Hmmph.

Big dope.

Pear Harvest

One more than we expected.

Weather Report

Warm and sunny. Winds are from the south.

Awww

Little Miss Fluff snoozing on her little bed by the window.

Mole Exterminator

Harry has taken it upon himself to dig up and eat every mole he can find, which is fine except that catching a mole often involves digging a hole in the yard half the size of his body. Sometimes he'll hear them digging and will wait until they surface. Here he is with his loot.

Sold!

I sold Cosmos today and not a day too soon. Now that he's gone, I can move the does out of the small pasture into a the larger one with an enclosed shelter. He's going to be Big Man on Campus at another dairy farm.

And we're getting rain, lots and lots of much needed rain.

Lots of Eggs

We're getting plenty of eggs now. We've been getting about four per day, but today we got seven. The fake eggs worked their magic and the chickens are all laying in the nesting boxes instead of on the floor. Yesterday, I saw one of the hens sitting on one of the fake eggs. She lifted up for a moment, reached under and turned the fake egg over and sat back down on it. So I guess she was trying to hatch it as her own. I read that when a chicken starts to brood (which, I think, means sitting on her eggs to hatch them), she will stop laying eggs. We don't want that to happen, so I removed all the fake eggs so as not to encourage brooding.

Wasted Days and Wasted Nights

I think I'm wasting a lot of time lately. It actually feels kind of good. **guilty**

I'm not milking any goats and my garden is at a point where it needs little attention. It's almost completely weed free (thanks to hours of weed pulling followed by some nice cool weather which stopped bermuda growth). There are just a few pieces of bermuda tucked in amongst the tomato plants that are just about done making. I've cut and pulled out all the finished veggies and planted most of my fall garden which is coming up but requiring little effort at the moment. I don't have to mow the grounds every week any more because we haven't had much rain.

Sooo, I have a lot of free time that I should be filling with other projects. But since those projects aren't urgent, they are getting ignored.

Maybe I can do some tractor work or something for Tom...next week. Things will turn around soon enough.

New Goat

We bought another Nubian milk goat on Saturday. She had a baby in June so she is still in milk. I would have preferred that she was not in milk because I didn't want to milk again until this spring and I also thought it would be better for the goat to have time to adjust to us, it's new pasture mates and our routine first. But all of the goats at the farm where we went had kidded in June, so all of them were in milk. I did not foresee the problems I would have, though.

She seems to be distraught, looking and calling for her baby; not eating much. Her udder is very full, but she will not let me milk her. We have to force her onto the milking stand and while I try to milk her, she kicks, jumps, twists, bucks, and fights it the whole time.

I've decided to just risk letting her dry up on her own because it is just too stressful for both of us. Hopefully, she won't get mastitis and be ruined as a milk goat. She has good bloodlines and should be a good milk producer in the future if we can keep her healthy.

Ouch!

I'd like to know which one laid this egg.

Tennis Elbow?

Tom has been suffering with tennis elbow for about a week and a half. Apparently, it is very painful, so he has been trying to take it easy for a while. He's better now.

So, Harry has been limping since last Friday. Tom took him to the vet yesterday and he has...tennis elbow. Isn't that ridiculous.

Harry is a little over five months old and a little over 63 pounds. The vet said he smells like a skunk. I hadn't really noticed him smelling, but I have been smelling skunk for several days.

Sale Barn. Ugh.

Tom and I went to the auction at the sale barn today just to see the process in case we possibly wanted to buy cows from there. We had some friends that were going and expected to meet up with them also.

I can tell you right now that it is not a place that I will be going to frequently. In fact, I'll probably never go again. We only stayed maybe ten minutes, but that was enough for us both. It's loud with the auctioneer shouting non-stop into his microphone and big steel gates opening and closing as they herd the animals one by one in and out of the small sale pen. They poke and prod and smack the animals so that they'll move quickly through the right gate.

We missed the goat sale, so we just saw some of the cows. Some of them were emaciated and a couple of them feel down. They were just poked and yanked back up and shoved through the gate.

Our friends said that last week there was a goat that was in such pitiful shape that nobody would even buy it for a dollar. They said it was dragged into the arena and dragged out by the horns. Now, I know from experience that if a goat doesn't want to go somewhere, it will flop down and you either have to wait until it decides to get up or you have to drag it. So I don't know if that was the case with that goat or if it truly was so feeble that it couldn't walk. Either way, I just can't stomache that kind of treatment.

Even Tom didn't like it. I said to him that I thought briefly of bringing Cosmos to the sale barn because we really need to sell him, but before I could even finish my sentence saying there was no way I could do that, Tom was already shaking his head, "no".

Eggs!

We have arrived! This was the one thing we've been really anticipating. Now we can call ourselves farmers. There are seven perfect little eggs, which means seven chickens are laying. It's funny that they all laid their egg in the same place. One of them was still warm, so I guess they just waited for their turn throughout the night. None of them laid in the nesting boxes we have for them, so we'll need to take the advice of my chicken book (thank you Tina) and put some fake eggs in the nesting boxes to encourage them to lay in there instead of on the floor.

This is so exciting!

I Can Feel It Coming On

Oh yeah, another painting project is erupting from my inner self. This finished garden shed is begging to be painted. But, I must finish the bathroom cabinet first.

Completely off topic...do not buy a Hoover Windtunnel vacuum cleaner. It is the worst thing ever.

Watermelon

I only got two decent sized watermelons off of the three vines I planted. This one is a bit over ripe, so I better go pick the other one quick. Our neighbor had loads of watermelon. Don't know what happened to ours.

House Update

Yesterday, the buyers backed out. From what I gather, they object to paying for the house in gold coin. In exchange for accepting their rather low ball offer, those were our terms. So, it seems that they may have been bluffing because our realtor told us today that they still want the house. The Freddie Mac contract that the mortgage broker wants to use needs to be amended for our particular circumstance. The buyer is in a hurry, but we're having to wait on permission from Freddie Mac to amend the contract, blah, blah, blah.

So, who knows what will happen. One thing is for sure...we will either sell the house, or we won't.

Searching For An American

**sigh** I just got the worst manicure ever. I've been trying every nail shop that I can find out here trying to find one that has a bona fide American manicurist...one that speaks English as if she was born here. I finally found one today, but was sorry, indeed.

The place was not particularly clean even though it was in a relatively new shopping strip. They charged twice as much as the Vietnamese shops. I just about choked when they said it would be 15.00...I mean, for just polishing my nails? Not even filing, taking off old polish, rubbing cream on or anything? I should have said no thank you and walked out then and there, but I decided to give her a try. I'm willing to pay more for English spoken American style and understandable.

The tips of my fingers look like I let a 10 yr. old paint them. Seriously. White polish all over the tips of my fingers and under my nails, globby polish. She had to take the polish off and start over two or three times on some fingers. And all she did was paint on the white tip, then put a top coat on. I asked for another coat just so it would last for more than two days, but I'm seriously wondering if I want my nails to look like this for two days.

I would have expressed my disappointment to the young girl at the reception desk if she hadn't been yakking on the phone when I left. I thought they should know why I would never return.

I guess I'll be a regular at the Vietnamese shop from now on.

Starbucks, Here I Come...Not.

I had been looking forward to getting a Starbucks frappucino for a week. The closest Starbucks to us is a 45 min. drive, so I try to get one whenever I go to Dallas. That was my plan. Go to Dallas, shop, get my hair cut, enjoy a frapp. Alas, it was not to be. I ate lunch at Wendy's and apparently, something did not agree with my stomach, so I felt a bit sickly afterward. It is not a good idea to load one's stomach up with frappucino when one's stomach is not up to par. I toyed with the idea of getting one anyway and suffering the consequences, but in the end decided I wouldn't enjoy it to the fullest knowing I wouldn't feel good afterward, so why ingest all that fat and not enjoy it.

So, I passed on the Starbuck experience today and I am very disappointed.

Hello Out There

Didn't anyone watch my goat video? Come on! It was funny. I should have gotten at least one comment on it. Scroll back down, y'all must have missed it.

Fun Projects

Can it be August 17th already!? Life is flying by me at a dizzying rate. Ack!

Well, while Tom frolicked in Dallas yesterday and today (he's working on our house contract among other things) I finished up painting the bathroom cabinet base. I'm still working on the doors (in a previous picture) and will be painting those white drawers some funky colors. It was fun, but I nearly had to stand on my head to get the lowest parts painted without sticking my hand in the wet paint above. Guess I should have started at the bottom and worked my way up - hind sight. This is my first effort with oil paints and I did not know that it takes oil paint so very long to dry; ten days or more, then I have to wait six months before I can put a coat of varnish on it.

Why? You may ask. Why, would she paint a bathroom cabinet like that?! Because she likes a bit of funk here and there. Funky ugly is what I call it. Funky ugly is beautiful.

Tomorrow, I will be the one frolicking in Dallas. And I will actually frolick, not work.