Things are moving along nicely at the family farm. Audrey is expecting a couple of loads of hay in a few days, she’s taken calves to the auction and made a connection with a gentleman who literally buys any calves she has to sell. The folks at the auction house call him and he hustles right over when she pulls up with the calves. She has one cow to sell…Lady is getting on in years…and then she is through hauling cattle for the foreseeable future. She has either two or three new calves and another one on the way any day now. Big Mama looks like she could be carrying more than one!
Audrey’s oldest child, Lauren, who lives in Virginia with her husband and baby, has been raising chickens, turkeys, ducks, doves and quail and finds herself in an sad situation. She recently brought home another young turkey, keeping her in quarantine for the required length of time, only to discover that her birds are coming down with a neurological disorder of some sort and several have died. I don’t recall the name of the illness, but it is fatal and she is going to have to destroy the birds and dispose of them. I am so sad for her. She spent most of the past couple of years building up a nice flock and then this happens. Her only choice is to eliminate the birds, totally scour everything clean, wait until spring and start again. Needless to say, she won’t be purchasing her birds from the same source again.
Brad has a load of things to take to Audrey when he picks the kids up for church in the morning. We were making room for some extra bottles of liquor that Brad picked up on sale yesterday and discovered a stack of decorative tins that would be perfect for storing homemade cookies and candy. I also found a stack of round plastic containers with snug fitting lids that I bought several years ago and no longer need. They have Christmas decorations on them and are about the size of a metal fruitcake tin, except plastic.
So, now a small cupboard and the bottom of the kitchen pantry have been cleared out and I need to do some scrubbing and rearranging and Audrey is well stocked with storage containers, including a gallon glass jar with a lid and a spigot for making sun tea. She was thrilled when I mentioned it to her so I am pleased as well.
It’s that time of year, leading up to Christmas, two weeks away now…when there is nothing much on TV but silly movies like Scrooged and Christmas Vacation. Been there, seen those, done and moving on. Actually we haven’t had the TV on much lately. We’ve both been reading quite a bit or puttering around on our laptops. Brad has managed to get over to the gun range several times in the past couple of weeks and his left shoulder is now able to support an AR-15 for target shooting. It’s a lengthy process recovering from a torn rotator cuff and he’s had surgery on both shoulders now. The left was nowhere near as bad as the right, thank you Lord!
Rural Texas Knitter 