Catching Up

I've been away too long. I never finished our vacation story. On our way back from Florida, we stopped to visit with our friends John and Janet Burcham. John has Stage 4 colorectal cancer. He's still making the docs laugh at last report but he seems tired now. John and J

anet, you are continually in our prayers. Winston-Salem , NC has changed so much over the years. It's much more built up than when I was first there. Economically depressed now, it's still much nicer than 1978. The old architecture is nice, the new could be better. Of note is the Wachovia ( now Wells Fargo) office building known locally as the Penis. If only they had added a spray of white lights flowing from the top. The symbolism would be perfect. We arrived home and everything was fine. Our orange tree is growing in our window, we've thrown away our tourist grade marmalade ( Oh that was bad.) and Stacey still hasn't eaten all the pecans. So much for vacation. Now for the farm update. It was a good lamb crop this year with many twins. I attribute this to pasturing the sheep through the winter. Of course, it could be just luck. We planted a large garden as usual and mostly it died or never came up. We kept the tomatoes alive with mulch and irrigation but it was costly. I plan on sinking a well point for a small well just to water the garden with. The temperatures were so high that after a day of work, I just couldn't bring myself to go out and work. We had to buy tomatoes to can. The tomatoes are starting to produce but not very much. We had some of our own corn. The wheat field that was all I could get in last year produced a whole 20 bushels per acre, less than half of an average year. I tried planting oats and sunflowers this year. The oats is worthless. The sunflowers are doing well. It turns out that they are a good crop for drought. If I can get my combine running, I'll have some chicken and cattle feed. We got 50 chickens. 25 are Turkens for the freezer and 25 mixed Bantams just for fun. We bought 14 baby ducks from the county fair. Stacey likes to go out to sit and watch the ducks and chickens. I suspect that with the ducks, she's sorting them by recipes. Dumbass the steer is now in the freezer. He was a good steer and would have made a good pet but he makes an even better hamburger. I bought 2 more Jersey calves to show in the baby animals at the fair. When I asked the lady I bought them from how much they were, she said “ Ten bucks each.” I almost said” I'll take a dozen.” but realized that I'd have to feed them and only bought 2. I've named them Carter and Reagan because when I first got them, Reagan would take the bottle and drain it right down. Carter was too dumb to suck. I'm in the process of weaning them now and they're doing well. We paid a professional painter to paint our house. He did a magnificent job but we're still paying it off. We got new gutters at the same time. The house looks far better than it has in a long time. Next big expense will be the roof and I'm going for metal. That should last the rest of my life. We've cut back on the fairs a bit. We'll hit the Fulton Co. Fair this weekend. We couldn't miss that as it's the best in Ohio. One more chance to eat fried cheese curds and Belgian waffles before winter. I don't have much more right now. Take care of yourselves.