Oops..

We haven’t communicated in, umm, several months. Tempus fugit.

It seems like only a couple of months ago we returned home from traveling last summer. It is always a joy to leave for new adventures and always a joy to return to the little ranch God has provided us.

So many things have transpired since our last entry.

It has been a long, cold and wet winter. Thanks to the cyclic weather phenomenon called El Nino, we had a very wet fall and winter, both frozen precipitation, and

Pretty in white!

liquid. We have had 1) rain, 2) sleet, 3) snow 4) frozen fog, and 5) pea sized hail at various times over the last few months. We are NOT complaining about the precipitation. We also have five to seven year periods of not much moisture, so we graciously accept the mud, the dirty vehicles, and the cold weather (but there is a little grumbling at times nonetheless….)

Moving along to some geekey things, John uses the winter for indoor projects. On the short list was to totally rebuild a couple of websites he created initially and maintains. John’s favorite web editing software, Adobe GoLive was an ‘end-of-life’ product so John finally decided it was time to move on to a current Adobe product called Dreamweaver. After a couple of weeks worth of on-line video training, he dove in and got the job done. The first effort was a remake of the sudansouth web site (the missionaries in Southern Sudan), the second effort was a complete rebuild of the Friends of Grayson Highlands State Park web site.

He built another web site for nephew Jason’s wife (Christine) that turned out okay as well.

He has had an objective of totally rebuilding the janeandjohn.org web site, but it is like the cobbler’s children not having shoes – he can’t seem to make the time to work on janenadjohn.org.

Our dear neighbor on the other side of the fence to the north finally sold the property. The neighbors were divorced a year or two ago and Marjorie was able to stay in the house until it was sold. It was a bittersweet moment to see the storage pod for the new owners dropped off today after closing. We all need to move on and it was with great delight and anticipation we met our new neighbors today. They seem nice and John was happy to find out the fellow was a woodworker.

Buck’s new “house and yard”

Marjorie endowed us with her pet axis deer (Buckaroo or ‘Buck’ is now in his new home) and her two pet whitetail deer are still in their high-fenced pen on her old property which she wanted on our property. Buck and the whitetail does are used to being around each other, so we don’t know how that’s going to work out. The whitetails were not interested in being walked around to our property. Speaking of Buck, we completely redid the fencing and gates in most of our catch pen and Buck has a pen of about 60 feet by 120 feet (I think this was the size of the lot of our first house!) It took the fence guys about three days to redo the enclosure and they had to build ten gates.

Buckaroo the axis deer

So what’s this about a 19,000 pound boy!?

John has wanted a bulldozer for a couple of years and has been reading and investigating and watching the classified ads and even made an offer a year ago on a dozer about 45 miles away. The dozer is the ultimate guy toy but it is more than a toy – it will be another useful hand around our little ranch. This dozer was purchased from an Internet auction (IronPlanet.com) and the inspector’s report about the condition (and 50+ pictures) was very accurate. John is thrilled to have another piece of useful equipment on the property.

Glamor picture

For those interested, the dozer is a 1999 Komatsu D39P-1, 90 HP turbo diesel, three forward, three reverse speeds, only 1246 hours of use. Joystick steering and a joystick to control the 9′ 3″ wide blade. It is interesting to note the blade on the front of the dozer weighs about 2,200 pounds, about 400 more pounds than his Kubota tractor.

Sorry about such a long time between updates 🙁 May God bless and a fair wind and a following sea to our friends and loved ones…

Jane and John Continue reading →

John has wanted a dog for a few years but always hesitated due to our Bosun (the senior cat), who we figured would not want to deal with being harassed by Trekkie (the other cat) and a doggie.  If you have been keeping up with our infrequent blogs, you will know that our dear old friend and buddy, Bosun, recently passed away from old age.  It was really difficult dealing with the loss of him, but it opened up the possible opportunity to welcome in a new family member.  John started discussing the idea of a doggie with Jane and while Jane wasn’t exactly against the idea of a dog, she wasn’t exactly positive about it either.  As far as John was concerned, this was a hearty endorsement for him to start dog-shopping.

First order of business was to choose a breed, then the source of the dog (breeder, rescue, Humane Society, etc.) and then what age (puppy or adult)?  The choice of breed is extremely important due to temperament, care requirements, tendency to shed the coat, size of the animal, etc.  John was looking closely at Collies (like ‘Lassie’) and Shelties (small Collie) since they are intelligent, a medium size dog (Sheltie is much smaller) and the grooming/care requirements didn’t seem to be onerous.  He emailed a few breeders in the state of Texas and looked on the Internet at shelters and rescue listings.  Our sister-in-law (Bettye) happened to know

Click on the picture for Sassy’s album

we were thinking about adopting a dog and contacted the breeder of their two Corgis and passed along the situation of us looking for a dog.  Jaime the breeder happened to have a Pembroke Welsh Corgi (Sassy) that was retired from the show ring and needed a good great home with no other dogs since Sassy was jealous of attention paid to other dogs.  We all thought this was a good idea, so we drove over to the Austin area and met Sassy for the first time.  It was love at first sight, Sassy seemed to like us, we liked her, and more importantly, the breeder thought we would make good parents.  Sassy needed to have a cracked tooth pulled, so we had to wait about ten days before we could pick her up which gave us time to prepare us and the house.  After having her for several days, we are all settled in with each other and we think she is a sweet and loving dog and is very well trained.  She responds to commands and sleeps in her crate at night.  Sassy and Trekkie and getting along real well (okay – they’re not sleeping together, but they haven’t gotten into a fight either) and about the only issue we have is that Sassy has an insatiable appetite and will eat anything and everything (John feels like that sometimes, as well!)

So, what’s the deal with antelopes you say?  Jane and John are now officially critter-owning ranchers after recently buying their neighbor’s entire herd of blackbuck antelope (about 31-35 animals.)  Our neighbors have been struggling with the economy being what it is, and they offered to sell the herd to us (their house and property are up for sale), and while we didn’t particularly didn’t want to own a herd of anything, we were interested in helping them out.  There is also the possibility we can make some money from the herd by selling animals every year (the does have babies twice a year.)  Blackbuck is a very low maintenance herd animal and we should only need to do supplemental feeding (corn and hay) in the coldest part of the winter.  These antelope are extremely popular in this part of the Texas Hill Country and were first introduced to this country right here in Kerr county in 1932 as an exotic species for hunting.  They are a beautiful animal and are lots of fun to watch.  By the way, there is no closed hunting season on exotic animals (axis deer, fallow deer, blackbuck, etc), so that is the primary reason they are popular.  (You are also likely to encounter ranchers in the area with bison, zebra, ostrich, and camels.)

And now about John’s nose job.  No, it’s not cosmetic surgery.  John had a spot on the side of his nostril that would crust up and bleed and then disappear for a while and then come back over a period of months.  A visit to the dermatologist determined it was a basal cell carcinoma which needed to be excised.  This Tuesday John went to a dermatologist in San Antonio that specializes in only removing the minimum amount of tissue necessary (called Mohs surgery); they excise some tissue, examine it under a microscope, then excise more as required.  John needed two iterations of excision and then a skin graft was necessary to cover up the hole (skin was transferred from forward of the ear area to the nose.)  Jane was discussing a nose ring or Swarovski crystal as candidates for the hole, but John was contented with conventional skin.  A friend of ours was curious if John was going to be able to hear out of his nose now.  John can’t get any respect.

We were planning on leaving for the summer last Monday, but that is now on hold until late June since John needs tendon surgery on his right hand – that happens June 4th.  John is considering this stuff his 100,000 mile refurbishment.

May God richly bless you and yours.  Bye bye from Jane and John!

Wednesday, April 29. 2009

Bosun and John taken two or three years ago. Click on the picture for an album of Bosun

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” [Genesis 1:26]  “A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.” [Proverbs 12:10]

Bosun, our friend and companion for 16 years, succumbed to the ravages of time yesterday, April 28, 2009.  He was a loving friend who gave a lot of love and received a lot of love in return.  More often than not he would spend the night firmly wedged in between us while we all slept together.  Mornings consisted of a ritual where he would bestanding on the bed after we arose and we would bend down and he would rub his nose on our nose.  He enjoyed taking a nap in John’s lap occasionally (which John also enjoyed!)  It is extremely difficult (and painful at the moment) to put highlights of our 16 years of fond memories in this communication, so we will end it here.

Life is a fleeting and precious commodity and as we lose friends and loved ones, this becomes even more poignant; treasure and enjoy those you love while you can.