Steve has gone fishing again today with his Dad.  They have been getting in quite a few trips the past couple of weeks.  I have been having to stay close to home and take care of the chickens.  Today is a little different.  My mother-in-law (Joan) is taking her aunt to Harrison to visit with family so I am dog-sitting Shadow for her while she is gone.  She has become quite attached to this little guy.  He just showed up one day at my son's house.  I guess someone had dumped him on the county road by his house.  Chris let it in to feed it and his two cats went crazy.  They didn't like the little guy one bit.  He called me asking me what to do with it and I knew my cat wouldn't take kindly to it either so I told him to call Joan and see if she would take it in until we could maybe figure out whose dog it is.  She lost her blond pomeranian last year and it just about killed her and we had been encouraging her to get her another dog but she just didn't think she could yet.  Well, she thought we had set up this dog dumped story to get her to take another dog.  We told her we didn't have anything to do with it.  I still don't think she completely believes us after all was said and done and she has fallen in love with the dog.  She put ads in the paper and put up notices at the vet's office trying to find the owner to no avail.  The vet said it is her dog now.  I am a little apprehensive to dog sit Shadow because I am afraid something might happen to him under my care and Joan would be devastated.  Anyway, she didn't want Shadow to stay in the house by himself all day long so I volunteered to keep him.  Here is a picture of him.

And, since I haven't been on here in forever, I haven't got to tell you about the dog that we have now.  One day this dog and a german shepard showed up at the house.  The shep went on but this one (not sure the breed) decided to adopt us as owners.  Here is a pic of him.     

He and Shadow get along very well which is a good thing.  Tooter (the name I call him and Steve calls him Yo Dawg after Randy Jackson on American Idol) doesn't want to share his toy with Shadow tho.  Tooter loves to play fetch but doesn't want Shadow to have any fun with it.



Anyway, we now have a dog.  He minds pretty good.  Not good to take fishing with us at the ponds.  He wants to run into the water after our lures.  Not a good thing when you are trying to catch fish.  He hasn't caused any trouble with the chickens either.  Seems to know his place which is good.  Maybe he will keep the deer out of my flower beds as well.  Another bonus.  Not sure if he was dumped or if he got away from his owner.  He had a very tight chain around his neck when he first came here.  Steve took it off immediately.  We have asked around to see if someone lost their dog and so far nobody has claimed him.  He is a really sweet dog and we will take care of him until someone does.  So, Shadow and Tooter are having a play date and I am hoping they play well together.

Now, to get you up to date on what all has been going on with me and why I haven't been posting much lately.  My Granny Virgie (88 years old) passed away at the nursing home the same day my Granny Lola (92) was having hip replacement surgery after a fall in her home a couple of weeks ago on the 7th.  We had Granny Virgie's funeral on the following Friday.  It was so good to see family we hadn't seen in such a long time.  We shared alot of great memories.  Granny Virgie was always a very happy person and fun to be around.  She was a child at heart her whole life.  She didn't dwell on the past and lived each moment, in the moment.  She didn't have a very good year with her health and now she is resting in peace.

Granny Lola came through her surgery with flying colors.  She is now in a rehab center and has her good days and bad days.  Her memory is fuzzy and she gets confused easily.  We think alot of it is her meds but at her age it could be the norm from now on.  She got up and walked with a walker yesterday and Daddy seemed pleased with how she was doing.  The day Steve, Chris, Amber and I saw her in the hospital she was in very good spirits and enjoyed all the company.  I sure hope she can get her strength back soon so she can return to her home where she wants to be. 

The same week, we lost a friend in the community to ALS and he was our age (50ish).  He suffered greatly this past year and I know it had to be especially hard on his wife, kids and his parents and siblings. We went to his funeral and saw friends we hadn't seen in a long time.  Funny how funerals are about the only time we get to see each other.  We need to change that.  Time just gets away from us all.

Needless to say, it has been a rough couple of weeks around here.  Things are looking up tho.  They say bad things come in three's... well, that is three and that is enough for a long while.  I better go for now and check on the dogs. 

It has been busy on the farm as of late.  We had just gotten the cornish chicken houses cleaned out after they were picked up a couple of weeks ago and got new baby chicks delivered to them last Friday.  We got rid of the nine week old broilers (avg weight only 8.09 pounds this time as compared to 8.65 last time) this past Wednesday morning.  Steve and I were up most of the night Tuesday getting the equipment up and out of the way for the catching crews.  It was nice this time, they had two crews working at the same time.  They picked up around 70,000 birds in a hurry that way.  As soon as they were through, Steve and I started in with the cleaning out process.  We have to run the brooder stoves back down so we can wash off the tops from all the dust that accumulates during the growing out process so they won't burn off when we go to light them for the next batch.  We also wash off all the louvers on the exhaust fans and the tunnel fans.  It takes alot of water and alot of patience to stand at each fan and blast off all the gunk on the fans and the blades and motors.  We also wash off the water regulators so we can see what we are doing when we go to flush out the water lines for the new batch.  After washing down the inside, we move to the outside and wash off the fans from the outside.  Alot of dust and what I like to call "gunk" gets caked up on the fans during a batch, especially during the winter.  Also wash off the feed carts and feed hoppers along with the pads under the outside feed silos.  It took me all day Wednesday to do two of the three houses.  Got up early to tackle the third house and had a hose blow out all over me when I turned on my pressure washer.  We have a big 500 gallon rig that runs by tractor.  I had just pulled up into the house and it was still rather chilly that morning when I got sprayed big time.  Had to run change clothes and then take apart the hose from the washer and head to town to find someone to fix it.  I was afraid I would be running all over the country so I took my Dad with me for moral support.  Turned out the first place I went to was able to cut the hose and put on a new fitting for me in no time.  Only cost me $10 to boot.  It was my lucky day.  Anyway, after that little excitement, I was back at the farm and reattaching my hose to the washer and back to my job.  All's well that ends well. 

Anyway, as I was doing all this washing down, Steve is going ahead with the other steps involved in cleaning out chicken houses. We till the floor bedding (that's sawdust caked with chicken poop), run a "cake machine" through it that sifts out the big clumps of litter from the finer sawdust (which falls right through to the floor), we use a litter blade attachment to the tractor to then pull the litter that the cake machine can't reach from the walls, run the cake machine back through the litter again to pick up any remaining clumps, use an old road grader blade hooked to the tractor to pull the litter back over to the walls, run the cake machine through it one more time to make darn sure we got all the litter clumps out of the houses (if you don't get it out good, you end up having an amonia problem when you heat up the houses which will blind your chickens), then we have "sorta clean" sawdust bedding only left on the floor of the chicken houses.  It takes several days to accomplish this process.  He finished up this morning and cleaned up the equipment this afternoon after church.

While Steve was doing all the caking out, he was piling up the chicken litter outside and his Dad was using the front end loader to load the litter spreading truck.  Yep, we fertilized a bunch of hay fields this past week and it stinks to high heaven around here to prove it.  It is supposed to rain this week and we got the litter on the fields just in time.  It should make some beautiful hay this summer if we get the right amount of rain to make the grass grow. 

Speaking of hay, we have been selling it like crazy.  We have had people come from all over to buy it too.  One guy came all the way from Missouri.  He said it was 71 miles.  He clocked it.  Had several people from 50 miles or so away come to get hay.  We have sold all the round bales we had stored in our barns (some of it was two years old) and we only have about 500 square bales left to sell.  Gotten alot of calls but most people around here have been wanting round bales.  Don't think we will have a problem selling the rest of the hay though.  We sold 700 just this past weekend.  We even sold about 20 rotten round bales that we didn't have room for in the barns last year.  They have been sitting out in the weather.  A community garden project near Fayetteville wants them for mulching their garden.  It will be nice to get those bales off the edge of the hay fields and out of here.  We basically gave them away just to get them gone.  They seemed tickled to get them.  You just never know how it will all work out.  So, we have been dealing with hay customers along with all the chicken business going on.  Quite a busy week or two around here.

We are not sure yet when we will get the next batch of broilers but we are planning on taking a little vacation this next weekend with our son and daughter-in-law.  Going to make a trip down to Monticello where Chris grew up.  Steve and I moved down there in 1980, two weeks after we were married.  We both got college degrees there and then became full time employees at the University working there for about 24 years before moving back home to northwest Arkansas to help Steve's parents work in the poultry and hay business.  We haven't been back in a long time and are looking forward to seeing old friends and people from our church while we are there.  Hope to get to see Anissa's new house while we are there as well.  I haven't got to tell Anissa yet that we are coming so if she reads this entire blog, I guess she will find out.  HAHA

I better go for now.  I have got to get my rest so I can tackle my massive list tomorrow.  Starting the day off with my 4 mile workout DVD.  Good way to get the ball rolling!!!