Long month

The longest months on the face of this earth for me are the summer months. It's Mike's busiest month dealing with his customers and employees who get a bit touchy from time to time. To me, he's an absolute genius at customer service. I don't know how many times I've heard him chatting with irate customers only to turn them around and have them laughing by the time he's finished talking to them. It's truly an art and he's a master at it.

My rental in Corpus needs work. My father left me his house and his debts and mortgage. Luckily, the mortgage is affordable even when there's no rent coming in... like the last few months.

The property manager told us the place needed paint. Boy, that was the least of it. He didn't bother to say it needed a refrigerator, too, as well as a total overhaul as far as maintenance goes. Bad tile, broken doors, door strike plates, bad bathroom fixtures, a broken gate, falling fence boards... you name it. I felt like a slum lord when I saw how bad a condition it was in. So we spent the first two weekends in July in Corpus, away from the farm, working very long days on the house and needing to do a lot more, for sure. We took our refrigerator from the house down to corpus and bought us another one, a fridge-only, for the house. Unfortunately, it took a week to come in and so we had to live out of ice chests for the entire week.

The animals were okay, though, in our absences. We have geese, now, seven of them. They're so cool! They're not quite as loud as most people make them out - at least not yet, but we herd them from their little sheltered area to the back yard and to the pond so they can swim around and act like geese.

We have four 'African' geese (actually Chinese) who have black bills and black backs. The other three are Chinese geese, whatever that means. They're about a month old, now.

I've been absolutely exhausted the last two weeks after coming back and work seems to take it out of me these days, as well.

Finally, today, we got rain from hurricane Dolly that hit the Texas and Mexico coastline and brought that rain north as it veered off to the west inland. I still remember hurricane Celia that hit August 3, 1970. Today, there are many warnings that come from NOAA and other sources and we're all aware of what's coming. In 1970, we had no idea and were in the middle of it, sopping water from the windows and watching things be destroyed around us. My sister watched the garage collapse from the back door and we watched several cars flying through the air. There was only about an hour's warning, if I remember and we were supposed to go to my Grandmother's apartment, but Mom insisted on staying home.

After Celia, we had no electricity for several days. As we had just purchased a half a cow's worth of meat, we served meals in our backyard over open fires and with a camp stove. I remember bathing in cold water and having candles everywhere so we could see what was going on at night. But if you've got a true neighborhood, despite all its problems, people will come together and support each other in these times. That time in that house, long since passed on in ownership, was probably the most memorable time in my childhood.

But back to the farm... Mike fell yesterday, tripping over some wire that was wrapped around a tree at one time to keep it from being ravaged by goats. He fell hard on his side and has had to deal with that while servicing swimming pools for his business. Not a happy Mike.

When we killed the goat for cabrito, we took the fourth stomach (the large one at the bottom) and cut pieces from it to make rennet - about three, one-inch strips. I tried to use the rennet tonight -- after freezing it when we had no fridge.. and it worked! It curdled a cup of milk just fine! And it left whey in its wake just fine! Woo hoo! Now I have over a pint of the rennet for our cheesemaking. Rennet is so expensive, so this will work until we get tired of doing it this way.

It's been a long week, even though I've had several days off, now. Still exhausted and so much to do.