Interesting Week

As you all know, it's been kind of rough around here for quite a while. It all came to a head for me yesterday as I got to spend several hours not doing so well. Apparently, the stress and the extreme heat combined to give me a hypertensive episode and it caused my heart to beat abnormally for a while. Today, I feel like I have been run over by a train.

The fight to keep the garden going is over. The fight to keep the hay equipment going is over. The fight to keep the lawn mower going is over.

Maybe next year will be better.......

Is It Hot Enough For Ya?

It is too hot for me! This is the worst part of the year, I despise being wet and sticky all day. Here in southern Illinois, it's the joys of the "air that you wear". The thermometer said 128F in the barn yesterday. That's almost hot enough to cook the eggs in the nests!

Thank you to the wonderful blog reader that gave us another day of fuel to get back and forth to work. God Bless you sir.

Since the job won't let the hubs stay in his crappy camper(they know he's still ill), I'm subjected to driving him back and forth to work. It's taking up 5 hours of my day, the 5 best hours(coolest times of the daylight) so I'm not making much progress in the garden or around the farm. This weather is supposed to hang on until Saturday. yay rah! The garden will be a jungle of grass and pig weed by then. At least the plants are shaded some and not burning up!

Oh, I read something yesterday that got me thinking and at the same time, made me mad. Modern Poverty includes AC and xbox. Geez, you know, I never considered us to be impoverished before, now I'm kind of insulted. Video games, air conditioning, big screen tvs, cable television and fancy, expensive cell phones. Hmmm, we don't have any of those things. Does that mean we're poor? We can't afford any of those things. Maybe I should quit trying so hard to take care of myself and sign up for welfare so I can have air conditioning! I'd like that right now, LOL.

I've been discussing a small equipment problem with "net pals" over at the APN chatroom. A couple weeks ago, I picked up a chunk of wood in the square baler and it broke one of the cutting knives. It turns out, it also bent the bale chamber inward essentially making the baler junk. Well, to us, that is unacceptable since we need it and have no way of replacing it. Now comes the rabbit out of the hat. Hubs, the boy and I spent a couple hours working over the problem, trying a few different things to fix it. Hubs brilliant mind, a cutting torch and some extreme adjustments on the bale plunger and it works. He basically counter sank the stationary knife into the chamber wall and adjusted the plunger to run right down the chamber rail. It will never break a knife again. But, if I ever pick up another chunk of tree, it will probably, destroy the baler. Now all we need to do is come up with some imaginative way to fix that $800 pick up rake track on the haybine.... we're working it out.

Skeeter goat is enjoying the freedom that the hot weather has given the goat herd. Since it's soooo hot out and it would be animal cruelty to keep them in such a hot barn, the goats have free range around the farm. No, the weeds aren't that high here, she's laying down and munching, LOL. I wanted to get a picture of Spud laying in the tractor rim but he was gone by the time I got back with the camera. Maybe next time he does it.....

Farm Update Photos

There's little Spud...


Part of the herd getting a lick on the salt block....



The corn meal corn. There really is 5 rows of beans in all that pig weed and grass. Can you see the tobacco to the right of the corn?

Mid July Farm Update

We got a little rain to cool us off. 112F with 85% humidity was horrible. Thankfully, it was just a couple days and we lived thru it with no air conditioning. The creek swimming hole is a life saver ;)

Thank you to the 2 blog readers that have helped us with fuel money this week. God Bless you both!

The garden is full of pig weed and bermuda grass. I pulled some out last night but it will take me the rest of the week to get it all cleared out. The corn meal corn looks really awesome and I'll take a pic or 2 to post. The tobacco this year is being attacked by some tiny bug I've not seen on it before and I intend to spray them with the hot pepper spray this evening. I'm hoping it works since I refuse to use chemicals here. Even with the bugs, the plants still look good and are flowering like crazy. A good harvest of seed for my next crop! I've lost 3 rows of kidney beans from all the rain, the plants just wilted and died. What's left is covered in bean pods tho. I had a few horn worms munching on the tomatoes but I pulled the grass from around them and the chickens picked the worms for me. Good chickens! Today I will be finding my garlic and onions amongst the pig weed and grass, hopefully they are okay from all the rain. Oh, the peanut plants have the prettiest orange flowers on them! The replanted sweet corn is growing okay, it looks nitrogen deficient tho. It's from all the rain.

We finally got the deposit slip for the long term disability. 2 weeks at $170. Wow, now we can retire, LOL. Hubster insisted on a return to work slip so we don't lose our farm with that 30 day default clause. I don't know how he's going to tolerate it in so much pain and discomfort. We will make the July payment on the last day before default and just deal with it. Not like we don't have plenty of experience with trying to catch back up to even ;) So, all we need to do is make it the next 15 days. Pray for good results from all the tests this week and an easy fix to his illness.

Tuesday, before the rain came in, I tried to make myself a little fuel money by custom baling a small piece for a fellow up the road. I didn't get 10' and picked up a piece of tree, snapped the sheer pin. It was horribly hot so I folded up and headed home to fix it in the shade. Not 100 yards down the road, I blew a tire! A baler tire, not a tractor tire. What a mess just the same. The blow out bent the rim on me. So, some pounding on the rim and some grinding on it to get the road tar ooze (it was so hot, the road was all sticky and oozy) and gravel off of it, a $3 inner tube and now all I have to do is empty the chamber, get the piece of wood out, pull the knives off, file the knicks off them, put them back and I'll hopefully be good to go.

Little Spud is doing good. I turned all the goats loose so they could graze and find a shady spot during the heat of the day. Keeping them in the barn when it's this hot is animal cruelty. Just too hot for them in there. Pictures of Spud soon too...