“…my arm is complete again!” That’s a nod to Sweeny Todd, I use it for my friend John S. who enjoys quoting that line when he pulls out the carving knife, but also because it kind of describes how Sue feels to have the tractor back in it’s comfy spot in the garage. That’s Sweeny, to the right, I thought about superimposing a photo of the backhoe to his arm so that my reference might make more sense; then I decided that I’m probably one of two people that is going to get that anyway – so, meh. What the Trails West Tractors guy discovered was that a transmission seals was completely disintegrated and that was causing havoc in many systems, plus making a horrible noise. Luckily, it was still under warranty!!! So, Sue just had to pay some labor and cost for fluid, diesel for George’s truck that hauled it back and forth. It was so much better than we had feared! While the tractor was off getting checked out, we were using wheel barrows to move large quantities of wood chip compost, and it got old quickly. We’re now ready to get back to the regularly scheduled plantings that we need to finish. Monday is a holiday, so we might get quite a bit done now. Continue reading
at last…
05 Friday Oct 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Today is our short post day, so I just wanted to give you an update on the DL. We have three sickos on the DL, if you count Bob. Let’s start there. Bob is slowly healing. Because his skin was so thin where he had his laceration, it wouldn’t hold stitches, so it is being treated as an open wound. He went to the vet last week and Sue was encouraged to keep on doing what she’s doing. He is still on some sedatives to help keep him calm, but he is sooo tired of having to stay still, and stay in the the house, and wear the cone of shame. It will continue to be slow going for a while, but I think it is starting to look less angry and weepy. Poor little dude. 
So, it was a rather quiet weekend and on into today. Not a whole lot to report. Sue ended up spraining her foot – not the ankle, but the top of her foot – and it was a fine weekend to prop it up and ice it. I did go to a rehearsal Saturday, so when I got back from that we took eggs to Tom to baker in Old Bisbee. Got back home just in time to do chores. One of our neighbors wanted to purchase eggs, so we made a deal to meet her at the gate around 5. Oops! We totally forgot. Silly people that we are. They were honking, but we were watching The Fellowship of the Ring, which completely drowned out her desperate attempts to contact us. She even called and texted me, but my phone was on “do not disturb” so that didn’t work either. Have no fear, though; we worked it out that we’d leave some eggs in a cooler by the front gate for her to pick up sometime Sunday morning as we are generally gone to church starting at 8:00 a.m. Wrote a thank you note, and gave her an extra 1/2 dozen for all the trouble. I think she’s still happy and, if that’s the worst thing to happen on a weekend, that’s a good weekend. 
This is the end of the week report. I’ve been trying to see if I can scare up some photos, but – no joy. So it’s a photo-less Friday for you. Sorry about that. I looked through the latest photos on my phone, the only one I haven’t shared with you is one I’m saving for next month. I’ll just run through some highlights. 
Some days are really quite interesting on the farm. [Pardon me, I know we just barely got started but, I’ll be right back. We seem to have some dogs that are absolutely convinced that we have forgotten to feed them.- OK I’m back. Near death crises averted.] As I was saying… some days are particularly interesting. Sue generally has to deal with the immediate “interesting” because I’ve gone to work when things get going. Today was one of those interesting days; maybe you might say it was troublesome. Sometimes when one thing happens, it has an effect the rest of your plans for the day. Case in point… 
Ok, so it really isn’t a lawn, and Sue only was able to use the lawn mower once, but it was still a “take care of the too tall grasses” day. Monday’s have got to be for something, right? We kicked around a few things: cleaning out the goat shed or the lean-to, planting pomegranates, pulling the straw out of the RCW… but settled on a good mow out in the fields. 
Not sure that pizza night has anything to do with farming, or chickens – since we didn’t do BBQ chicken pizza – but it was the evening’s fare. Sue had been craving it, so at breakfast, we made our dinner plan for pizza. Unfortunately, today was a late work day so dinner came later than normal. We both made it to dinner time, though, without withering away. And there is nothing like fresh baked pizza from your own oven. YUM-O! It felt especially indulgent because we each made our own, and this was a week that warranted a great, greasy, cheesy pizza – for me anyway. Not a banner week at work, but definitely a great week on the farm! 
…and purposes, it’s been a couple of quiet days. We’ve had a few days of rain, off and on, and we love it. Even though we have been saying, “please let it rain,” we don’t ever plan for the rainy days. Well, how can we? There’s never a guarantee that it’s going to rain. So we just plan the plan and go with it if we can. “The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 
We’ve had a pretty busy few days. Well, except for Sunday which is our Sabbath; the day we reserve for all things churchy and for taking it easy to refresh our bodies as well as our souls. We had a jammed packed Saturday and a very busy Monday. Are you ready for the news? Then I’ll tack on some insect photos at the end. I’ll try to keep it coherent. 
Have you ever heard of the REALTOR® Designation, M.R.P.? It stands for Military Relocation Professional. Well – did you know that Sue and I have the C.R.P. Designation? Chicken Relocation Professional. And boy did we exercise that today! We began and ended the day relocating chickens, for various reasons. Whenever we’re in the midst of doing things like that, people drive by and wave, I always imagine that they’re saying – “What are they doing now?” I think we give our neighbors a great deal to talk about! 
Wing and a Prayer 