Hard to believe a (school) year has gone by already! Seems like just yesterday I was getting the kids ready to put on the bus and now they're out for the summer!
A whole school year in Kansas has flown by, the thought of it sends me reeling. Winter even flew by, which is pretty hard to believe thinking last fall I had wondered if we'd make it through! But...here we are.
Plans are in place for summer work, mostly to prepare for the next winter, if you can believe that! We went through a pretty good amount of wood, that's for sure. It somewhat caught us unprepared though it wasn't as if we were working on a million other things. I somewhat dread the winter, that's for sure. Thinking about next kidding season is a lot of fun until I come to the part about having to go through winter and that doesn't really thrill me a whole lot to be honest.
The past few weeks Jeremiah and one of his students have spend a lot of time in the woods clearing out trees that have snapped off. These black locust trees we have in abundance grow super fast and it's great wood to burn but they don't last more than 15 years or so, if the ice storms don't get them first. They'll pop up anywhere too from these little tiny seeds, given the right conditions, they'll be a full grown tree in a year. Not something I want in the lawn areas!
At any rate, there's a lot of good burning wood to pull out of the woods on the east portion of the property. Jeremiah and I managed, between dropping Rachel off for a slumber party on Saturday, picking up her up on Sunday and Jeremiah attending the school's graduation on Sunday, to finally get another long stretch of fencing up. I'd say the biggest issue has been clearing the fence line to begin with!
The north property line (back of the property) we worked on too clearing these stupid sand hill plum bushes out of the way and ripping yucca out of the ground. There's about 400' of fencing I can run myself now which I'd like to get to today. It's really not hard fencing to put up at all...a lot of walking back and forth but other than that, it's pretty simple.
But speaking of fencing, our vet neighbor about a month ago said he'd pay us in t-posts. I'm pretty darned ticked with him. First off, he's the one with "Horse". "Horse" stayed with us for about a month after we moved in until he decided to come over and ask for her back...like we were holding her hostage! Not wanting to speak ill of our neighbors or anything, but come on, that's not exactly the best way to make friends with your new neighbors, ya know? So anyway, they have dogs that yap yap yap all the time! "Horse" likes to come down to the fence line while I feed and look pitiful and here lately, I don't think she's had food for the past month. Or at least that's the way the vet made it sound so of course I feel badly and feed her some! Alfalfa ain't the cheapest thing in the world for sure!
We talked to him about a month ago about fencing. Here in Kansas the law is that neighbors share in the cost to replace/maintain. Well, this fence is definitely in need of replacing and I knew it would be a hard sell to some of the neighbors being as how it really only benefits us to have it all electrified though it's not as if I am asking them to pay for the electricity AND the is the cheapest fencing you can buy! It just so happens, in my personal opinion, it's also the best. The non-electrified 4 strand is doing just fine for the 2 neighbors with horses. Never mind they haven't spent a minute in helping to maintain it! The fence we share with the vet has 2 strands that are completely broken! The corner post in all but one corner are gone and have been/were replaced. The vet's response was something to the affect of, 'Well, this new fence doesn't really help me. What's up is just fine and I could come out here and have it repaired in an hour.' Well then gosh darnit, DO IT!
Anyway, he said he'd give us about 50 used t-posts that were just sitting around his office instead. We figured if that's all he could afford, it was better than nothing. We've yet to see them, surprise surprise. He wanted to know if he could "board" his horse in our pasture over the summer for $1 a day. You think I'll see that money? Probably not and as sad as it makes me to think horse is over there starving, I won't agree to taking his horse. For one, the whole back fence doesn't exist and for two, cross fencing will take a while and I will not take the chance that the horse does something to the goats and I will not not let the goats out because the horse is. Vet or not, the guy won't even follow through on his word with t posts, I sure don't expect to see a check for $30 a month!
His fence line is only about 350' so we figured we'd get that done before starting on the longer stretches so we'd have to put the horse up for a few days in one of our empty corrals. You know he had no problem with that! He even mentioned that all she'd need was some water and hay everyday and a can of corn; he'd bring he corn. Well, gee thanks! I swear!
So, I'm not sure what to do at this point. If I knew he'd pay the bill and it wouldn't end up just being a fight I'd send him a bill but as it is, I think it would be a waste of my time and sanity. Two of the neighbor have agreed to help and the north neighbor, well, there is no north neighbor. The property is in and out of foreclosure and I seriously doubt we'll get blood from a turnip on that one though I do know the owner's current address so I may just send them a bill. Ya never know. May as well do that with the vet too and take photos first but not make it a point to worry about it. The fencing's all bought anyway, however, we will need a new fencer. As I said, the lightening toasted the last one.
So anyway, a good portion of the summer will be spent chopping wood and repairing some things on the shop. The roof is leaking where the skylights are. The panels need to be taken off, scraped of the old caulking and then re-caulk and re-rivited. I've not emptied some of the boxes in the shop of decoration stuff because I have not painted much of the house. I have not painted because Jeremiah mentioned wanting to open the wall back up (he installed a 2 way switch to run the fan we put in last summer) to put in a line going to the outside garage light but yesterday he mentioned putting it on a motion detector instead so I am now free to tape, mud and re-texture, paint it and get another box out of the shop.
Someone recently asked Jeremiah if he taught welding to private parties. Guess who may be running some welding lessons out of the shop this summer? It's is something he'd like to get into further later on but it's not as if we don't have 5 million other things going on either!
At any rate, the truck needs new brake bands so that's Jeremiah's chore for this weekend. I need to show clip some goats, the darker ones to be exact, for the show next weekend. The others will get done later in the week. Rachel has been working almost daily training the little girls to lead. We'll see how all that goes! More than likely she'll end up dragging them but all in a days work.
We're taking quite a few goats to the show. The youth show is on Friday evening with a showmanship class beginning at 6 PM. She's taking 2 doe kids. The open doe and buck show is the next day and I'm planning on taking 2 doe kids, 2 Sr. dry yearlings, 2 yearlings in milk and then 3 bucks! The older does have milked off their backs more than I would like and are not in show shape so they will stay. I am taking a buck kid out of a yearling who has already been sold (but is staying on his dam until we get back from Ca.). I'll show the yearling and then Jeremiah will show Prince Charming. Well, Jeremiah's showing one of each of the girls but since the buck kid and yearling buck are in a class of their own, I'll just do them myself. It should be an exciting day and I am anxious to see how the girls (and boys) do!
I have sold a few of my milkers and most of the kids as well. We're keeping 4 doe kids, 2-3 milking yearlings and then the 4 older does and bucks. We'll be bringing back a 5 year old doe and her buck kid from Ca. and I keep saying that's it. HA. We've built the herd up pretty nicely I'd say in short order. I was very pleased with the kid crop this year and next year should be even better!
Anyway, today marks the first official day of summer vacation for the kids. The storms have passed through and there's lots of laundry that piled up waiting for a nice day to wash it and hang it out on the line. Which, you'll be happy to note, I finally have a real real clothes line. The umbrella clothes line kept sinking into the loamy soil and it's not really good for winter time drying (on the days that are warm enough to actually dry the clothes) because the line are too close together so I was either wasting a lot of space by skipping lines or the clothe weren't getting dry and what's the point of having it then? So, Jeremiah welded up some heavy duty metal posts and we concreted those in the ground a few weeks ago. It's finally nice to be able to hang sheets out again!
Jeremiah and I scraped the popcorn off Drew's ceiling so we're finally ready to paint. He first picked out a green color but now he wants blue so back down to get blue paint and I'll use the green elsewhere. Jeremiah also scraped the hallway ceiling and I can paint that now if I want...which I don't. The kitchen, oh the kitchen (!), has this ugly texture job going on on the walls. Why someone paid to have this done is beyond me though I think I must be the only one who despises it because everyone who comes in says how much they like it!
The "back" room in the basement is floored and done minus the drop down ceiling which can wait so I have been slowly moving my sewing stuff back there. I'd like to get the dresser that's currently in the living room down there and be able to paint the living room and move in the couches we bought that are sitting in the shop!
That's all for now. Time to get started with the day!
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