I hate hauling hay by hand and using borrowed equipment but that is where I find myself today. Tractor will not keep running and the John Deer Dealership just came and picked it up. It took them a week to come get it and they say it will be about two weeks before they can get to it. I wish I would have bought an older tractor without all the environmental crap on it. One without all the computer crap on it. One that the average person could work on.

Now that that is out of my system.
It has taken some time but Olive is completely mastitis free. I don’t think that would have ever cleared completely up without the calf helping to keep her milked out. I have been and will continue to milk every morning to strip her out even without separating her from the calf. I thought that she had lost the right front quarter. It was still mostly hard as a rock giving very little milk as late as a month ago. Now it is normal. It has been a long battle that is finally won.

Also, an addition to the Homestead and preparedness in general, right before Thanksgiving I got my HAM radio Technician license. Working on the General and maybe if I can dedicate some time to it like I did the Technician it will come sooner than later. Call sign is KO4IPQ. I have a small handheld transceiver and just bought a Kenwood TM-V71 that I will put in the truck for now. Once I get an antenna up I will move it into the house for my base station and get a different one for the truck. Not exactly a cheap project so this will have to be done over several months.