Howdy all. Thanks for all of the encouragement and the PM's. I have heard from more people on this site than I have friends in my real life. Of course I only have 2 friends, and there are hundreds of thousands of TBN'ers out there, so I guess the math was inevitable. Don't worry about me too much, I am trying to keep my head up and my heart in good spirits in spite of the business and personal struggles right now. Thanks for all of the advice about the surgery, I was going to really bust it for a quick recovery (I'm not a patient man), but will heed your advice and take it easy. I have promised not to work on the fence the first 3 weeks after they cut me. I do have an old gear tractor, but I've been practicing shifting left handed. Since I keep my right arm typically on the FEL stick, poised and ready to drop a heavy load (hope you are all proud of me for heeding that advice too) I've been using my left hand to shift a lot already.
I had to go out to the farm monday night, we lost 3 more cattle over the weekend. I took my tractor and loaded up the last one that died and took it to the University of KY's Animal Disease Diagnostic Center. Hopefully they will be able to figure out what is going on so that we can address it. When I fired up my tractor though, the steering was impossible again. Not sure what the deal is, and didn't have time to check the fluid, but I'll do that next time I'm out. Looks like I may have a pretty good leak somewhere. It was so hard to steer I actually hit the barn trying to make the turn through the gate. Just couldn't get 'er to turn one handed in 6th gear in time.
So, I learned a few lessons in that one. Sorry David from jax, another scratch on your FEL, but the barn took the brunt of the impact.
Like I said, I'll keep you posted as best I can. I do have some potentially good news though. Just finished my taxes, aparantly I'm a really bad rancher (big loss on the farm) and not such a keen salesman either (small loss on the beef thing), but I had enough deductions that I am getting over $10,000 back. Even though I've been absent from the site for way too long, I have not been gone so long that I can't look at a $10,000 refund and see a back hoe. It's a longshot that I'll actually get to use that money for a back hoe, but I have already started convincing myself how good it would be to have. Digging 9 graves for Longhorn cattle with David's FEL is a pain and it's hard to get them deep enough that the horns don't stick out of the ground. My Longhorn burrial ground looks kind of freaky once the dirt settles and those horns peek out. A back hoe would solve that problem. And no more chainsaw/drag the logs out with my bad shoulder. I could make short order of them with that back hoe and save myself lots of pain. (this is where I am looking for encouragement from the TBN faithful that even though there are a million other things I could apply that money towards, nothing would be this noble.)
Thanks again everyone.
