Pallets, presentations, progress

Tuesday evening, I got right to work changing attachments on the tractor so I could make the trips needed to bring home the pallets Mama and I had agreed to move from the business down the road. I did not get a full count of the pallets, but we got over one hundred in all. Most of those are in very good condition. About half of them are made of oak. To get them to the farm, I had to pick up a stack and put a strap around the pallets, binding them tightly together. That way I did not lose any of them on the road or as I drove onto the farm property. In the four round trips it took to get all the stacks moved, I only got passed by three or four vehicles. So at least, I did not have to hold up any traffic on the half mile of county road I traveled.


The last load was the most difficult. The pallet on the bottom had obviously been sitting on the ground a long time. The three boards across the bottom of the pallet had rotted out., so when I ran the strap around the stack, I did not have anything below the forks of the attachment on the front of the tractor and a couple times it tipped pretty drastically. I made it all the way across our property to the shop without losing the stack but when I hit a rut near the back of the shop the whole stack flopped sideways; held to the tractor only by the strap. I carefully set the stack down enough to right it some and pushed it into place. By the time I had it parked, it had righted, and I was able to remove the strap. No one will ever know. That took me about two hours total. Some of that two hours was spent getting the pallets off the trailer that Mama and I had loaded a couple days earlier.


I have been in class the past two days. Tuesday, I audited, and team taught a class that I do not normally participate in. The instructor was brand new so there were some hiccups as the class began. However, everything turned out well. The instructor did a good job in the class – which is a difficult class to teach. After some very minor coaching, the pace slowed to the point that everyone was able to keep up. The class includes a lot of exercises within our operating system. To those unfamiliar with that system it can be overwhelming. It was a larger class than normal, so that added to the challenge presented to our new instructor. But in the end, he prevailed.


On Wednesday I taught the class I most often present. It was a large class. Adding to the challenges normally evident in a large class, we had a film crew in the class through the morning shooting footage for a promotional video. Then, at lunchtime, we had our mobile training unit – a uniquely outfitted trailer – on display for the participants to look through. The one VR scenario offered yesterday was fire extinguisher training. Many in the class were interested in going through that training exercise. That took a while, so I had to condense the class to accommodate the loss of time. A couple times I struggled briefly at getting the class restarted. In the end, it all worked out. The participants were happy with the class and my company management was happy with the video shoot and the trailer debut.


Even though I have not had a lot of time to devote to the various urgent projects around the farm, I have been able to make noticeable progress. The door frames are built for the rolling doors on the goat barn and a feeder had been built and set in place for the pigs. The garden is coming along nicely – despite the continued cold nights. The sheep are settling into a routine with Mama and our little Penny is healthy and growing quickly. The goats are losing weight so we can take them to be bred in April. That should give us September babies. Hopefully that will turn out better this year than last year. Meanwhile, the pigs are gaining weight. They should be ready for the market in October. The chickens are laying about two dozen eggs per day, so Mama is able to offer eggs for sale again.  It has been several months since she was able to make that offer. And the cows are being bred. Hopefully we will have September or October calves.


The fact that our garage door opener got fried by a couple power surges Tuesday is a minor inconvenience.