Lunch with Brittany and Andrew, a good buy, more animals

Brittany and Andrew came back through Decatur after they picked up the car in Dallas. I was thinking that they would pack in the morning and leave from Dallas to go home, but they left their things and Lucy at the house intending to get all that packed after they got the car. That gave them more time to pack and two vehicles to pack their thing into. As it happened, they came back through right about lunchtime. Since they wanted Mexican, Mama suggested Casa Torres. So, all of us met there. The restaurant is always busy for lunch and yesterday was no exception, but since the restaurant has put in a second parking lot we were all able to get parking places. We were all driving separate vehicles, so I thought that was a good deal to be able to find parking for all of them. Mama had to stand in a spot so Andrew, who was the last to arrive, could park there; but he got a spot. Andrew clearly did not feel well so the entire trip was a challenge for him. I can only imagine that the drive home was even more challenging. They finally made it home a little after 8 pm. Other than Lucy, I cannot imagine they will be up early this morning.

Mama set up a meeting with a gentleman selling some rabbit cages yesterday evening. We followed his interesting directions – just before the cull de sac at the black mailbox with no numbers on it – but we did find the house. He lives in Alvord so it was only a fifteen-minute drive. We drove the truck because we did not know for sure what the man was selling and it was a good thing we did. The drive was not safe for anything but a truck. It reminded me of a West Virginia mountain road. There were four or five barking dogs at the house so Mama was disinclined to exit the truck. None of them looked too mean so I got out and met the seller.

He had a slew of cages, feeders and nesting boxes lined up. When I asked what he was asking for the larger cages, he said he wanted $50 for the entire lot. I coaxed Mama out of the truck to show her the offering and she agreed to make the purchase. In all, we got one very large single square cage, one very large rectangular double cage, one large double cage, four medium sized double cages and three small single rabbit cages that are more like transport cages. They were all used but in fair condition. Along with that we got four nesting boxes, three are made of metal, five waterers and eight feeders. Mama is using the transport cages this morning to get the rabbits from Ling.

For the visit with Ling, we went out in the late evening to catch the rooster and three hens to take to Ling and his family. We used the large square cage to house the chickens in the bed of the truck overnight. Since there was a high probability of rain last night I backed the truck up under the carport. Mama will take the chickens to Ling this morning and pick up another young male and two young females rabbits. Ling has too many and is quickly running out of room to house them. Mama is a little mortified by the fact that those he does have are in cages which are sitting on the ground with a tarp over them…mostly covered. To Ling and his family, they are meat, not pets. Mama has an entirely different concept of raising animals – even if they are for meat.

With the cages we picked up last night we will have enough cages to house the rabbits. What we will not have is a good place to put those cages. I will spend the weekend trying to decide where to put our rabbits temporarily in a manner that satisfies Mama’s expectations. Eventually I will have to build either a covered stand for the cages or a set of hutches for our little colony.

At some point, I will have the time to get started on the well house and the shop…but not yet.

Hoarse goats, Brittany and Andrew, sunrise, animal shuffle

The boy goats we separated from Millie Tuesday evening have now almost lost their voice. They have cried loudly and nearly continually since that hour. It is pitiful to hear. (Fortunately, we can only hear it when we are outside.) They start their bleating with a clear tone and it quickly fades to a hoarse whimper. Mama was so worried about it that she called Rick to see if we were really doing the right thing. He said he separated a set of twins one time and they cried after their mama for over two weeks. By the time they gave up the protest they could barely squeak out a sound. That did not make Mama feel better. Rick also said that if the boys are not eating or drinking properly within a day or two we can put them back with Millie – who looks like her udder is about to explode since we took them off of her. That made Mama feel a bit better. We will know by tonight or tomorrow what we will need to do – regardless of the strength of their voices. At some point, we are going to have to get used to dealing with this separation anxiety. I guess, for me and Mama, it is okay as long as we can still smile at the whimpering little ones.

Brittany and Andrew stopped over last night. They are headed to Dallas this morning to get the car that was shipped back to them from England. We visited for a couple hours after church before I had to call it a night. It sounds like they are going to enjoy their time in Wichita. It is a good area for them geographically. They have a great house. They have good neighbors. Plenty of shopping. Now, if they can find a good church, they will be set for the next five years. They almost have the pool ready for a visit that Chase and Makaila are planning to make to do some work for them on the house they bought.

At least, Makaila is planning to work as she does some painting for them. Chase is planning on floating in the pool for the entire visit. Mama and Victoria are going up next weekend to visit and hopefully, help unpack. I am not planning on going this trip because I want to save my vacation time for the birth. Speaking of which, Brittany is definitely “great with child”. Her girth more than doubles around her belly and she has six to eight more weeks to go. At least, we hope so as we continue to pray for that much time so the now almost three pound babies can gain the time to develop in utero. That will allow for a less complicated continuation to life outside the womb. Brittany will be waddling very soon as she struggles to balance the load the twins are producing. I expect within a week or two Andrew will have to help her out of certain chairs.

I had to stop on the way into work this morning to take a picture of the sunrise. It was one of those mornings when you can watch the orange-looking sun come up over the horizon. When it is not yet direct enough light to burn the eyes. I remember that we are the ones moving and not the sun but as you watch the sunrise actually happen it is not difficult to imagine that the sun is the moving object; lazily circling us on its slow trek across the sky. After all, is do not feel like I am in motion as I watch it happen. We certainly have a big God to have put all this in motion and then watch over it and us individually each and every day. What wisdom! What patience!

Tonight, we catch a couple chickens and the rooster to give to Ling so he can make soup. He is going to give Mama a couple young does that we will breed to Jack. I am still working on hutches and cages for the new arrivals but I still have time to set up a proper warren for our colony of rabbits. Which also means I have time to figure out the best way to dispatch them when that time comes. If we find out that Mama and Victoria will not eat them we will have to rethink this project.

Until then I will stay busy on the project.

Relocating, recycling

Mama and I spent the first part of the evening getting hay to the cows. To date we have not found a supplier to buy hay from so we are continuing to go to our neighbors to get last year’s bales he has stored right behind our property. As hay goes, it is not bad hay, but it is not as good as the bales I bought from a local farmer earlier in the year. I will go back and see if he has any hay left, probably tomorrow evening, so we can store some up for the next couple weeks. It is convenient to get the bales from a nearby location but there is a lot of waste with our spoiled cows. They will dig through the bale, eat what they want and spread the portion they do not care to eat on the ground around the ring we put the bale in. After I got the bale set out I swapped implements and cleaned up from the last couple times we set out bales. We are accumulating a pretty good pile of hay mixed with manure in the area where we feed out the hay. In a couple years, it will be some very rich soil. Fortunately, it does not stink and we have had sufficient rain to help it to decompose. The ultimate recycling project.

Yesterday evening the Wycoff’s came by to see the piglets but while they were here we had them help us catch the baby boy goats so we could separate them from their mommy. They were starting to drag her down pretty badly and Mama was worried about her health. Plus, the little girl baby seemed to be lagging the boys. Since the little boys are able to take regular feed it seemed like a good idea. I know the Wycoff’s, Brittany and Bro. Daniel, had fun as we tried to corner the kids so we could catch them.

What I have discovered with the fainting goats is that if you just walk them around – not chasing them fast but at a walking pace – they will eventually faint. That trait is priceless in catching them. So, I began to walk after Millie and her triplets and they finally ended up in a corner of the lot. When we had them cornered one of the boys tried to make a run for it around Brittany and Mama but Brittany caught him. When he was caught, he cried out and his brother froze up so I picked him up. They only weighed about twenty to twenty-five pounds each so it was no trouble carrying them to the new area. They are only four weeks old but they are stinking fast – until they faint – so I was thankful for the help catching them. For the rest of the evening and into the night we had to listen to the boys cry for their mama and the mama cry for the boys. Mama hates that part of raising animals; separating families and all, especially when they are so young.

After the goats were rehomed, we got to talking about rats and squirrels and snakes because of the trap I have sitting in the well house. I explained that I have caught eight rats in that trap and recently caught a large rat snake. Mrs. Wycoff asked if I had killed the snake. She was happy to hear that I had not. But when I told her I had killed a lot of squirrels lately she asked what I had done with them. When I explained that I made no effort to keep them she asked if I would dress the squirrels and save them for her so she can make soup. I would be happy to. I just know that Mama will not eat them so there was no reason to go to the effort to clean them only to throw out the frozen meat later. I am not a big fan either. It is like eating a big rat. When they are skinned and cleaned, it is hard to tell the difference between them and a rat. Now that I know somebody will eat them, I will not feel as badly about killing them.

Another recycling project.

Rabbits, squirrels, piglets

I worked last night to put a wire bottom in one of the rabbit hutches I had bought online. They were cheap enough that I thought they would be a good deal but they are not quite what I expected and they lacked any type of floor other than a pull-out tray. So, I took the time to finish out the one that we have assembled so far. Now, when we pull the tray out for cleaning, the rabbit in the hutch will not fall to the ground. They will work for young rabbits and possibly for pregnant mommies but with the size of rabbits Mama and Victoria have, they will house only one rabbit at a time. Hopefully, I will assemble another one tonight and get the floor in it as well so we are ready for the young females Lin wants to give to us. Mama is excited about the exchange – chickens for rabbits – but I know what is coming as she breeds the rabbits. Very soon we will be where Lin is now; too many rabbits for the space we have to house them. One of Lin’s females recently had a litter if eight and another is raising a litter of ten. He has four cages. We will have five, but at least we have time to get prepared before the females he is giving us will be breeding age – two months at least.

I had to shoot four squirrels over the weekend. I tolerate them as long as they are away from the house but once they get close to the house or the well house, I dispatch them. Mama decided to take down the bird feeder that was attracting them so I would not have to eliminate so many. I believe the young ones I have recently put down are offspring of this year’s litters – and there are a lot of them. I have eliminated a lot of them and yet it is difficult to tell that it has made any difference. There are still several in each of the treed areas across the farm. I guess this was a good year for squirrel reproduction. I know of at least sixteen that will not be around to reproduce this year. Sad, but necessary.

Mama is off on a shopping adventure today. She left the house early to make several stops in Denton. I remember some of what she told me she was going to do but most of it is quick stops for an item or two at a select number of stores. The big stops are at Sam’s and Panera’s. But there are stops at several clothing places, Bath and Body Works (I cannot even go into that store because the smells are too strong for me) and a couple places at the mall. She will be worn out by this afternoon when she gets home.

We have company coming this evening to see the piglets. Brittany Wycoff thinks she wants to buy at least one of the piglets so she is coming over to get the pick of the litter. I am elated that anyone wants them and I will be even more excited when they all have new homes. For now though, they are far too small to leave their mommy – who, by the way, is a good mommy to her litter but a very mean mommy towards us. On Saturday, I was helping one of the little one get back onto the building so it could be with Tilly and when it squealed - very loudly – she came after me with a vengeance. I had to take the shovel that I happened to be holding and smack her soundly in the snout to get her to back off. I am not offended that she is protective over her brood, but I do not want her to harm Mama in any way.

Mama is less mobile than I am…and that is not saying much these days.

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.