Curiosity

So, what did you do today?

Adoption Supper

Tonight is our annual adoption supper. This is a supper in which we attempt to honor the children who have been adopted. My sister's family will be joining us, they have two adopted children. We will try also to honor those who have been adopted by God. The ones who have accepted Jesus as their Saviour.

Favorite/Best

Are favorite and best the same thing? You have a favorite musical group but that doesn't mean they are the best musical group, does it? Or is you favorite musical group the best one around?

Bad Day Part II

The power guys showed up about an hour later to reconnect the line to the transformer. They wanted to disconnect the fuse at the main power line. The main line runs through our pre-fresh pen. We currently have a rather vigorous or hyper active heifer in this group. She runs at people and makes them think she is going to gore them. So, one of the line guys went meandering down through the pasture. He seemed to be a tad nervous and was continually looking over his shoulders and wondering when an animal would pursue him. He was half way across the pasture when this heifer noticed his presence. This put her in a very hyper mood and she went galloping off across the field. This brought the line man out of his meandering and caused him to stride with a purpose towards the fence. His purposeful stride turned into a gallop and in a few seconds he was hurdling the fence like and Olympic gold medalist. I decided I should meander out and make sure the local paramedic wasn't needed to calm his racing heart. When I arrived on the premise we had a little discussion about what had transpired. I told him that animal had a very inquisitive nature and seemed to enjoy scaring people. He informed me he was sure he was going to hear about this caper for quite some time. I am sure he will. He had to feel rather silly as he watched me shoo the animal away from a distance of 10 feet.

Bad Day

I mentioned the other day I needed to fill you in on some details concerning our transformer and the lack of power to the house. I had a load of feed delivered on Saturday. The first thing the driver told me was We are going to have a mess when we dump this load. When we were loading a board got broke off the top of the trailer and my tarp got knocked inside the trailer. So my tarp is buried under the feed. In his defense, it was dark when he loaded so he was having a difficult time seeing, I guess...
Anyway, He got his rig turned around and backed into the bay and began to dump. I went about my business working on feeding the cows. I came back by a few minuets later and he wanted to talk to me. He wanted to explain to me why a board on the face of the shed was broke. He backed up to far with his trailer way up in the air and broke the board. So, in his words, he felt about half an inch tall. After this incident he did get the trailer emptied and it was then I discovered what a mess we had on our hands. His tarp was buried under the whole load. To make a long story short I moved 80% of the load back out of the bay to get his tarp. In the process I ruined his $1000 tarp. (I was doing what he instructed me to do so I didn't feel responsible for this negative affect on his bank account. It took me a good 30 minuets to uncover his tarp. By now the driver was very out of sorts. This had never happened to him before and he was very sorry and how much does he owe me for my time. I told him not to worry about it. It wasn't a big deal. He finally gave me $20 for fuel and left. I didn't pay any attention to him as he left because I was bust putting the feed back in the bay. The next thing I noticed was him stopped in front of the house walking around and looking at stuff. The poor fellow had gotten so distraught he had forgotten to lower his trailer when he left. When the trailer is in the dump position it is a good 30 feet in the air. We have over head electric service to the house and his trailer caught the lines and jerked them out of the transformer. The ladies informed me it sounded like the end of the house was going to fall down. The driver was very apologetic and offered to pay for this as well. I am afraid he will have to. I will see how much the electric company charges to reconnect the lines. I don't know how tall he felt by this time. He did wonder How much we would charge too take him home...

Doughnuts

We didn't have church this evening so we decided to make some doughnuts. Gloriously large, golden, doughnuts. I fried them or floated them in oil, while Sierra and Aleya took turns placing them in the bowl Rachel was using to glaze them. Then, after eating two wonderful cheese filled bratwursts I had two wonderful doughnuts with a cup of coffee. We had a wonderful time... When did you last make doughnuts?

News

First, I went on a shopping spree thursday morning. Staples had a lap top on sale for $350 and we had decided to go ahead and purchase one. So I went out bright and early for this early bird special. I arrived on the premises and discovered a line roughly 100 yards long. I stood in line about ten minutes before they opened the store. In the five minutes it took me to get to the door my lap top was gone. So I left without entering the store. I went to some other stores and decided they were too expensive so I left and headed home. On the way home I decided to go to the Wal-Mart in Altavista. This I did and discovered they had a seceret sale on a lap top for $350. So I bought it. In fact I am doing this update from my lap top sitting at my kitchen table. How cool is that....
In the near future I will do a post on how the electric lines got tore out of my transformer this afternoon. No one was hurt or anything but they could have been I guess....
More on this later...

Aleya

My sweet mischievous four year old. I love her to pieces

Expansion

I am in the process of gathering information concerning the possibility of expanding. I am looking at putting in place 5-10-15 year plan that will get me to 150 milking cows. This will be a rather long and tedious process for two major reasons. The first being I don't intend to borrow money or buy cows. The second reason consists of upgrading some of the facilities. My reason for looking at expanding is rather simple. I want my boys to have something that will support them when the time comes. If I don't expand I am not sure I will survive. I need to be able to spread my costs out over more cows which will make it cheaper to operate thus allowing me to stay in business.

Anne

Lately Anne has been a hot topic around our house. Tonight Sierra and I were doing a Light Brite creation in her closet and she was just a yammering away about her day and right in the middle of her stream of words and sentences she asked me if she was talking to much. This made me laugh. It sounded so much like Anne of Green Gables. We have this tape series which was done by Focus On The Family. The series covers the first book and is fairly accurate and is done quite well. The girls want to listen to it all the time and now they tend to throw Anne phrases around in normal conversation. The longer I heard the tapes the more I wanted to read the books. So I have started the series and was surprised how much of the story I had forgotten. Of course it has been ten years or more since I read them...
For our 10th anniversary we went to PEI and visited Green Gables, the Haunted Woods and a few other points of interest. This has made the books more interesting.

Troy Williams

I learned here a week ago or so that the Minnesota Vikings team owner asked his head coach to reconsider his position concerning the Troy Williams case. The coach took the issue up with his leadership team, his words not mine, (I wonder if he has Mennonite background) and they unanimously voted that Troy should be paid for his leave of absence. Troy was pleased about this and took the $25000 game check and donated it all too charity in honor of his grandmother.

Proud Boys

The boys are so pleased with their new clothes. Jackson is always sticking his toungue out in this manner when he is pleased with himself or is getting attention. Jayden appears to be copying him.

Gingerbread House

Last weekend I bought a Gingerbread House when I took Sierra out on her birthday date. Here we are working at putting it together....

Sierra

I just like this picture...

Scrap Metal

We loaded a dump truck load of junk machinery and scrap metal to haul to cycle systems. We then loaded the cattle trailer with aluminum roofing that came off of the shed and we will take it tomorrow morning. I think they are paying 6-7 cent a lb on scrap metal. I don't know what they are paying for aluminum. We shall see. I have plenty of scraps lying around here I would like to get hauled in the next few weeks...

Hay

Due to our record low rainfall I have purchased a 25 ton load of Timothy/Alfalfa hay. It arrived via tractor trailer this afternoon at @3:00. I unloaded him and sent back on his way with a check. This load cost $230.29 a ton. Freight is what drives the cost up. On the farm it is $145 a ton. If you know of a better deal let me know...

Liquid Nitrogen

I was shocked to hear liquid nitrogen has rocketed to $335 a ton. Typically, nitrogen is cheaper in the fall than the spring. However, I have decided this is an absorbent price and I am going to go a different route. I am going to try to get some turkey or chicken litter from up in the valley, Harrisonburg. This is much cheaper per ton. I can get litter delivered for $32 a ton and if I put two tons to the acre it is still cheaper than liquid nitrogen. I hope it works. If anyone from the valley reads this and know of someone who has litter to sell, let me know.

Franklin Heights (Part II)

Singing at Franklin Heights was quite an experience. First, the sanctuary seats close to 1400 people. Huge place. Second, they had an amazing sound system. Wireless microphones. Was very nice to not be stepping on my cord all night long. Third, they had two large screens behind us and to the side. They then had us on these screens for the whole program/concert. Fourth, they dimmed the lights. That was a first. I didn't particularly care for this because I couldn't see the people in the audience very well. I enjoyed singing there and look forward to going back in the future.

Franklin Heights Baptist Church

VOP will be singing in Rocky Mount VA tonight. Service starts at 6:30. We will be leaving the Gladys area about 3:30. Josh will be meeting us at the church about 4:30. They have redone the sanctuary since we were there last. It has been several years since the last time we sang for them.

Another Date

So, I finally took Sierra out for her birthday. Funny how things change. As little as a year ago she didn't have much to say. This appears to have changed. She now seems to have lots of things on her mind.
This afternoon I mowed some yard, hopefully for the last time this year. I don't have much more to say so I won't say it....

Troy Williams

I was surprised to hear this morning on ESPN radio that Troy Williams took a leave of absence from the Minnesota Vikings last weekend to go to his grandmothers funeral. This doesn't sound very earth shattering unless you hear a few more details. One detail was the fact that his grandmother raised him. The second fact was that he had to miss a game. The third fact was he was docked one game worth of pay, $25,000, by team ownership. I cannot believe someone would be so uncaring... They said the decision was based on business principal. Really? What does that mean. I was glad to hear that Troy Williams also said that the team could have docked him the rest of this years paycheck and he still would have went home. What would you do if your boss did this to you?

Odyssey

Last night on the way home we were listening to odyssey. In short the story was about a set of parents who separated because their differences were irreconcilable. Today, Sierra said Wouldn't it be sad if you and Mama broke up? I said Yes it would.... I wonder how many parents have wounded their children because of differences they are not willing to work out...

All Home

I left this afternoon @ 2:30 for Harrisonburg VA. I met Rachel's parents and my family at Wal-Mart on 33 east of I 81. We switched the car seats over to our van and headed for McDonalds before heading home. We got home about 15 minutes ago. It is so nice to have the family here...

Main Street Cafe

A new cafe has opened in Altavista VA. It is located on main street in a remodeled bank. I believe it is a remodeled bank because they have what is called a Vaulted Conference Room. You can have a conference and eat in the old vault. Very nice. I must put a big plug in for these fine people. The people who opened the cafe are Christian people who want to help keep young people out of trouble. The goal was to give young people some thing to do after school. Something to help keep them out of trouble. Tonight a buddy of mine and I went for supper. We got there not long before closing time. We ordered and ate and then she asked us if we wanted more soup. They were just going to throw it away anyway. We both said sure we would love more soup. So we had more soup. Those of you in the area really should go eat at this wonderful cafe....

Home Again!

I am home again. My wife and the children are not going to be coming till Tuesday evening. When I got home I drove out to the barn to see if I could let the cows out. When I got out of the van my nose was hit with the aroma of cows and feed. The first thought that went through my mind was Man, it is good to be home....

Life

Finally have an internet connection again. Tuesday morning we once again loaded things. We left Middlefield with Grandpa driving Rod's van, Grandma driving their van with a six foot picnic table and some outside benchs strapped to the top. Rachel was driving our van and I was driving the Uhaul. A very nice Uhaul. It was a 2007 model with only 8000 miles on it. We arrived at the rental house in Harrisonville, PA around 5:00 in the evening. We unloaded the vans and the trailer I was pulling with the Uhaul truck. Wed. Morning we unloaded the truck. We had to put all the stuff in the basement except for some large furniture which we put in the garage. The lady was not out yet. Needless to say this was a very trying thing. We were unable to do anything yesterday. I was going to trim some shrubs but I was told I needed to leave by a very angry man. So I meekly left with my tail between my legs, never to be seen or heard from again. They were totally moved out this morning so we once again moved things from the basement upstairs. I am very weary and sore. Tommorow sometime I will be headed home. Rachel will be staying to help Grandma get more settled, or unsettled as the case may be. Aside from some tense moments I would say we are still on speaking terms and still love eachother.....
So this is what we have been going through.....