Monsoon Season

As many of you know, it's been raining/storming around here.  In some places, the rain is now snow (Texas).  Well, this afternoon, the monsoon let up and the clouds broke.  What appeared in the sky?  God's promise to never flood the world again.,  Came close but no cigar!  LOL

Yep, that was a complete rainbow, side to side with a second partial bow above it.  Thanks Ethan for getting the panoramic photo for me.

The farm critters are all happy to see the rain quit, the poor chickens kept giving me the death stare this morning while wading thru the slop in the coop.  going to have to do something about that.  Can't have chickens swimming.....

The critter that rules the roost

Welcome to the farm, Little Critter!  Born Monday morning and has turned the farm upside down!

days melt all together

Always, this time of year, combined with the big, commercialized holidays, I always get kind of melancholy and reflect on things that have happened to me so far this year. It's hard not having a net connection out here. Paying for a wifi hotspot by the gig is just too expensive. Not enough paycheck for it.

So, what's been happening to the little self sustained farm this year? I've been stuck in a rut of perpetual catch 22. The farm isn't making enough to pay the taxes and the monthly bills so I work off farm more which reduces the amount of time I can work to improve the farm which in turn, slows progress on it down. I am grateful for the pitiful paycheck, it is keeping the bills paid. Just doesn't give me enough to make the improvements I need to make in a timely fashion. Took me all summer to scrounge up enough to get 6 pieces of treated 2x10 along with 18 pieces of treated 2x6, 4 rolls of cage wire for the base of the chicken coop. 19 weeks to save up $218. There's chickens in it now but it's not finished and winter is coming fast here. My big stumbler is that darn truckers tarp I need for the shelter side. That bugger is over $100. I need 4 more sticks of lumber, 3 more sheets of plywood to finish the shelter side. Meanwhile, I've got a plastic tarp zip tied and pinned to the base, covering the whole thing to keep the weather off the 45 days old chicks I hatched in the house to fill it. Oh, ha, I don't have a door for it yet, I keep them inside with an old quilt hung over the hole and an old, rotten table top! Yep, use what ya got, even if it's crazy and kind of retarded looking.

Garden was a wash this year. Barely made enough out of it in between the head high weeds to feed me up to Christmas time. Totally my fault for relying on an old fart who was full of crap and good stories of all the stuff he could do for me to help. Too bad it was all bullshit. So glad I wasted 5 years feeding 2 worthless nags for him while he was away. Eh, I did get a square baler out of it. Which, I need to buy a tarp for that and get it moved into one of the side stalls on the old barn. I've been procrastinating moving it because that old barn needs some work and I'm worried it's gonna fall down this winter. The main section of that old barn is full of square bales of hay. Too bad it's not MY hay. Another catch 22 thing. Work too much to cut and bale the hay so I had to reach out for help which in turn, I need to give help in return.

I'm disappointed with the rabbits this year. I've old had 3 batches of kits all summer, sold 18 to Rural King, lost 4 in the yard and ended up with 2 young does and another 2 bucks. Since I lost one good breeding doe this summer, the 2 young ones are needed to replace her. They haven't produced yet. The 2 bucks need to be in the freezer and will be pretty quick. No sense in feeding them for nothing.

Another year has gone by without me adding quail to the farm. The run is something else I need to save for. Right now, it's behind a new pair of glasses. I only have one pair, prescription, and they're expensive to replace. The ones I am currently wearing are so scratched up, they give me headaches. Tried to polish them since no vision place around here would do it for me. They claim you can't polish the transitions lenses. Wow, what a big mistake choosing those were! Pain in the ass, they take forever to dark up then take forever to undarken and the coating is flaking which is what's causing the distortion. I tried some stuff around the shop and made a slight improvement, it did peel some off but they're a little cloudy now. Don;'t have a fine enough grit to actually polish them. So, new pair has to be purchased. Need $300 for that, have $43 dollars saved up for them so far. LOL, it's gonna be a while still. There's no earning potential from a new pair of glasses. Personal comfort and decent vision but no farm income. Hard to make that kind of decision but it's base survival here and it's do what ya gotta do and get on with it as usual. So, it goes on the list with socks, underwear and a new pair of boots that don't have duct tape on them holding them together! Yep, I'm going into winter with 1 pair of sneakers that are pretty much worn out and a pair of work boots that are split down the side. Oh well, just part of life.

Oh! A good thing, it was kind of a surprise! Delta, my Kinder goat nanny, just gave me a new kid to play with! A single this time, a little nanny goat. Tri-colored. Never had kids in November before. Had to be one of the January billys I hauled to the auction in September. She would have bred back in May, during the monsoon rains we had this spring. So, there's a new baby bouncing around in the barn.

Oh, ha, a friend bought me an adult coloring book. Complex, geometric patterns. Kind of cool. Supposed to be good stress relief. Too bad I've only got 4 colored pencils! I colored 2 pages so far but the lack of color option has me a bit miffed. Stress relief, yah, okay. hahahaha Maybe in a couple of weeks, I'll splurge on a new set of pencils and get to coloring.

Eh, the 2 stupid dogs are pestering the life out of me this morning! You're late Mom, you're supposed to be outside feeding so we can run all over the place, chase the loose rabbits and act stupid! Hurry up Mom! Get some socks so we can lick your face and bother you while you're trying not to kill your back putting socks on! Come on Mom! Why are you ignoring us whining and barking? You don't need that cup of coffee! Mom! Quit ignoring us! Eh, okay, time to go out and feed..........

Jumped Up Into Fall And Surprise....

Wow, the pitiful summer just flew by without much bravado around here. Working the off farm job kept me pretty well in catch up mode the whole time. The unusually wet spring ruined the garden with weeds that grew faster than I could control them. The farm spent most of the summer looking like gypsies lived here with the waist high grass and critters tethered out all over the place. August and September were a whirlwind here with me falling into a 20 year old, 3 cylinder gas john deere rider mower, getting the square baler timed ( thanks Gene!) and getting all the hay baled. Without Justins Grandpa Gene, I would have never figured out what the last owner had jacked up on that baler. It's always the simple stuff that gets overlooked and I just never knew that piece was there. Old farmers are always worth their weight in gold. Would have been a waste selling the cows to get tractor tires if I couldn't get the baler going to make winter hay.

So, the 3 billys born this spring got sold, $2 a lb, not bad. Kept the orphan billy to breed with since he's from new bloodlines. If he wouldn't have come here, I would have had to buy one so I'm good with it. He's got a good personality, easy going and is turning out nice and beefy. Should make nice babies. Now I will at least have the winter feed bill covered and a good billy to make new babies for spring kdding. Throw in the hay bales and I'm sitting pretty good coming into the winter. Now all I need to do is come up with a small cushion in case disaster hits like last winter.

I'm still a bit in withdrawal not having a milk cow around here. Had a scare with the old horse, she seemed to just walk into a fit of colic. It was a bit tense here for 2 days while she worked it out with the help of 2 bottles of karo syrup. I figure it was weather related since here diet has not changed. She's also over age 20, officially old for a horse. She's still looking good and can still buck when she wants. She'll be around for a few more years. I don't mind, she earned her stay here.

Got a wild thing picking the chickens off every few days. I've gone from 35 laying hens down to 10. I have 19 chicks in the grow tank waiting for me to finish a coop to put them into. I have 36 eggs in the incubator but they're due tomorrow and I haven't heard any peeps from in there. I think the temperature wasn't good for this batch. The weather change and I found a cat sleeping on it the other day. Eh, I really didn't need any more right now anyway. Hate it that they're all dead in there tho. Seems like such a waste.

One of the team at work has a puss-ass immune system and brought a nasty bug to work for us all. Hacking and coughing, spitting in every trash can and yup, we all got it. I, of course, went on the old timey health ranger offensive and all I ended up with is a mild case of the sniffles out of it. The rest of the crew ignored my suggestions and they're all smacked with it hard. It still amazes me that people can be so narrow minded and hard headed. Where do they think modern medicine came from? Eh, it's like hitting my thumb with a hammer trying to teach people anything. They're sick, I'm not. I'm good with that, LOL

Oh, so, back in July, the company that has been picking up my trash for the last 6 years just quit picking it up. I thought the first week that maybe I missed trash day but the next week went by and the trash was still there. Then, another week went by and the trash was starting to stink a bit. Yep, they aren't picking it up. So, I commenced to drag it over to the burn pile and get rid of it. Then, 2^nd week of August, I get bill in the mail for August pick up. I ignore it since they hadn't finished out the month of July which was already paid for. Then, 2^nd week of September, I get another bill! This one is for August and September pickup! Oh no, this ain't gonna fly. Me being me, I wrote a somewhat nasty note on the bill and sent it back to them. Simple and to the point, if you stopped picking my trash up in mid July, I can not pay for August and September services I did not receive so stop sending me trash pickup bills, LOL Reminds me of the John Deere dealer sending me a repair bill stamped past due for work they did on the mower they took as a trade in 3 months prior. Sometimes I wonder about people. How they can be so stupid and or why they think everyone else is so stupid.

As for me, I'm just plodding along, day to day, going with the flow of whatever happens. It's really all I can manage to do. Make plans, watch them work or fall apart, adapt, overcome, move on to the next plan. Samey same and more of it, LOL.

Oh, I did manage to make 2 small upgrades toward the cottage kitchen being approved as a full on commercial kitchen. I had 2 specialty jobs this summer that paid for the supplies. A couple more things and I'll be good. Now all I need to do is find the time to work it up to a viable business. Hard to cut back hours from the job that pays the bills to build up something that isn't making enough at this time to cover much of anything. I most certainly haven't given up and the market is out there, just taking longer than I planned for it to pay me like I want it to. Hard to dedicate the time needed when I have nothing to fall back on. The not sleeping for 2 or 3 days at a time to get those specialty jobs done is one thing, doing it all the time or once or twice a week just won't cut it. I'm way too old for that!

Well, I grabbed the camera for some fall farm pictures and what do ya know, the battery icon comes on instantly. Wow, guess it's been a while since I picked the camera up. I flip it over and pull the batteries out. Yep, the camera has been a victim of my son helping himself again. In place of the lithium batteries I always put in her, there's 4 cheapie standard ever-readys. Guess my son needed AAs and thought he could just get them from me. He does that quite frequently. Very annoying. At least this time, he actually put something in their place. Normally he just takes what he wants from me and leaves me nothing in return. Most of the time, it's food. Every now and then he sticks me for the lawn mower gas, take dish soap from me and fill the bottle with water to cover it up, help himself to the toilet paper, usually my last 2 rolls. He learned this crap from the ex. He better hope and pray I never get ahead enough to burn this crap trailer down and build something he can't break into so easily. Wish the dang dogs would bite him.

Eh, it's life and now it's time to feed and go to work........