Yes, why
not blog again. It has been a whole
semester, so there would be a lot to catch up on, but why not? I’m trying to decide whether or not to give a
blow by blow of all events since the last entry, but I think I will just give
the highlights and then give a status report of where we are now.
One of
the main reasons I have not been making entries is that I took a job that has
been taking a lot of my time. I am very
excited about it, though. It is a
classical Christian school in the university model. That means I teach two days a week and the
parents or other teacher or tutor does the other days of the week. It is a great group of people that I am
working with and although the pay is little it is better than subbing and it is
consistent. There is also likely to be
increased pay and responsibility as the school progresses. This is the first year. I teach 6th grade and have two
boys. I will probably teach 7th
grade next year and go on up, learning the classical teaching methods as I
go. I will not bore you with the details
of how classical teaching is different, but I will put up a link to our
website.
It is
interesting how God works. I met this
inclusion teacher named Tom Muirhead while subbing at Liberty Middle
School. After discovering that we were
both Believers we began visiting more.
He later asked me if I would ever want to sub at this school that he was
heading up in Beaumont. After hearing
about it, I knew instantly that I wanted to teach there. Barring that, I told him I wanted to attend
if I could. It has been very
challenging, but extremely rewarding. I
look forward to what the future holds there.
About
that time our pastor resigned. I was
made chairman of the pastor search committee and Anna was on the committee as
well. A few months after that, Tom, the
headmaster at VCA, felt like God was telling him to resign from the
school. In short, the man who brought me
on to VCA was brought on by our committee to be our pastor. Be nice to the people you meet. They may be linked to you in ways you can’t
imagine.
Okay,
for the ranching part. We have 14 calves
in the pens that we are feeding. These
are not just heifers, but beef calves as well.
Our calf crop was highly skewed in favor of heifers this year so we only
have 5 bull calves to sell. We like
building our herd, so this is good from a capital improvement standpoint, but
not from a cash flow standpoint. We will
mitigate this by culling cows that have been unproductive and maybe a couple of
the heifers that don’t look so good.
Since we have moved we have been steadily improving our record
keeping. We know of at least two cows that
haven’t had a calf since we moved. She
is out as soon as we can get her up.
There is another cow that had a calf last year, but has been running off
and taking other cows with her. If one
of the 2011 cows had her first calf in 2013, I will give them a break. If the other cows have missed a year, they
will be sold. It is a slow process and a
little painful, but worth it in the end.
A rancher should expect an 85% calf crop, but only if they cull
diligently.
We
finally had Silver hauled off to be broken.
I am hoping that funds and this horse will work out so that I can go to the
Red River campaign in April. This will
be a once in a lifetime event. Better
than a week of tactical fighting in the field.
But, I need a good horse and money in the bank to offset any lost
income.
The
truck has been out of commission since August. I expect that with the one calf that we own
personally that is being sold, we will get it up and running again.
All in
all, things are looking up. It just
requires patience, faith, and perseverance.
If you say that quickly enough it sounds easy.
