Just a Couple of Notes

I am still waiting to get the greenhouse torn down.  Now it looks like it will be after planting.  That’s fine.  But I am starting to get a little nervous about everything getting done in a timely manner.

Sky by the greenhouse

I’m also going to have to figure out how to evict Ms. Goose who has a nest in there.

I heard a cardinal singing outside.  Usually, they are not a bird who waits for you to get the camera to take a picture.

They don’t usually wait for you to change your lens, go outside, and walk closer.  But this one did.

It makes me think he had a message for me to hear in his song.

The rye my nephew planted on the field as a cover crop is coming up.  We weren’t sure it made it through the winter because it got cold so soon after it was planted, but you can definitely see those nice rows of green.  It should help cut down erosion as well as herbicide use.

rye coming up through last year’s corn stubble

Horace and Jasper are looking much better. So is Hilda.  They always seem to do better when they get out on green pasture.

Horace (in front) and Jasper nursing Hilda

Finally, Maybeline is sporting some seriously cranky llama ears.

Maybeline

I agree, Maybeline. I agree.

Abstract

I am currently in the process of getting everything arranged for the loan to replace the greenhouse with a new Morton building.

If you have been following me since I started this blog in anticipation of purchasing the farm that surrounded my acreage, it’s starting to remind me of that.  Kind of. Only worse.

I should have known it wouldn’t just be easy, but it’s kind of to the point of being a little more difficult than it really ought to be.

I have two loans for the farm–one through Farm Credit Services (FCS) and one through the Farm Services Agency (FSA).  The one with the FSA is a government subsidized loan, so it has a really low interest rate.

But now that I want to take out an additional loan, they are telling me I have to pay them off and wrap that amount into my new loan through FCS.

That’s not a big deal.  I plan on the farm being completely paid off within a couple of years anyhow–after fifteen years (instead of twenty and thirty years).

Well, because of this change, it means they have to update the abstract and get a new appraisal of the farm.  That should not be a big deal, but I got an e-mail asking for me to drop off the abstract so they could get the process going.

I don’t have the abstract.  When I signed papers with the FSA thirteen years ago, they required that I leave the abstract with them.

I was told it would be locked in the safe at the lawyer’s office where we met for the closing on the farm.  I told the loan officer from FCS that the FSA kept it, and the reply from the current loan officer at the FSA was that they don’t hold abstracts.

I politely disagreed and then I did a quick Google search of lawyers in the town.  I found a name I recognized, but I knew it wasn’t the name of the office.  I clicked on the link and read about their merger with another office (two actually), and I immediately recognized the name of the pre-merger firm.  So I sent that to her as well.

This is a bit disconcerting.  It makes me wonder how many abstracts are sitting in a box in the safe of a lawyer downtown that the FSA doesn’t know about.

But the FCS loan officer was great.  She called the lawyer’s office Friday morning.

After waiting through the weekend and the first half of the week, I finally got word on Wednesday that the lawyer found my abstract! I kinda want to make the FSA officer eat crow, but I’ll take the high road.  Although, I really think someone ought to let them know they really need to have a conversation with the lawyer to see how many more abstracts are sitting there.  If I hadn’t remembered the name of their lawyer from thirteen years ago, we’d have had to have a new abstract drawn up.

I hope you enjoyed the abstract photography from around the farm to go with the post on the farm’s abstract.

A Week Later

I planned on scooping the barn and Love Shack while we had cooler weather. Considering we’re into horrid heat again this week, it was a really good plan.

I started last Sunday, the 24th.  After my dad came out and helped we had most of the third section done that day.

The next day, I finished it up. Then, I worked on the middle section.  Odie was not happy that I removed one of the llama poop piles and was messing with the other one in there.

Odie

I completed my goal for that day.

On Tuesday, I decided to do the Love Shack.  I was throwing from the other side of the spreader and could get it all filled up that way.  But I forgot that I hadn’t scooped it out the last time I did the barn, so it was really full.  In fact, I had the manure spreader almost overflowing and had to stop.

But I still had some of the Love Shack left to scoop.

I took Wednesday off from scooping, but my nephew’s dad came and emptied it and brought it back for me.

I told you it was overflowing.

Thursday morning, I finished scooping out the Love Shack.  I literally just finished scooping when Zinnia came up to have her kids.

You can still see how that the concrete hasn’t even dried out, but I had the bale of straw beside me when I took the picture above.

Zinnia with Barbie while we were waiting on the vet.

Then I went back to the middle part.  I couldn’t quite get it done.

Friday I finished the second section, and I got a really good start on the first section.

But I just didn’t have any strength left to finish that little bit.

Dolly in the doorway

Saturday morning, I finished it.

I’m done!  I got the barn and Love Shack all scooped out this week.