Some Status Notes

Some Status Notes was Originally Posted on May 6, 2010 by lavarock

My Mom was visiting my older Sister up in Virginia and she broke her hip. Regardless of her advanced age, they decided to perform a partial hip replacement and I can report that she came through fine. She also reports that she had no pain after the operation. That is even better news because many of the pain medications make her sick to her stomach.

I’m not sure if Mom will ead back to Florida anytime soon, because my Sister always has someone there at the house and looking after Mom would be easy.

I was going to send Mom some Mothers Day flowers, but I’m still unemployed and by the time you get the flowers delivered, you are up to about $45. I’m going to call Sis and ask her if they want to take Mom out for dinner and I’ll send money. Mom may be ready for a nice afternoon out of the house now.

My friend Sandra just took delivery of a poodle yesterday and I’ll see it today on my trip up there. Today is the day we receive meat for the pet co-op. We buy meat in bulk to feed to our dogs. This is all USDA inspected meat that also goes to the stoes here, however, our cuts are a bit different and certainly cheaper. Strip or skirt meat is what they make fiatias out of, but we get the same meat for perhaps $1.80 a pound. The supermarket at least doubles that price! Beef back ribs are $1.09 a pound. Yes, some people buy this meat for themselves, however, there are other meats offered in the co-op that humans don’t want. They include spleen and beef heart and so on. In helping cut up this food, I have learned to identify many parts of the caw i never knew existed

It is also interesting t onote that my dog Koa eats better than I do. At 70 pounds, he may get a pound and a half of beef for a meal. Naturally, that meat is raw. Another meal may consist of two chicken quarters (leg and thigh). That chicken has to be raw so that the bones in it are not brittle. Dogs and cats should never eat cooked chicken bones.

Sandra and I will be selling coffee (both bagged and brewed) this Friday and Saturday up in town at the orchid society show. I’ll also take along some honey to sell.

We have had a lot of rain recently and the new little coffee trees are doing pretty well. It is time to weed and feed them and I just bought 300 pounds of fertilizer yesterday and will be out spreading it as soon as it gets dry.

Yesterday I put up a rain sensor to keep the watering system from running when it is rainy. It is a simple thing they make to do this. IT is a small microswitch that has a stack of fiber washers on top. When it rains, water drips onto the washers, which absorb the water and get heavier. The weight finally causes the mass to droop and that weight makes the switch trigger. When the washers dry out, they get lighter and the switch springs back up. I need to do a bit of rewiring to the system to include this witch, mainly because besides turning off the ability to water the trees, it also has to stop the pump from running. You don’t want to wate rtrees in the rain, but you do want to be able to use the pump water from one tank to another if it is raining. In fact, that is the perfect time to use the pump for a different task than watering.

Well, time to start filling coffee bags, so I have to go.