An exhausting weekend

Saturday, the boys and I did a bit of garden work. Planted some more cool weather veggies in the ground, since our last frost isn"t until April. I don't care that it has been in the upper 70's, we have seen it before and a killing frost has moved in. For all those people putting in there summer veggies now, locally, I do hope things are different this year. When it warms up like this, people tend to forget, but really, you shouldn't plant heat seakers until after your local frost date.

Things are blooming early however. All my fruit trees are in bloom. I am enthusiastic that they will fruit before a possible killing frost. If not, you might just find us in the orchard with several fires going to keep the freeze off the blooms.

And grass is finally growing.

We also managed to dress out the pig over night, Saturday night. Took us only 3 1/2 hours to do so. A record I think. Missy was pushing 300 lbs. No more screaming pig is a burden lifted. She is curing in a friends fridge right now, and we will break the meat down to certain cuts later tonight. Poor horse neighbor's wife. She was afraid she was going to hear Missy make a racket. Horse neighbor said she had turned the fans on and turned the tv up just in case. But it was a clean kill. Remember our farm hand? He came out to lend a hand. He asked to do the shooting, and did a great job of it. Missy had no clue what happened, it was fast and clean. I always assumed it would get easier, emotionally, as time went on and the more butchering we had done. But I still have trouble watching it all go down. I can clean the animals with ease. Husband still must do the killing. Or in this case, the farm hand.

We are meeting with a lawyer today to attempt to stop a fired client of Husband's from libeling Husband on public forums.

The woman who was accusing me of starving my cattle, her husband showed up Saturday evening. It was a strange encounter indeed. He was very very drunk. Cross eyed drunk. He approached us as a friend however, and didn't show up to spout accusations as his wife had planned to. He admitted to having an affair with another neighbor, he wanted to buy us hay as a friend, he complained about the Mexicans in the neighborhood. Did I mention he is from chihuahua, Mexico? And is heavily accented? Oh but how he did go off about the ungrateful Mexicans here. Even brought up bad dog neighbor. Apparently he did a bunch a tractor work for bad dog neighbor, and when he only asked for gas and some oil for payment, bad dog neighbor told him he was asking too much. Oh did that set him off, and he went on and on for what seemed like an hour. He told me he is not like the Mexicans around here. Honestly I wasn't sure how to respond to it. Was he saying these things because we were white, or because he was drunk?

He then offered to purchase 3 of our calves. At a discount of course. I told him I would think about it. Then he said the funniest thing I heard all weekend. Of course me laughing at it makes me a bigot, but don't care. It was one of those moments one had to laugh. "if I said to you, let me write a check, you would say heck no because I am a Mexican. . . But I would say heck no too because I'm a Mexican." now come on, how would you respond to that. I stared at him for a moment, and just started laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. He was impressed I could cuss in Spanish though, and we laughed about that. He stood out here for about 2 hours, ranting and joking about all the neighbors, but not once accusing us of anything. Let me amend that, all the Mexican neighbors. He did mention how he wanted to help us as neighbors if we needed the help and that he too was interested in raising cattle, then drifted off into telling us how a Mexican who he was training and boarding his horse didn't pay for feed or anything else for several months and he sold the horse. The owner showed up wanting to know where his horse was, and he asked the man which horse was his? Then he got upset with us for selling and butchering some of our herd last summer. Aw drunks. They can be entertaining.

Let's see if he shows up here sober. He didn't arrive yesterday with the hay he promised, but we weren't expecting it. However with all the rain, our hay guy has yet to deliver our feed. So I had to drive 40 minutes yesterday to pick up some brome because she was the only person answering her phone on a Sunday. Nice lady. Brome was still green, which makes my girls happy.

We have been seeing good neighbor a great deal more lately. Which is nice. With the weather change and our zombie moat doing it's job, we should see him more and more. He is planting a peach orchard near the fence line. Looking forward to that myself.

Husband and I are taking a nice long motorcycle ride today. After this weekend I think we really need it.