Well work, babies, moving

It’s been a few days since I have written. That does not mean nothing has been happening. I taught class all day Wednesday and Thursday and we were off Friday so my time has been pretty well occupied away from a computer. Evenings have been spent studying for the test we have tonight in FBI. All that being said, Mama and I were able to get a lot done at the farm with the extra day we were given.

I have been accumulating and assembling parts for the well in the barn lot over the past few weeks so that when I got the time I could put it in service. Thursday night I worked on a line that the cattle had trampled and bent where it comes through the slab. I had to bust up the slab to get to a part of the line where the repair could be made. I hated to do that but there was no other way. (I will have to repair that corner before I put up the walls of the well house.) Once that was done I got the water lines we laid a year ago hooked to the well and started the well. To my great disappointment, I could not get the water to come out of the yard hydrants at the end of those lines, even though there was pressure and flow at the well. Since Mama and I had to do some shopping that is where I left it Friday afternoon. 

Saturday morning, I had an idea. I rigged up a connection where I could hook the hose at the garden into the new lines and back charge them with water all the way to the well. When I got water flowing at each of the three hydrants I shut them off and let the pressure build. Then I opened the faucet at the well and got the flow there as well. When I started the well again, I had flow from that well to each hydrant. With that done, I spent some time disconnecting hoses from the house well and hooked up separate hoses to the hydrants fed by the barn well. Each of those is close to where we need them so it is a lot easier for Mama and I to fill waterers and troughs and to water the garden and flowerbeds. That was always the intent. It just took me a year to get to it.

We are anxiously watching for baby goats. Millie looks like she is ready to explode. She is starting to show signs of being ready to kid but has not delivered yet. In our cattle, Big Mama looks like she is about ready to give us a calf so we are monitoring her and the others. All of whom are due this month. When it happens it will be a pleasant surprise. We are praying for healthy deliveries. Last year #95 had a still born calf. We are really watching her.

Brittany and Andrew made it to Wichita over the weekend. They will get the keys to the house they closed on some time this morning. It was a painful process doing the purchase long distance. Some of the things being demanded of them and the realtor by the sellers seemed over the top. As it turned out, the sellers were attorneys, so their demands were a little out of the ordinary and very lopsided in their favor. It left Brittany and Andrew with a negative experience which I pray does not carry over into resentment towards the things they will have to do to the house they bought through the process. God will deal with the seller as He sees fit so there is no sense in spending any emotion energy there. I hope it is an exciting moment for them as they get to look over the house they will be calling home for the next five or so years.

It will be Maggie and Aaron and the kids turn to go through the moving process next month. Maggie is absolutely thrilled about it. Kind of.

Teaching, grooming, time off

I found out yesterday that I will be teaching tomorrow and Thursday. I was hoping not to have to do back to back eight-hour training sessions but that is not the way it worked out. My coworker, who was slated to give the training tomorrow, does not feel that she has had adequate time to prepare so she handed the class back over to me. I am not worried about teaching the material for that class. I feel well prepared for it. It is the Thursday class that I am more concerned about because it was scheduled rather suddenly and I have not had a lot of time to prepare for it. It will be the first time I have taught that class so it would have been a bit stressful under normal circumstances. Ordinarily, the classes would not fall consecutively since the Thursday class is given quarterly but I got lucky this week. It should not be a problem if my voice holds out. Last time I talked for the six plus hours of training I did not have the strength of voice to lead the singing at church that night.

This morning Mama is going to attempt to take Sam and Sasha to the vet for shots and grooming. She gets Sam sheered every year but we do not normally try anything like that with Sasha. She does not have to report to the school until 1 pm so her hope is that the dogs will be ready by noon and she can have them back home before she has to leave to meet the school kids as they head out for a track meet this evening. I think it is an overly ambitious goal, but Victoria is there to help her get the dogs loaded. (I do not like using the vehicles for hauling dogs but it is not a fight worth the emotional toil involved.) My real concern is Sasha. She is very timid and resistant to anything out of the ordinary. I hope Mama can keep her from running off once they get to the vet’s office. I am curious to see how things turns out. I hope it is less stressful for Mama than it will be for Sasha.

Both Mama and I will be off Friday. It is a scheduled holiday at my work but it is not typically one that the school takes. Since there are extra days build into the schedule they have elected to take the day off. It will be a much-needed break for me and Mama. I had originally thought about going down to Chappell Hill to collect the few items Martha is holding for me but have since decided against making the trip. Mama, Victoria and I have our first test for this semester of FBI on Monday and I have not studied well enough for it. I will not be able to really study until Thursday evening so making the trip would take that time away as well. It may be a small thing but I do not like to do poorly on tests. Anyway, there is a lot we can get done at the farm if we stay and work. It has been a while since I had a full day to devote to the effort and I am looking forward to it.

We are carefully watching the cows and our nanny. Babies should be arriving within the next couple weeks. We are praying for safe deliveries all the way around.

New fence, replanting, travel plans

While Mama, Victoria, Mr. Plumley and the Echeveria kids went to Trade Days in Bowie, I went bus calling but before I got the to the church I went to Tractor Supply and got the cattle and hog panels I needed for the garden. I decided that rather than reinforce the fence on the side the cattle have access to I would rebuild it with cattle panels. At least those are strong enough to withstand Big Mama’s attempts to crumple them. What remained of the garden is slowly recovering. The cooler weather and careful watering have revived the strawberry plants that were not completely uprooted. The plum trees will not fully recover this year so, hopefully, the leaves they have remaining will be enough to carry them through until next year. The pear trees are so old that they have plenty of reserves to make a comeback. We still have most of the potatoes and the plants that were eaten down are sending up new shoots. Fortunately, all my miniature and dwarf fruit trees were left alone.

The primary reason Mama went to Trade Days was to buy the plants to refill the raised bed. She was not aware of my plans to redo parts of the garden until she got home a saw it. I used a couple cattle panels for trellises for the green beans and sweet potatoes. I used a hog panel for the peas to attach to as the plants grow. It made the garden look very nice when I got the panels in place. I was working on planting the peas and green beans when Mama got back home with her crew. She loved the look. Mr. Plumley just moaned about the possibility of frost killing everything we were planting. He can be pretty negative but I suppose in his eighty plus years, he has seen a lot of negative things happen. I went ahead and planted the beans, peas and okra seeds. We will hope for the best. I hilled up the potatoes for the last time and cleaned the leaves and fronds out of the strawberry bed. Then we all took a nap.

Saturday evening, we planted the tomato, pepper, watermelon and squash plants. I spent a good deal of time watering the new plants. If it does not rain today I will water them again. I have found it best to water generously during the first week or so with new plants. Again, the cool evenings have really helped the plants to adapt to their new surroundings – as well as their full exposure to the sun. Fortunately, the way the garden faces, it only gets the later afternoon and evening sun. That is often enough to burn things up, but not yet. We still have two full rows and about half of the raised bed to populate but Mama is out of ideas for new residents. I have confidence she will come up with something soon but for the moment, the garden is fuller and looks better than in any of the previous years. Now if we can stay home long enough to tend to it we might have some good results from all our work.

Brittany and Andrew should be in Kansas this weekend and Maggie and Aaron and the kids will be getting packed to move next month. They should be in Wilmington late in May. Victoria is planning a trip to connect with Cori, Nate and the kids in early June, which she hopes will include me and Mama – at least for the trip over. I am not sure if I will be able to make that trip but for the moment she and Mama are planning as though I am able. Work has things scheduled for me into June and July which will require a work around of schedules. Fortunately, Mama will be off for those months.

So, our summer is filling up quickly.

Dragging around, evenings, house buying

Yesterday evening was a dull evening. It was one of those evenings when Mama and I are both tired and have to scrounge up the energy to go to church. We both laid down for a half hour after I got home and it was even harder to get going after our little nap. We were both sort of dragging around but we did and made it to church on time. It was later than I like to get to church on a Wednesday night, but we made it. I read a mission letter each Wednesday night – except when we have a missionary in attendance who can present their work. I read a letter from the Moreland family last night. They graduated BBTI two years ago and are headed to the Armenia this month to begin church planting and Bible translation. They became friends of ours while they were at BBTI so it was good to hear the news and to share the update with the church.

Hopefully there will be more energy available tonight. There is a lot we have to do around the farm which too often takes a back seat to the things we have to do for normal living – work, grocery shopping, minor auto repairs, cleaning the house, laundry, cooking, church attendance, bus calling, etc. I am not traveling yet so I still have several evenings per week free to work about the farm , however; I am finding it a challenge to keep up at times. The evenings have been almost perfect this week with light winds and cool temperatures. The bugs are not bad yet but that is just around the corner. Mama and I are still doing all the needed chores to keep the animals fed and otherwise cared for and we have mowers and blowers, tractors, trailers and trucks, as well as other equipment to speed up the work processes. At some point, we will catch up to the more urgent things but we will never get ahead of the ongoing tasks, like cleaning the coop and barn, hauling and storing feed and hay, planting and pruning, hauling animals in and hauling animals out. I suppose that is why I like having the farm. There is always plenty to do. The animals and Mama make sure of that. As long as her knees hold up we will be able to enjoy all the life around us.

Brittany and Andrew are enjoying the pleasures of buying their first home. She called yesterday frustrated with the process – especially long distance. I have never dealt with a home purchase from outside of the US but Mama and I have bought and sold houses while we were not on site with the realtors and bankers. If you find a good seller and a good realtor and a good banker all in the same purchase or sale, it is a very fortunate happenstance. Unfortunately, it does not happen that way very often. For me and Mama it has happened a couple times and we were thankful for each of those times. In Brittany and Andrew’s case, what they are experiencing is not horrible but it can be stressful none-the-less. If I heard correctly, they have worked out the details with the bank and the realtor to get the closing done by using a notary at the base. I don’t think it matters at all to the sellers as long as they get their money and the house is legally transferred out of their name. My concern is that the seller will back out of the deal to fix/replace the roof – even if it is in writing. We will see. I pray they are honest people who are locked into the area so if there is a contention, it can be resolved quickly.

Brittany and Andrew will be in Wichita Sunday or Monday and she can take on the issues personally at that point.

Lazy evening, another tool

Yesterday at work the company hired a training contractor to teach is how to fuse plastic pipe. It was set up in four two-hour training classes of two hours each. The three instructors wore themselves out through the repetition required to train all forty of us. My group went through the training from 1 -3 pm. It was a bright, windy day so a couple of the guys in my class got a bit of a sunburn in the course of the training; me included. I did not realize I had gotten that much sun until I started to clean up later that evening.

Mama and I did a lot of little things in the late afternoon and evening just to clean up and catch up to the interrupted weekend we had. Neither of us had a surplus of energy to expend but the tasks we took on did not require a great deal of output on our parts. I did get the cattle a fresh bale of hay and they ran to it and attacked it like they had not eaten in a week. It is always humorous to see them pull or a huge mouthful of hay and slowly work it through to completion. They are actually very neat eaters in many respects. They always chew with their lips together and they never get another bite until they have swallowed the bite in their mouth. They never talk while their mouth is full and they always act like they are totally enjoying their meal. Goats are very much the same. No wonder the old timers referred to those with bad table manners as eating like a pig.

We took time to re-inspect and clean up in the garden. For the moment, it looks like the fruit trees will survive although it will cost them the year just to regain the growth they lost in one afternoon. There are enough of the crowns left to regrow about two thirds of the strawberry plants and there were even a few little berries left on two plants. I just had to clear the leaves back to see them. For the vegetables, all of them will have to be replaced and we should be able to do that this weekend by buying replacement plants at Trade Days. Along those lines, Mama dug into the cabinet where she has the seeds stored and found some green bean and snow pea seeds we can plant also. All this planting is premised on the hope that I can build a fence capable of keeping the cattle out of the garden. I believe I can do that.

Before we settled in for the night I applied weed preventer to the back yard in the hope of keeping down on the two types of grass burrs we get in the heat of the summer. One kind, the sand burr produces burrs that are very spiked, very hard and very painful to pull from shoes, shoe laces, socks and the bottom of pant legs. Mama really hates those. The other burr is not as spiked but is almost soft. It attaches to the soles of shoes and gets ground into any rugs, carpet, bath mats or car floor mats. It is not usually painful to extract but there are so many burrs produced per plant that it is a bit overwhelming to have to pull them out one-by-one from the infested areas. They end up getting on everything. Mama hates them also but at least they are not injurious. I hope the preventer works as well as we have been told it does.

Becky called and asked me to take the plate off the PT Cruiser and send it to them. I think Mama told me they bought an older Blazer already so transferring the plated makes sense. However, when I tried to remove the plate I discovered that it is mounted with a special screw that requires a hollow star bit. It is called, properly enough, a tamper proof screw. I do not have the bit required so I will have to spend the time tracking one down. It is not a big deal but it was unexpected.

One more tool to buy and then track down every time I need it.

 

Vanishing garden, Becky, Brittany

Last night was FBI so I did not get re-dressed for feeding. Mama was ready to go out when I got home and said she did not need the help so I settled in a chair to nap for a few minutes before going to class. Mama and I were both dragging from Sunday night sitting up with Becky as she and Mike waited on a ride home. I never did get to rest because after Rosie pooped right behind the chair I was resting in – the nasty smell of that was inescapable and the cleanup was disgusting – Mama came in and told me that the garden was gone. I could tell by her voice that I needed to get up and go out and look; even though I was not dressed for it. I was still in my office attire. When I got to the garden it was painfully obvious what she was talking about.

The raised bed was empty. The pots where we had tomato plants blooming and growing little tomatoes, the strawberry bed that had been loaded with ripening fruit, were all gone. Completely, totally gone. One of the plum trees was almost denuded and the other was nearly so. One limb of the pear tree that was bent over by the pears ripening on it was eaten away all the way back to the tree. Even the asparagus did not escape the onslaught. It was all gone. Bare ground, bare branches, bare beds. It was easy to see where a cow or cows had nearly flattened the fence to get in. Mama was almost in tears. I was most upset over the strawberry plants that I had tended for two years to get to the point of really setting fruit. We put the cows up in the barn lot – where they will stay - for the next couple days so I can repair the fence.

 The best way to get them to move is the promise of feed so that is what we did since that is what they expected. It was funny to hear Mama talking mean to her herd. “You don’t deserve any feed after what you all did. I don’t know which one of you ate my garden but I am really mad at you.” And so on. In their defense, I could have taken the time to set out a bale of hay for them on Sunday but I wanted them to eat what they had before doing so. I will set one out tonight but I will also reinforce the garden fence before I let them go near it again. Trade Days is this weekend so we will buy the plants to repopulate the garden – maybe even to make it better than it was before, just three weeks behind where we were on vegetables and two years later that we were on strawberries.

Becky and her crew made it to Hot Springs at about 8 am yesterday. For the moment (or for the next several weeks), their PT Cruiser sits in the carport taking up Victoria’s parking place. The only issue we will have that I can see is getting the mower out of the carport. Fortunately, there is a gate wide enough to accommodate the mower at the back of the carport. Mama will just have to go the long way around to get to the yard to mow: which she intends to do this evening if the rain holds off. Please continue for Becky and Mike. I will not suggest how to pray, just that you pray. It is difficult for those who know how to play church to realize how far away they actually are from the Lord.

Brittany and Andrew will be flying to Kansas sometime in the middle of the month; which is only two weeks away. I have not heard, but I can imagine Brittany is a bit stressed out. I am not too worried about Brittany but I pray hard for Zoe and Soe. I told Mama I will laugh for weeks if the twins turn out to be boys. But we will celebrate healthy twins because of the miracle it is. Pray for them to find a good church in Wichita. They will be there for several years.

Lots of changes coming this year.

Becky’s visit, Seth

Becky, Bridgette and Mike made it over to the farm Saturday morning. They stayed at a hotel in Bridgeport Friday night after getting very late. We had planned a big breakfast together and I think Becky was looking forward to that. We discovered right away that Bridgette likes “outside” as much as Savanna, so, once out the door, we let her stay outside for a grand tour of the farm. She walked all around the pig and chicken area, all around the goats, all through the garden and over to the barn to see the cows. From there Mama took the tour out onto the road so Bridgette could have some solid footing for the walk back to the house. I managed to get a few little things done while Mama, Becky and Mike visited and after Bridgette’s nap we headed to Decatur for lunch. I had planned on going out for bar-b-que but everyone elected to go for Thai food so we went to Moua’s Asia Cooking. That was when the fun began.

Mike insisted on taking the little PT Cruiser that they had driven over and before we got to town it started overheating. A quick stop at O’Reiley’s for a thermostat and we were off for lunch. He babied the car on the way back to the farm and pulled the thermostat as soon as the engine had cooled off enough to work on. The thermostat we put on turned out to be a bad one and he had to pull it back out. When he did, he broke the fuel return line. No big deal, we had to go to the parts store anyway. Well, it turned out to be a big deal. It is a dealer only part and a special order one at that and all the dealership parts departments were closed. On the advice of one auto parts employees, we headed to a junk yard to locate a replacement. The nearest one was in Bowie. Fortunately, they were still open. Unfortunately, they did not have the part we needed – and we looked over the entire yard. So, I took him to a parts store in Bowie that has always been very helpful to me every time I needed help. There we bought the parts to temporarily fix the fuel return line and headed home thinking all was well. Not so fast.

With the fuel line repaired and the new thermostat in the car, it still overheated quickly. Mike determined that it was the water pump. That is a five to seven hour job for a mechanic shop. The best accommodation we could give him was working on the car under the carport. So, he dug in thinking the Google videos he had watched had provided all the information he needed. He worked on the car until dark that night and came back Sunday morning to continue. By 5 pm Sunday night he had to give up. The engine was disassembled and the front was up on jacks, but he could not go further. Becky called a friend in Hot Springs who was willing to drive over to pick them up. He got to the farm about 1:30 am, loaded them up and headed back to Hot Springs. That’s a good friend. We used to be able to count on Grandpa to be there for us like that but he and Norman were not interested in helping Mike – and they made that clear pretty quickly. Mike and Becky will have to come back over in a couple weeks to finish repairs to the car, but he will bring help with him.

Overall it was a good visit. Mike and I had time to visit as we drove around in search of parts and I did get a chance to witness – so it was not all bad. Mama and Becky had a good visit with Grandma on Saturday and Bridgette warmed up to us a little over the time spent with us.

On another note, Seth and Gabriella came to church Sunday morning. It was pleasant surprise to see them there. I was under the impression that he, like Norman, Grandma, and Grandpa had not been going to church, but that is not the case. Since Gabriella watches a young lady named Zoe on the weekend and since they have to take her to Mineral Wells each Sunday, they have been sneaking to church in Bowie on Sunday mornings. And the church they are going to is a really good one.

It is a shame they have to sneak off to church – especially considering Grandma’s heritage.