Lorihadams-- hi guys...been busy!

[justusnak]

$7/hr is cheap! However, if you are OK with that amount, and he is as well...yes, its fair, to him. ( I don't think it is fair to you tho)
I will definitely say a prayer for Chad. Sometimes those lines can be tough!!! I Totally understand why he is walking through the line, I know we would have to do the same, if hubby's place ever went on strike. Luckily they are not union tho. whew! I want to wish you both the best of luck getting through this. Just tell Chad to watch his back..and be safe and if he can, come out of there in pairs at least, never alone!!!

 

[lorihadams]

Thanks....Chad told me to charge the guy $15/hr cause he's got plenty of money to "throw around". Must be nice.

 

[MsPony]

Lori!! I've missed you and your updates! Ok, back to lurking

 

[lorihadams]

Thanks!

Today we are doing laundry....big surprise

I'm trying to get the slide show put together for the church but we are having issues getting the closing video off of the camera and onto the computer for the end of the slide show. We have a buddy that is going to send Chad an email to help us convert the files later tonight so I'll get back to work on that after chiro/dinner/milking/nature walk/duck wrestling.

All our new ducklings are not "getting it" about their house. They won't follow the older ducks inside every evening so CHad and I are having to go out and herd them in every evening at dusk. One of the best things we did was position our gate close to the corner of the fence (extra wide to accomodate the riding lawnmower) so that it swings inward and forms a triangle space on the inside corner of the pasture so if we can't get them to go in the house then we run them into that corner and open the gate forming a pen and then manually transport their little butts into the house for the night. I cannot tell you how useful that little corner "trap" has been for catching whomever we need to get our hands on. We also have to sex the ducklings tonight cause I have a buyer coming Saturday so for lots of girls.

I was able to get 12 oz out of Aliana this morning...the first two days milkings after I got back I was only get 8-10oz per milking but yesterday I made sure she had an extra bucket of fresh water in the afternoon and I think that helped too. I'm hoping to get her production back up a bit....I have not seen any of my goats come into heat yet and I am thinking I want to breed them in September, October at the latest. I may see if I can get a buck rag from a lady down the road that has goats and maybe then I can pin down a time. I also have to get their registration papers transferred too but have been putting it off....need to do that this week now that my AGS membership has gone through.

The kids want to start their nature journals today so I am thinking we will go for a walk after I milk Aliana tonight and check on the food plots below our tree stands anyway and gather some leaves along the way (we are going to start with tree identification). Chad is going to borrow his uncle's tractor to plow up the corn patch and I'm thinking I may plant a whole mess of broccoli in there for the fall cause we eat a lot of it and then freeze it when it comes in (I'm being positive...it WILL come in). Then I am thinking that I may just add a layer of straw from the barn over the winter and till it in come springtime. We also want to plant some winter crops for the food plot for the deer so we may go on and till up some patches in the lower field while we have the tractor. I need to clean out all my raised beds and start over again with fall crops. I may bite the bullet and go get some organic fertilizer to put in the boxes to give it a boost cause the soil just didn't do well for us and evidently needs it.

I have one more load of laundry to get on the line but I have to get the sheets off first before they can go out there. I think I'm gonna give them another half hour or so.

This morning was hot so I let the kids "draw" on the back porch with ice cubes....if you haven't ever done that with the kids you should, it was really fun. I also got two index card binders for the kids and made some sight word cards for Tyler last night. I made some before 2 yrs ago but put pictures on them and he cheats I'll use those with Maddie again this year and we are starting our reading list for the year already. I'm keeping track of every book we read for the year. I am about half way through Charlotte's Web and the kids are doing great, Tyler is looking forward to each chapter every night. He's done well and is asking questions about different things every night . Last night Maddie and I read Bread and Jam for Frances (one of my favorite books and it shows cause my 1964 version from my childhood needs to have half the pages taped back in where they are falling out) and she LOVED it.

I'm thinking we will move the freezer into the garage either this weekend or early next week, hubby has his Sportman's Show this weekend and is going to be gone pretty much the whole time doing lectures. He got another 450 acres to hunt (for free!!!) from the farmer he helped with the cow/wild dog situation last weekend. I have to take inventory and reorganize everything and truth be told I need to unplug it, defrost it and clean it but I don't have the other freezer ready to go yet to do it. I am hoping to get 4-5 deer this year and grind 3, cut one up for roasts, and maybe do one in jerky. We'll see what we can get. We don't eat beef so all our red meat comes from the deer we harvest in the fall. We have a farmer that would give Chad a holstein baby to raise for meat for like $35 but we just don't have the time to put into it right now....maybe next spring we can have something set up so we can do one or two calves. I would love to put up a pig but hubby just won't go for it yet.....YET. I'm working on it

We got our first two "rogue" cantaloupes out of the compost pile and evidently they were good cause I didn't get any. Tyler brought me the bowl and said "here mommy, you can have some.....HA!! just kidding, I ate it all. " Gotta love 6 yr olds

Gotta sit down and go through my seed packets too and plan out the fall garden. When did I get so busy....oh and I'm supposed to go to the beach to see MIL but I don't know if that is gonna happen. We discussed Chad taking stress leave after the strike is over....he gets a certain amount through is benefits. I don't think anyone would dispute it after all the crap he is going through with the strike. He would just have to have a recommendation from a psychiatrist or psychologist, I forget which but we have a woman that we went to when we did marital counseling that would do it in a heartbeat. He called me earlier and said they had agreed for him to go to a different location (back to his "home" office) and he said he knows where he could park and sneak in through a hole in the back fence if need be. Sad. Hopefully it will be easier in the location where the guys he is used to working with are and they know our situation. Maybe they'll cut him some slack for trying to keep his house and feed his kids.

 

[colowyo0809]

 

[FarmerChick]

wow Lori that is so hard on Chad.
stay strong thru all this mess.
such troubles one has to do just to work and take care of his family..ugh

fingers crossed it is all over soon for him.

 

[valmom]

Ugh- the whole strike thing stinks Good luck to hubby crossing the lines.

 

[lorihadams]

So now I got a call from my mom and Granny did well with her surgery today! The doctor said there was a lot more damage on this shoulder than the other one but there wasn't the hemmoraging in the shoulder cavity that the other one had. The other one had almost a pint of coagulated blood inside the shoulder cavity where the bone was rubbing. They did a total nerve block on both sides this time instead of any anesthesia again and she seems to be doing really well with it but I haven't talked to her yet. I think we are going to call her in a little bit when she gets settled.

 

[lorihadams]

Okay, well now Granny is in a lot of pain so they kept her last night and the surgeon was supposed to come look at her shoulder this morning but I haven't heard anything from mama yet so I am assuming no news is good news. This one was a lot worse and they had to do a lot more to it when they got in there to remove some of the deposits and such from the arthritis damage so I guess it is to be expected that the pain on this one would be worse. She just couldn't get comfortable last night so the nurse gave her morphine after calling her surgeon and he was gonna take a look at it again today.

Chad's boss let him report to a different location and he has received much less confrontation there but is still getting phone calls both good and bad from the union workers that are picketing. The bad thing is that several employees have called and threatened to come to the sportsman's show this weekend and he is very worried that they will heckle him during his presentations over the weekend. We are going to videotape both of his seminars so that if anything happens we have evidence of defamation of character. They have also put his name on the union website as a "scab" for crossing the lines and working. The supervisors have assured him that they support his decision and most of the guys he works with daily are very understanding as well, it's the ones that he doesn't really work with normally that are calling and harrassing him. He played a message for one of his supervisors this morning and he was told to document it in case that person actually followed through with the threat once the strike was over.

This morning we have had a power outage (not long though), made pancakes (that was fun, I let Maddie crack all the eggs), read a book on Rocks and Minerals, caught and released a cicada, chased a butterfly, found a bluebird feather, watched some youtube music videos (Luke Bryan's Country Girl Shake it for Me with his son Bo dancing is hysterical!), read 6 chapters of Captain Underpants, discussed how airplanes fly and flown toy ones all over the living room "airport", played with the dogs and the goats, and used up 1/2 gallon of goat's milk. It's only 11:15 and I'm already tired.

I still have to work on planning the fall garden and I think I may go out and work on the raised beds tomorrow morning before the lady comes to buy the ducklings. Sadly, only 2 of the five appear to be females . The two chocolates appear to be girls and the 3 blacks appear to be boys. She definitely wants the chocolates but she says she'll see what else she may want when she gets here and can get a look at everybody. I'm supposed to go to the beach this weekend but I'm not going cause of the strike issues/money issues/milking issues. Because Chad has to be at the showplace so early and so late every evening if I were to go out of town there would be no one to milk the goat cause my neighbor is going out of town today for the weekend too so we may try to go see MIL next weekend if everything is in line for it. Then I have to go back up to Granny's the following weekend cause the church is taking all the VBS kids to the waterpark as part of their reward for raising so much money for missions work.

I got started last night on the slide show and got all the pictures lined up and all the music files imputed on the program but still have to work out the fine points. It is really rough right now. I may work on it some this afternoon after lunch. The kids are taking a break now and wanted to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so I'm letting them. We haven't formally started our "school" schedule yet but I am trying to ease back into it gradually before I hit them with it every day. We have really picked up our reading time though and Tyler is doing much better reading aloud on his own but I'm not pushing it.

I may spend some time today looking at the SOLs for school and seeing if I can find some fun activities to do for later down the road. I'm trying to be much more organized this year and have started two file boxes for homeschool records and paperwork so that I can put together a portfolio for Tyler at the end of the year.

I also need to mow the grass but we got rain early this morning so I won't be able to do that until way later this afternoon if at all. Chad won't get home until at least 9pm tonight cause he has to go set up his booth for the show and meet with the other vendors. I think we'll go down there Sunday afternoon to watch him do his presentation and walk around.

I also have to make a feed run sometime soon. I figure I have about 1-2 week's worth of food for the goats and 4-5 days of food for the birds. I'm thinking beginning of next week I will be hitting TSC for a major food haul. Probably about $80 but that will last another month for the birds and around 2-3 months for the goats. I have to say my food bill for the animals isn't that bad. About $15 a month for the birds after I get rid of these extra ducks and the goats are about the same. I get a bag of alfalfa pellets, a bag of BOSS, and 2 bags of blue seal feed for them and that will last me around 3 months, sometimes more cause the pellets and the BOSS are just supplements. I figure I end up spending around $20-25 per month for them. The dogs are another $30 per month and the cat is $7 so my total monthly bill is around $75-100 if I buy treats or extras for the dogs. I don't figure in the cost of hay/straw cause I paid cash for a big trailer full and that should last me until winter at least. They eat about 1-1 1/2 square bales a month, sometimes more if they waste a lot but I bought 25 bales so I should be good to go. 3 goats are not that expensive. We have a lot of woods to cut stuff out of too so they supplemental roughage from that too and they have the pasture.

Well, gonna go catch up a bit and see what else I can get done today. I need to clean the house but I'm just not motivated to do it. I hate to clean the house. I clean as I go when I do stuff so for me to stop and just clean the whole house is annoying. Mopping is killing my back and so is vacuuming and with the current sinus infection dusting is not high on my list right now either, but then again it never really is. Oh well....

 

[lorihadams]

Oh yeah, and we counted at least 22 cantaloupes growing in the compost pile