracts. It is a great soul winning opportunity. I participated for the past several years, but this time, I do not feel up to it. I hate to miss but with the struggle I am having with my voice and the fact that I do not have the energy, I will stay home and pray for those who are able to participate.  

The EDS is the blue unit stabbed into the microscope

I got some very good news earlier this week when I contacted the tech that has done all the maintenance on the Scanning Electron Microscope I operate at the Creation Evidence Museum. One of the additional electronic appendages, an EDS system, stopped working last year and we have not found a )way to get it corrected. However, the tech and the company he works for have developed a way to recondition and repair the unit. They have offered to donate their services for those repairs asking only that we purchase any parts necessary to complete those repairs.  That is huge. Potentially saving the museum tens of thousands of dollars. Please pray that they are able to get the unit functioning properly. 

It will make a huge impact on our research. 

Sharing, blah days, scraping by

Grandpa and Mama spent the day shopping yesterday. They drove to Wichita Falls to do the monthly supply run versus going to Denton. I could have gone along, but if I had volunteered, Grandpa world have let Grandma talk him into staying with her. She certainly tried to do so before Grandpa left with Mama. It was quite the show. But I kept silent and let things sort themselves out. 

From my point of view, Mama does not get enough time alone with her father. He is either working about the property or accompanied by Grandma or Norman. In any of those cases, Grandpa will participate in the conversation happening around him, but he will not initiate the conversation. If Grandma or Norman is around, the conversation centers on themselves and often gets loud. Neither Grandpa not I are inclined to participate.  Rarely do we get to hear his heart. So, it was a good opportunity for Mama to have Grandpa all to herself for a few hours. It is one of only a few opportunities she may get to spend quality time alone with Grandpa. Times that can never be replaced.

While I stayed home, I did not get into anything particular. I have been in the doldrums lately. Not necessarily depressed, but certainly lacking motivation. I forced myself to finish a couple little chores and clean up an area where the hogs had plowed up the ground, but not really accomplishing much. Today I somewhat better. I have been earnestly praying about several important matter in our lives. At least, to me they are important. It has been one of those “faith walking” times. When there is no tangible evidence of God’s intervention in the situations I am praying about. Where I know by faith and by experience that God is, in fact, working His Will in my and Mama’s lives. Almost always, these intervals of waiting on the Lord work out far better than I expect they can. We just keep doing right and wait on the Lord.

Norman got his truck back yesterday. It has been in the shop – again – for over a month. He seemed less excited this time than in the past when he had been absent from it, but I am sure he is relieved to be able to use it for his business. Working out of the trunk of the Ford 500 is not optimal, but he made it happen. In those times where the car would not suffice, he and Daryll used Daryll’s truck to get the tools and materials to the jobsite. Daryll has been helping Norman for over two years now. He’s a friend as well as an employee. That comradery servs them both well.

Now that Norman has his truck back, we will make a feed run. I still have not gotten my truck back form the mechanic. We have been making smaller feed runs since we had to use the two smaller vehicles, getting just enough feed to make it for a couple weeks at a time. Today we will get one month’s worth of feed. The timing is good since I would run out of goat feed this evening. We do not usually cut it that close, but Norman was suppose to have his truck back last Friday, so we scraped by thinking any day now we would be able to get feed. It all worked out.

When Mama and I were in Florida over the Spring of last year, I was given a stalk of a Dragon Fruit plant. It was not much to look at when I brought it home in a jar. At some point I decided to plant the stalk which had rooted and sent out a fresh stalk. Now that has divided and sprouted into over a dozen plants. The shoots were haphazardly snaking their way across the area I set up to winter the plants in the sunroom. It bothered Mama so, something had to be done.

I repotted about eight new stalks this morning. I should have probably thrown them out when I cut them off the mother plant but could not being myself to do so. It will probably take three or more years for the plants to mature enough to bear fruit, so I have a while to wait. They will produce the Red Dragon fruit variety when ready. 

The good part about the plant is that it is nearly impossible to kill. 

Choosing Wisely, Please Vote, Anniversary

I have maintained throughout my Christian life that the most difficult decisions are not the ones between right and wrong, but between better and best. It is fairly easy to choose properly if we consider one of the two choices we could make clearly leaning to a sinful outcome. We often know what is wrong and thankfully avoid, by God’s grace, choosing that wrong. 

What challenges us as believers is when, of the choices we are considering, none of them are clearly sinful in and of themselves. Choosing what to eat or drink, where to shop for our basic needs, what route to take when driving to a particular location. That sounds over simplified, but it is not. Depending on the circumstances or the timing, those decisions can be affected in either a positive or a negative way. So, we make as informed a decision as best we can. (And we can certainly pray for guidance in each of those choices.)

More subtle choices that have a profound effect on our lives are choosing the right friends to connect our lives to, or choosing a church to attend with our family, or the schooling we will provide for our children. These are important decisions where we need the guidance of the Holy Spirit to choose wisely. (Do we pray about those decisions or just let things evolve on their own hoping the Spirit is guiding us?)

Less in focus is choosing our elected officials. It may not seem connected to our lives in any direct way, but the choices we are about to make in the coming Texas primary are fundamental to the government we will have for several years to come. I bring this up because I have been trying to parse through the noise to help identify the candidates we will pick during this primary runoff. Mama, Grandma, and Grandpa are looking to me for that guidance. I appreciate their trust, and I certainly do not want to violate that trust. 

So, the choice comes down to taking what is available and known about each candidate and making the best choice, especially when there is not really a good choice among the candidates vying for the respective offices. Early voting begins today for the primary election here in Texas. I do not know how the general audience feels about early voting, but we will vote early because it is available to us, and it makes it convenient for us to get Grandma and Grandpa to get to the polls. 

They want to vote, so we make it as easy as possible for them to do so. When we are relegated to one day, in-person voting we will comply. With early voting, the polling station is almost always empty. Rarely have we encountered a crowd. We generally walk into the polling station, present our ID, get our ballot and the code needed to register our vote and go to the voting booth. That is important for Grandma. Anyway, if there is a primary in your area, please vote. Do the best you can to choose wisely, but please go vote. 

Along the same line of thought of choosing wisely, I am really struggling at the moment. In order for Mama and me to keep the farm, I must draw from our saving every month to make up the shortfall in income. I have tried several avenues of earning the required shortfall, but none have proven the right course of action. I have not chosen wisely in any of these attempts to bring in the extra income. Don’t get me wrong, Mama and I are not in danger of losing our farm, but I feel I have less than a year to make some kind of drastic adjustment to our lifestyle to stay financially solvent. Please pray with me about that.

Mama and I are both at the point where selling the farm would be an option. I am physically challenged to do the work by myself so having Grandpa and Norman to do a large portion of the upkeep has been a blessing, but that cannot continue too much longer. Plus, Mama and I would like to downsize and perhaps relocate to Florida, and I would love to provide that for her sooner rather than later. While we both have the health to enjoy such a life. I am finding myself longing for a simpler, less obligated life. I am longing to have Mama to myself for a while, if we can ever work that out. Such an endeavor will be a series of better versus best choices. Pray that Mama and I will be very sensitive to the Holy Spirit in each decision - whenever that time comes. God’s way always produces the best outcomes. Proverbs 10:22 “The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.” That’s what I’m looking for.

Today is Grandma and Grandpa’s 64th Anniversary. Kudo’s to them.

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.