For the most part this is a strictly farming blog. I write about my farming experiences, research, current events in agriculture, and even questions that I have. But, life has been dreadfully busy lately both at home, at the church, on the soccer field, and even at the farm! I can tell that it has been busy because here it is after 9:00 am and still haven’t posted yet today … and my hair is still wet from my shower! So, today I thought I would just take a moment to give an update on the unglamorous side of farming. In doing some research for an Epi-Log post the other day I came across a statistic that says over 52% of farmers work off the farm … I guess I’m just another statistic now!
Home – The house we live in now is on 6/10ths of an acre in town and serves dual purpose as our house and as our youth center. But, now it is for sale (by the church) so we need to make sure everything is spic and span. You can read about it on my wife’s blog, but basically I was up until 1:30 am on Wednesday (into Thursday) cleaning house for a showing on Thursday afternoon.
Church – This is a deceptive time of the church year. On one hand it seems like it should be winding down because our weekly youth meetings are ending (Sunday and Wednesday) and summer is right around the corner, but on the other hand Vacation Bible School is just a couple weeks away and so is a pretty big (for our town) Christian music festival. Always lots to do…
Soccer – The season is 10 weeks long and this year it has seemed twice as long for me because there is always pressing stuff that I could be doing somewhere else. I really enjoy coaching the girls and getting to know people in the community, but it has seemed like a long season. We are a slightly disappointing 5-6 right now, but have had to battle injuries, a girl missing games because of a college class, low numbers, and sharing some of our top players with track. Despite that I think we could still end up with the best season in school history.
Farm – We bought out the CRP earlier this week so we are now allowed to do anything we want on our land. I just wanted to go out a dig a hole because I could! Besides that we have started pulling out some old fence and fence posts that were still on the perimeter and I’m guessing we will be done with that after tomorrow if the sun comes out. We spent about 3 hours each day there on Wednesday and then again on Thursday doing some work and meeting with a couple people and it is finally starting to feel like things are getting done. We will clear out the fence rows and then I believe the fencing is the next big project … bye, bye money …
Let me know if you need any pictures of our 6 wire hi-tensile fence for ideas on how to do things and I’ll try to go out and take some. There are alot of tricks and things that I wouldn’t have thought to do, now that we see how to do it, we may try doing any expanded fencing on our own.
Steven – I would love to see some pictures of your fencing. I have talked to people that have put it in themselves and they say it is relatively easy and straight forward. So, I think we should be able to do it … hopefully 🙂