It's 43 degrees outside and...

...this is where Sterling and Ginger asked me if they could spend the night:

All they have for covers is their jackets. I would have let them except for they would have had to walk past the cattle at night in the dark when they figured out it was a bad idea.

Update: Dog, Cattle, Suburban

Some of you may be aware that our livestock guard dog Justin got his world ROCKED the other day. It all started with a girl...
Our friends have another livestock guard dog (female) and wanted her to be bred by Justin. She is in heat, so they brought her over to our place for a visit. Justin has been very happy with that arrangement, but she has a powerful attractive quality and is bringing in big dogs from all over the county. I didn't even know we had so many dogs around here. Anyway, the other day when we came home from partying with the Allreds I found Justin half dead and freezing out in the mud. I brought him in and set up a pen in the garage with a heater, washed him up, treated him with some 1st aid supplies and gave him warm milk to drink. He was NOT looking good that night and it broke my heart but I was expecting to be burying him the next morning.

These pictures are from the first night. Notice the two teeth marks on the opposite side of his leg from the big gash? I could see his tendons in his leg and he is lucky it is just the skin that was ripped. The next day, we saw a big pit-bull-looking dog that I think was the perpetrator. Those ones on his leg make the cut under his eye look like nothing at all.

Anyway, as of today, he is doing great and is limping around tripod style. We really like this dog. This was his first night spent indoors and he actually held his bodily functions until we let him out of the garage for a potty break - no training and he is housebroke!

I thought this was a fun picture of Winter and Sterling playing in the hay while we fed the cattle and goats.
About our Suburban - the other day while we were hauling Jessica's harp around between performances, the Suburban made some funny sounds and was acting like the E-brake was on and grinding while driving. I thought I could hear noises when I put it in gear too, so I figured the transmission must be full of loose pinball machine parts and ready for the junkyard. We parked it (which, in turn led to the damage to Jessica's harp which you can read about here: Harp Tragedy) and had a auto shop come pick it up. The good news is that they couldn't get the problem to replicate. I asked them to go ahead and drop the pan off the transmission to change the fluid and look for loose/broken parts and it came back with a clean bill of health! At this point, I am thinking a rock or something got stuck in a brake caliper or something and that we are in the clear! Hooray! We were feeling blessed that a $1,500 transmission repair bill wouldn't throw us into bankruptcy, but now we feel even more blessed to be able to apply that $1,500 to something more effective for our family plan.

Fun w/ my truck

I wrote this post at 2:00am on the 5th - I was just finally able to get my reports that were due to Corporate. Something about my VPN not hooking up....

Anyway, earlier that day, I snapped a couple of fun shots:

This is what is left of a ton of decomposed granite that will be serving as the underlayment for our new granite paver patio. Notice that it the outer 4" or so is frozen - it was a real pain getting that part broken to get the stuff unloaded.

This is what filled the truck as soon as the granite was out of it. All those branches are the results of my newest hobby - trimming trees! I don't know what it is, but I really have to say that I love to cut branches off trees (no surprise there) to sculpt them into new and better looking versions of their old selves (the surprising part.) Anyway, if you are going to be around on new Years Eve, come on by because this stuff will all be flaming high.

Is this a Jed Clampett load or what?

An Original Thought?

Believe it or not, we are pert near (that's Texas slang for "just about") ten years into this brand new century. Time really flies, and it is amazing how fast technology, too, has changed in those few short years. What I want to know, however (aside from the reason why not a single politician nor environmentalist has proposed synchronized traffic lights to cut greenhouse gases, reduce dependency on foreign oil, reduce the need for add'l road construction, etc) is why it is, in this brand spankin' new century of rapidly advancing technology, that we can't figure out a way to harness that technology to communicate better with our politicians. Bear with me here as a simple farmer lays a communication brainstorm into "the cloud."

What if there was a website....you know....like usa.gov or something... where any regular Joe from anywhere, USA could post a suggestion for viewing by the entire world. Then....any John Doe and any of his friends could view said suggestion and give it a thumbs up, or thumbs down (or rate it according to some other system.) Suggestions with the highest ratings would be automatically sorted into a summary page with the most highly favored suggestions for the country. Politicians could make their own assessments of the suggestions and go from there. What have we got to lose? How insignificant would the costs of such a program be? How great are the potential benefits? Let's harness the power of the masses in such a way as was never imagined by the founders of this great country - let's take advantage of Al Gore's invention here!

Heck, my cousin Bill could prolly have the code for a basic version of this website written and published to the "ennernet" (as the locals call it) within an hour or two. All he lacks is the official URL and Obama's blessing in a national speech.

Here are my basic plans for the site:

1. There would really need to be some sort of login system - something as simple as Ebay's or Craigslist's would be fine I think...but if you really wanted to go nuts, it could incorporate some sort of requirement for a social security number matching the name you submit or something
2. There could be different categorizations for each suggestion (like environmental reform suggestions, health care reform suggestions, legal reform suggestions, etc) On top of the categorized suggestions, there could be a category for "most popular suggestions" or something similar to aggregate the best of the best of all categories.
3. People could "lobby" for their suggestions on popular TV shows, advertisements, Twitter, etc.
4. There would have to be a moderator of course to weed out non-productive suggestions, but there would have to be some accountability on that (like publishing the deleted suggestions on a separate list)

Wouldn't it be great to throw something like this out there and just see what our collective wisdom allows to rise to the top? The only reason (I think) a system like this doesn't already exist is that there is no money in it. We have the capability, why not use it?

Disclaimer: My motives for desiring such a system are selfish and stem from a prideful suspicion that I myself, a lowly farmer actually may have a suggestion or two that this country could benefit from, but which are lost in the volume of mail that my representatives receive and is likely never even viewed by them.

Driving Back From Abilene

Here's the view from Abilene this morning:

Luckily it wasn't affecting the road and there was no ice - I am safe and sound at home now.

Newsflash: Farmer Ridicules CNN

In a surprising turn of events, a local farmer from rural Leonard, TX is heaping ridicule on the mighty CNN for a seemingly insignificant oversight. After reading this article on some out-of-place icebergs, the barely literate farmer claims, "I guess CNN could use some farmers in *they're* editing room."

What set this farmer off were such seemingly simple sentences as these:

"The currents that have taken the icebergs so far north mean that their now doomed to melt in warmer waters. NIWA estimate that the bigger icebergs will last between six and eight weeks depending on where they go." (bold text added by the editor)

In other news, Piggy Smalls is scheduled for an afternoon flight at 2:00 EST to celebrate his pre-Christmas roasting.

The cows & goats & kids (same ol, same ol)

The other day at Dairy Queen, the kids were super excited to see pictures on the wall of all their friends and of their T-ball team from the year before. The local DQ is the team sponsor.
Today, while Jessica entertained a whole gaggle of women for a baby shower in the house, we spent most of the day outside pruning trees. Once we were done, we called the cows/goats over for a snack on the leaves from the removed branches.
The goats (especially) seemed very appreciative of the snack.
Later, we headed up and gave the cows a bale of hay and the kids took the opportunity to get a real close look at the cattle. I don't think they have ever been this brave about it before. In the picture below, you can tell Sterling is not quite comfortable with that cow right behind him, but he makes a genuine effort at a smile.

This little guy is not eating hay yet, but he wanted to see what is going on in the hay ring.