West Texas sand

2/10/09 Tuesday
I’m planning on running the tiller as long as I can. Monday we were blessed with 1/8” of rain, a most welcome sight and the first rain we’ve had this year, at least that I can remember. The rain gauge also showed we have gotten a ¼” of sand as well, that constant West Texas feature that permeates everything. With the storm that brought rain there was a high wind with some sixty mph wind gusts. This coated everything in the garage with a layer of sand.

The tiller has been not running well, backfiring and stalling out in addition to losing power. When I fired it up yesterday I coaxed it along as I have been doing for days but it had gotten so bad I hauled it into the garage to see what I could do. What was the problem? SAND. It had plugged up the air filter and when I took that off I found that sand had managed to get passed the filter and contaminated the carburetor. Nuts! That’s not good at all and I hope it hasn’t done too much damage to the cylinder. I removed the carburetor and cleaned it out. Sand had also caked around the cable and mechanisms that controlled engine speed and was making them stick. While I was tearing the motor apart I took off the pull start because it too has been sticking, with the pull rope not retracting back into the housing. Once again sand was the culprit.

So that cost me the whole morning as far as working on this farm goes. I went to work for the old man at 2:00. He had me digging up the water line that goes to a small building he’s removing and then digging around some fence posts that were cemented in and breaking up the concrete with a sledge hammer. So I was swinging a grub hoe and sledge hammer and they don’t work well unless you do it with vigor. I love to work and attacked the concrete with enthusiasm, but work doesn’t always love me. After breaking up the concrete I looked at the old man and said “How about I put the tools up and call it a day”. I just hurt too much to continue on. He understood that well (He warned me to not overdo it) so agreed. I came home, took a pain pill, and laid down till the pain subsided. So I’ve got lost time to make up.

We adopted out three puppies at Pet Smart Saturday. That makes four we have found homes for and leaves two more to do for we are going to keep two of them. Our thoughts on that are that the two we keep will be outside dogs and that it’s better to have two of the same age as companions. What we are grateful for is that we found a good home for Ben. The puppies we know can find homes but Ben we were worried about. He went to a family that has an eight month old puppy who needs a companion as well. They brought their puppy in to Pet Smart where we had Ben to see how well they got along. Ben is good with other dogs and has exhibited great fatherhood instincts when it comes to his puppies. I miss him already and wish we knew who adopted him so we could visit but that’s not going to happen. Now the problem is choosing which two we will keep or I suppose which two we will give away. We love them all so it’s tough. Part of us wants to keep them all but that is not practical. We’re spending about $80.00 a month feeding the dogs we have and as the puppies get bigger they will eat more. We would like to adopt out Gretchen but don’t think that will happen. She had been so abused that even after being with us for half a year she is still full of fear, ducking and cowering at every move or when I yell at Rascal and Trixie to quit whatever they are doing at the time. It’s sad but Gretchen wants to be loved. She will crawl up to my lap when I’m sitting down to be close and get her pets. And I love to pet her, empathizing with her pain. Every night I spend some time petting her on the love seat she sleeps on and will cover her up with a blanket. Her foot is still bad but she can get around better so it seems to be healing.

What else? Can’t think of anything right now despite the fact that much has been going on. Time to get to work.