Update...

It has been a busy week since we had Buttercup humanely euthanized. We buried her in the very back of the property. We have an almost finished pump house. It just lacks a roof. It has two doors/gates. They are the gates from the wooden fence blown down by Ike, and the walls are sections of the old fence, too.
I have a riding student. She is a college student I met while sitting outside of Barnes and Noble bookstore at work. She is very enthusiastic! Her first lesson was last Thursday, and she has had 5 so far. Winter break is about to end, but she has been out nearly every day this week.

We had the storage container moved out to the farm last Saturday. We need to buy a storage building and move all the stuff from one to the other, since the container costs $215 per month, and we have decided not to buy a mobile home, but instead, build what we want as soon as we sell the other house. We will continue to live with our daughter, son-in-law, and grandson for the time being. We have had an offer on the house in town. It isn't what we want for it, but in this economy we are kind of stuck. This is a person who will buy it as is and fix it to "FLIP" it. It is costing too much paying 2 mortgages, plus the utilities, and taxes on the house in town every month. It has eaten into our savings so that we really don't have the money we need to fix it up ourselves, so we are letting it go at a loss. Mike is going to cash in a life insurance policy his mom had on him, to pay the closing cost, and the difference between what the man is offering and what we owe on it. I hate to do this, but we don't have the resources to fix it up enough to get what we want for it, and each month we are paying almost $1,500 in mortgage, insurance, taxes, and utilities for it + $1,700. mortgage on the farm. My shorter work week gives me more time to work on stuff, but my pay is cut in 1/2, and if I want to go to an SCA event, I earn NO MONEY for that week, unless I drive 85 miles one way, to work at another property, with out being paid additionally for milage.

A man from the state wildlife department came out to make a site inspection and give us some ideas about how we might want to proceed in getting a wildlife exemption, rather then an agriculture exemption. We are going to convert the pastures, over time, back into native Texas grasses, instead of the more delicate grass that the neighbor's cattle had overgrazed for so long. It will be quite a project, requiring controlled burning of sections and reseeding with native species. This will encourage more Quail to live here. We will also work towards encouraging some of the native Texas water fowl to visit our ponds.

We still haven't heard from the judge in the lawsuit on Grandson's hair.

Husband and I have appointments on Monday to see a gastro-enteralogist for a consult prior to having a colonoscopy. What fun! NOT

I'm working on insulating my new trailer, to make it more comfortable to camp in, when I'm not feeding horses, teaching riding lessons, gathering eggs, grocery shopping, or helping build the well house.

We need to buy a disk-harrow to make firebreakes around the pastures as well as break up the sod for a garden, and a riding arena. The fun never stops.