Lisa and John

We had a wonderful day at 4-H day camp on Friday.  The boys had a blast.  The weather was cool and refreshing.  The activities planned were great.  The mountains were close and beautiful.  A perfect day.  (The theme was “Cowboys and Indians”.  We were part of the WHITE tribe.)

And… my favorite….

I love it when FAMILY comes into town.  We had a (much to brief) visit from Josh, Andrea, and Lily yesterday.  It was so nice to be with them again.  Lily is such a fun, vibrant child.  As usual, she completely dwarfs Avy.  They did a little better together than last time.  Soon enough they will be having tea parties with their pretend high heels on their feet.

Lily was smiles the whole time.  Avalon pretty much had this same expression on her face the whole time.

Lily loves to pat Avy’s head.  She is learning “soft” and “gentle”.  It’s a steep learning curve.

Cute Cousins.

Well, the phone line was repaired by morning.  The first thing I did was go out and check out the “damage”.  They took out a few fence posts, but were able to find the damaged cable without messing too much up.  My fence contractor was NOT happy.  But, it could have been a lot worse!

This is me looking down into the pit they dug out.  I thought it was interesting enough to share.

One big hole!  Shortly after Cal and I were there, the utility company came and filled in the hole.  Good as new, I guess.  (More strawberry plants were squished, but I have faith they will survive.)

Well, we have learned a lot of lessons over the past few days.  Here is another one.  In an effort to keep offensive animals OFF our property and perhaps keep a cow ON our property, we hired a fencing company to put in a good farm fence for our back yard.

So, we got a permit to build the fence.  Several folks came out and marked the power, gas, and phone lines.  And then our fence building began.  Last week they came and cemented in the end posts.  Today they came in a put in a bunch of “T” posts and started stretching the wire.  They got the fence done on the side of our property that runs along the road.

Well, about dinner time we noticed a bunch of “Qwest” trucks gathering around the road next to our property.  FIVE Qwest trucks to be exact!  The workers kept walking along our brand new fence.  We went to talk to them and apparently our fence has caused EVERYONE to the west of our home to lose phone service.  One of the posts that was inserted into our yard today killed the phone line.  They still don’t know which post.

Here is the fence.  Isn’t it a beauty?

Here are a few of the trucks that were here earlier.

One of the main poles was pulled up and they could see the line down there somewhere.  It was intact at this point.  We are very relieved that we hired a professional company to put in this fence (John considered doing it himself.)  I’m sure we will learn more as this unfolds, but it looks like the chicky who came to mark the phone lines failed to do her job properly.  If she had, we would have never had our fence so close to their line.  They told us that the phone line runs right along where our fence is!  Go figure!  Who knew??

Here they are.  It is 9pm now.  They have some sort of back hoe out there.  I imagine we won’t have much of a fence left when they are done.  Calvin said they ran the backhoe right over his baby strawberry plants.  We are hoping they surive.

And to all my friends who are without phone service today.  I’m sorry!  I hope they fix it soon.  The lesson learned is, if you have a job to do, do it well.  No half hearted efforts.  Because the lines weren’t marked properly, a lot of time and effort is being wasted.  Not to mention those that might be suffering for lack of phone service.  So sad.  Oh well…

Some of the time.  We lost another chicken today.  We got two chicks a few weeks back and they have gotten big enough to put outside.  Our neighbor’s dog got into the coop again.  Stupid dog!  The other chick is badly wounded and probably won’t be alive in the morning.

We have figured out where our coop is weak and will make repairs accordingly.  Until then I’ll try not to have bitter feelings for this dumb dog.  I mean, I guess it is partly our fault for not having the coop secure.  But, other people have free roaming chickens with few problems.

So, it’s a bit sad over here on the Pratt farm.  Just wanted to vent a little.  Pray for my little hen.  Either for her to heal or join her other chicken friends up above soon.

Goodnight.