Any “Wallace & Gromit
” fans out there? If you’re not familiar with the shorts and movies, I recommend you look them up for a wonderful bit of silliness! I was thinking of this title earlier today; sometimes I start thinking about what the blog will be about quite early in the day, and this title just kept jumping to the top of the list. Then, as the day progressed and I was getting updates from Sue, I wondered if I’d be able to continue to work with it. Well – we’ll see how we do when we get down to the end. Some interesting things happened today. Ready to take a gander? Continue reading
a grand day out
13 Monday Aug 2018
Posted in Co-workers, Projects
Or at least the chicken tractor. That’s what we did before I went to work today. Sue thought it took longer than it should, but I thought we did it in pretty good time. The reason we did this? The banties were getting water in their coop on a regular basis and it wasn’t drying out in between the rains very well, so it was getting rather yucky in there. Sue had already taken out all straw from inside and they were left with just the bare floors, because they’re way old enough just to roost up on the roosts, and they were fine with that, but it smelled dank and musty – not a healthy environment. So Sue wanted to lift it off the ground, let more air circulate to dry it out (it already looks better and smells cleaner), keep them off the wet wood that’s underneath, and also provide them with a larger protected area of shade. So we lifted the tractor today and placed it on 1 large cinder block, plus a 1/2 block. That raised it enough that the chickens could get in underneath – maybe their food and water can go under there as well – in the front section where it’s easily accessible and can stay dry and cool during the summer rains and heat, then the water might not freeze in the winter. 
Have I ever mentioned that I am not a morning person? Well, I am not. I never have been. I am more of a late night person, so I am very slow to wake and get to a functional state in the morning; usually this involves copious amounts of coffee. This can pose some problems on the farm – especially in summer. Sue, however, is a very early morning person. She’s always up before dawn, the only time I’m up before dawn is in mid-winter, when dawn comes around 7:00! I’m trying to regulate for morning, especially now when I’m staying home 3 days during the week. It’s just so much cooler (temperature wise) in the morning that we’ve got to do actual physical work then. How’s that working out for us? Let’s look at the last three days and see where we are, and where we’re trying to go this week. 
Thankfully, we’re coming up on the weekend. It seems to have taken a while to get here. We’re gearing up for a great couple of days. Not sure what they’ll hold, but I know they will be wonderful! This may be a rather short post tonight, I’m starting a bit later than normal. I made the mistake of going to the store, after work, on a Friday, at the beginning of the month, during the first full week of school. All those things – I think – combined to create the perfect shopping storm. So, I was a bit late getting home today. I’ll just give a quick run down of our last two days and call it macaroni. 
Wednesday is our day to get back on track this week. I don’t mean that we were seriously off track, perhaps more that we’re getting everything in order again. I’m trying to keep the M-W-F blog schedule, so even if I’m late on one of the those days, I’m trying to make continue with the schedule the next day. We’re also back on track with our monthly egg donation to church. July was weird because the 1st Wednesday – when Sue usually goes in to help with food bank delivery and takes the 10% donation in – was on Independence Day so that didn’t work. I didn’t get back until the weekend and I think we ended up taking them in around the 9th. So that means that they received a big lot, but then today they received fewer because it was only a couple of weeks. Whatever… we’re back on track now. What other things are back on track? 
Yep. I’m a day late again. Totally not my intention. I got rained in at a friends house last night. Went over after work to have a glass of wine and catch up. It started raining around 6:30 and I thought – I should go soon so I can help put up the chickens if it starts raining at home. Started saying my goodbyes; at 6:45 it started absolutely pouring. I hurried on out and jumped in the car. They live on a dirt road and it was already flooding. I knew of two ways to get out, one was a short cut and fraught with gullies and dips that surely were flooded, the other was the more used way, down the quickly flooding road. It wasn’t deep, so I decided to slog it that way. I got half way to the main road that is blacktopped when a guy in a lifted truck flagged me down and said – “you can’t go that way. The wash is flooded and you’re car is too small. So I had to call Sue and let her know that I wasn’t going to make it – and I turned around to wait out the rain at my friend’s home. 
This is week two of the new “working” plan; I think it’s “working.” We hashed out the things we wanted to work on and put them in order of “need to get done” and it’s been turning out pretty well. We’ve had to tweak the plan a couple of times due to weather issues, but overall it’s been a good change. We have lots of goals- so many that it becomes overwhelming if we just look at all that needs to be done. So, for me at least, it’s easier to cope when we have the steps laid out for the short term. Otherwise, I have a tendency to
simply shut down. We’ve got the dream and can see some of the projects that we need to finish to get us there, but working on the most time sensitive projects just helps to keep things rolling well. Some people say that a goal without a plan is just a dream, but I say that dreaming is a type of planning too. If the dream didn’t exist – no goals would be there – no plans would be needed – nothing would happen. So, dreaming is needed to to get all the rest of that going. This week our dreams did get a little closer to becoming reality. Step by small step – so we can handle it. 🙂 
It was so hot, the chickens were laying hard boiled eggs! Ok, that’s not exactly true; however, the temperatures today were so much higher here than anticipated. We were looking at highs around 100 at last night’s forecast, but it is, right now, 108! So our plans have had to change a bit. It was in the mid 70’s when I left for work around 6:30 this morning, so I know it climbed really quickly. Keep reading for the updated plan. 
Here we are, past mid-July, and we are just gettin’ into the summer fun here. It’s difficult to believe that we’re over half way through the year. Ugh. As we were reminded today though, there’s still time to put up your lemonade stand. I never really tried to do that as a kid – we lived too far out in the middle of nowhere – so I don’t really relate to that, but the CPA we saw today kept likening us to two girls selling lemonade. After we left, we weren’t too sure if that was a slight or not. He gave us some good advice, which is what we were after… it was just a somewhat demeaning simile. Oh well, you gotta start somewhere, and lemonade is as good a place as any! It’s certainly refreshing, right? We do have some other summer fun going on around here, wanna dive in? 