No new news to speak of really. I could talk about the weather. Things were getting a little dry around here up until about a week-week and a half ago. We had some overnight storm roll through dumping a coupe of inches in total. Thursday seemed rather overcast and sprinkley if I remember right. It's still been pretty warm, in the 90's. The humidity makes it worse! I think we have few more days of 90 degrees before we drop into the 80's and the rest may be history.
Yesterday Jeremiah and I were over at the house house. The weather people predicted strong storms. Most of the time they build out of nowhere, sometimes overhead and head west and sometimes west and they hit hard. The summer storms are quite spectacular how they can just build out of thin air. I've subscribed to a Facebook page called Weather Watchers. They've been a great source of awesome and accurate information, more so than any other other and they are very local. I've learned a great deal about weather in general but more so about the oddity that is weather here on the plains, a place with weather like no other.
Jeremiah worked the concession stand at the stadium on Friday night for the varsity vs. jr. varsity football game. Rachel asked if she could help so I ran her to town and dropped her off. She was very excited to have her first job, as she called it. Completely volunteer. She said she had a great time, she ran the nacho station. Drew and I grabbed an ice cream cone and picked up a couple pizza's, came home, did chores and watched TV.
The kids start school on Wednesday. I'm a little sad about that. It's been a great summer and I will surely miss them! This year, more than any other, it seems they have grown up so much and are so helpful with chores and what not. Not that they haven't been helpful all along but this year more than any other, I can trust they will do what needs to be done by just asking and they are usually very eager to oblige. It's been a really great summer.
The sow was due yesterday. Jeremiah and I moved her over to one of the pens. She was kind of in a foul mood all day yesterday, which, I guess I can't blame her. Some of the piglets are reserved for feeders for others but we plan to raise a few up. We took our boar off recently, he came in weighing close to 500 lbs. or more. That yielded 191 lbs. hanging weight for half the hog!
I've sold a few more goats and the herd, to me, is looking pretty small! I think after these 2 kids leave we'll be down to 20 in all including 4 adult bucks. I was going to keep a younger buck but decided against and he to a family up near the Ne. border. They drove down last Sat. to pick him up. Two other doe kid are reserved with pick up next weekend.
Our milk barn still isn't any more complete than the roof that was put on over the spring but everything in due time, I guess.
I've been sleeping horribly most nights, waking around 1 or 2 and being wide awake for hours. I try o grab a few hours before 7 AM but it's fitful and almost worthless most days. Some days I sleep all the way through the night but most days not. I toss and turn and toss and turn and eventually just get up and sit around.
After few chores around here yesterday morning Jeremiah and I went over to the other house. We sort of lost our drive for a while there to work on it, not to mention there were some serious pressing issues here with the fence that had to be addressed. Now that that's taken care of and we feel a bit more of an invigorated spirit we got some tiling done yesterday. Jeremiah had to take the air chisel to some old mortar to get it up. I swept and vacuumed real good. We let the A/C cool the house down while we came home for a while to grab lunch. The kids were back from church at that point.
We went back and Jeremiah mixed the mortar. He put entirely too much water in the bucket which required the whole bag of mortar. I was near 3 PM at that point and we hadn't intended to stay as along as it would take us to use all that mortar but it ended up we used it quicker than we thought. We got most of the tedious stuff done. Where the bathroom exits into the kitchen there was carpet before along with the first step down into the basement. We tiled all of that which took quite a few cuts. We still have a few more pieces to lay but because we were doing a "patch" job for that area, I had to start at the existing tile and work my way to the wall. I had no choice but to work myself into a corner, so to speak, and needed to leave enough area to be able to jump out. The mortar should be set today and we can finish up that little bit.
The rest goes pretty quickly. We set some tile in the center area where there used to be the island. It was all tiled around the existing cabinet so putting in the new tile makes it a seamless patch job. The bulk is still yet left to do but it's nothing more than laying tile after tile in a row...save for some cuts along the wall, it should go pretty quick! Right now the kitchen cabinets are sitting in the area we need to tile. We had to replace some tile where the existing cabinets were along the wall. We did that yesterday so now the cabinets can be moved in to place. I am hoping to have enough stamina and time today to finish laying tile I can grout on my own some time this week. At the time we bought the tile, I don't think we had intended to put the pantry in so didn't account for extra tile. Now that the pantry is built, I don't know if we'll have enough tile to do that too. We could just put in laminate as well, either way. I don't think it would make a difference either way.
I wrote out a list of "to dos" yet left to do and the list isn't all that big. It seems bigger before I started but it's really not bad. I'd like to be done before Oct. The weather is going to turn at some point and there are things we have to do around here before that happens. We need to replace our back door, at the very least. We've tried all kinds of different weather stripping and nothing is working like we need it to. When that cold north wind hits the house, all bets are off and freezing cold air pours though. Our front door isn't much better, but it's not as bad. Jeremiah hates installing doors but there's little choice.
For years we've talked about putting in a wood burning furnace. The kind that usually go outdoors or in a basement? There are lots of reasons we wouldn't put ours in the basement, #1 being I am not hauling wood downstairs! I think outside would be a good location but Jeremiah keeps mentioning the garage and I guess that would be okay too. I love the wood stove and it works fine but it is a lot of work to keep running and stocked with wood and not that I mind but I think a wood burner would be a lot more efficient and would only require stocking 2-3 times a day. The basement does get kinda cold with the wood stove burning so we don't use it as much in the winter. We still have yet to run duct work from the living room to the back bedrooms though the attic. Jeremiah complains about being cold in the winter. I think most people keep their houses entirely too hot in the winter and I am not really a fan of the cold myself! But I hate sleeping in a hot house or coming in from outside where it's literally freezing or worse and the the house is blazing! Warm is nice, blazing isn't! If only people here would realize it's cold out and winter appropriate clothing would make a big difference! That said, it sure is nice after a long winter to finally go sock-less. But then I look forward to sock winter in the fall too. Funny how that works!
Fall is just around the corner. We have a lot of chores in mind. Back in May we bought a boat load of plywood. Jeremiah wants to put it up along the walls in the shop. Right now the shop is just a wreck! Not that the plywood would change that, putting things away and cleaning up after jobs would change it but that is one of my requests before it's too cold to work out there, that we get that shop picked up!!!
We have got to get metal on the milk barn before it starts to snow. The subfloor won't last long. Working diligently can often times be a problem, keeping at the " to do" list seems a little relentless but I know if we keep at it, we won't feel like we're always playing catch up and if it's not one thing it's another around here! The yard looks nice for now, I mowed on Saturday. The fences are fixed. The processing date or the 2nd hog is made and we have a month to get the other house done!
We're hoping to put a steer in the pasture next year. Prices are sky high though and I cannot fathom spending what they're running! Forking out $500+ for a weanling calf that we'll have to feed for 12-18 months seems daunting. If the rain keeps up there's pasture 4-5 months out of the year but boy howdy, $500 is a small fortune for an animal you hope doesn't DIE! We're near out of beef and will have to buy another 1/4 from someone but the prices are just awful. It's bad all over, of course and I try like heck not to buy a single scrap of meat from the grocery store, organic or not. I bought some grass fed hamburger the other day and I reminded myself why I don't do that often...I really prefer grain finished. I don't see what people see in beef that isn't grain finished. Yuck. We've gotten to the point though of having non-feedlot non-commercially raised meat and honestly, there is no comparison to farm raised! Regular grocery store meat is tasteless, not to mention I shutter to think what's in it! Brainwashed or educated, whatever the case may be on that commercially raised meat, I can taste the difference and that's enough for me!
I hear the thunder roaring outside. It's not storming overhead but it is somewhere close enough by that the lightening is lighting up the house. I think I will try to grab a couple more hours of sleep before the sun's up and the day begins. I'm trying to get a blog post in here and there. None of this news seems very exciting to me/us, it's every day "mundane" but maybe mundane and uninteresting is neither to someone else.
Bye for now.
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