Sink upgrade, winter temps, a mess

For the past couple of weeks Norman has worked on replacing our kitchen sink counter and the sink. This included not only made replacement of the countertop and sink, but also the backsplash. I think it was two weeks ago that I helped Norman cut the counter so that we could set it in place and hook up the new sink. That turned out to be the easy part. Hooking up the complicated plumbing system required for the sink and the web water supply lines to the multitude of valves that the sink offers turned out to be a challenge for Norman. He did finish most of the water and drain lines the first day, but we've been waiting on the backsplash.

Over the last several nights he has set and glued the backsplash in place and last night he grouted and cleaned the backsplash so that all that's left is to seal it and to do some caulking along the edges. It looks really good! Mama has not seen it in person yet since that part happened while she and Victoria are still in Florida. However, she was very excited over the pictures Norman sent to her. This is the second sink that we've had in the kitchen, but this is by far the best remodel we've ever done of that counter and a huge upgrade at the sink. The backsplash is icing on the cake, so to speak. Norman does very good work. It's taken some time because he's sandwiched the work in between several other jobs he's working has contracted to do but it is nice to see that project come to completion. Now, we'll start to work on the other side of the kitchen - the stove countertop that expands into the living room. No hurry on that.

Though the temperature yesterday peaked at 81, this morning’s temperature was 34 degrees. Just above freezing. For the next three nights we are going to see temperatures just slightly below freezing somewhere around 28 degrees. That's pretty frigid for this time of year in North Texas. It does not portend a severe winter, but it did put me on my toes getting the water supplies we have in the house and around the farm ready for freezing temperatures. I had to spend yesterday afternoon, all afternoon, disconnecting and draining hoses, covering faucets, and running heat tracing on one line.

We're at that time of year on the farm where life is most difficult for us. When the temperatures are below freezing overnight, we have to make sure that all hydrants and spigots are drained and covered. Then, in the morning we can hook up the hoses that we had drained and use them to get water to the various places on the farm that we water the animals, making sure to disconnect the hoses in the evening and prepare for the overnight freeze. Fortunately, this cold snap is only going to last three nights. Unfortunately, I have a very poor selection of hoses that we can hook and unhook easily, so I’ll have to buy at least two hoses to help us make it through the winter months ahead.

From the animal 's point of view, all of them have good dry shelter and places where we can feed them in the dry, so it's not a hardship on them. They just huddle up together in the corner with the least draft of whatever barn or enclosure they're in. It is amazing to feel how warm they are in the mornings when we feed them – just after they have stirred from their beds.

To ensure the two little boys that we had in the garden while they were being weaned could stay warm, I carried them over to spend a few days with Samuel in the small enclosure over on the East side of the farm. Saturday, Norman helped me wrestle Midas from the small enclosure into the larger enclosure with Little Boy Blue, Mini, and Jersey, two of our little does that needed to be bred. Little Boy Blue was having trouble getting the job done because he's just a bit too young to handle the more mature does, but Midas didn't have that problem. Later this week after Mama gets home, we will move Samuel and two of the little does into a separate area to let that breeding take place. I'm not sure what we'll do with the Little Boy Blue except to leave him where he is for right now. I wait further instructions from Mama.

Also, as soon as Mama gets home, we're going to get the quail and baby ducks out of the garage. The cold temperatures outside necessitate leaving the garage door closed. Because the garage door is closed, the messy little ducklings produce a less than appealing smell in the garage. Every time we raise up little tiny ducklings, we are amazed that how huge a mess those tiny things can make. We are using a water container to provide water to the little ones in the hopes that they can't make that big a mess of it, but they manage anyway.

Grandpa provided them with fresh water in the container that most fowls would simply drink out of, then he stood back and watched. Within a few minutes the ducks had sloshed almost all of the water out of that container and onto the puppy training pads that we try to keep fresh in there to soak up part of the mess that they make. The four little ones simply dipped their beaks into the water, waggled their heads back and forth in a blurring motion, and spread the water around everywhere. A little fresh water became a huge mess in about sixty seconds. It's impressive. We have kept the ducklings in the garage just to safeguard them from the low temperatures, but they'll find a home in the grow out pen until they can be integrated with their larger cousins.  

There, they can mess up the area to their heart’s content.

Impact of rain, Mama and Victoria

Part of the direct impact we've had from the rain here lately, was that the tree Mama and I have worried about just South of the duck enclosure, uprooted and fell onto the enclosure a couple of nights ago. The damage wasn't that extensive, but the repair will be time-consuming. The structure of the enclosure held together pretty well and the large box that I had in there for the ducks to lay in actually held the weight of the tree as it collapsed and tore through part of the roof. I took some time last night after I got off work to look at the damage First I cut away the tree from the duck pen to see if I could at least lift the roof back up and secure it as close to the way it should have been setting before the tree fell on it so that as we get a couple of inches of rain over the next couple of days it would at least keep the duck pen somewhat protected. That turned out to be harder than I thought it would.

I had to use the tractor to move the tree after I had gotten everything cut away from the roof and sides of the enclosure. With the ground as soft as it was and the tree is heavy aa it was, that proved a bit of a challenge. My 20-inch chainsaw would not function properly so, I had to use my smaller chainsaw and it turned out the blade for that chainsaw was completely worn out. So, I set aside the 20-inch chainsaw, sharpened the blade on the smaller chainsaw, and just did the best I could. Fortunately, when I got to the point where I needed two people to try and slide a piece of metal underneath the tear in the roof where a limb had pierced through the roofing, Norman was just coming out to check and see how I was doing. With his help we got a piece of metal in place and as it rained today not very much of that rain actually got into the duck pen, but if we do get an inch of rain tomorrow, I don't think I'll be able to boast in that claim.

Hopefully, I will be able soon to tear off the roof, rebuild the structure, and then replace the roof and maybe even do a little bit better job on the structure than I originally did. In the meantime, our ducks are just gonna have to make do with the pen that's a little bit damper than what they're used to. Needless to say, based on the trauma they suffered when the tree crashed down on them, they are not laying right now. I guess that's to be expected.

Yesterday morning Mama and Victoria caught a plane to Florida. As Mama was rearranging and swapping purses Wednesday afternoon, she realized that she did not have her driver's license in her wallet as she would have expected. We searched everywhere. We opened every purse she ever carried. We looked through the pocket of every shirt and jacket she had ever worn. And we looked in places where there was even the remotest possibility that she could have set the license down. To no avail. So, I gave Mama her expired driver’s license to take with her along with her passport. That would provide sufficient identification for her to board the plane, but it would not allow her to rent and drive a vehicle.

When we were coming home from church Wednesday night, Mama asked me to fish out a jacket that she had stored in the car. Over the process of several days, we had folded the seats down on top of that jacket. I fished that jacket out for Mama to put with her stuff that she would carry to the airport, and hauled Victoria and Mama to the airport early Thursday morning. I got home about 8:10 from that drop off. It was only about 30 minutes later that Mama called me. She found her license. For some odd reason she had stuck her license in the upper pocket of that Jean jacket that she had not worn for quite some time period she only discovered her license there when she put on the jacket at the airport and then went fishing through the pockets of the jacket. Well, praise the Lord!

However, when Mama and Victoria did arrive at the airport in Pensacola, the reservation that I had thought I had made for them for some reason was not registering on the computer have the car rental company. Mama and Victoria hopped from car rental counter to car rental counter trying to find available cars at a price that they thought was reasonable -something less than $100 a day. It took some searching, but they did finally find a car rental agency that did not have an office in the Pensacola airport, but rather was stationed outside the terminal in the little booth. They were able to rent a car for about $60 a day plus all of the other things that they charge you in conjunction with the car rental. All told, they are ending up with a final charge of about $499 for the five days Mama and Victoria will be in Pensacola. Ouch!

The reason Mama and Victoria are in Pensacola is because Victoria has been looking at houses for purchase and or for rent in the Pensacola area. She and Corie are anticipating Mykenzie being a student at Pensacola Christian college within the next 18 months to two years. Victoria is thinking that if she can relocate to Florida - a move that would not necessarily be a hardship for her - then she and Mykenzie could share the house while Mykenzie attended college there. I think they're finding that to be a little bit of a pipe dream. Recently interest mortgage rates have jumped to almost 8%. Navy Federal Credit Union, as Victoria pre-applied for a loan, gave her an interest of 9.3%. Double Ouch!

On $150,000 loan that adds about $850 to $900 per month to the mortgage payment just in interest. Realistically, that is probably not doable, but she and Mama are still looking at houses currently available on the market in both Pensacola and Milton. The fact that they get to go to the beach several evenings during their five days in Pensacola were a tremendous attraction for Mama to make the trip with Victoria. Also, Mama just needs a break, and why not make that break a beach break. On the good side, from my way of thinking, since they flew to Pensacola, there's very little that Mama is going to be able to buy and bring back from Pensacola to the farm. So, I may not end up with a lot of extra stuff to try and find places for.

Right now, the garage, the shop, the well house, the barn, and any place where we have items being stored are overflowing with clutter. Even certain places in the house where Mama has tried to consolidate her crafts are just overloaded with totes and boxes. Tables are piled up with sundry items that may one day actually turn into some type of marketable craft. In my shop, Norman has supplied us with hundreds of board feet of lumber from the projects that he has been working on that may also end up turned into crafts at some future date. But right now, they are just occupying space in my shop making it difficult for me to work on anything that actually needs to be done.

I hate clutter, so, I am not sure that is a good problem.

Traveling, hatching ducks, goats

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I traveled with some men from our church to a men’s retreat in Rose Bud, AR. Fourteen of us went to the retreat. This is my second time to go, and this year was even better than last year. It is difficult to describe the sense of unity and camaraderie that permeates the weekend. There were several competitions in shooting, pistols – all caliber, rifles – all caliber, .22 rifle competitions, and even an archery competition. The highlight, however, was the preaching. Two sermons Thursday evening, then morning and afternoon devotionals on Friday with two sermons following supper. All this ended with a short devotional sermon Saturday morning after breakfast. Mike Norris, our pastor from our time in West Virginia and Terry Angel were the preachers this year. The campground, which also serves as the campground for Junior and Senior camps, is about six hours from Decatur. It was a pleasant drive both directions. The weather was mildly cool in the evenings and overnight but warm through the daylight hours. We all left the retreat charged up. The effects of that reviving will be in the forefront of all our minds for many weeks to come.

It was wonderful to spend some time with Pastor Mike and catch up with each other. His mom, Helen, went home to be with the Lord in February. It was equally wonderful to hear him preach. He was Mama’s and my first Independent Fundamental Baptist preacher. When we grew dissatisfied with the denomination we had been a part of for many years and decided to try out another church, it only took one exposure to Ripley Baptist Temple and Mike Norris to know we had found the place of service we had been looking for. Mama and I have faithfully attended Independent Fundamental Baptist church ever since that first Sunday morning. I often share with people that the very first Sunday morning we attended Ripley Baptist Temple, Joshua and Cori prayed to receive Jesus as their savior. It was the first time either of them had ever heard a clear-cut presentation of the Gospel even though they had grown up going to church. Mike Norris was a big part of that. Hearing him tell stories of his ministry in West Virginia – which we were part of almost from the time he began to pastor the church – and to hear him preach again brought back some very fond memories.

Back at the farm, Mama, spent Saturday at an event in Chico. The Chico Days event was set up on the lawn of the town square. It has never been a heavily attended event, but this year was slower than Mama has seen in the three years she has been attending. A rough estimate of what she took in in sales and what she spent in event fees and food, left her with a net income of $8 for the day. She came home a bit discouraged and quite worn out. It did not help that one of her upline in Color Street sent out a happy text that she had a single sale of $425 Saturday afternoon. Mama and I have never been sure why people around us do so well at the things we struggle to succeed in, but such is life.

After watching over a potential twelve duck eggs, we were left with only four successful hatches. While I was away for the weekend, Mama let the last few eggs incubate and when one of the eggs exploded Saturday night, Norman unplugged the incubator unaware that one more little duck was trying to escape its egg. That duckling died within the next couple hours – while Mama and I were at church – because it got too cold. Sad. With that, Mama and I are finished up for the season. Once I get this incubator cleaned up, it will be stored with the other two incubators until Spring.  

Our goat babies are growing quickly. Tomorrow Mama will be taking four more of the little ones to get disbudded. Of the nine recently born on our farm, we had to have seven disbudded. That is the most we have had in any kidding, but that is not a bad thing since the horned goats are the dominant trait. We have them disbudded so that they will not grow horns. It is not only that we prefer polled goats. It is that the horns can be a constant problem in the paddocks where we raise out goats. We have had one horned goat in the past get its head caught in the fence. Not necessarily a bad thing except that the temperature was very hot and the prolonged exposure to the direct sun and the constant fighting to get free caused the goat to die from heat stroke. Mama and I were both upset at the senseless loss even though we did not particularly like that goat.

Yesterday Aubrey came home with us after church. She and Rosalee played inside all afternoon, but when Mama and I went out to feed they ventured outside to join us. We had limited time to feed because of church that evening, but the two girls decided to help feed the goats. Friday, Seth had dropped off a large part of a round bale he came across somewhere in his travels. He just pitched the hay over the fence from the back of his truck as he parked in our circular driveway. That location seemed too far to Aubrey and Rosalee, so they carried armfuls of the hay to a more convenient area. This exercise attracted the attention of a couple of our baby goats. The girls were quite pleased with the response and continued the operation until Mama called a halt so Aubrey could cool down before church.

The couple days away with the men from our church was a great respite, but home is where my heart is, and God has blessed me and Mama with a great home.

Success, weekend updates

 Our chicken flock inspection went off without a hitch last week. The inspection team showed up about 9 am and worked through the forty or so chickens in our coops – as well as the quail we had on hand that morning. Mama had to catch each chicken herself because the team was not allowed to touch the birds. Something to do with liability should any of the birds be harmed. Even though I was working from home I was not able to help because of meetings I had to attend that morning. So, it was a bit of a hardship on Mama, but she muddled through and the entire flock we successfully tested by about 10:30. I do not know if we will ever use the certificate to market our birds, but now we are authorized to do so. The ducks were exempt from testing. I am not sure why, but we were relieved to hear that bit of news.

Friday evening, Mama and I met a coworker of mine at her house to see her bourgeoning quail business. Having only been in the business of raising quail for a few months, they now have about three hundred birds in their care. An additional two hundred and fifty eggs are scheduled to hatch mid-week. They have the flock set up with groups of mixed males and females to give them fertilized eggs, large groups of females only just to produce eggs and even larger groups separated by age as the quail rapidly mature. Mama and I bought three mature females to place with a male we had so now we have two cages with a male and three females in each cage. Those six females often produce six to eight eggs per day. It seems that the females are capable of laying more than one egg per day. Too bad we cannot find any chickens that can do that. I would be thrilled if our ducks would lay one egg per female per day, but we count it a blessing when we get more than two eggs per day from our ten hens. We will go back at some point to buy more mature quail, but for now, as we raise the five we hatched, we are full up. So far it looks like we have three or four females in our chicks. Mama is excited about that.

Also on Friday, Leoni came by to visit and to drop off our Little Boy Blue. We negotiated on the purchase of the young buck many months ago but Leoni wanted to show him in the circuit she shows her goats in. As she expected, our Blue Boy did very well taking first place and Grand Champion in his class at three different shows. He was housed with Samuel and Midas in their small pen Friday afternoon. The three bucks got along well instantly. Like they had known each other all along. All our fretting about the butting and shoving that is normal for such an integration simply did not happen. That was a huge relief to Mama. What did happen was that all three bucks immediately began to stink themselves up to compete for the attention of the four female goats in the paddock beside theirs. A wonderful aroma now graces the breezes blowing through our trees.

Saturday morning as Norman started installing a new countertop and sink in our kitchen, l took two of the nanny goats we bought thinking they had been bred, to the goat sale. It has become abundantly clear that none of the four were able to maintain their pregnancies due to the nearly starved condition they were rescued from. Mama and I realized we might take a loss selling the two but the trade off was getting them with a buck to be bred – without any assurance that that would be successful – and feeding them out for another six months while we waited to see if they had any kids or taking the loss on the two just to reduce our headcount. We erred on the side of cutting our losses and in the process did take a loss. We bought the females for $200 each hoping we could get babies from them. That did not happen. We sold the two of them for $266. A net loss of $134 plus four months of feed.  Not too bad, actually. It certainly could have been worse. They were two goats we did not plan on keeping even had they given us offspring.

When I got back from the goat sale I changed and went to church for bus calling. I went with Pastor to visit some of our bus kids then he and I went to look for homes out in the country to see if we could talk to anyone about the Lord. Instead, after stopping at four homes and finding no one home, we were pulling onto the county road and felt the unmistakable sensation of having a flat tire. It did not take up long to change the tire, but Pastor, knowing he was headed to Ada, OK to preach Sunday night, decided it was time to get some new tires on the van. He dropped me back off at the church before he headed to the tire shop.

Back at the farm, I helped Norman pull the old sink counter and cut and install the new countertop. I will have pictures of the finished project later. While Norman was working on hooking up all the appurtenances of the sink, Mama and I left for the church picnic. It is an annual event so lots of our church family look forward to it. The weather was perfect!  After Pastor and I finished cooking all the hot dogs and everyone had taken time to eat, we presented the gift we had voted to purchase for Pastor and Joyce for their twenty-year anniversary serving as Pastor of the church. It was a brand-new Polaris Ranger 4x4 crew cab side-by-side. They were completely stunned by the gift. I was extremely pleased that the entire church had kept the secret until we made the presentation. The look on their faces was well worth it.

It is a gift that will serve them for many years to come.

Inspections, making room

Last weekend, I looked once more into the hives to see if the colonies were doing well. It appears that they are. While one hive has a low store of honey the second hive has seven frames full of honey. I am tempted to pull out four of those frames so we can harvest a little honey but am apprehensive about leaving the colony without sufficient stores to go through this winter. While I was working the hives, I began the process of preparing them for winter weather. Swapping to the smaller hive entrance and covering the opening of the screen bottom of the hive are two things I do each Fall. Later this month I will make a couple candy boards to help feed the bees through the cold season. We are forecast to have a cold, dry winter this year, so I will wrap the hives in an insulation blanket to help them conserve the heat required to make it through the very cold days. I will make my last bucket of syrup for them this evening.  Temperatures at the end of this week will be too cool for them to harvest the liquid feed. Bees are truly amazing creatures.

Tomorrow Mama will meet with a team from the Texas Animal Health Commission. In Texas we are required to register our flock in order to sell any of our birds at venues where the general population is in attendance. To get that registration, all of our chickens and quail will be tested. We have about fifty chickens and twelve quail in our flock, so testing may each and every bird may take a while. To accommodate that exercise the chickens will be left in the closed coops until they are selected in groups of five to be tested. Once those five show negative results, an additional five will be caught and tested. While the results are being processed the tested chickens must be caged until the negative result is posted. Once proven negative, they can be let loose and the process repeats.

The agent who will be leading the team tomorrow will have two helpers with him. All three will be equipped with nets to be used in catching the chickens. It should be fun to watch. My assumption is that all three chicken catchers have a modicum of experience in chicken wrangling, but that theory will be proved tomorrow. Mama is far less apprehensive of the whole affair since the agent has sufficient help to conduct the entire testing exercise on his own. We were expecting to have to provide all the support to a lone agent, but since that is not the case, it should require little participation on Mama’s part. We were told that the ducks are exempt from the testing. That is a huge relief. They just started laying again, so we were apprehensive about stressing them out.

I was scheduled to present an all-day class tomorrow, but my voice is still not strong enough to talk for that many hours. That class has been, once again, passed off to one of my coworkers. I am truly thankful for the help. Mama is thankful that I will be working from home when the chickens are being tested. At this point I am not sure that I need to be there, but I am happy that I will be available if needed. Most times that I am available to Mama I am needed for something or another. That’s okay. It is nice to be needed.

Trying to finish this craft container has become a challenge. It seems that every opportunity I have to set aside time to work on the container, I am drawn away to some other more urgent tasks. The latest interruption is on behalf of the goats. We have little ones that are now ready to be weaned. This means they need to be separated from their mommies. We have used the pig building in the past, but it is not properly occupied with pigs. So, I have to create a separate area to sequester the weanlings for a few weeks. We will use the garden area for the weanlings. To create three breeding areas, I have to section off two areas on the farm to allow us to use three bucks in the three separate enclosures. Each buck will have two or three does to breed. To accommodate that, I am going to split the goat barn in two and enclose one side of the paddock to have entry to the barn on the West side of the barn, while the goats that are not getting bred will have use of the East side of the barn. All of that labor for a couple months of separations.

I finished a shelter for the weanlings in the garden last night. We will begin the weaning process later this week and by the end of the month will have at least four of the nine little ones in the garden area until their mommies dry up. The shelter was built in such a way that it can be quickly disassembled and once again be repurposed. Sometime before Thanksgiving we will have sold off at least four of the goats we are now feeding. Three of the four we rescued will have had their kids by then – if, in fact, they will be having kids – and we will have the paddock for the boys back in use by our three bucks. Mama is also looking to sell one or two of our current flock to cull our herd. Right not we are keeping too many goats. How many is too many? What we have right now is too many and we will have to cull the herd to bring the feed costs back into a manageable budget. That is very hard for Mama.

By Christmas we should have everyone back to normal…whatever that is.

 

Doing our best, Fall, new to us

Mama met with a friend a couple days ago whose 45-year-old son is dying from alcohol induced terminal illnesses. It is a very sad story. But not, unfortunately, uncommon. Another friend of ours at church has a son about the same age that has been sent to prison for twelve years for a drug possession and distribution charge. That son, like the alcoholic son walked a long but predictable road to their own destruction. No intervention was sufficient for either son and now their families are suffering as well with the consequences of those destroyed lives. The families of the sons may not bear the penalty of the choices that led to the current circumstances, death or imprisonment, but they will bear the loss, the regret, the guilt of the “if only I had” or “is this partly my fault” accusations that will haunt their thoughts for many years.

Such are the musings of many parents that, though they had done the best they knew how to raise their children, have nonetheless, watched certain of their children make one bad decision after another leading them to a very certain end. It is sad, especially when the outcomes are so predictable; yet every warning offered, every caution spoken are scoffed at and trivialized. The Lord allows us to each make our own mistakes and forgiveness is available when sought from a sincere heart. However, though the sins are forgiven, the heart is set right, and the penalty for our sins has been paid in full, the consequences of our errant decisions and presumptuous sins can affect our lives and the lives of others – especially those who love and cherish us - for many years to come. My cautionary note: If you have someone who loves you cautioning you about something you are doing or allowing in your life, take the words to heart and at least give that person a fair hearing. It may save you from years of hurt and loss.

Mama and I have the windows open today. It was just over sixty degrees outside in the early morning. The ground is still moist from the inch and one half of rain we had overnight Wednesday, so the dust is minimized as a light breeze stirs the leaves on the trees. The change in weather happened so quickly. Only a week ago we had high temperatures near one hundred degrees. Then, overnight the forecast changed, and we will have days with high temperatures in the low eighties and nights in the forties and fifties. We moved from Summer into Fall in just one day. Our animals are loving it!

Norman who has been staying with us, has been doing several remodeling jobs in the area. One took him almost a month and he was able to stay in the house he was working on as he worked. Anyway, he has come across multiple items in those renovations that he has passed on to Mama and me. The most recent of which is a table and chairs that are absolutely perfect for our eating area. Mama and I have been through four table and chair combinations over the last two months and none of those arrangements seemed to fit all we were needing in that small dining area. Until now. This set is everything we did not know we were looking for, but nonetheless wanted. It is an oak pedestal table with one leaf that can be inserted to expand the table. The four chairs are the most comfortable we have had in any of our dining areas. The pedestal design allows Mama to prop her feet up as she sits at the table. That is the first of its kind for us. With Norman’s help we installed it yesterday placing the higher table with the granite top in the sunroom.

Also in his travels, Norman located for us a one-time rabbit cage that we have repurposed into a quail condo. It was into that that we put the recently hatched quail. Only five managed to survive but at least we have that small success. So, to bring some new genetics into our quail flock we are negotiating the purchase of hatchlings from a coworker who recently set up a large quail farm operation. The newly established quail breeder sells fertile eggs for one dollar each. They also sell hatchlings and young quail, up to three weeks old, for three dollars each. We will probably buy the older quail in the hope that we can distinguish males from females at two to three weeks. That would take some of the disappointment out of raising hatchlings to discover that the majority of them are male. Not that that is a bad thing, since we can eat the overage. At least, I can. Mama and Victoria are reluctant to eat what we raise, be it birds, goats, or sheep.

Last night I candled the duck eggs we had in the larger incubator. Twelve were viable and nine were clearly not fertile. Those that were not viable were removed. The twelve viable eggs should be hatching by the 16^th. It is fun to candle the eggs at this point. You can actually see the embryonic duckling moving around in the egg. It is kind of freaky looking because mostly all that can be seen are large blood vessels and a dark shape, but it is clear that there is a live, developing ducking in the eggs. Only a few more days to wait. Again, we will not be able to determine males from females for months after they hatch, and again, we will cull the males from the mature ducks and either process them for me to eat or sell them to someone else to eat.

Either way, we come out alright.

New births, additions, picnic celebration

It has been some time since I have written. It is not that I have had nothing to write about, but rather that I have lacked the emotional energy to put those happenings into print. I do not have a huge audience for this little blog, but still, once something is committed to print and published, there is almost no way to take it back. I do not live in the pretentious world of today’s social media where I pretend to believe your lie as long as you pretend to believe my lie, so I try to mean what I say and say what I mean. All too often, that communication is faulty because anything said can be misinterpreted, misunderstood, or misused by those who do read what I have written. Nevertheless, I will attempt to expend the energy required to put my thoughts into words. The following are real events that happened to real people, and I will personally attest to their veracity.

That being said, we have had quite a bit of activity on the farm over the past few months. What follows is a very brief synopsis. Since my last update we have had seven little ones born into our goat herd. One set of triplets and two sets of twins. The oldest set of five little ones were born a couple weeks back, and they have doubled in size over that time. The most recent births took place yesterday, just before Mama, Grandma, Rosalee and I left for church. Mama and toyed with the idea of staying home for the births, but that turned out not to be necessary. In fact, both little bucks were born in a matter of a few minutes. We watched the nanny, Honey, wander about the paddock over the course of the morning, finally ending up in the barn. We lost sight of her once inside the barn. There she had the two kids so close together that only one got fully cleaned up. Normally the nanny will busy herself in cleaning the kid just birthed while waiting on any subsequent kids, but the second must have come very quickly. The second of the two was matted with dried amniotic fluids and stubble from the barn floor when we did a welfare check on the two when we got home from church. Mama will attempt to clean up the little one sometime today. If we do not, his hair will be bristly and stiff for a week or more. So far both are doing well. They are nursing successfully and are starting to explore their surroundings.

We received four piglets to the farm Friday evening. JD and Sarah Fox found a Kune Kune pig grower who was overloaded with piglets. He was trying to cull his herd and had eight piglets for sale for thirty-five dollars apiece. Mama and I could not resist the purchase – especially since the piglets typically sell for two hundred dollars or more. In total there were eight piglets offered as a package deal. We took four, JD and Sarah took the other four with the intent of selling two of them to a third buyer. The little ones have been a delightful addition to the farm. Mama and I have always liked raising pigs, but we have avoided purchasing any because the prices were so high. These little ones fit our budget. Grandma and Grandpa are very excited to have pigs on the property. Grandpa more so than Grandma. I am hoping the additional feed required for the newcomers will not break our budget, which is already strained by having twenty goats to feed.

In addition to the pigs and the goats, we were also successful in hatching out some quail. So far, we have five. A total of eight hatched out, but three of those died within a day. Mama and I have found that the newly hatched quail tend to be very fragile. We are not sure why the hatchlings die, but our best guess is that temperature is the main culprit. We have two running around in an enclosure in the garage and three still in the incubator where they hatched. We try to leave the hatchlings in the safety of the incubator for 24 hours. That gives them time to get strong enough to be moved to a larger area. Yesterday, Victoria and Norman removed one from the incubator and placed it in the enclosure in the garage, but when I got home from church, I put it back in the incubator. It was clearly going to die if we did not do something to help it. By last night, it was running all over the small incubator. It will be moved this morning and the two that hatched yesterday afternoon will be moved this evening, hopefully.

Saturday, Mama and I attended a celebration at Bible Baptist Translator’s Institute in Bowie. The picnic was to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of BBTI. It was not as well attended as I would have hoped, but there were about seventy people there. Mama made two types of slaw and deviled eggs to add to the large variety of other picnic fare to compliment the hamburgers and hot dogs served up by BBTI staff. The afternoon was hot but there was a good breeze throughout the celebration, so it turned out to be quite pleasant. Mama and I visited with families we had not seen in many months, some for several years. It was fun to catch up on all that has happened during the extended time we were out of touch.

We all promised to be more diligent about staying in touch, but those are promises rarely kept. I am not sure why we do not do better since such communications are extremely convenient with our current technology. Too busy, too distracted, out of sight, out of mind. Who knows? There are no good excuses, but perhaps we allow ourselves too much grace in these glaring oversights. I am going to make it a point to respond to each prayer letter I receive from and of the missionaries that share those correspondences with me. Such a simple gesture is encouraging to those serving abroad. It is the very least I can do.

So, the farm is growing, keeping Mama and I busy, entertained and nearly broke. It is a wonderful life.