An Untypical Typical Day

My day usually begins the same way. I wake up, turn on the light, get out of bed and head for the thermostat to turn up the heat. I usually set the thermostat for 62f at night so the house is usually pretty cold when I wake up. I have a space heater in my bedroom which I run at night when the temperature outside is low, which it was last night. After resetting the thermostat for 68f, I return to my warm bed.

Especially during the winter months, I am usually awake long before the sun even thinks about rising. So while I am waiting for the house to heat up I like to open my Bible and start reading from where I left off the day before. I enjoy snuggling under the covers, listening to the night sounds that I may hear, and contemplating on God’s Word and praying. It is such a peaceful time.

Right now in the earth’s solar cycle the sun starts to peek over the horizon around 7:05am. If I am up early, once the house is warmer I venture out of my bedroom and into the kitchen. I am a tea drinker so my first task is to make myself a nice warm cup of tea. Once that is accomplished it is time to make breakfast. While enjoying a warm breakfast I turn on the computer.

As soon as it is light enough outside I throw on my jeans and a coat and I am out the door to take care of the animals. I used to do this task in my PJ’s but somehow they kept getting muddy and wet so I now always put jeans on. This morning is extra cold, 31f with a wind chill factor of 13f, so I really bundle up. I put on a sweatshirt over my PJ top, then my winter coat, followed by an orange padded windbreaker and an orange knitted hat.

Often I am greeted at the front door by Tiger and Little Bit, the first two “employees” to come work at the ranch. Their job is rodent control. They have been here for 13 months and are very diligent workers. There has been a substantial decrease in rodents, especially mice, since arriving. I would much rather pay for their food and pet them on a regular basis then buy mouse traps and remove dead mice from the house.

The cats have wonderful accommodations in a cabin, turned kitty condo. Every morning I walk out to the kitty condo and scoop some food out of a bag and pour into their bowls. It does not matter if their bowls were empty or not, both cats will jump onto the counter and start feasting. I never leave without petting each kitty. Not only am I giving them love and attention, but I am feeling for prickly pear stickers or anything else that may be in their fur which needs to be removed.

After attending to the cats I turn my attention to the newest “employee”, Lawn Mower. Her job is weed removal and lawn mowing; she is also doing an excellent job. She has almost cleaned out all the weeds from the vegetable garden and I am expecting her to finish that job by planting season. Since her arrival I have spoken to several goat ranchers and consulted with a vet tech, so I am gaining some knowledge in goat care. I have also done some research on the Internet and for those who are interested, there is a great forum called The Goat Spot. On the advice of the vet tech I gave Lawn Mower a CD/T vaccination (Tetanus, Clostridium, Perfringens). I had never vaccinated anything before in my life, so this was a new experience. The hard part was trying to grab some skin on her rear end, as she kept turning around to look at me. But I eventually accomplished the goal. She didn’t even act like she felt a thing

Both the vet tech and the goat rancher instructed me to feed Lawn Mower about 1/2 cup of pellets twice a day. I have no idea what is in those pellets but she clearly loves them. Feeding her at first was a challenge because she refused to eat them off the ground. The first couple days I poured them onto a plastic frozen dinner tray and she gobbled them down, but she quickly started refusing to eat them. Not wanting the pellets to go to waste (they dissolve in rain), I stopped giving them to her. But somehow I discovered she would eat them out of my hand. Hand feeding a goat in the dark (Sunday mornings) or when it is cold and raining outside is no fun. The next time I drove to Kerrville I visited ranch style stores looking for a solution. The very last store I stopped at, a feed store, had just the perfect thing, a food trough/bowl that hooks to the fence. And the best part is Lawn Mower will eat out of it. So twice a day I pour her pellets into the feeder and she happily gobbles them down.

This morning is one of those cold miserable mornings that I do not want to be out in so I also threw a handful of alfalfa in the garden for Lawn Mower to munch on. She doesn’t need much as she also has some cedar branches to eat (she loves cedar needles). But since I knew it would be afternoon IF I decide to go outside to work (and let her out of the garden to graze), I wanted to give her some extra food in the morning.

Now that the goat was happily eating, I went off to check the rain gauge. As expected it is empty except for some dead bugs that somehow have fallen in and couldn’t get out. I dump the bugs out.

Usually I would return to the warm house but this morning’s sunrise is gorgeous and I have to take a few pictures. Then I return to the warm house, take all the coats, hat, and jeans off and put my PJ bottoms back on. I then log onto the CocoRaHS web site and record my rain gauge total.

It is one of those really cold cloudy mornings and the house just feels cold to me. It amazes me how much warmer the house feels when the sun shines through the windows, but today there is no sun. So I grab a magazine, return to my warm bed where the blankets and space heater keeps me toasty warm, and start reading.

Around 8:30am I suddenly remember the turkey. Last year I purchased 16 poults (baby turkeys). A friend raised the poults and in return I got some turkey meat and she got her foot in the door at being a turkey rancher. She had been raising chickens for eggs and meat for several years and was eager to start raising turkeys, but she could not afford the initial purchase. So we went in together. Turkey’s are a lot harder to raise I have learned and half the poults did not make it. A few months ago she selected the two largest birds and together we butchered them. Well, she actually butchered them and I assisted. The two turkeys have been in a neighbor’s freezer but recently I decided it was time to thaw one out and cook it. Because the friend did not want to pluck the turkeys by hand, she simply skinned it, which means roasting the turkey’s in the oven is out of the question. So this morning I removed the legs, thighs, and wings from the turkey and threw it in the crock pot with some vegetables.

Once that job was complete, I returned to my warm room. After a little reading and some phone calls, I decided to bring this computer into the bedroom. I cannot get online in my bedroom, which is a bummer, but I still have plenty of computer work to do.

The mail arrives around 11:00am and so I eventually put some clothes on and drove down to the mailbox. My weekly newspaper arrives on Thursday and I wanted to pick it up. Since it is a mile to the mailbox, I only pick it up a few times each week. Once back home I read the newspaper and then back to the computer.

Around 2:00pm for the first time today I noticed the sun shining through the window. I went checked to see the outside temperature and was pleased it finally warmed up to 40f. I normally prefer to go outside and work when the temperature is above 50f, but today I knew it was not going to get that warm. So I put on several coats and my orange knitted hat and ventured outdoors.

My first stop outdoors is to let Lawn Mower out to graze. I grabbed the 20 foot chain I attach to her collar and then headed for the garden. As soon as she saw me coming she ran up to the gate and started bleating. She always jumps on the gate but has learned to get down so I will open the gate. I then put her chain lease on, say okay, and off she runs to her favorite cedar tree to start eating.

By now both cats show up. I know they have been sleeping in the cabin all day, but when I am outside they like to be with me. I bend over and pet each of them quickly and then off to work. Right now I am working on three major projects.

1. Burning the many piles of dead cedar trees the previous owners left behind. A few days before Christmas the county finally lifted the burn ban and so like so many folks out here I have started setting those piles on fire to get rid of them. So far I have eliminated 5 piles, but there are many more to burn.
2. Collecting rocks for two major projects. One project is a raised garden bed inside the garden. The other project is a goat shelter I hope to build out of rocks/stones.
3. The third project is building a goat enclosure. That requires installing a fence and building the goat shelter.

Today I collect a few rocks and spend some time scraping dirt off a sheet of rock that will form the floor of the goat pen. Instead of laying down cement, nature has laid down a rock so large it can never be moved and will work great as a floor. I also take some time out to pet Tiger and Little Bit.

While I am working I keep an eye on Lawn Mower. She is just happy to be out and spends time running around and finding stuff to eat. Today she wants to be close to me so every time I walk to a different spot, such as to get a drink, she comes running. Then when she sees I am walking back to where I had been working a few minutes ago, she runs back to wherever it was she had been to continue eating. Lawn Mower clearly enjoys this cooler weather. But I don’t so after about an hour I put her back inside the garden. It is early but I know I won’t want to come back outside so I go ahead and feed Lawn Mower her afternoon pellets, which she gobbles down. I also give the cats a little bit more food and then I come inside the warm house.

When I come inside I smell the aroma of the turkey in the crock pot. I glance at the clock and know it is about done. I get the meat thermometer which confirms, dinner is done. I turn the crock pot off, but I am not hungry yet so I let the turkey just sit there.

Before going outside I had put the computer back on the dining room table where I normally keep it. Even though the sun had only been out for less than 30 minutes, I decide not to return to the bedroom but just work at the dining room table with a throw on my lap. I spent the rest of the day working on the computer, watching a few hours of TV, eating dinner, and reading.

Tomorrow is supposed to be even colder, so I have a feeling I will be spending some of the morning in my bedroom reading. Oh well, it won’t be long before the sun is up before I am done with breakfast and I am out the door before it gets too hot to be outside.

The Goat Story Continues

It’s been about three and a half weeks now since I looked out my kitchen window to see a goat walking by. As I sat here figuring out the time line, I am actually shocked, for it seems more like several months that I have had her. During the first two weeks I attempted to locate her owner. I placed a sign up by the mail boxes, alerted several business owners in case they overheard something, and placed a notice in the local weekly paper. Then I waited. The goat was never tattooed or tagged in any way, and without such identifying markers there is no way to know who the original owner is unless they come forward.

The first hint I had of this goat’s origins came that first Monday afternoon. As I was driving back home from visiting a neighbor I was flagged down by a passing motorist. The woman in the truck asked me if I had seen a Great Dane. I said “no, but I did find a goat”. That perked her interest and she requested to follow me home. It turns out her dog and my goat was last seen together the previous Friday afternoon. The two friends then took off. My house is one mile from the mail boxes and 1.8 miles to the east of those mail boxes is where this woman lives. Fencing forced the two to follow the roads. I never saw the dog and neither has anyone I know. As far as I know the dog is still missing. But we all know where the goat went.

Soon the paper came out with notices of a lost dog and a found goat. As each day passed with no one calling it seemed more and more likely that I was now the owner of a goat. I started praying about what I should do with this goat. Offers were starting to flow in from people willing to take her off my hands. A retired neighbor who used to own goats said they had a pen I could put the goat in if I decided to keep her. The woman with the lost dog had planned to give the goat to a relative, as the goat had spent several days at her place causing problems before taking off. So I could always give it to her relative. Then a friend put me in touch with a goat rancher who gave me lots of advice on caring for my new pet. He also told me if I decide to get rid of her he would be more than happy to come pick her up. Then finally a county worker putting up Christmas decorations in front of the County Courthouse said she could provide a good home for the goat, even promising me the goat would never go to the stock yards to be butchered.

Faced with all these prospects and the possibility of never finding the owner, I started praying about what to do with this goat. That is when I sensed God telling me the goat is mine. I never heard any words; I just felt I was to keep this goat. Before then I had assumed I would have to find her a place for her to live since she cannot stay in the vegetable garden forever. Goats and vegetable plants do not mix. With this change of heart and thinking, I decided I better start learning about goat care.

During a trip to town (Rocksprings) I stopped by the County Agriculture Extension office, where I was given some information on raising 4-H goats. I came home and started reading the fliers. There is a lot of work that goes into raising an animal for 4-H, most of which I do not need to worry myself about, but it was interesting reading about it.

While I sat in my living room reading the literature my phone rang. It was a woman who lived in Rocksprings (15 miles/24.14km away). She had just gotten back into town from visiting family over the Thanksgiving Holiday, and had read the notice of a lost goat. It turns out her goat had disappeared from her yard several weeks earlier. The family had driven all over town looking for the goat but never saw any sign of her. Since her goat had never made any attempt to get out of the yard before and was always locked up at night, they feared she had been stolen. A lot of what she shared about her goat sounded a lot like the goat I had found, but the distance made both of us wonder. Still, it had to be checked out. Her goat was a female boar-cross. I had found a female boar-cross (probably crossed with a Spanish goat). Her goat was a sancho, so was mine. I had learned just the previous week a sancho is a bottle-fed goat and use to being around humans, more of a pet then livestock. Only the issue of the distance made both of us pause. Unless it was an adolescent joke, why would anyone steal a goat and then drop it off in the middle of nowhere? Clearly, in this case a picture is worth a thousand words and I gave her my email address so a picture could be sent to me.

I would spend an anxious night waiting for a picture of the goat. I thought God had told me this was my goat. Had I been wrong? Everyone had told me I probably would never know where she came from, were they wrong? Did the goat I was now viewing as my goat really belong to this woman in town? If so she had a right to come fetch the goat.

The next morning I stared at the picture of a baby goat being bottled fed. I analyzed the photo and then went looked at my goat. There were a lot of similarities but it was clearly not the same goat. I was relieved I was not going to lose the goat I had now become fond of, but sad for this woman and her family. When I informed her it was not the same goat, I learned she now had to call her grandson with the bad news. I really did feel bad for them and have prayed they find their goat, but most likely it was stolen and would never be seen again.

So now I own a goat, which I have named Lawn Mower, who is living up to her name. In the past three weeks I have learned if sold at the stock yards she could easily fetch $150, but she is not for sale. I also have been informed I need to get another goat so she has company. Since ranchers often want to get rid of sancho’s, I assume it is only a matter of time before God brings me a second goat. Most ranchers breed goats in the fall so they will have their babies in the spring. In all likelihood, Lawn Mower was born last March or April. How she wound up alone in the middle of the country is anyone’s guess. It is possible someone bought her for their children and then decided she was too much work and just dumped her. I will never know.

On December 2, I drove to San Antonio to attend a Christmas party. I returned with a friend who came out to fix some things around the place. While here a hard freeze rolled in and we woke up that Monday to a light dusting of snow on all elevated surfaces. Before Thanksgiving I had hung some tarps on the garden fence to act as a windbreak for Lawn Mower, but she needed some shelter. Without any trees or structures to hide under she had no protection from the elements. So that Monday my friend and I, using more tarps, thick long cedar branches, and some metal roofing that laid around the ranch, we built Lawn Mower a pen. It is only makeshift and can be easily removed come spring. But for now she has a dry place to sleep. This morning when I went outside to do my morning chores I found her asleep in her makeshift pen.

How A Goat Challenged My Faith

Last March after spending $3000 to have an eight foot fence installed, I planted my first real garden. I have grown a few vegetables in pots over the years on apartment balconies, but I now had real space to grow food. So I planted lots of seeds and started watering daily. Due to the Texas heat and extreme drought, most of my vegetable crop never made it. Many seeds never germinated and others just failed to grow. My corn did well the first few months but when it came time to start producing ears, it simply got burned up in the hot sun. When my tomato plants failed to grow, I went to a nursery in Kerrville and purchased baby plants. At first they seemed to be doing well, but one day all the plants disappeared. One plant did have a stump sticking above the dirt, but another plant, roots and all, simply vanished. Later that month I watched in shock as a porcupine squeezed through the holes of the fence. My next winter project will be to wrap chicken wire around the bottom of the fence to keep small critters from getting inside and having lunch.

One of my goals with the garden was to share, which I was able to do. While most folk’s garden failed them this year, mine did not. Maybe the difference was that when I planted my garden I prayed over it, asking God to bless it so I could help those in need. That prayer was answered as I took bags of zucchini and cucumbers into town. I also made multiple loaves of zucchini bread which I shared with friends. I also harvested arugula, mesclun salad greens, and basil. So though it was not a roaring success as I had hoped for, I did have a pretty good crop, better than anyone else I know of out here.

I joked a lot about my best crop, which I did not plant. Since I had to hand water the garden every day, grass and other weeds started growing abundantly. By the time I was able to purchase some good weeding tools, I had 4 to 5 feet tall grass growing in and around the garden plot. Grass and weeds started growing elsewhere too. The task of removing all that grass seemed overwhelming. I did spend a few hours for several days trying to remove some of the grass but it quickly became clear it was going to take weeks to remove it all. I knew there was an easier way, goats.

Goats will eat anything down to the root and there are thousands of goats in Edwards Co. The problem was how to get a goat. The chances of a goat just wandering into my yard and following me into the garden was so unlikely that though I fantasize about it I did not expect it to ever happen. The nearest sheep (who are pickier eaters) live about a mile away, and goats are over 2 miles away. When the opportunity presented itself I did speak to someone who raises goats and so I knew there was a possibility she might bring over a goat or two, but first my garden needed to close shop for the winter.

So for the past few months I have had goats on my mind, especially when I see all that grass and weeds taking over the garden. I think about goats when I push the grass aside looking for cucumbers that are hiding or arugula needing to be picked. I wonder if I have waited too long to request a goat when I search for the basil among the tall grass.

Well, Friday evening my problem was solved when I looked outside my window and spotted a goat walking by. In shock, I threw my coat and shoes on and went outside to greet my very friendly visitor. At first she kept her distance, but within a few minutes she started following me everywhere I went, which was straight into the garden. My new female friend was very happy as long as I stayed in the garden with her. She was like a little puppy dog, following me everywhere, rubbing her head and horns against me, and eating my weeds.

I immediately called the authorities to report a lost goat. Then I started calling my friends and neighbors. Someone had to be missing a goat but I as I write this I have no idea who owns her. There is always the possibility the owner doesn’t even know she is missing.

It is now early Saturday morning and the sun has not even risen yet. The goat has spent the night in the garden; I am guessing curled up somewhere sleeping. My plans are to leave her there tell either I find the owner, or more likely—find someone with goats who is willing to take her until the owner is found or keep her permanently.

It is not going to take her very long to eat up all my vegetable plants, weeds, grass, etc. Once the garden is cleaned out, which depending on her appetite could be sometime today or tomorrow at the latest, she will be out of food and so she cannot remain in the garden. (I did provide her with a five gallon bucket of water.) Without any other way to secure her, she could wander off onto neighboring property all of which is owned by hunters. For her own safety I need to find better accommodations quickly.

I will share the rest of the story later, after it has happened. Let me just close with this—we should never underestimate God. I hoped for a goat to clean out my garden but I did not really pray about God sending me a goat because it seemed like pie in the sky wishful thinking. A goat just wandering into my yard was too improbable, and yet God provided me with a goat. Not only did God send me a goat, he sent me one that is affectionate and doesn’t want to leave my side, and thus was willing to follow me into the fenced garden. I thought I would have to solve the grass problem myself by seeking someone with goats willing to lend me one, but God had the last laugh.

(Matthew 14:31) “And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?’

(Matthew 17:20) “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, Move from here to there. And it shall move. And nothing shall be impossible to you.”

(Mark 9:24b) “Lord, I Help my unbelief.”

Accessing the Internet via Satellite

When I moved out to the country my options for access the internet became very limited. Basically I had one choice—satellite. There are no phone lines to the property (will cost $5000 to have one installed), so DSL and dial-up was not available to me. And of course cable does not exist anywhere in the county. There was a Wild Blue satellite dish on the south side of the house so I looked up the company online (before I had totally moved out here and still had internet access at my former residence). They came out and hooked me up.

Accessing the internet via satellite is very different then DSL or cable. On the surface it is the same, I turn on my computer and the computer communicates with the modem and I magically am logged onto the internet. But a satellite feed is affected by the weather. I have learned over the past 22 months that even fog can prevent that feed from reaching my dish. So if it is raining outside or foggy, I am not surprised if I cannot get online. But it is not just local conditions that affect whether or not I can get online. I have been told my satellite feed comes through Laredo. In 2010 a tropical storm hit Laredo causing a lot of flooding. That entire week my access to the Internet was spotty. Sometimes I was able to get online and sometimes I wasn’t. I just never knew. Eventually Laredo dried out and my access to the internet improved greatly.

Sun spots has an effect on internet access, just like it does for cell phones, ATM machines, gas pumps and everything else dependant on satellite technology.

So when I got kicked off the Internet last Thursday I was baffled but not surprised. First thing I did was turn the Weather Channel on to see what was happening in the state. The radar showed clear skies. So I knew the problem was probably not weather related. I then turned the modem off and shut down my computer. I waited a few minutes and turned everything back on. Still couldn’t get online. I tried it again, keeping everything off for a longer period of time, but it still did not work. So I called the company. As soon as a human being answered the phone, I suddenly was back online.

Since Thursday I have been having more and more problems. Got kicked off Friday and half of Saturday. Sunday and Monday no problems, but since Tuesday I have spent more time off line then online. Yesterday I finally broke down and made an appointment for someone to come out and figure out what is going on. I am baffled as to what problem could be so intermittent.

Fortunately just 15 miles from home is the Claud H. Gilmer Library, which is rated eighth in the nation in its expenditure category. It may be little but it offers a lot. The library is in the town of Rocksprings, pop. 1300 (the county only has about 2000 human residents). One service they provide is Wi-Fi. Which is why I am sitting in the Gilmer Library right now, I have a guaranteed access to the internet here. I may live in a rural area but in today’s modem world I still have access to modern technology, even if it does break down once in awhile.

My Compartment Filter Made Me Sick

This past Sunday on the way to church I started feeling bad. By the time Sunday School was over I felt fine and totally forgot all about not feeling well. Then on Monday, before the sun had even risen, I hopped into my car for the hour long drive to Kerrville. Since it was once again a chilly morning, I turned on the heater. Then just like the morning before, I started feeling bad. I started thinking of what might be going on. For instance, I analyzed what I had eaten for breakfast the past two days. Just about the time I started feeling like I might throw up, it hit me. Maybe the cause was my car heater. I immediately turned off the heater, which produced instance relief from the need to gag. I would drive for the next 45 minutes without any heat. Since it was in the low 40’s F (7c) outside, I was pretty cold when I finally arrived in Kerrville.

After stopping for some hot tea (my favorite hot beverage), I dropped by my auto repair shop. He turned my car on and looked under the hood but found no obvious problems. My fluids all looked good and everything sounded fine. After a brief discussion he asked me if I had ever changed my campartment filter (also called cabin filter), not to be confused with the air filter. I own a 2006 Toyota Rav4, which I purchased in 2009. I had never heard of this filter.

As it was explained to me this cabin (or compartment) filter is just like the AC/heater filter in our homes. It occasionally needs to be changed. All air passing through the car’s ventilation system and coming out the vents into the car, basically the air we are breathing, first passes through this filter. Not all cars have such a filter (the mechanic checked to make sure I did). I am guessing that all or at least most new cars have this filter. I decided to have the filter changed. I was shown my old filter which was covered in a thick coating of dust. My total cost was $60.

I have no idea how long I have been breathing bad air in my car. I do know for the past few months whenever I turned on the AC the air smelled dusty. (Sunday was the first time in a long time I felt the need to turn the heater on.) I had complained to a few backyard mechanics about the dusty smelling air, but I was ignored (probably because none of them knew cars have a compartment filter). Clearly the air in my car has not been good for some time. Since very few folks seem to know about this filter, I have to wonder how many people are out there breathing air full of dust, mold and other allergens, but the air is not bad enough to cause the driver to head straight for their auto repair shop?

My ventilation system is now providing me with cleaner air. The big question is do you have a cabin/compartment filter? And if so, does it need to be replaced?

I'm Now A CoCoRaHS Volunteer

I grew up in Sacramento, California and the weather seemed like a pretty consistent event. If it was raining at my house it was guaranteed to be raining all over Sacramento and I assumed it was raining similar amounts. This was the days before satellite assisted weather reporting and so I really knew nothing about weather patterns. I only knew it rained all winter and was sunny all summer. That was the reality for all of us children. When I was in the fifth grade my teacher put up a bulletin board that read “April Showers Bring May Flowers”. One boy voiced what we were all thinking, “how dumb is that, everyone knows it doesn’t rain in April”. Well, it almost never rains in April in Sacramento, but I would learn later in life that for much of the country the weather is not so predictable.

I now live in Texas where it can rain all year or not rain all year. It can be raining on one side of the house and sunny on the other side of the house. I once was with a friend driving by the entrance to the San Antonio Airport. It was coming down so hard we could barely see out the window. It was one nasty storm. I couldn’t wait for that night’s weather report to learn how much rain we got. I just knew it had to be several inches. So when the weather man reported we had received no rain at the airport, not even a trace, I couldn’t believe my ears. The freeway I had been on was less than a mile from the weather collecting data station but not a drop had fallen there. That is Texas for you. It is also the reality for many people across the country.

Recently I learned about CoCoRaHS, which is short for Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network. CoCoRaHS is “volunteers working together to measure precipitation across the nation.” CoCoRaHS is free to join. All one needs is an official rain gauge and the willingness to daily record your rain/snow totals when home.

This morning with the help of the County CoCoRaHS Coordinator and her husband, my official rain gauge was installed. They also took a GPS reading of my location, since the map software CoCoRaHS uses put me in the middle of the highway. Anyone can visit the site and check in to see how much rain has fallen in different areas. For instance I am in Edwards County. My location is TX-ED-22. I am the 22nd person to volunteer in Edwards County, but I am aware of a few more people who will soon be joining the force.

If you want to find out where in your own county volunteers are, you can simply go to the CoCoRaHS web site and click on the map to find your own county. Then see where totals have been reported. And if while there you want to know how much rain has been arriving at AOCCCI, click on “MAP” on the top menu bar, then “Station Number Maps”, then under “Map Location” choose Texas and Edwards county Once the map pops up just look for station TX-ED-22. Once you know where AOCCCI is located on the map, under “Map Type” you can select “precipitations” from the drop down menu. There you will get a map showing the rain totals for all the stations in Edwards County who reported that day. You can also change the date to see what the totals were for any date in the past.

If as you have been reading the thought has crossed your mind that this sounds like fun, then may I suggest that you visit the CoCoRaHS web site and learn more about it. It really does not matter if you live in the country or a large city, the more people recording their precipitation totals, the better. This is more than just a fun hobby. This information is being used by climatologists, hydrologists, emergency managers, engineers, and more. It could even save lives. So if you think this is something you would like to do, then check it out.

And finally, I took some time this afternoon and looked up Sacramento County in California, where I grew up. It rained a few days ago and there were lots of people reporting rain totals. As a child I might have thought everyone was receiving the exact same amount of rain every day, but one look at that map told a different story.

Serving God

I never chose to move out here for myself, but to serve God. This past summer I have been having lots of opportunities to do just that.

One way I have been serving God is by sharing the bounty in my garden. When I planted that garden last spring I dedicated the garden to the Lord and asked him to make it bountiful so I could share with those in need.

This has been a tough summer to try and have a garden. Texas has been in a severe historic drought. It has never been this bad ever. The dry conditions have allowed our temperatures to sky rocket. While much of the country was just beginning to thaw out from winter we were already hitting triple digits here (100f = 38C). Because of these conditions many folks never even bothered to plant a garden. Those that did often had poor results. For instance, I do not know of a single person in this county who managed to grow tomatoes. They all had the same problem—no flowers. I planted tomatoes but in my case the plants got eaten before they got big enough to even think of flowering.

I may not have had any success growing tomatoes, but God did answer my prayer. I have been harvesting zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, arugula, mesclun greens (for salad), and basil all summer. Nothing else I planted grew but I have harvested so much squash and cucumbers that I have shared with quite a few people. Most folks are in shock that my garden has produced anything. I really believe I have had a harvest because my garden was dedicated to God with the purpose of sharing and so God has blessed it.

I just planted a fall garden. I have no idea if anything will grow but if I do get blessed I will be sure to share with others.

Before I owned my own car I use to get occasional rides from friends. Now I am providing that service to one of my neighbors, who I have become good friends with. This elderly couple lives about 3 miles from me. The husband gets all his medical care at the Veterans Administration (VA) clinics and hospital. He usually goes to the clinic in Kerrville, which is an hour east of us. Last month they wanted him to have some special tests that can only be performed at the VA hospital in San Antonio. They do not know San Antonio that well but I do. So I said I would drive them. I have now driven them to the San Antonio VA several times. On one occasion it was for exploratory surgery and all three of us had to stay overnight in a hotel. He has several more scheduled appointments at the San Antonio VA hospital which I will be driving both of them too. Every trip to San Antonio is always a full day affair.

Besides these tests, last month the husband had a mild stroke on a Sunday morning. It affected his ability to speak and understand what others are saying. I was at church when the husband finally was able to ask for me and his wife called. I rushed to their house and managed to talk him into letting me drive them to the VA hospital. He was admitted that evening, upon which his wife and I returned home. We made the 120 mile (193 km) drive back to San Antonio that Monday and again that Wednesday. He was released on Wednesday but he still had a doctor’s appointment that Friday. So I put 1000 miles (1,600 km) on my car just that week.

The husband’s speech is improving daily but he may have kidney cancer. We should find out next week at his next doctor’s appointment in San Antonio. I promised them I would be there for them and I intend to keep my word.

I am also keeping busy these days trying to learn Dreamweaver, which is web design software. I have viewed some tutorials during the past few months and have learned a lot but still need to learn a lot more. Designing web sites is a very tedious and time consuming activity. It is not easy at all, especially when using new software. I have just begun the process so I do not expect to have the new site finished for some time now. Most likely I will still be working on it next year.