Friday afternoon the new stove was delivered. We were ready. We had already removed the old stove. I had trimmed the trees down the length of the driveway knowing the truck would have trouble with them. It did. However I should have kept going. The large pecan that the roadrunners nested in last year interfered with the truck and the dead or dying pecan in the barnyard scratched it up too. I helped the driver's helper (making me a driver's helper's helper) and we had everything unloaded lickity split. The helpers was looking around and wanted to know what kind of creature could make SUCH a NOISE. I hadn't heard it but I screen out about 95 percent of the noises there. Just ask Kristi. I'm going to pay for that last if she ever reads this. What he had heard was our peacock. He was in good form at the top of the barn. His call is clearly audible over a mile away which causes me to wonder what our neighbor's think when they don't know what kind of creatures we have. Anyway the stove and associated parts and attachments were all unloaded before the driver even made it out of the truck.
I knew when we got the stove that there was the possibility of a problem with the wiring. Now we replaced the stove with the exact same one. Well exact except for all the differences. So I'm using the word exact incorrectly but that's just the kind of guy I am. Always pushing things. Even the language. Sometimes I push THAT to the breaking point. I am on the record for wanting to replace the old stove with a restaurant style stove with high BTU burners. Six of them. The kind of burners that bring a 10 gallon pot of water to a boil quickly while you stand there in an impatient mood watching. However as usual circumstances butted in and pushed my desires aside. They're always doing that. I wanted the restaurant range which would have required installing a propane tank since we don't have gas. That would have meant digging a trench for the pipe, pouring a pad for the tank a bunch of plumbing and no doubt some pretty extensive modifications to the center island in the kitchen. The circumstances as I've mentioned in a previous bog entry was we were down to one burner that was working unreliably. We needed something quick and something that wouldn't require reworking the whole kitchen to get it to fit. So we got the same thing over again. BUT. There's always a but. Our old stove was 47 inches. The newer version of the old stove is 45 inches. Ha ha ha. That means that there is a 2 inch gap at one end. From a convenience standpoint you can now grab a spatula easier by sticking your hand directly from the top of the island into the drawer without having to open it. I'm guessing this will become another project. I have so little to do and I need things to occupy me. Back to the wiring. We did indeed have a problem. In between when the first stove was made and the second stove was made the code must have changed. We have 3 wires coming from the electrical box and the stove has 4 wires. What to do? I turned as I always do, to the Internet. After about 20 minutes of searching I found an expert site that explained a fix even an electricity impaired person could follow and we had a working stove! Better yet neither of us was electrocuted! We didn't even need the fire extinguisher that I had prepared Kristi with!
Saturday morning we went to a rare treat, breakfast out. So we celebrated the installation of our new stove by not using it. Sigh.
A quick trip to Tractor supply and we loaded down the truck with goat feed, chicken feed (3 kinds) some parts for the tractor and couple of sprinklers. We paid nothing for it this trip because we also returned a "universal tractor seat" fits Ford tractors among others! Of course it didn't fit MY Ford tractor. Not even close. We also stopped at Home Depot. Got some clips to attach the 6x6 goat fencing to our T posts, some BT for worm control and I bought a seat cover for a garden tractor. The seat cover worked better than the new seat and it took only minutes to install. Plus it was cheap!
Sunday was the day that made me achy. We dealt with poultry in the morning. Something had attacked a chicken. The chicken may have been blinded. It's hard to tell, it's head is scarred. It sits upright but we're having to encourage it to drink and we've been unsuccessful getting it to eat anything. Apparently in the same attack a turkey's ear was injured. Likewise the turkey is being a bad patient with no other visible injuries. Sometimes animals are so traumatized in an attack that the just don't recover. We're hoping for the best.
Sunday I set fire to our large burn pile which had branches old wood tree limbs from getting the driveway ready for the stove delivery and cactus. I have found a good technique for ridding ourselves of some of the cactus. Using the tractor's loader I can scrape the cactus out of the ground and then using a pitchfork, toss it into the loader bucket to be dumped onto the burn pile. Now if I can find a couple of months full time, we can be rid of it! I also prepared an extension of the gourd field, scarifying and de-weeding the earth. It's ready for the next wave of gourds! While this was going on I was smoking a brisket. So I'd stop every once in a while and go check the fire, which was always either out or too hot, as usual. But the brisket came out great anyway. It's what I shoot for in cooking. Every time anyone walks past it on the counter, you have to take a taste. If I can achieve that I've done well.

Coming up Monday - Extending the watering system for the new gourd field!