Applebee's & Veteran's Day

Well, I guess I was kidding myself in thinking that I could have a blog that was dedicated only to our farm and our new mid-western lifestyle.  I still intend to keep my original focus, but my convictions will force me to occasionally comment on other topics which will probably have to do with the military in some regard.

This evening, I read an article at Military.com which I felt warranted further promotion...  Veteran's Eat Free at Applebee's: First I must admit that I am not a huge fan of this restaurant, but their apparent support of our nations warriors compelled me to let you know of their corporate patriotism.  While I think that our veterans should get regular discounts at all establishments (instead of students and senior citizens who have done nothing to earn them) I love to see any type of outward support of those who are mostly forgotten in our society.

Provided that veterans can prove their honorable service, Applebee's will allow them to choose from one of  6 specific dinner entrees (my choice would be the Fiesta Lime Chicken) available for free on November 11th (Veteran's Day).

To the "suits" at Applebee's, I would simply like to say "thank you" and Semper Fidelis.

a little cleaning up

Due to the upcoming concert I am being forced to deal with a few items around the house.  I keep the property fairly neat, but I am a procrastinator by nature and there is always something left unfinished.

In this case it happened to be the old goat/chicken shelter and the canopy which was destroyed when it blew away.  I moved them both behind the house, next to the shed and they have been sitting in a heap for several weeks now.  They were out of the way just enough to allow me to forget about them.

Yesterday, I decided that they needed to go.  Naturally I grabbed my favorite helper (along with several saws and hammers) and headed out to finally take care of the mess.  My son seems to enjoy doing any type work when he is working along with me and I love having him by my side.  He is also starting to get to the point where he is old enough and strong enough to actually accomplish tasks with little supervision; which makes him much more of an asset when it comes to getting work done.  In addition to his physical value, I love seeing the look of satisfaction on his face when he completes his "mission" on his own.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon we got it all broken up, stacked on the trailer, and parked it for our run to the dump the next day (Saturday).  This afternoon after we finished moving the goats/chickens and dealing with several other small tasks, we headed off to the dump... only to get there and discover that it had closed 30 minutes before we arrived.  After all of that, it is now back in our driveway and sitting again.  At least the delay is not completely my fault this time.

how far I've come

As we hit the one year anniversary of moving to our new home (also our 12th wedding anniversary) I have been reflecting on how much my life has changed since fleeing southern California and starting a new life in southern Indiana.  I thought I'd go through a list of things that I never thought I would be doing:

     Riding my old farm tractor instead of my police motorcycle
     Watching my son drive our riding mower and cutting our grass by himself
     I had to cut the head off of my daughter's "pet" chicken
     Working on my 1962 John Deere
     Raising my own chickens/eggs
     Raising my own goats
     Breeding goats for the purpose of meat
     Raising turkeys (well only one now that the other two died)
     Planning to slaughter the remaining turkey myself, for Thanksgiving dinner
     Going out to check on my animals at midnight... in the rain
     Shooting pistols with my wife in our backyard
     I had to instruct my wife, over the phone, how to dispose of a dead goat (I was away with USMC)

Last night we went to a friends house for dinner and in the course of our conversation he asked me if I was glad we had moved to Indiana.  I will tell you the same thing that I told him: I have never regretted our decision; I know we did the right thing.  I think that we would have been joyful and content in many places, but I love where we ended up and I am grateful that the Lord led us here.

As previously stated, I never would have imagined that I would be living on a small farm in the mid-west and rasing goats, but I have to say that I love it and I am curious to see what I end up doing over the next year.

I'm back

You may have been wondering why I have not posted in a couple  of weeks, well I had a good reason.  I do have another job which requires me to leave the farm on occasion.  You can read more about my career as a reservist in the  United States Marine Corps at www.usmcphillips.com/biography.html

Anyway, I spent the past 15 days attending the Combat Marksmanship Trainer program at Weapons Training Battalion / Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.  This happened to be a high intensity course which only granted one day off out of 15 and working long hours.  A short day consisted of waking up at 4am, getting on the buses at 5:00, drawing our weapons from the armory by 5:30 and being seated in the classroom by 6:45.  On a good day we would spend the next 12 hours in class and get back to our living quarters by 7pm.  Our longest day started at 4am and did not see us released until 11pm.  After our 20 hour day of lectures and shooting, we then had to study for an exam and a presentation we had the next day before getting a few hours of sleep and getting up again at 4am.

We "lived" in 60 year old Quonset huts which had no heat, but did have mice running around on the dirt covered floors.  Fortunately we did have running water and while it was not 100% cold, it certainly was not hot either.  We had one large shower room with 15 heads for everyone to use and the toilets had dividers between them, but no doors.  Nothing causes men to "bond" like talking to the guys walking by as you sit on the toilet and then stripping down and showering together.  Anyone who supports homosexuals in the military needs to live in this environment for a week or so and then come talk to me about their political views, but I digress...  It got down to 51 degrees in our hut; that coupled with the early mornings made it very difficult to get out of the sleeping bag in the morning.  We ate MREs most of the time, but got the luxury of eating powdered eggs and greasy hash-browns a few mornings; needless to say, I really missed my wife's home cooking.

We also spent quite a lot of time shooting on the KD (known distance) range for pistol and rifle as well as the 3 different (tables 2-4) combat courses.  Despite shooting in the pouring rain and hurricane force winds, I qualified as and Expert (top of the three tiers in the USMC) with both the pistol and rifle.

All-in-all, it was a great course and I am now certified as a Combat Marksmanship Instructor... ooh-rah!!  I have always said that it is great anytime I get paid to shoot or simply be around weapons.

a stud for the ladies

We have been hoping to move our small farm operation forward, in order to do that we need to get our does pregnant.  It is funny how that works, if you plan to actually make any money at raising meat goats, you need to have kids to raise.

We have eight does, but two of them are a little young still and one has been sick for a few weeks; that leaves us with five does that are able to breed.  Ideally they would each have twins and we would end up with our eight does, plus 10 kids running around in March.  We are not sure if we are going to sell the kids at 3 months old (sort of like veal) or raise them and sell them as much larger yearlings.  Before we get to any of that we need to get our ladies pregnant and there are two basic ways to go about that: artificial insemination and the old fashioned way.

I have learned a lot about animals and I am doing a lot of things that I never thought I would, but I just cannot bring myself to artificially inseminate a goat.  Besides, it only has a 60% success rate which is simply unacceptable for me.  We decided that we needed to either rent a buck or buy one.  Both options have benefits, but we were open to either one; the real problem we had was trying to find what we wanted.

Boer goats are not exactly rare, but they are not real common either.  We needed to find a buck that was 1.5 - 3 years old, of large stature, a proven breeder, with a good demeanor, and under $400.  Oh yeah, we also needed the seller to deliver him as we do not have a truck or trailer and I didn't want to borrow from our friend again.  After searching all over southern and central Indiana we ended up finding one that was only 10 miles from our home.  He is a year & a half old and weighs 150-175lbs.  His registered name is Painted Wizard, but that simply will not work for us.  My daughter has taken to calling him Mr. Red, while my wife and son are calling him Jimmy.  Hopefully, we will come to an agreement soon.

He is in rut, but the does are not in estrus at this point.  Hopefully, they will all sync up soon and we can begin to make some real progress on the farm.  :-)