Changing, frost, more travel

Mama and I were talking the other day about how many times she changes in an average day. It is typically twice in the morning and three times in the evening. Most of those wardrobe changes are for her to get properly dressed for feeding our animals. I have adopted that cycle of changing in the evenings. When I get home from work most evenings I am dressed for the office – business casual – which is not necessarily the way I want to go out to feed the cows or the pig. So, I change every evening in order to get out to help Mama. I don’t typically mind, but I have to admit that on Monday night when we have FBI to go to it bothers me to change for a fifteen minute chore. Last night I did not think I would have to change because Mama was close to being done when I got home so I went out to the coop to greet her in my office attire. Little did I know that she was waiting on me to carry feed to the coop to fill the feed container for the male goats, walk over to check the hay, feed the cow we have in the corral, and fill water troughs. I went back to the house and changed especially after she admonished me by greeting me with, “Why did you come out dressed that way?”

We had frost last night. It was not predicted to get that cold. It is a little troubling since all the fruit trees are blooming right now. Some are further along than others. My main concern is the peach trees – which are loaded with blooms. If all those blooms actually make it to the point to set fruit, we will have a really good harvest. If this frost killed them back, we will lose more than half of our potential fruit harvest. Time will tell. The older pear trees in the garden should fare well especially since I pruned them heavily last year. The plum trees are past the flowering stage and are setting fruit. I do not know how this will affect them at that stage. The apple, the apricots and the fig trees have not started to bud out yet so they should be good. The dwarf grapefruit was moved into the garage last night in anticipation of this cold snap. It is loaded with blooms. I am curious to see how many of those produce fruit. If they all set fruit I will selectively pinch off most of them and allow only one fruit per branch – if it gets that far. The blueberries, the black raspberries and the blackberries are all getting ready to bloom so they should make it through this in good shape. Again, time will tell but I expected this to be one of those years that we would have to deal with late freezes. This may not be the last one.

This evening will be busy since it is the only open evening we have to spend on the farm chores. We will be traveling again this weekend; heading to Amarillo to visit with our tax accountant. Next year I will find someone local but I am hesitant to do so for 2016 taxes. Because of the layoff severance package, withdraws from our 401k and selling some of the farm equipment, 2016 was a complicated tax year and I do not want to take the chance of missing something important by starting with a new accountant. It will be one of the things I will discuss with my accountant as we go through the documentation I have collected for him to file from. I expect to pay this year but I want to keep that amount as low as legally and ethically possible.

Work assignment are starting to accumulate and it looks like there will be some travel involved. I know my management will be careful to limit the amount of time I have to be away from home but we have not set that limit yet. Most of the travel will be in the US but right now there is one potential international trip in the planning. If that goes well it will not be the only trip out of the country this year.

And here I was thinking things would start to slow down.