Cleaning, catch and release, Chinese eating

Mama and I spent the entire morning Saturday cleaning out the chicken coops. It was high time to get both sides cleaned – especially on the side with the chicks. What we ended up doing was taking the large cage out of the coop with all the growing chicks in it, and completely emptying the coop before cleaning the floor. It was quite a mess and neither Mama nor I wanted to just put the maggot infested combination of feed and manure anywhere on the farm so we bagged it up and took it to the dump. My biggest concern was that the bag would break on me and I would be left cleaning up the mess a second time. Fortunately, I got it to the dump and deposited in the container there with the bag fully intact. To get all of the slurry loaded into the bag Mama and I put it in an empty trashcan and loaded it that way so we did not have to sit and hold the bad open while loading it. That worked really well – especially since I know who would have been holding the bag open to load it.

Once we got the mess cleaned up Mama, we thoroughly cleaned the floor and got it prepared for the chicks to be turned out – without the cage. To do that, Mama and I placed the cage on end in the doorway of the coop and fished out the terrified chicks one by one to be treated and released. When all were free (sort of) we backed the cage out the door and set it on a couple saw horses to be washed by the rain. By the time we got the other side of the coop cleaned, the chicks were on the roosts, on the nesting boxes and everywhere else in the coop. I thought it was quite a feat since the roosts are about three feet off the floor. The will really grow now. The problem will be cleaning up the coop with all of them loose. We both showered after we finished the cleaning chore.

Saturday evening, Mama and I went out kind of late to feed. I normally feed the goats while she tends to the other animals. Maybe it is our left-handed, right-handed nature but she and I do the feeding completely reversed from each other. When I opened the door to the well house I could immediately tell I had caught something in the livetrap. The trap door was shut and a couple things near the trap had been knocked about. When I picked up the trap to see what was in it a large snakehead poked out the side at me. It was a very large rat snake. He could only get a few inches of his body through the mesh of the cage. I picked up the cage – with the head and neck protruding and carried it through the garden to find Mama.

When she realized what it was she went to the house to get her phone so she could take a picture. She went a step further and videoed it as I shook the snake out of the trap to release it. The video went well until the snake headed toward her. Then all you could see was the ground. When we were at a fellowship at the church Sunday night she must have showed the video twenty times. It was the most interesting thing I have caught in that trap. I leave the trap, set and un-baited, at an opening the rats chewed through the doorjamb at the well house. So far, I have caught eight rats as they dash through the opening into the trap. I suppose it is a great shock to the m to end up in the trap, but it works for me. Now, I can add a five-foot rat snake to the list of trapped animals. So far, it is the only captured critter to have made it out alive.

Sunday after church, we went to the Chinese restaurant and spent some time visiting with Cheyenne’s parents and her uncle Ling. He is also raising rabbits and has two young females to give us for breeding to the male, Jack, that we have now. While we were talking about rabbits, Mama asked if they would want any chickens. Ling asked if they were older or younger. He was excited when we told him they were older. He told us the older ones make better soup. I agree. Mama does not. So, we are going to make the exchange tomorrow morning. I will pluck them off the roost tonight. I asked if he wanted the chickens alive so they could kill them. “, Yes, alive is better.” He responded, “We will kill them because we eat everything inside.”

Mama almost lose her lunch.

Cautious mommy, nasty birds, safe at home

For being only a four-day week this week has seemed to be long. There is not any rationale for that. It is just what seems to be true.

Tilly is a good mommy to her seven little ones. So much so, that she will not tolerate Mama handling the babies in any way. It brings back memories of a sow we had in West Virginia that caught me by the pants as I was trying to escape her attack and ripped the back pocket off my jeans. I was in the pen to get a dead piglet she had laid on and smothered. I did get the little body out of the pen but she got me back. We took her to market a few weeks later. Tilly is not so mean as that, I hope. She is a lot smaller than that sow but even with her tiny stature she could inflict some harm if she chose to do so. Maybe we will get her calmed down in the weeks to come. For now, the babies are doing fine so we will let her tend to then – all by herself. Neither Mama nor I move quickly enough anymore to avoid harm if she intended to hurt us.

Every time we get a batch of chicks I am amazed at how messy they are. I think there is something in the crumbled feed that causes the maggots to grow in the droppings below the cage. I should be used to the site as many times as we have raised a new batch of chickens, but it still makes me wonder how such a filthy bird could taste so good. Anyway, Mama and I have a lot of such mess to clean up this afternoon. At some point, Mama will take the not so little ones out of the cage and allow them to have freedom in the side of the coop where we now have them in the cage. I am not certain how that will work out but I am willing to go along with the idea. The twenty-one of them are very rapidly outgrowing the large cage Mama has them in. About five weeks from now all the roosters will be dressed for a future dinner date. The hens will live to lay eggs and become Mama’s pets. Poor, tasty roosters.

Maggie, Aaron and the kids arrived safely in North Carolina. They will have to live in a hotel for the next several days while their apartment is being prepared for them. It is a third-floor apartment in a very nice complex, I am told. If I have to live in an apartment again I would want the top floor also but that will not happen unless there is an elevator. Mama does not do stairs. Going down is particularly hard on her knees. It might be a chore at times to get up to the door for Maggie and the kids but for the time spent living in the space it is generally better to be on the top floor. When we lived in the apartments in New Jersey we had one little bitty woman who lived above us who, when she crossed the floor of her apartment (our ceiling), sounded like she weighted three hundred pounds. When she got her heels on it sounded like a jack hammer on the ceiling. Fortunately, either we moved or she did fairly quickly. It was quite disturbing at times – especially when I was sleeping through the days because of working night shifts.

The Lord has been good to me and Mama so we have almost always had a house of our own. No competing for parking. No trying to sleep while your neighbor’s party was still going at 2 a.m. No wondering if the guy you see around the complex is as weird as he looks. But there are limitations to having our own house. We do not have access to a gym or a pool or any other of the amenities available in most apartment complexes. We have to tend to the property – lawncare, maintenance, taxes and insurance, etc. There are pros and cons to both and Maggie and Aaron may not be there for more than a few years which makes buying a house a toss-up financially. Hopefully they will find a place they like and stay there like they did in Alaska. Unlike Chase and Makaila who have had seven addresses in three years. Not that that it bad if each move is a step up.

They are just professional house sitters – sort of.

Mama’s surprise, beating the rain, Victoria’s working vacation

Mama called me yesterday to tell me that when she went out to feed the potbelly pigs she found a surprise package waiting for her. Tilly, who I thought was getting very fat very fast had delivered a litter of seven piglets overnight. They are all beautifully marked and should be very easy to sell. I was not in the market for little pigs but we have to take them none-the-less. We have to assume that the father is the wild boar that had been hanging around the place about three months ago. His is the only contact they would had had with a male. How he pulled this off I do not understand. We ought to be glad that this is the only pregnancy we have had to deal with. And just to think, Mama and I were looking for ways to get rid of the pigs last week. Mama has separated out Molly into the hog pen but we are waiting to see if her sudden weight gain it the result of the same consequence. If it is, we will have a lot more pigs to deal with. It is really kind of funny because Mama had been after me for months to buy a bred sow so she could raise some babies. Now she may have more than she would have originally hoped for.

As soon as I got home last night I got the tractor and a pallet and began loading the hay we had bought Monday night onto the pallet so I could move it into the goat barn. Just as I was loading it Zack and Ethan pulled up in the drive. They had come to see the piglets. Zach helped me finish loading the alfalfa bales onto one pallet and while I went to the barn to offload those, he and Ethan loaded the remaining ten bales of TIF grass onto a second pallet. That was a big help. Those were the heavier bales. To get them into the barn loft all I have to do is open the loft door, raise the pallet to that level and drag the bales into the loft. Now we have a total of twenty-one bales in the loft – safe and dry. I felt a sense of urgency in getting them stored before it began to rain. I set aside one older bale for Mama to give Tilly some hay to make a proper bed for the little ones. That too got stored in the dry before we got any rain; which is predicted over the next five or six days.

It will be good to see any rain come out of the forecast since we have not had significant rain for several weeks now. I have not been free to water the plants around the house and they have suffered for it. Mama keeps promising that she will do it but it is not something she sees as a great need and often overlooks it or forgets it outright. If it does rain it will help me catch up. If it does not I will have to do the catching up myself. She is very much in tune with the animals and all of their needs – never slighting them in the smallest way. My trees and plants, on the other hand, have to make due in large part when I am not available to get them watered and otherwise tended to. So far, they have all done well enough but the trees in the garden need a bit of extra attention this weekend…rain or no rain.

Victoria is flying out today to meet Cori and Nate and the kids in Tennessee. She will only be gone the week but Cori and Nate appreciate the help as they complete their week of classes to be fully certified as missionaries through BIMI. Mama is still aching a bit because she did not get to go along but I think it was all for the best. This will give Victoria exclusive rights to the kids for the entire week. I hope she is up for it. I know Cori and Nate will appreciate the break even though it is a working vacation for both of them.

Non-news, guests, travel for Victoria, work

My visit with the doctor yesterday was a bit of non-news. She did not offer anything to me that the chiropractor had not already suggested. I asked her if the current pain was likely a lifelong condition from this point forward. Her answer was, “Pretty much.” Pain management was the main topic of conversation but not a path I look forward to walking for thirty years. Nothing in the three bulges along my spine or arthritic buildup in several areas of the spine are bad enough to require surgery. In fact, the doctor said that there is nothing, even in the area causing me the most pain, that could be surgically corrected. That is not bad news but it is not good news either. No surgery works for me. No pain would be better.

For improved health reasons, Mama and I will make the required diet changes to alkalize my body, I will add the herbs to combat arthritis and we will move forward. I will take what analgesics I must when I must but nothing expensive of invasive. The doctor asked to see me again in a month but I will not likely go back until I have to – whether for my back or for some other reason. I told Mama that although I creak and groan when I work, I always feel better for having moved and bent and stooped and straightened in the work. So, I will keep working and do my best during the recovery to not hurt myself further.

Kaylen and Brianna came over last night for supper and we grilled some burgers and steak. Mama fixed some of the best potato salad she has ever made. We had made a crock pot of black beans and served them as well so there was plenty to eat. My only regret is that we did not have time to water the yard plants and we did not take the time to put the hay in the barn. (But last night was time to visit and I was hurting badly enough that I did not want to risk lifting pallets and bales of hay and alfalfa. I can do the work, but I have to move slowly and carefully as I do it. Being on a tight time table is not optimum for the lifting and twisting work needed to put the bales where they need to be. Hopefully, we will get the hay put up this evening before church. That will give me an hour to do what would normally take twenty minutes.) We had a good visit that stretched later into the evening than we had expected. Mama and I finally got to bed a little before 11 pm. I was wakened by my alarm this morning. That does not happen but a handful of times year.

Mama and Victoria will be watching the Echevarria kids today. During all that activity, Victoria will be packing to fly to Chattanooga to spend the week with Cori, Nate and the kids. Cori and Nate will be in their final week of training with BIMI and having Victoria there to watch the kids will save them several hundred dollars in child care services. Why a mission’s organization would charge their own missionaries for child care services is questionable but that is how things are. Victoria is not complaining. She gets the kids all to herself for a week. Mama is the only one complaining. She was planning on us driving Victoria over and the two of us driving back but work and money constraints prohibited that. Besides, they will be here in September for a few weeks as they attend meetings in our area. We can take our time and visit then. Additionally, Brittany is more than likely within a few weeks of delivering the twins and I know Mama will be needed there for that. I would like to be able to visit for a few days at the birth and since we cannot spend our money twice, I would like to save it for that event.

Mama is off work for the summer and she is thrilled about having the extra time. But being off also means that she will not be getting a paycheck. That, she is not too thrilled about. Even though the checks she gets are not a whole lot, she did enjoy getting them every week…and it helped. She enjoyed giving her tithe. She enjoyed having a little bit of money of her own to spend as she liked. People keep asking her if she will continue working at the school and she is unsure how long she will do so. Next year she will work but the following years are not so settled.

We will take it one year at a time.

Travel and visiting, help and more help

Last week I attended a conference in Houston. It was a good conference and I hope I got enough out of it to justify the expense on my employer’s part. I made some good contacts in the training sessions and was also able to visit with family over the course of the week. On the way down I stopped by to see my sister Sarah. While I was in Houston, I made the trip over to see Joshua and on the way back home, I stopped by to see Martha – and pick up a few things she has been holding for us. It was a good trip even though I spent a week away from Mama and the farm. Actually, it gave me the time to rest my back; whether I wanted to or not.

Friday evening, when I got home, Mama and I spent time together getting the animals fed and watered, checking the cattle and picking some produce from the garden. Saturday was the busy day. Daniel and James Wycoff came over and helped me put in the new front door. Before they had gotten there I had already gotten the old door ready for removal – pulling of the inside and exterior trim and cutting the door free of the brick mold. Mama, being Mama, decided that since we had the door off and since we had help we should rearrange the fridges in the house. So, we took the fridge that is in the kitchen to the garage and moved the fridge from the garage to the kitchen. That done, we installed the new door and I put the trim back on the exterior of the door. By the time we finished all the labor on the door, the fridges and they had assembled a rabbit hutch, lunch was ready. By the way, I had been tending to the grill during all of this so we could feed Daniel and James – a small token of thanks. When we sat down to eat Mama mentioned that we had done all that work in a little over two hours. That was big encouragement to me and Mama.

Monday, I resituated the frame on the door to allow for better closure and I set the catch plates for the deadbolt and the latch. I also mixed concrete to back fill under the threshold since we had to chip out the old concrete to set the door in place. Later this week I will get the interior trim put up and we will be able to call it good. Then I can start on the interior doors. It was a pleasure to have the help we had for that job – the solid oak door we put up is very heavy. I would have had to have help no matter the condition of my back.

Also on Monday afternoon, I took the time to tear down the Styrofoam insulation panels from one area in the coop ceiling. A rat had made his home in the void between the panel and the metal roof and had accumulated enough sundries that the panels were sagging under the weight. When I took the panels down, I swept up over twenty pounds of chicken feed that had been stored in the ceiling. There were sticks and twigs and even a few cattle cubes, but mostly it was just pellets stolen from the feeders. It looked like we had poured a bag of feed into the rafters. I had to admire the work it took to carry all that feed from the floor of the coop, piece by piece, up the wall, through the tunnels provided by the shape of the metal roof and into each area for storage.

Later Monday evening, Norman met me and Mama at Rick’s so we could get twenty bales of hay. Norman loaded it all. Mama gave me a very mean look when I tried to help. It is still sitting on the trailer because I will need help to unload it and put it in the goat barn loft; hopefully this evening.

I have an appointment with the medical doctor this afternoon after work. We will see what path forward she recommends. At least Mama knows that while I am at work I will not be doing anything that will hurt my back…beside sitting all day.

She is planning on enjoying her first week off for the summer.

A busy week, watching the babies, loving it

If all goes well I have a busy week ahead. I will travel to Houston today via Rogers, TX. I am hoping to visit with Sarah and Fabian on my way down. I am not sure how often they get visited but this seemed like a good time to do so. While I am in Houston, I plan on driving down to see Joshua. It may not be a long visit, but it would be a shame to be that close to him and not make the effort to drive the two hours to Victoria to take him out to dinner. On the way home from Houston I plan on stopping by Martha’s to visit and to pick up some items she is holding for me and Mama. Wednesday will end up being my shortest night in town, but it is also the day I will be in a class for eight hours. It will be a full schedule if I do get to keep it, but you know how life is; you make plans only to change them as life actually happens.

I am a little worried about the cows running out of hay while I am away. There is too much available right now to set out a fresh bale but I am pretty sure it will be gone before I get back late Friday night. Mama and Victoria will figure something out and Mama is fully capable of getting a bale set out.  I am just not sure she will. Other than that, things are set for me to be gone a few days. It even rained last night – not a lot, but enough – so Mama will get out of watering the plants tonight. She will have to water on Thursday if there is no more rain between now and then, but we have things set up so that watering is much easier than it used to be.

On the way home from the doctor visit I had after work yesterday I stopped at the pet store and picked up some fish to put in our cattle trough. I have it set up with a float so that it is constantly full but Mama does not like the algae growth that accumulates when she cannot dump it and scrub it clean. If the fish do not help with the growth at least they will be fun to watch for a few months. I do not know how cold a water temperature they can survive but we should be able to keep them until sometime in November, at least. If I know Mama, I will have to get an aquarium to winter them over in. My plan is to dump the tank when temperatures are too cold to keep the hose hooked up and let the coons have the fish. I am not sure Mama will allow that to happen. Time will tell; you know how Mama gets attached to things.

Both calves and the baby goats are growing as expected. It is delightful to watch the three little goats as they race across the yard, over the rock pile and back again. They move with such sure footed-ness, but still, it is almost frightening to see how fast they cover the ground especially when they get to the rocks we have piled up on a mound of dirt. Last night I watched them hop from cinder block to cinder block while the blocks are laying on the side that exposes the open side to the goats. At best, there is only a two-inch-wide surface for them to balance on and yet they were hopping from one to the other. I have thought about getting Mama a side-by-side to drive around the farm. It would be facilitated by a bridge type crossing through the fences so she would not have to open and close gates. My concern is that I could not give her access to the goat area because the goats would not be the least bit intimidated by the access – not like cattle would.

We love our life on the farm. We are both hoping we can heal up enough to really enjoy it without all the pains we are now feeling. If not, we will adapt and bear the pain to have the blessings of the farm; at least for the next several years.

A new addition, farm shopping, getting help

Mama and I got to watch as Big Mama had her calf. We went over to the barn lot Saturday morning to check how things were with the cattle and saw Big Mama laying under the cedar trees at the barn. There was already something coming out her backside – part of the birth sack. Mama got worried that something was wrong but I made a couple calls and got her reassured that everything was actually okay. The entire birth took about twenty minutes. As we watched I saw a front hoof first appear. Then the other and a just a moment later the head. The calf went back and forth a bit in the birth canal but finally, after the front shoulders made it through, she slid out onto the ground. Mama, or rather the grandkids, named her Marshmallow because she has a very white face. She is doing very well, perhaps better than the little bull calf #95 had almost a month ago. Big Mama is still very heavy looking. That may never change. We watched for a good bit of time as the calf struggled to stand. It was very entertaining to see her flop, tumble and collapse as she put into use muscles that had never been tested. Now she is up and running around like a pro.

I spent the first part of the morning driving to get feed, pick up our meat at the meat market and get milk at the dairy. The trip to Muenster is about 50 minutes each way. Since I was driving right past the feed store on my way to get the meat Mama did an early inventory of feed at the farm and had a list ready by the time I got to the store. I was surprised we needed twelve sacks of feed total but it has been over three weeks since Mama last made the trip. Having gotten the feed, I went to the meat market and got our pork. It was a total of five flats of meat, each weighing about sixty pounds. That will keep us in pork for a while. On the way home from Muenster I would normally go through Forestburg towards Alvord. Dry Valley Dairy is only a six-mile run from the tiny town going towards Montague from the turn in Forestburg. Since Mama and Victoria have been talking about getting some fresh milk, I turned toward the dairy and got them two gallons of milk. I think the extra stop added less than twenty minutes to the overall trip. It is a route we will have to take each time we go for feed.

Mama and Victoria attended a youth rally at church in the afternoon. I was worn out and hurting by the time they needed to go. All of us had laid down for a short nap before the church function but my nap turned into a several hours long rest. I am doing better. As I worked about doing what I could Saturday morning into the afternoon, I felt like my back began to limber up but the pain never let up. I did not feel as stiff, but I felt a lot more pain. It made Sunday tough to get through as I led the singing but I made it.

I will be traveling to Houston tomorrow afternoon and will not be back in the office until Tuesday next week. We have Memorial Day off and I have arranged for Bro. Daniel and his sons to help me install the front door Mama and I bought several weeks ago. I would have needed help even if I was not hurting as badly as I do. It is a very, very heavy solid wood door and jam. It will change the look of the house once it is installed. Mama is ecstatic. I will be relieved to get it done and have the door safely in place.

Bro Daniel is also going to build me a Banty house so we can make the Banty’s a proper yard. Although, he may not get to do it now as easily as he had thought he could. He has been out of work for a couple months (which is why I asked him to help me out with the new Banty coop) but tomorrow he has an interview for a position at a local bank. He is excited about the prospect. We are all praying it turns out well for him. Even though our coop may be put on the back burner again.

Maggie and Aaron are making good time crossing the continent – and enjoying it as they go.