Good Times

I took advantage of the good 70 degree day the weather men were not sure we would get and took the kids fishing.
We had a great time and the kids thought it was so funny they caught fish and I didn't. My excuse is I spent most of the time restringing poles after one of them would get hung up. (That's the best excuse I can come up with)

 

 

The only fish that were biting were the little ones and since size does matter when you are fishing they all had to be thrown back. Never the less, it is the experience.

     

Pull On The Waders

It is hard for me to just sit and do nothing. I now understand why it is hard for some people to get going and do anything at all.
With having a week of rain and not being able to do much of anything, I think I am getting lazy. Take today for instance. We all put on our mud boots and waded to the big barn to do some cleaning. Half way there I was wore out and wanted to go back to the house and sit down but I was not going to pass up the help so we pushed on.
 We all worked together and got 1/4 of the barn cleaned out so I can at least have a place to start the chicken breeder pens. It took all five of us only about an hour or so but after that, I was wore plum out. I can't do much of this sitting around or all my "want too" will be completely gone.
So I can see that once you get into that rut of doing nothing, then nothing is what you will do. 

If the weather holds up, I think I might take the wife and kids fishing tomorrow. Now that's not doing nothing alright.    

At Least It's Something

I know it is not much but at least I got out and waded through the mud and did something today.
The wife and kids bundled up to come out and help and I could not have done it without them.

I guess the stars were aligned or something because we got the wire pulled though the conduit on the first try. It stayed drizzling rain for most of the day so I decided to stay in the barn and set the breaker box and wire one outlet up so at least when we hook the wires up to the meter I will have some place to plug into at the barn.
I am still a little iffy about messing around the meter base. I know I can kill the power to the house and connect the wires but the Neutral inside the main has me skittish. Being that it does not go through the breaker and comes straight out of the meter I do not know if it will be hot or not.
I guess I need to do some reading on it tonight plus I do not plan to hook anything up while it is raining. The weather man said last night is was going to be sunny and 74 tomorrow. Now they changed it to rain and in the 40's. It figures, on my vacation last year I was snowed in and now this year I am rained in. How can they get my hopes up like that.   

One Year Ago

This time last year we had a foot of snow on the ground with no end in sight. It was the worst winter in history around these parts. One year later, it will be 74 degrees this week.

I took the last two days off and did absolutely nothing besides your normal Christmas events with the family. I say normal, you know your a redneck when your best Christmas present is a incubator. I sure needed it too. Now I have two I can set all summer long. We will be pumping out the chicks this year.   

Another reason I took the last two days off was because it came one heck of a rain and it is still really muddy, but cabin fever got the better of me today.
Even though it was cold and muddy, I decided I had enough of cleaning the house and went out to get the string pulled in the conduit so I can at least get the wire pulled in tomorrow.
Yes it was awful working conditions but I managed to push on.
I attempted blowing the string in last Thursday but ended up not being able too, so today I built a neat little device that had a automatic string feed and a seal that would keep the air pressure up in the pipe so my fishing cork would make it all the way to the end. After several attempts that did not work either and I was just about to give up because I was cold, muddy and out of ideas when I tried one more thing.
I modified my device attaching it to a garden hose and used water pressure to push the cork. It took it a little while and when I heard the youngest yelling from the barn for me to stop, I was relieved. Finally, success!

So tomorrow the plan is to attempt the wire pull. I am pulling three #6 wire squeezed into a 3/4 conduit. The big wire is to make up for the voltage drop going that far.
Hopefully I will have power down there by the weekend.         

Marry Christmas Yall

Marry Christmas from The Modern Day Redneck Family.

Before The Rain

I got off work at noon today on the pretense of getting out of town for the holidays. I put in for vacation three times and was denied all three times. At the last minute they said I could go so we tried to get everything together for a week and a half away and it just did not come together.

You know as well as I do that when you have animals, it is hard to just go. Things do not work like that. It takes time to find someone to care for everything plus show them what to do twice a day. .    

Not just the animals was the problem but it was the money that did not come together. Thinking we were not going to go let us get a couple of more gifts for the girls this year. I think it's all for the best.

So instead, my dad came over this afternoon and brought his 70 year old Farmall  and dug the trench for the power line. Renting a trencher was going to cost about $200 a day so Dad made a trenching attachment for the little thing and went to town with it.

Unlike a trencher that throws the dirt out of the ditch, his little device made it to where we still had to clean the ditch out by hand and then cover it back up.

All and all a little extra work was a lot better than paying $200 dollars, that was for sure. Tomorrow I plan to get the string in the pipe so I can pull the wire in on Sunday. 

Isn't that tractor as cute as a mouse's ear or what?

Laughing Out Loud

How do the people text laughing out loud, LOL?
That is what I did just a few minutes ago when I saw the weather.
We broke the record today with temps thirty degrees above the average. It topped out at 85 but a cold front is sitting at the red river ready come on into Texas.
What was so funny about the whole thing was, it has not really rained here since October and Friday is when I plan on digging the power line ditch down to the big barn. You guessed it, that is when it is going to rain. Amazing.
On a lighter note, I was really proud when I came home last night. I found the youngest with a shovel in her hand digging the trench. I asked her why she was doing it and she said she did not want me to have to do it all. AWWWW, how can you not love something like that. She dug a good twenty foot or so.
Now just 300 more feet and we will have this thing licked.   

Another One Year Post

Is it ok to have two, one year posts in the same year? I guess in this case it is because one year ago today I created The Modern Day Redneck blog.

In that first blog I wrote on December 20 2009 I introduced myself and the family and talked about a little Christmas party the family and I went to and were greeted as the rednecks. Since that time a year ago I have been called that at least a thousand times.
Take tonight for instance. Our friends D&R took us out for pizza and on the way home I was getting all warm and fuzzy, my butt was really getting hot. It was getting so hot I actually thought something was wrong with me. It was kinda like after you eat a whole plate of peppers or something kinda hot. I was squirming and moving around trying to get comfortable so much they finally asked what was wrong with me. I simply told them that there was something majorly wrong because my butt is on fire.
No help there because they all just started laughing. I rolled the window down to get some fresh air but nothing was helping. I though about telling them to take me to the doctor it was getting so bad, I was burning up.
That is when Rhonda looked down and saw that her heated seats were on full blast. I tell you this, if you have never sat in one of those heated seats before then my goodness be careful, they will hurt you if you don't know whats going on. Yup, I was called a redneck.

What I write is the truth, good or bad. If you have been with me this year you have seen some highs and many lows in this new adventure my family has undertook. Sometimes I stay on track with the grand design of it all and other times I daydream and just want to get something going.
You have seen projects get started but never finished and you have also seen projects built on the spur of the moment. Yall have read about what bothers me the most and on the other hand what is important and really makes my life worth getting up for every morning.
If you have read what I wrote this year then you know about my faith in God, the love for my family and my belief in this county.
All of yall have put up with my non spelling, no grammar and sometimes pointless style of writing.
By now everyone of you know me better than most of the people I call my friends. I consider you family.

After one year of blogging, Modern Day Redneck has been visited 10,922 times. This blog has a reader base of anywhere between 40 to 60 people a day from all over the world.
I would like to get that number up to 100 readers a day by the end of this year.

I want to thank all yall for reading and commenting when you can. Please keep it up because I have some good stuff happening this year. (Have you ever heard of an Egg-Loo?)

Do Whatever Day

Honestly, I do not like going to the big lumber box stores but on Sundays they are the only ones open.

I woke the wife early with a "Get up! Lets go" and let me tell you that worked real good. Sometime later she got in the truck with a "I'm going to kill you look" but I was able to avoid any harm by getting her a big Sonic Dr. Pepper on our way to town.
I had to get the conduit so I could run power down to the big barn and the only place open was Lowe's. I don't know why it had to be right then or even today but in my head, I needed to go right now. Next Friday I plan to rent a trencher and during Christmas I plan to at least get the pipe in the ground and the wire pulled.

I was real eager to get started so I took my shovel and started to dig the 350 foot trench by hand. I dug for what seemed like hours today with the neighbors cheering me on I felt like nothing could stop me. When I thought I had really done some damage to this trench I looked up and I was only fifteen feet from where I started.
That was it, I was done. I am too old and fat to continue without power equipment. At least I got past the water line and the house's power line.

Other things that happened today were,

1. We got all the chicken and rabbit pens cleaned and re-bedded with fresh shavings and hay.
2. Organized the mini barn.
3. Moved around some chickens and took an inventory of what we had.
   
4. Moved a bunch of stuff out of the way for when I get the trencher this week.
   

For this week I plan to come home and stare at the massive trench I dug and I can bet at least one of those days I will think I am man enough to keep digging it by hand just to go only a couple of more feet before saying "To heck with this".

Nice Little Outing

The wife brought home three new five week old Mini Rex does today to add to the little rabbit herd. We have been looking for more rabbits because we only have two we can show right now and it is not worth the trouble to spend the time and the money to go to these shows with only two show abled rabbits.
We have 10 rabbits in all now with one fixen to kid the day after Christmas. Once these little things and a couple of six week old ones we have make it to two pounds, then we will be able to show them.
They all should be ready in February for the local show.


For the family's Christmas present, the wife's aunt bought us all tickets to the Gaylord Texan's Charlie Brown Ice exhibit. I was not to sure about going to this one but ended up going and kinda liking it. There were way too many people for me but the wife and kids had a good time so that is all that matters.

They brought in a bunch of Chinese ice sculpture guys to do this. It was some really good work. They gave us all Parkas because it was 9 degrees in this place.


The exhibit had over 2 million pounds of ice in it. This pic on the left is five ice slides they let everyone slide down.










This was at the end and the best one. It is the Nativity Scene.

All and all it was a nice outing. We do not get a chance to all be together much anymore and that was what really made it nice.

It's A Secret

One good thing about being new to the show rabbit world is that from here, the only way is up. Plus people are more than happy to share how much they know about the rabbit business.
Take for instance, our rabbits were a little on the thin side so that gave people the perfect opportunity to tell us how to fatten up a rabbit in a hurry.
A older guy who has been showing rabbits for over twenty five years took us under his wing on this subject and told us about a secret, magic food mixture that will make the rabbits nice and fat plus it will give the bunny a coat of fur to die for.
So yesterday the wife was able to locate all the ingredients to have the magic brew mixed up and we started to feed it today.
First, a syringe of yogurt once every two days applied directly into the rabbits mouth. (Make sure they don't get on there whiskers)(I don't know why)
Next, A mixture of 50 lbs of show rabbit feed (only from Bluebonnet) mixed with 8 qts of Steamed rolled barley and 6 qts of Black oil sunflower seeds.
Next, three teaspoons of frog pee and, well maybe I am making that part up but it does fit.
Mix it all together and free feed till you get the weight and fullness you want from the rabbit.

All I can say is "What could it hurt?" I am willing to try anything once and if this guy has been doing this for 25 years then that is 24 years, 11 months, 1 week and a few days longer than me.
I will tell you this, The steamed rolled barley and black oil sunflower seeds are hard to come by down here. I wonder if I can substitute one for the hair off a worms back?

On The Books

With Christmas right around the corner I have not put any projects on the books to get done right away. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things to do but I would rather use what little money there is getting the wife and kids something to open.

This weekend will be about cleaning. The cold weather has kept everyone in the house for the past week and being gone to the rabbit show all day Saturday has crap piling up, literally.
I just need to keep it away from the fan because if it hits it then you know what that means. Yup you got it, then I can say, "The crap just hit the fan". Thats too funny, even if you didn't laugh.

Chrismas Party

Last night was my place of employment's Christmas party.
All and all it was a nice set up. It would have been really fun if it was on a Friday or Saturday night but never less, it was good.

As soon as the wife and I walked in they gave me my yearly Christmas bonus and just like every good husband does, I gave half of it to the wife.
It's funny how they had gambling tables there as well. Within the first hour at the blackjack table I lost $5000.00 The wife was betting light so she was up a few hundred and feeling good about it.

With only 5k of my half of the money left, I decided to put it all on black at the roulette table and hit it. Now I was back to the original 10k again.
By this time the wife was up at least 4 grand and I was not wanting to chance it anymore but peer pressure got the better of me and ended up giving it all away.
It is amazing how quick $20,000 goes when your having fun. Plus it was fake money anyway.

Do you really think I would have gambled away that much money if it was real, plus did you really think I worked at a job that gave that kind of bonus? I wish!

Baptism By Fire

Today was, how can I say this, an experience.
I can use all the phrases, Baptism by fire, Thrown to the wolves, Sink or swim, Took one for the team and so on to describe today.

Keep in mind we are not rabbit show people and this was our first rabbit show. We had no clue what to do, where to go or the procedure on how to do it when we did it.
I tell you what we looked like. Have you ever seen people when they are on vacation. You can pick them out a mile away because they are wearing the fanny packs around their waste with a camera hanging around their neck. Most of the time they are wearing a cute little sun hat, plaid shorts and best of all, the whole family matches. They are what we around here call tourists.

Even though we were not dressed up like that, in the rabbit show world, which is a world of it's own, we were picked out and labeled as tourists, newbies, fresh meat so to speak.
Don't get me wrong, everyone we met in that place was more than helpful. Some were so helpful in fact, when we left them we were more confused than before we met. We did meet a couple of real nice people who talked to us like real people and we do appreciate that.

As far as showing, needless to say our butts were handed to us and this is why.

• Our X-Grand Champion Prized Buck Lucky, with a pedigree a mile long, got last place in his breed because he was to skinny. I was told not to get them to fat so I guess I went a little to far the other way. I did not know what the judges looked for in body bulk, but now I do because I had several people come by and show me. Ten to be exact.
• Our X-Best of Breed Doe Onyx was disqualified because her ears were 1/4" to long. This doe was going to be the momma of our new stock of show rabbits and now her ears are to big. She is pregnant now and will have a litter on the 26th of this month. I will just have to see what the babies look like now since several people educated us on how to tell if the babies are worth anything or not.
• Or free Jersey Woolly Buck rabbit got second place, out of two. That means last place where I come from. The judge said we brushed him to much and needed to leave him more natural. After the fact, a few nice people told me to never brush them more than once at the show so the coat looks fuller. These were the same people that were sitting next to me, watching me while I brushed that stupid thing all day long trying to make it look so pretty. OMG
  

There were 1200 rabbits showing today. I was kinda overwhelmed and wanting to go to a small show for our first time so we could learn the ropes without too many people noticing, but it is what it is and it's done now. The next one will be better because If we can remember what everyone told us about what to do, then we are already rabbit showing experts and just don't know it yet.

The next show is South of Dallas next month on the 15th. I am not going down without a fight. This time I am going to have the fattest, longest eared, un-brushed rabbits in the whole place.

We Will See

Tomorrow is the big day at the rabbit show for the youngest girl. We will see if the investment we made in these little things was worth it or not. It is a little late now if it's not, right?

With registration being a 7:00 AM and the drive South of Fort Worth is a little over two hours from here, that means we have to leave the house sometime around 4:30AM. All this just for rabbits! I must be out of my mind.
I will post pictures tomorrow night of what all happens there.

On a high note, the oldest girl got her acceptance letter to Texas A&M yesterday. We are so proud of her and very excited. I have spent the last 18 years prepping her for this. Her plans are to be a Zoologist and work with exotic animals. She hopes to get the chance to do a summer in New Zealand before actually getting a job. I wish her all the luck.

It is going to be cold on Sunday so as of right now, I do not know what is on the books as far as work but I can bet you this, I will let you know.

Under Twelve Hours

In just under twelve hours we are now down to our winter stock, I love Craigslist. As a matter of fact, I don't know how I sold things without it.
The calls started pouring in early this morning and most of them were the normal "hem hauling" around. Then A guy called and asked to buy the whole lot. I am sure he was a animal broker but if he wanted everything then I would make a deal with him.

We ended up selling the two Pygmy goats plus two Spanish goats I really was not wanting to sell but the guy made an offer I could not refuse on them, doubling my money.
Every rooster is gone, all 15 of them and he even bought the latest chicks we hatch as a straight run.
The three Flemish Giant rabbits that were eating fifty pounds of feed every two weeks are finally gone. I hate to say we lost money on these rabbits due to the feed we have put into them. I bet I would have had to get $75.00 a piece for them to come out. I was at the point of just giving them away or eating them to save on the feed bill, but a little money is better than nothing.
He also bought some four year old pet chickens we had laying around. They quit laying a year ago but he had to have them.

I was getting worried on how we were going to afford Christmas but this right here did it for us. Plus, now we have the money to get to the rabbit show I promised the youngest we would go to this weekend.

I want to say a big howdy to the new members of the Modern Day Redneck family. "Howdy"
and welcome to the family. Just to let you know, if you disagree with me or have a question on something, just let me know.

Weeding Out

After checking the animal budget it seams we need to weed some animals out for the winter. The thought, is why feed all the extra animals grain all winter when we plan on selling them this spring anyway, right?


These extra animals mostly consist of over ten beautiful roosters anyone would love to have. They will make great pets, yard ornaments or fill a hungry belly when needed.








I also need to sell a couple of goats. Lucy's momma is a kid throwing machine. She has up to three kids at a time and gets her figure back in just a few short weeks.

And this five month old is one of the goats we got from a real nice lady that really knew how to take care of goats. She would be a perfect Christmas present for that special someone.








Oh and I still have two Flemish Giants that are so big a cuddly that you might mistake them for being a stuffed animal. They love to be hand fed.

It Was Almost A Do Nothing Day

Last night I was making fun of and laughing at the slightly older crowd with all there groaning and complaining about being sore and not able to move after all the work they did at the wood cutting party. I was bragging and told them I felt like a spring chicken and could go another round tomorrow if they wanted to.
When I tried to get out of bed this morning that is when I realized I ain't no spring chicken any more either. I tell you this, I'm not a couch potato but just that one day of hard labor made me feel like I don't ever do anything. It was tough to get out and get the "want too" started.

But I did and me and the youngest girl got the fancy mini chicken breeder pen done today.
All it needs now is a coat of paint that I think can wait till after the new year. The chickens did not seem to mind it was not painted.










Today ended with a bang. The wife treating us to stuffed bell peppers and fried potatoes and onions, plus the Cowboys won. What a great way to end a hard worked weekend.

Came And Went

Another wood cutting party has come and gone.
We ended up having more people than we thought show up and it appeared everyone went away happy.

Every year for the past six or seven years we have a little party like this. I remember when we started it all and youth was on our side, we would always cut and split more wood than was needed. I guess the fall's cool weather just brought out the "want too" in everyone back then and we thought we had something to prove.
This year though, old man time has started setting in and every stick was loaded and actually had room for a little more but decided it was good enough.


How it goes is, we cut until noon and then take a break and have bite to eat and tell lies. Then we split the cut wood and load everything in the trucks.







Usually it is the younger ones with the strong backs that do most of the splitting while the rest of us stand around and tell them what they are doing wrong. I make a great supervisor.









While I was doing the mindless cutting I could not help but think of stupid stuff to write on here tonight. This is what I thought of;

At The Wood Cutting Party
Where the sawdust flies and there is crust in your eyes,
At the wood cutting party.
Where the fire roars and you can't take no more,
At the wood cutting party.
Where the wienies are fired and your o' so tired,
At the wood cutting party.
Where the men are men and the women are too,
At the wood cutting party.
Where the beer flows free and so does the pee,
At the wood cutting party.

Tell me that ain't funny right there!

Let's Get This Party Started

Did I mention how bad I hate cutting wood?
I know and understand all the benefits of having your own heat but that does not mean I have to like it. I told the wife the other day, I would almost rather pay the high electric bills than cut and haul wood.
All because I hate it does not mean we can't do it so we have everything ready for a full weekend of it. We are even packing the baby goat Lucy so she will not be left at home and hungry.
I will share many pics tomorrow so you can feel like you were right there with us.

A Beating

Work has been a beating this week. I long for the day I get to work full time on the Mini Farm. It cannot get here quick enough.

I got my Modern Day Redneck cards and bumper stickers in the mail today so now that makes all this Bonafide right? I also received the official Mini Farm cards so the general public will not scared off by the redneck thing.

The youngest girl has been creating a rabbit show calendar this week and she has really out done herself. She penciled in for us to go to shows like Houston and San Antonio and even the National convention way up North. I think she had 13 shows in all she was wanting to go to this year. After I was done with the list we now only have 9 and two of those are iffy. I give her credit for the enthusiasm though.

The wood cutting party is this weekend and it sounds like it is going to be a big one this year. What better fun is there besides open fire cooking, beer, chainsaws and a bunch of rednecks?