Progress is always full of challenges (and hard work)

We've come a ways since moving day. Of course the house was move-in ready since we had folks leasing the property since we bought it (along with the bank) 2-3 years ago, but the property and yard needed work and still does, but it's an ongoing labor of love!! Retirement is when you kick back after a lifetime of work and keeping regular hours, collecting paychecks, meeting deadlines, attending meetings, paying into social security - you get the picture! So let me show you about retirement!!! Of course the main difference is the keeping hours part - we get to pick projects with consideration of the weather and our motivation. We have softer deadlines, but we do want to get a garden in this year which will require fencing off an area and preparing the soil; we need to plant grass in the pastures so our future herds will thrive and build a chicken coup, repair outbuildings and storm cellar, replant parts of the lawn - that's just for starters. This is what it looked like when we moved in:
If you look real close, you can see the corner of the 'barn' (it's white)! And you can see some of the corral fence! So Mike ordered a rototiller and a bush hog over the internet. The first project was to clear the corral so we could use it for the horses. So here's Mike lazing back in his retirement, getting ready to 'watch the cows' - you see, he's always telling me that his job is to watch the cows while I feed them and make sure they have water, take care of the garden, keep the house clean and a few other chores. (LOL)

Diligence pays off though, and after cutting down the wild sunflowers and little mesquite trees and treating several red ant hills - and burning and hauling away debris, we have a barn and corral!! He has also mowed down thousands of cockelburrs and other Texas weeds and prepared an area for our future garden. Next project: the pastures. A friend loaned him a little tractor for a couple of days so he could 'disk' the fields and mow down all the wild sunflowers that obscured our view and choked out the grass. Once again, here's Mike, lazing back while clearing fields so he can sit back and watch those cows in the future. This "small" piece of farm equipment probably costs more than our whole ranch!!! We're lucky to have a friend who loaned us the use of one. We're currently waiting for the results of some soil samples we sent to Texas A&M so we know what to do next. More progress will be coming soon!