The flood, travel, difficult situations, it’s a boy – maybe

I have been on the road since Tuesday morning and a lot has happened over those days. I have often said that Mama gets to lead a far more interesting life than most people would imagine. Though you would think she would have predictable and uneventful days living quietly on the farm in Chico – that is not often the case. What happened while I was traveling to the panhandle was a case in point.

Wednesday afternoon I got a frantic call from Mama who had been out shopping for plants and grass seed with Grandma and Grandpa. They had come home to a flood. There was water collecting in the living room – which is about five inched lower that the rest of the house. We were making a swimming pool out of the area. She knew at that time that the toilet had been left running but not much else.

 It was only later that I found out that the toilet in our master bath had been stopped and the flush handle had gotten stuck in the open position. That made far more sense. Fortunately, the stoppage on the toilet was far enough into the sewer line that no offal was present in the floodwaters.

Grandpa was able to take the filter and bag out of the shop vac and use if to suck out the water ten gallon at a time. Mama said he was sore from getting the full vacuum to the front porch to empty it. I think she told me he filled it ten or eleven times. The floor seems to have survived the submersion in water so the damage was very minimal.

I wish I could have accomplished more when I was in meetings with my staff in west Texas and Oklahoma but I think all I did manage to do was stir up the controversy I was trying to settle. Time will tell but the ladies there are in a difficult situation because of duplicitous leadership and there is little I can do to insulate them from the Human Recourses storm I see coming to that area.

It was overcast most of the time I was in the panhandle but I did not think anything about it –severe weather wise. I got a good reminder of the fickle nature of the weather on those high plains on the way back to the hotel from Guymon, OK. I had left Dumas that morning under cloudy skies with the weather report saying that there could be some sprinkles. On the way back through Stafford, TX there as a pretty substantial accumulation of snow on the ground.

The roads were okay, just a little wet but the grassy areas were fully covered with snow and it had all happened in the six hours I was in Guymon. The next morning there was heavy ice on the truck windows and the temperature was 21®F. Fortunately, the forty mile per hour wind had blown itself out.

On the way home from Elk City, OK I had to pull over and put out a grass fire. I had passed three small fires already but there were people tending to them  - beating the fires with towels and jackets - but the forth one I came to was unattended and it was near  little rustic furniture shop. Since I had a fire extinguisher in the truck, I got it out and used it on the fire until I ran out of dry chemicals. By that time there were other people with me. We got that fire put out completely. The next four I passed were already large enough that they would require a lot of water and a long reach to contain.

Maggie texted last night that the nurse doing the ultra sound told her the baby is a boy. Time will tell. I would think it difficult to discover the definitive parts on one that small but those who do the sonograms for a living are better at the details than I am. However, they have a 50% chance of getting it wrong.

We will know more as the pregnancy progresses.

Building, selling, baptizing

Saturday was a productive and painful day. Grandpa and I worked on a shed we are attaching to the barn. It is not particularly large – only 24x30 – but it was a challenge for both of us. The ground around the barn was heavy with rocks and roots. Even though I had the power post hole digger it beat me pretty badly as we struggled to get the depth we wanted for the six posts we set. We ended up doing the majority of the digging by hand and supplementing with the power auger. By the time we put the tools away on Saturday afternoon we were both pretty worn out and sore.

We put up nine four by fours and twelve two by sixes and it wore us out. That’s a sad commentary on the stare of our health. My back was completely worn out by the time we quit. Honestly, Grandpa was not doing very well through the day. His blood pressure was pretty low and he needed to stop every time he stood up to let his blood pressure come up so the dizziness he was experiencing would pass. It was slow going at a couple points but he hung in until we got to what he considered a good stopping point.

Mama and Grandma had gone to Trade Days that morning. Mama decided after the evening with the pup peeing all over the place when the children came into the house that the pup needed to find another home. Though it saddened her, she did find a buyer among the many shoppers at the flea market that morning. It is a relief to me and I think is will be to us all since Kira is in heat and bleeding.

Mama and Kimberlyn Cantrell are supposed to get together this morning and let Kim’s dog, Leo, a German Shepherd male, meet Kira to see if there will be some puppies produced from those encounters. All I need is another litter of puppies to deal with. So far Victoria has committed to selling all the pups. We’ll see if that holds true when the time comes. The way Kira sheds I do not want another one like her in the house. Then again, I could just put some mild adhesive on the floor and we could virtually carpet the entire house with dog hair in a couple months.

Last night Cori shared videos of her children being baptized. All three were baptized after the evening service at their church. She tells us that they were counting down the days to the event and it proved to be a memorable one. The pastor had forgotten about the baptisms so the heater had not been turned on. The water was, according to Grant, colder than frozen.

In the videos all the kids were troopers but the pastor probably got more wet in these baptisms than any in his recent past since Blake practically climbed onto his chest as he came up out of the water. Kudos to the pastor for holding each of the little ones as far up as he could until they were submerged and then getting them out of the water as quickly as he could, but the muted antics of each of the children as they tried not to overreact to the cold water is worth watching.

It is a moment they will always remember – as it should be.

Old utilities, being overrun, babysitting

Yesterday evening as I was pulling in the driveway I saw Grandpa digging near the fence. I was curious so I walked over to see what was going on. He was trying to uncover the electrical line that had a junction in that spot to see if he could determine how the power was fed to that junction. It has not been used in years and could be completely defunct but he is curious.

He also discovered a set of valves for a water delivery system that appears to service the entire ten acres. There are spigots throughout the property but we have no idea how they are lined up or which of the two wells they originate from.  Since his curiosity is piqued I will let him do what he can to figure it all out. It can only help us as we try to redevelop the property.

It was pretty chilly all day yesterday so I did not stay out very long. Grandpa came in pretty soon after I did but it was what made him come in that was fun. He heard a stirring in the leaves in the section just east of the house and saw the baby pigs heading our way. When he pointed them out to us we were able to really get a good look at them. They crossed the area just in back of the backyard – and took their time doing it.

There were fifteen in all and all of them looked like they were about the same size. Either they came out of the same litter or they were born within days of each other. They were certainly moving together as a herd. It was fun to watch but kind of frightening to think that in several months they could all be ready to reproduce. Grandpa is desperate to get a garden in but with that many young pigs in the area we will need a fortress to protect anything we plant – especially potatoes.

Mama and I met Erin Ehceveria at the junction of Hwy380 and CR1655 at about 6:30 so Mama could lead her to the property for the first time. She had been to the farm in Bowie but now that we are closer she and Mama are talking about watching her three young ones more often. Last night Erin had a meeting in Bridgeport for the special needs baseball support group and Mama is near enough that we could help her with the kids.

We only had the kids for about three hours but in that time we really discovered just how far from baby-proof our house was. Her toddler, Joseph, is just not walking and he is into everything. He is a very heavy little man and Grandma tried to hold him for the first few minutes because she thought the floor was too dirty for him to be crawling on – especially since Mattie nervous peed in about five places as soon as she saw the children. That did not last long. I guess he weighs about twenty five pounds.

All the children are terrified of dogs so all the dogs had to be banished. Grandma would not give up on that. Rosie did not take to it very well and yipped from Victoria’s room where we had shut her up until I went back and “reasoned” with her. Mattie and Kira were sequestered in the sunroom but every time the youngest two saw either of them they acted very frightened. You can only assume it is genuine with children that small.

It was a busy three hours – especially with Grandma calling out instructions for things we were already doing – as the children acclimated themselves to the new surroundings. We do know these two things: our house is not ready for toddlers, and we will not babysit regularly while Grandma lives with us.

Full up, new glasses, warm weather

Mama, Grandma and Grandpa picked up the meat from Hess Meat Market yesterday. It was almost more than our freezers could hold. The processing weight was 638 pounds so the final weight would have been near 500 pounds. There were ten boxes of meat to deal with when they got there. They hustled home and got it all into the freezers – except three packages of hamburger which Grandma cooked up as soon as it thawed. Any thoughts I had of getting a hog processed- providing we could trap one – will have to wait until we have opened up some freezer space.

Mama is going to talk to a few people at church to see if they would like to buy some of the meat. I am not sure how she will work that out but I think we need to pursue it. She will also talk to the Skills to see if we can trade some of our beef for some lamb. All the space to keep the meat frozen would have worked out a little better if Grandma and Grandpa had not bought eight half gallons of frozen yogurt last week…it was on special.

Last night I wore my new glasses to church. I have not risked wearing them as I lead the singing because I was fearful I would not be able to move my eyes from looking out at the congregation back to the hymnal and get the words of the song in focus as quickly as I needed to. It worked out alright but I wanted to make sure I did not try it on a Sunday morning for the first time.

With the progressive lenses there is a narrow band of view in the center of the lenses that goes all the way from the top of the lens to the bottom of the lens with multiple focal lengths as you progress downward or upward – as needed. The problem is that outside of that band of prescription cut glass everything is very blurry.

It requires a lot more head movement to keep things in proper focus than normal bifocals. Granted, the movement is minimal but you have to train the eyes to center on that focal band in the lens while the head and neck make the adjustments to bring everything into focus. It is a bit of a challenge and can be quite disconcerting if you are moving quickly.

At work, I call them my go-to-meeting-glasses because I cannot use them for normal computer work since the focal length I need for that work is at the very bottom of the lens. Mama assures me I will get used to them but she is eight months ahead of me. I have to admit that it is nice to see clearly at a distance.

The weekend is almost upon us and this one promises to be a great one weather wise. The temperature is supposed to move a little over 50®F from this morning’s low of 28®F to near 80®F by Saturday afternoon. I have plans to start the shed at the barn so we can get some cover over our equipment and hay.

We will see how those plans progress as we move into the weekend.

Lost and found, fuel costs, pigs and traps

See if this sounds familiar, one of the ladies at work was telling a story about some lost paperwork. She had sorted through their informational files and gathered together all the birth certificates in preparation for the coming school year. Once she got all of the papers together she put them someplace she was sure she would not forget.

Several weeks later she needed to retrieve the birth certificated and could not remember where she had put them. After searching for several weeks without success she had to go to the local courthouse and get duplicate copies so she could present them for evidence at some agency that was requesting them.

When she got back home with the duplicated she sat in frustration with the circumstance and with herself and began to think about where she could put the copies so she was sure to never forget where she had placed them. Having made that decision, she opened the drawer she had chosen and discovered the originals – where she had put them months ago. It sounds pretty familiar to me only with me it is usually finding a tool I know I just had with me.

Yesterday, Grandpa and Mama went a bought ninety gallons of diesel to be used on the farm. I commissioned the purchase yesterday because I saw the price of crude oil go up by over four dollars by late morning. It was up by over seven dollars by the time the market closed – on the index I watch. Gas and diesel prices will be up today as a result. The timing seemed right even though the expense was not budgeted.

On the way to work this morning I almost hit the big red hog we have been seeing around. I was turning onto the state road at the junction of our county road and as I began to accelerate the hog ran into the outer reaches of my headlights; just a shadow and a flash at first. I barely braked enough to miss hitting it dead on but I got a real good look at in the few seconds it was escaping direct contact with the Uplander.

It is a red color but not the deep red of the Durocs. It is probably under three hundred pounds but not by much. It stood about even with the top of the headlight assembly on the Uplander. I have to assume it is one of the major sources of the piglets we have scrambling through our pastures – like last night. I am relieved I did not kill it with my car. It would have caused some pretty significant damage.

After Mama and I did our homework last night I went for a walk down our road. Just outside of our fence line I saw one of the two groups of little shoats we have been seeing meandering about. I had my .22 revolver with me so I took a shot at one. It was pretty far away for a pistol. I do not think I hit it but they all knew to head for the brush when they heard the sound of firearms.

I hope we will set the trap tonight. I know where I would like to set it but it is in the pasture where Daisy May roams about and I know she will dump the trap over to get the corn we would use as bait. How do I know? Yesterday evening I closed up a gate Grandpa had left open. He got to feeling poorly in the afternoon. When I closed and locked the gate I noticed the tractor was out so I went to put it away.

Daisy May was just on the other side of the cattle panel we are using as a gate between the two fenced areas so I opened the gate only enough to get through so she would not be tempted to squeeze past the tractor and get out. Having done that I closed the opening with the cow panel and opened the gates to the barn so I could part the tractor.

Grandpa had put a bag of deer corn in the bucket of the tractor and I knew it was there but before I could get back to the tractor – about fifty feet away – she had pulled the bag of corn onto the ground and was doing her best to rip it open.

Proof enough that she would never leave the hog trap alone.

Paperwork, meeting my boss, the hog trap, FBI, Victoria’s house updates

Mama came to Decatur yesterday to get the application for agriculture exemption on our little property in Chico and was helped in a big way by one of the ladies working in that office. We are now set to receive the exemption which should save us more than half on our yearly taxes. She was encouraged to have gotten that done so easily.

She stopped by the office to give me the paperwork after she was done and since it was about that time we went to lunch together. When we came back my boss was leaving the office headed to Dumas. I stopped him to ask him if he had a minute to meet Mama and he pulled over and got out to greet her. It was a good opportunity to connect faces to names for both of them.

Sunday morning on the way to church we spotted a herd of little pigs in the field across the road from us. There were at least fifteen in the group. I would rather not give them a chance to breed. To that end, Mama had tried to arrange a meeting with one of the men in our church to borrow a hog trap for the last week or more but we were never able to work out the timing.

So she and the daughter-in-law worked out to have the trap put at the front of the property and we would get it when we had the opportunity. Yesterday evening was the opportune time. So when I got home we got Grandpa – who had been weed eating and preparing our garden spot – and we headed out to find the property where the trap was sitting. It was not supposed to be very far out.

The directions were to go north out of Chico and turn left at a blue “Camping” sign, cross the railroad tracks, pass a rundown mobile home and look for a painted white pipe fence entrance. Well, we never did find the “camping” sign to start the path to the farm in question so I had Mama call and see if we could get a road number. After several calls and three U-turns we found the road we needed. The rest was easy. We have the trap sitting in the middle section of our farm. Grandpa is going to rework the trap mechanism today and we will bait it sometime this week.

We (Mama, Victoria and I) went to FBI last night at the church. It makes it a late night for me but the class is very enjoyable. There are fourteen of us in this session, only three of which are men. It is a fun group and will ultimately earn those who finish a full Bible degree. Right now that seems very far away (three years to be exact) but if we can endure it will be well worth it.

We did get confirmation from the title company yesterday that they are working on the title search for the little house and they have completed all that has been asked of them to date. We now need to know if the bank will require a survey – which he seller will pay for – and how long that will take. Mama is trying to close by the 19^th of this month but it is likely to be several weeks later.

Victoria, Grandma and Grandpa are very excited.

 

Help, Victoria’s house, Good news

In spite of the threat of rain we managed to get a lot done this weekend. It helped that Daniel Wycoff called early Saturday morning to ask if we could use his help. I hesitated to say yes, but I am not sure why. I was already working on the Mama’s vanity in our master bath and Grandpa did not seem too engaged. So I had Mama tell him to come on over. We could surely find some way to let him help.

When he got there I set him to assembling the nesting boxes I had cut out Thursday evening when I had taken the day off to help on the final assembly of the little metal shed. The chickens had been introduced to the building Thursday night but we had not put nesting boxes or roosts up. I had hoped Mama and Grandpa would work on them Friday but they found other things to do.

While I finished on the vanity Daniel built the nesting boxes. They turned out nicely because he saw what I had intended when I cut the pieces and he is a perfectionist in assembly. He had them ready a little before I got the vanity done so Grandpa helped install them in the coop building, but it was not with much enthusiasm. I have come to the conclusion that Grandpa is a xenophobe – at least, in practice. He disappeared as soon as I went to the coop to help install the roosts and complete the nesting boxes. In the end, Mama loved her new vanity and her new additions to the coop.

As of Friday Victoria was assured she would hear the final costs to close on her little house by some time today. Grandma and Grandpa are fronting all the money for the down payment. It is perhaps the wisest investment they will have ever made – in my humble opinion. That should complete the process of actually getting the finances in order to sign the papers so they can take position of the house and begin remodeling.

Victoria, Grandma and Grandpa are very excited about the ideas Grandpa has for the house. I hear only bits and pieces but I think Grandpa has the project well in hand; if he can hold up physically. I predict that the entire project will take most of the year but I hope Victoria and her grandparents will be able to move into the house early in the fall. Time will tell.

As that goes on I still have the materials for two projects on our farm so there will be plenty to keep all of us busy during the next few weeks as we wait on the final authorization to take possession of the house and property. Past those small projects I have three major ones to keep me busy through the end of the year.

Cori called yesterday and told us that both Grant and Blake had asked Jesus into their hearts. As she relayed the story of how that all came to pass I was struck by how having your children in the right church helps them formulate those questions and prepares us as parents to answer those questions.

As their children grow we will pray fervently, watch carefully and guard jealously their progress in understanding how God works in each of their hearts and lives until that faith is deeply rooted and personal.

Then we will pray fervently, watch carefully and praise the Lord continually as they grow in Him.