Appointment, travel, farm prep

I spent the entire morning at the doctor’s office. It was my first visit with this doctor. Mama scheduled the visit prior to our leaving for Honduras. There was no real opportune time to go, so we just picked a date. I have been run through a battery of tests, had an EKG run, blood drawn, and an x-ray taken. I will find out the results at my next appointment in mid-March. I am not particularly worried about anything except my ongoing respiratory issues and moderately high blood pressure. The doctor was more worried about my breathing issues than anything else mentioned during our interview, including the colon issues I have continuously. Those concerns may be refocused based on test results, but she was not ready to jump to any conclusions. We will see how all this plays out but I was impressed with her overall approach. She will hold off on her diagnosis until she gets some definitive results to help determine a meaningful approach to managing my health. Hopefully, Mama and I can afford it.  

My work weeks are filling up quickly. I have to travel for classes both of the first two weeks of March. Leaving on Tuesday and returning on Friday of each week. This afternoon I got a notice that another company wanted two classes given at their site during the last week of March.  I will not be surprised if that pace continues though the months of April and May as our business grows at a remarkably fast pace. It is certainly good for the company. Not so good for the farm and our apiary going into the Spring months. Somehow, we will work it out with the Lord’s help. Right now, I am just trying to get through all the financial obligations of March and April.

Mama and I are planting potatoes in the garden this evening. We are a couple weeks behind, but our timing should work out fine. Mama has been nursing sweet potatoes in a pot in the sunroom through the winter. But it is far too cold to set them out yet. Those are early Summer vegetables. So far, I have the raised bed ready for vegetables as we reach those specific planting times. While we were in Honduras, Grandpa disked up the garden to give us a head start. Tonight, we will till the area for the potatoes. Mama and I are still discussing the planting options; what direction to run the rows and how ling those rows should be. How to keep the chickens from destroying our garden as we plant it.

Blackberry and blueberries bushes, grapes vines, peach and apricot trees are all starting to bud out. The blackberry plants never really died off through the Winter, but they are showing lots of new growth now. I moved the grape vine from it’s spot in the back yard to the bed with the blueberries to see if I could give it a better growing environment. It seems to be responding well to the move. If I can get grapes this year, I will keep the vine. If not, I will pull it up and discard it. That holds true for the apricot tree as well. I plan to take cuttings from the peach and apricot trees this year and start new trees from those cuttings. I am planting pecans (the actual nuts) to try to get some trees from those nuts. That way Mama and I can be sure we will get the pecans we want once the trees start to fruit. I am starting five plants. We will see how successful that might be.

We are still waiting on our realtor for news about our properties in Lawton. That has been a discouraging project. Mama and I are not certain we will go back to Lawton once we have cleared these two houses. One has been in the works for sixteen months. The other for eleven months. Far too long to be a practical flipping project. Hopefully, we will make some money off the two once they are sold, but, for now, we are just praying to get out of the projects successfully. Soon.

I will have to work at the farm to get the site set up for our beehives. I have not done that yet and we have two nuc’s ordered from our beekeeper’s club president. So, I have to have two hives set and ready for those to be inserted in the new hives. I was going to try to get two more hives ready, but I am running out of time. I ran out of money a good while ago. Fortunately, all the goat projects are caught up for the moment.

Now I can focus my attention on the bees. Maybe.