Picking Up the Pace

Life at the end of the dirt road has gotten busy. Seems as if before cow works, there is always a flurry of activity. Had overnight company on Tuesday. Had the kids' friend over to sew on Wednesday. Had to call the plumber to work on the bunk house and he was here much of the day on Wednesday...he was back on Saturday...AND Sunday. Sigh. He's actually the same guy who installed our heating and cooling . DH has been fighting with that cotton picking bunkhouse plumbing for 10 years. He finally called Jared to ask for a recommendation for a plumber and Jared said he did that as well as heating and plumbing and he'd be out as soon as he could. I'm thinking he's regretting that decision right about now:

So far they have lost a tool somewhere under ground, cut into the wall of the bathroom and are getting ready to cut into the floor.

Poor guy. He is the NICEST guy who has built a  highly respected business. He's always swamped and on the run and single so I feed him when he's here. The trouble is, he doesn't even take the time to eat so I try to make things he can eat on the run. Buckaroo Bundles this time and cookies...always cookies.

                                      

Then, my SIL's boy showed up on Thursday evening. I was already in my PJs. He had called when I was tending to evening chores. He's working about an hour from here this summer for a crop company that consults with  farmers to evaluate their crops. He has been there for 2 days and he called and said he was bored and could he come up for the weekend. Thought he was coming up on Saturday afternoon,  but when DH went out to turn out his horse, he came back in with Zack. LOL.

My BIL that was here earlier in the week sent me this text when he talked to Zack on Wednesday:

"I met Zack. We had lunch. He said he'd give you a call about coming out on the weekends. I said he needed to to help clean water troughs, build fence, shovel poop...whatever DH needed help with. He said he would do that, but his real motive was to see if he could get some home cooking once in a while. I told him to be sure and check out the Pecan Muffins. LOL."

I love my family!

Zack was excited when I told him he could sleep in on Friday - he's 19. :) We had a guy show up at 5 on Saturday morning to look at a tractor. DH has been trying to find a power steering pump for it for about 5 years now and we can't find a serial number on it anywhere. DH took the pump out and took it to a highly recommended tractor mechanic 4 years ago and it disappeared. Last week we took our beef to a town south of us and stopped at a tractor company and found that new hope has been restored. We'll see how far we get with that. LOL.

So back to Zack. DH and our North Camp man, Jake, had to gather a pasture and drive them 6 miles back to headquarters in the morning. Zack wasn't raised around horses, but he's a farm kid and knows how to work so we gave him a job.

Poor kid spent the morning cleaning out the oil pit. :) And we hauled multiple loads of dirt to the chicken coop with the trusty wheel barrow. I hope we didn't run him off. :) I tried to feed him well.

On Saturday I had to cowboy up and tackle town armed with my long list. We're just working 4 days next week so its not really that long of a list, but long enough. I survived, but it wasn't pretty.

We're just about out of meat and I'm trying to clean out the deep freeze before we fill it again, but it'll have to wait until after works.So I came home, unloaded everything and started cooking. I had already cooked the ground beef and chicken and roasts for barbecue sandwiches, but I wanted to get a few other things fixed to send with Zack for the week. He's staying with his boss who is single and doesn't cook so he's living on  bean burritos and ham and cheese sandwiches.

 DH loaded up at 3 am  on Sunday morning and headed to Texas to pick up our college girl's horse and bring him home. We're thinking she needs her own trailer. :) She's heading this way tomorrow and it will be so good to have her home for a bit. She is over the moon about being here to take her place on the crew. She eats it up. Even as a teenager, she never minded getting up at 3 am if it meant crawling up on the back of her horse.


It's fixin' to get hot around here. 102 forecast for today. Ick. I was out the door at 5:30 in an attempt to beat the heat and get my trotting in. Someone else was out for a morning hop as well:

                                          

DH had shown me a Killdeer nest and I hunted for it as I headed out:

                            

I don't know how he sees these things. They are always camouflaged so well. but this is the same man that can be out riding horseback and spy an arrowhead on the ground. Oh settle down Mama. I'm just taking a peek.

                                   

As for me, I'm thinking that I'm going to be spending a lot of time in front of my kitchen sink this week: