It has been quite a week. At times it seems like it has been several weeks, but the calendar is telling me it has only been 7 days.
My son has decided that he is tired of the small town life, and has gone back to Seattle to work at the company he was with last year. I know he needed the money, and the jobs around here are not the top jobs in the country. Believe me , I know! After trying to find employment for most of a year, I finally came to my senses and took an early retirement to fund my farm hobby. My son had nothing like that to fall back on, and I think he was kind of homesick for the bigger city.
A friend of his was visiting for the week, Jon was trying to find a car, and I was trying to keep my fatherly advice to myself. In the process of test driving the car he would eventually buy, he got a speeding ticket. That did not seem like a good start to the process, then when he finally purchased the car, there was a vapor lock on the gas tank the first time he tried to fill it. He thought the fuel gauge and the speedometer were both faulty and it did not look like it would be a good vehicle. We were able to resolve the gas tank problem the night before he left and he “discovered” on his trip to Seattle the the speedometer seems to work just fine. Imagine!
That Friday I managed to sell the two goat kids pictured above to a guy who said they were going to Seattle to help celebrate Eid al-Fitr . We lost a barn cat to traffic, and I had to have some lab tests done at the Dr. office. It was a busy day, kind of tiring, and I still had to milk the goats, and now I had to figure out how to get the chickens into the schedule as well. That was only the beginning of the changes.
Without the two big boy goats to nurse, now I need to milk twice each day. My refrigerator is filling up fast since I get about 1/2 gallon each day. I can’t drink that much, and I don’t have the time/energy to experiment with making cheese and soap and yogurt to use up the excess milk. I have a couple of friends who are willing to take some of the milk, but still, “WAIGTDWAOT?“.
I still need to finish the fencing and build a new goat barn, and probably move the chickens into the old barn (for the winter of course), and take care of ALL the garden Jon left. I have been thinking that maybe I will have all of the female goats bred and just let the momma’s dry up for the remainder of this year to free up some time to do the things I need to get done.
Speaking of chickens…. they have started laying! The eggs are small, and twice I have found them in the dirt under the coop, but as of this posting I have 7 eggs so there is more than one hen laying. This is how they look . All of them are about the same size and color.
It is difficult to reach into the nesting boxes because of the way the top is hinged and I may rework it so that the side hinges down instead. Also the coop was designed to be mobile, but it is enclosed in a fence and is not easily movable. I will take pictures when I get the birds into their winter home.
It is getting to the time of year when the garden(s) will really start producing, we have lots of tomatoes coming on, there are some small pumpkins forming as well as different squash. The corn is doing well, both the early and late plantings, and the melons are vining out although I don’t see any fruit yet. We have been having lettuce and peas, though they are mostly finished now. The carrots and beets and onions are getting big.
I am sure Jon had a plan for all of this, and I will say I do miss his energy and willingness to try new things.
I wish you well in your new endeavors son.