Newbie.
Posted on | December 18, 2012 | 3 Comments
Normally I have a No Return policy on goats. Not because I’m selling inferior stock and I’m afraid my customers will bring me back a dud. Mainly because a lot of my goats are bought without spousal consent. Oh, most couples talk about purchasing a goat together. But sometimes “I’m not sure” is interpreted as “Yes, get that goat!” What can I say? Marital communication is a complicated issue.
So should a spouse come home from work to find a goat in a box in the garage and Build a Goat House on the weekend To Do list, I can’t have them arguing about whether or not the goat is coming back here. No Returns, people. The rest you have to work out on your own.
The one exception is breeding privileges. If a goat comes from my stock and is only living with other goat stock from my farm, then I will allow the females to return to be bred. After all, they are dairy goats and, although they make great pets, I enjoy seeing them used to spread healthy rich goat milk throughout the community. Imagine if we each had an adorable dairy goat for our family’s needs and didn’t have to participate in intensive dairy operations? Even more important, the more people that milk their own dairy goats, the more people I could find to milk for me when I want to go out of town. Win, win, people!
So it was under these conditions that Zorra returned to visit this week. Zorra was born here in 2011 to Magenta and is part of Brianna’s family, my herd queen.
Pick Me Up.
Posted on | December 13, 2012 | 6 Comments
Well, things went from bad to worse.
The hose sprung a leak after constantly being unattached and reattached to the water hydrant due to freezing temperatures at night. So a lovely mud slick developed outside the barn door.
One of the ducks turned up injured. Possibly broken leg. She can move around, but slowly. And kind of floppingly. Of course not floppingly enough to be an easy capture. Her wings still work and she’ll fly right down to the pond when we attempt to take her into protective custody. So the best we can do is guard her each day during the morning madness at the chicken trough, chasing others out of her space to ensure she gets a sufficient amount of food.
Isaac, one of the sheep, broke off a horn. We have no idea how. We wanted to examine it to figure out what happened and check for infection. But we settled for spraying it with Blu-Kote from a distance, which was all he would tolerate. He ended up with almost that entire side of his face blue, kind of like a Braveheart in the barn yard. Plus I had to go to work with blue fingers for the next 3 days.
Riccio developed another sebaceous cyst and we had to drain it and sprinkle it with wound powder. These cysts are common in guinea pigs, don’t seem to be painful, and can be cleaned up pretty well whenever you find him sitting in his cage oozing pus on everything. Draining them does require a strong stomach or apparently some kind of sick proclivity like those people that constantly post videos of bursting sores, boils, blisters, pimples and other disgusting growths on YouTube. Perhaps someone needs to buy them a guinea pig.
We are getting slews of Christmas cards every day in the mailbox. Which just reminds me that we have yet to make and order any cards yet. And what are the odds of that happening at this point?
Which also reminds me that we have failed to get out the Christmas decorations or put up a Christmas tree. Getting out the decorations means braving the disorganized mess in the shed. In addition to putting “clean out the shed” back on the To Do list. Where it will sit until summer arrives and I take it off the list because no one cleans out the shed during snake and spider season. And then I will ignore it until I need to get out the Christmas decorations next year. It’s an exhausting and dysfunctional cycle.
Should I even bother to mention that it rained throughout the entire Christmas parade—-leaving us soaked and dispirited on the sidewalk and with a mountain of wet blankets to wash afterwards? Read more
One step forward and you know the rest.
Posted on | December 10, 2012 | 3 Comments
Daylight savings time isn’t the only thing that has sprung forward and fallen back. Around here we haven’t just lost an hour of sunlight and been forced to climb on chairs, get out user manuals, or almost drive off the road trying to reset all the clocks in our homes and automobiles. We just can’t seem to complete one chore without another one rising up in its place. Something about that 23.5 degree tilt as we head into the winter solstice makes it a particularly slippery slope. Just when you’re making some progress, you find yourself sliding back down.
For example, it has been time to rake the leaves for a while now.
So we finally got it done. By “we” I mean Big, who happened to be out of pocket money, and therefore, susceptible to chore requests. Raking really is a drag because the leaves are such a wonderful, carefree ground cover. They look pretty, they make a lovely crunching sound when you walk on them, and, best of all, they mean you don’t have to mow anymore. They even act as a protective layer between the bottom of your shoes and the dog poop that the kids never scoop. Read more
Fine Already.
Posted on | November 26, 2012 | 5 Comments
Some of us do not go gentle into that good night. The winter night. I, for one, do not appreciate the approach of winter. I prefer to do the morning milking in my pajamas. I like sunlight when I wake up and long slow sunsets while still working in the garden. My wide-enough hips are not thrilled by bulky outerwear. I do not care for frost on the herbs or on my windshield. Or the hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing dearth of fresh eggs.
Giving Thanks.
Posted on | November 22, 2012 | 7 Comments
Let us give thanks….
for the families that we were born into
The Queen Bee and her Wannabees. Brianna and her daughter and granddaughter.
Guinea teaching Bugs 101 to her keets in the garden.
and the families that we chose.
"You are not a kitten. You are not a hen....Wait. You ARE a hen!" (Are You My Mother? by PD Eastman)
Tina and one of her "brothers." Guess her kids will have uncles. There goes the matriarchy.
Election Results.
Posted on | November 16, 2012 | 6 Comments
I’m not sure what everyone is so upset about. Because no matter who you voted for, there are lots of benefits when the elections are finally over. All those elections signs make for excellent free targets.
A Tale of Two Cities (Plus the Country).
Posted on | November 14, 2012 | 1 Comment
Sometimes the party never ends. Or at least it doesn’t end until the kids are so exhausted that they put themselves to bed and the adults are too exhausted to care if the kids brushed their teeth or not. As a matter of fact, the adults are so tired that they just open a new toothbrush out of the upstairs toothbrush stash rather than make one more trip down the stairs to get a toothbrush out of the luggage that they meant to carry up but didn’t. That’s tired, people.
What’s even more impressive is the fact that this party practically spanned the entire globe. Or at least most of the state. Well, three areas of the state. Definitely 150 mile radius. We almost had to make arrangements for farm sitting. Which means we were almost too far away and too busy partying to make it home for the milking. That’s a party, people.
We started partying where the party started many years ago. The little college city where we first became friends. You’ve met my friend, T before. This time she drove into the city for Homecoming and staked a place at the local brewery where she and I watched many, many college games together. Also where The Other Half and I had our first date. She actually commandeered the party room where The Other Half and I hosted our rehearsal dinner. She did this by turning her 4 year old loose in the room and letting him burn off steam by racing back and forth from wall to wall. Then she let the baby throw half-chewed chips all over the floor. By the time I arrived the waitress had closed the privacy doors (apparently, there was a baby-almost-falling-down-the-staircase-into-the-downstairs-bar-area incident) and conceded the party room without even suggesting an extra fee. When I appeared at the hostess stand and said I had a friend waiting for me, they eyeballed my 4 kids (still fighting over who got to put the money in the parking meter) and knew immediately where I was supposed to be. Read more
Learning.
Posted on | November 6, 2012 | 8 Comments
Well, there has been a lot of learning going on over here. I took a basic knitting class where I learned, um, the basics. I made a visit to a knitting friend when I dropped a stitch. She showed me how to fix the dropped stitch and lots of other tricks that I barely understood at that time and couldn’t possibly repeat at home. I’ll be back, K, I’ll be back. Plus, a frantic phone call to another knitting friend when I knotted my yarn, none of my co-workers could help me unravel the knot, and I didn’t know if I could cut and retie it or not. And lots of referencing my Guide to Knitting by The Chicks with Sticks, Nancy Queen & Mary Ellen O’Connell, whenever I couldn’t remember what I had learned in class. Also, I learned lots of tolerance for lots of mistakes in my first piece.
But I did it.
I knitted a scarf.
A Fair Price For Memories.
Posted on | October 30, 2012 | 4 Comments
I am a big believer in the fact that you don’t need money to make memories. Every time I see the Disney ad “Let the Memories Begin” paired with special rates of “only $2500.00 for a family of 4!” I have to laugh. We budget our annual vacation at $400. For a family of 6. And there better be a kitchen where we can cook our own food.
My kids have grown up enjoying all the free local festivals and turning their nose up at any that wanted to charge a gate fee. They enjoy the local kids museum on the free Sundays or the city kids museum on $2 Tuesdays and explore the free exhibits at the planetarium without watching the $8 planetarium movie every time. They go to the science center when it has free admission (on its anniversary each year) and get to visit the swimming pool with the water slides and special pool play areas on its annual Back to School Labor Day bash when all school age kids get in free. Our credit union offers us a discounted family membership to the zoo (only $35 for an annual membership), so we spend 6 or 7 days a year meeting friends and family and visiting the animals, and it also gives us free admission to all the aquariums when we’re down at the beach. That $35 is cheaper than the admission cost for the 6 of us on one visit. God bless the credit unions.
So despite our proximity to the capitol city and all the hoopla surrounding the State Fair, we don’t go every year. And when we do go, we pull the kids out of school and go on the Canned Food Day when you can get free admission in return for 2 cans of food per person. Parking fees, ride tickets, and fair food for 6 are just too expensive for an annual adventure. And the begging for more than we’ve allocated (Just one more ride? Please, please, please,please,please,please!) is just too intolerable.
So the kids hit the jackpot this year. Because I had planned to go without them to the fair on Canned Food Day. Just so I could enjoy strolling through the garden displays in peace and quiet, making note of any flowers or blooming bushes I might want to add to the perennial bed. And also to pick up a couple Silkie chickens to replace the splash we lost a few weeks ago. Last year I saw all these lovelies for sale….
….and I was hoping to find a frizzle or patridge Silkie for for sale in the poultry tent. Read more
Ho hum.
Posted on | October 22, 2012 | 5 Comments
At first I thought I was getting old. After all, there were some signs. After years of highlighting my hair, God saw fit to give me some natural highlights. You know, to save me the trouble and all. Ask and ye shall receive, I guess. Um,… thanks.
Plus there are many times when I enter the grocery store and only shop from the discounted bakery and close out product shelves.
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