Ginger goes to the vet

2/24/09 Tuesday
Worked for the old man yesterday. One of his cows gave birth to twins and they aren’t doing well. They brought them in and are hand feeding them. One of them is blind and it is in the worst shape. The other seems to be doing good and is feeding well. They are about a week old.

I lifted a heavy bag of concrete for him and as a result my pain level is pretty high. I’ll work for him again this afternoon. This morning I take Ginger puppy to the vet for her shots and first check up. If I can I’ll do some laundry as well. This will help Cherie out and I’m glad she is allowing me to do it.

Just got back from the old man’s. Dug dirt all day (That would be two hours) so hurt bad. Took another pain pill, probably more than I’m supposed to but there’s lots to do so need to keep going.

I’ve been thinking about asking the old man to let me use his tractor. I really don’t want to be a bum so have been pondering on this for some time. There’s about three acres on the outer perimeter of the garden that I’m not going to be able to plant. I just don’t have it in me to sow, rake in, and water that much area. Hell, I’ve barely touched the two acres I intend to cover with rye as it is. And here’s the rub, in order to beat out the sticker grass and other weeds I need to do it three times. First I must till or disc in the entire area to kill whatever is growing. Then I will seed it fairly densely with rye and water to insure it grows well and competes with the weed seeds that will be germinating at the same time. Many of those weeds will take root so I must watch carefully for when they start making seeds (stickers!!!) and till everything back under again. Then I start the process over, sowing more rye, or some other crop. From what I read it takes about three cycles to virtually eliminate the weeds and sticker grass from the area. It’s just not physically possible for me to do without mechanization. The old man has lots of livestock that he feeds so I’m going to ask if I could grow hay for him in exchange for using his tractor. That way he could get some kind of return out of it and I’d feel better too.

It won’t be long till we have our own tractor. You just watch. Things have a way of working out around us. When we have a need it is met. Look at Cherie’s car. It dies and a friend lets us use their spare pickup truck. Cherie's car is back home by the way. Here’s a picture of it in the back yard. Hey Nate…I’m going to take you up on your offer to get a steering column from the junk yard and send it down. Give me a call or email about it. Wayne has something he wants to give me that could be shipped with it too.

I’m tired on top of hurting so I think I’ll just nap for a while. Just thought of something I should record in this journal. Rusty called me on behalf of Pioneer regarding getting permission to run a pipeline through the farm. He had first gotten in touch with us last summer about this and I instantly called Steve and Janie because I’m pretty clueless on how this stuff works. I had Rusty send Steve all the information. Steve’s got a whole world on his shoulders and is rarely home because of how hard he’s working so hadn’t gotten back to Rusty. Rusty said he was going to mail a check along with an agreement for me to sign. I told him I wouldn’t do anything before I got with Steve but he said he’d send the check anyway. I guess we’re holding him up from doing the job. But we can sure use the money. That’s how it works. We need money it shows up out of the blue. Some guy pulls in the drive and says he’d like to run some pipe and needed to pay us to do so.