I had to stop at Lowe’s on the way home to buy some toggle
bolts so I could repair a gate support on the back of the chicken coop. I was
not in a particular hurry since Mama was not going to be at the farm. She had
to make the trip to Muenster for feed. With the goats being taken to be bred, Mama
and I struggled to determine just how much feed to buy to carry us through the
month; but we will be close enough that if we fall short, we can make another
trip to overcome the shortfall. Back to the gate. As it seems the case with all
the “minor” repairs on the farm, it turned out to be more involved than I had
anticipated. I have the coop yard separated by a fence and gate in the center
of the yard. It was the center gate that had worked loose from the mountings.
In order to fix it, toggle bolts were the only option. The problem I ran into
was that I did not have a drill bit large enough to get the “wing” of the toggle
bolt through the siding. Keeping the Banty’s in their yard and the other
chickens out of the Banty yard only added to the frustration of wallowing out
the holes to enlarge then sufficiently to use the repair bolts. It was one of
those moments that you could have made a video worthy of any competition. Why the
chickens wanted to relocate is beyond me, but it added a lot of time to the project.
I did finally complete the repair and the gate is in better shape than when it
was originally installed. (No chickens were harmed in the repair of this gate.)
While I was working on the gate Mama made it back from the
feed store and because the cows heard her voice, they started bawling.
Honestly, I do not try to keep up with the livestock since Mama takes her
responsibility to tend to them very seriously, so I was surprised to hear that
she had not seen Daisy for several days. We have been off-again-on-again with
Daisy since getting her back home. We managed to get all our herd to walk
through the gap I use to move the cows from our land to the neighbor’s land but
Daisy was pacing and bawling on our side of the fence so we let her back onto
the neighbor’s property. Our thought was that she may have a calf in the pasture
there. The next day she came back to the gap to be let in for Mama to feed her grain
and cubes. After that, she seems to have crossed to the neighbor’s pasture on
her own. At least, that is what we are thinking at the moment. We walked the fence
line to see if there was an obvious place for her to get through but did not
find one. Mama called our neighbor to let him know and he will look over his
property this evening to see if Daisy is there. Hopefully she is there and Mama
can rest at ease knowing that nothing bad has happened to her very large pet. What we can do to keep her in our pasture
remains to be seen. We may have to take her to the stock sale along with the
other two cows we were planning to sell this weekend if she will not stay home.
Just before dark, I cut as many of the elderberry fronds as
I could. I was able to fill a very large container before it got too dark for
me to continue and I only harvested one side of the bushes. It took me over an
hour to wash the berries and strip them into a large pot so we could transfer
them into freezer bags for later use. We filled six one quart Ziploc bags with the
berries. I will look tonight to see how much more I have to collect before the plants
go dormant, but I am fairly confident it will be as much as I got last night –
if not more.
While Mama and I are in the area this evening to drop off
the goats I need to go by and look at the logs for the log home package we have
on the property in Bowie. I plan to get them moved this winter. The question is
where to put them. If the logs are in good enough shape after several years of
exposure to the elements, I will try to sell them. If that does not work, we
will regroup and see what possibilities they will provide to Mama and me.
God always brings good of everything we give to Him; we
just have to offer it and listen closely.
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