Tracks & Footprints

It snowed on Tuesday, as I already mentioned. By afternoon, the temperature had fallen enough that it was sticking. We got a decent enough covering for the kids to go out and make some dirty snowballs and require their snow clothes to be washed. Yay, more work!

Speaking of work, as some of you already may know, the principal of the kid's school called me a week ago a wanted to know if I wanted a job. I don't really need another job, but they needed someone and were in a pinch and so, after 10+ years of being out of the outside workforce, I am now a district employee. Strange how that works. I swear, if you want work, come to Kansas. There's jobs (and general work!)  here! Shoot, sit at home and they'll call you, apparently!

The school receives grant money for fresh fruit and vegetables. That produce needs to be washed, cut and divvied up between classes ('three-school' (friday's only), pre-K (2 classes, AM & PM), Kind., and 1-6th) and since I do that on a smaller scale at home, they need someone now and I am free (sort of), I figured, why not? So, hi ho hi ho, off to work I go to do what's necessary to calm the fiery dragons keep the kids healthy and fed. Tuesday I counted raspberries....I don't even want to know how many I counted. Yesterday I cut and counted cauliflower and then apples and I did a good 150+ apples- cut, core, slice, divide. I was beat! BUT, the cool news in all of this is, the goats benefit too! Guess who gets all the 'throw away' goodies?

Since there is often much to much for the girls, it's yet another reason to get some pigs! I hadn't even thought of the school cafeteria for excess food. This should work out real well and if we're lucky, these pigs will cost us near nothing and provide a lot of yummy bacon...and imagine this, it may already come pre-apple-seasoned <grin>!

It'll take some time to adjust my schedule and certainly Rachel and her leg has thrown a bit of a monkey wrench in things in that we're taking them and picking them up but on the days I work late enough, I'll just stay and hang out and help in the classrooms until school's out.

They asked me if I wanted to be a back up cafeteria aide (if someone were to call in sick (there's only 2 of them!) and I quickly nixed that, they have to be in at 6:30! Not that 6:30's a problem, goodness knows by the time stamps on some of my posts, but with milking chores (and kidding coming up) and store business and work + general life, there's no way. And to be on call? I just can't (and don't want to) do that. I love being at their school, I wish everyone could attend a school like this but I have to draw the line!

On to snow though, here's some photos of the kids out playing. Yesterday Rachel asked me if people with broken legs can sled. I told her people who sled end up with broken legs. I'm so not fun! Bwaahahahahaha

Note the crawl tracks on the left and the footprints on the right. Oh, and the kitty prints on the far left.

Notice Rachel tasting the snow!

Fleeting

Enjoying the last few fleeting days of warmth before closing up and calling it a day winter.

Ding Dong Dawn

I try to take the girls out to 'the woods' daily. They don't seem to want to go on their own this time of year. 'The woods' are in the NE corner of the property and pretty far out so I can't say I blame them. This time of year looks a little spooky in there. They will go out to the closer mulberry and cottonwood trees to see if any new leaves have fallen. As for grass, there isn't much in the way of that except this cool weather green stuff that's popped up in the last couple weeks. They also like to eat the ceder tree needles this time of year.



Winter's a comin' that's for sure but we have had quite a few very nice 'above average' (temperature wise) days recently. I remember last year, it seemed like Halloween day was the first real cool day and after that, it was all down hill. Two days ago we had a pretty good storm roll through that dropped quite a bit of rain. There wasn't much snow to speak of but it was there. I'd be happier with freezing rain as oppose to snow.

We're better prepared this year, live and learn right? The tarps we put up on the barn (See: 'Winterizing'e a few posts below), I think, are going to work out great! We've yet to get them up on each of the boy's buildings but that'll either be this weekend or next.



Jeremiah is off to St Louis Nov. 16th for a conference. Today he has the college instructor over to certify (in welding) some kids.

The living room is, for the most part complete except for a new front door that will come a bit later...you know, once we buy it and have time to install it =). I'd like to get the hallway walls, ceiling and trim painted before Thanksgiving, but I won't hope for too much. I do need to purchase those thermal curtains though for much of the house. I am even considering putting up a curtain rod over the back door (inside) and installing those thermal curtains for the winter. Man, when that cold wind blows, it just makes no difference if the door is shut tight or not. A curtain over the door may look a bit strange but hey, if it works I don't care!

So, I guess that's about all that's happening in our little world. About half of the does are bred. Kidding starts mid-March and I have every hope it will be decent weather next year! Everyone is looking fit and fine and I recently trimmed and wormed all 3 bucks all by myself. I'm quite proud of that fact. Jeremiah, I am sure, is quite happy as it's really not the most pleasant of jobs. Out of rut isn't such and issue, in rut you're 100% likely to smell vile and have things on your clothing you'd rather not think about.

 I don't know if I mentioned it or not but the 3 boys had all been in a pen together and that just wasn't working. A few of the does were all cycling together and that was just sending the boys into an absolute spastic state. Jeremiah and I rehabbed one of the north pens for them and things have calmed down considerably. The back fence of the north shelter was still that old field fencing. We took that down and installed cattle panels and a walk through gate for access to the new buck pasture that we sectioned off with high tensile electric last spring. The shelter itself also needed a little help that required a few boards to be installed but other than that, it's good to go and secure now.

Poor Storm is by himself but believe me, he's better off. Much of the time he can see the girls but he does get upset when the leave out to the pasture. Once I am sure all the girls are settled (bred), I may move all the boys back into the same pen and see how things go.

For the birds

Can you imagine in your mind Barney Rubble trying to back pedal his human-powered vehicle? That's what I am trying to do with winter. How's it workin'? Not so hot. No pun intended. High of 48 tomorrow (which oddly, is the low tonight) and rain. Winter is for the birds.

Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring

The pond in all 4 seasons as we've watched it change. You'd think this was a favorite spot but it just so happens I've taken photos in the exact same spots during all 4 seasons...and still have done nothing about the Cottonwood we cut down (that can be seen in the in the left hand side of the first photo). Too much wood, too little time. Oh well, we'll get to it someday.

Summer 2010 just after we moved in. And they weren't kidding, it is deep!

Fall 2010

Winter 2010/2011

Spring 2011

Meet Sgt. Sexy...

...and his wife, Yeti The Snow Queen (who needs to have her eyebrows waxed and whose lovely getup wouldn't be complete without hay and snow in her hair.)




See what Sgt. Sexy does on his day off for the abominable snow wife adoring wife he loves so much...









Abominable! I mean, Admirable!

Goats & kid in snow

Just so we're clear, I'd like you to know I braved the elements unhappily to bring you these photos. You're welcome.





I had to coax the goats out of the barn with food. They won't go more than 18 inches away from the opening of the barn. Darn goats. These feeders are portable. I just hook them up wherever I please. In this case, outside the barn in the snow.

I LOVE SNOW!

I LOVE SNOW! I love photos of it. I love how clean and beautiful it looks. I love watching it fall from the sky. I LOVE SNOW...when someone else is in the picture, someone is else is standing in the gosh darned friggen cold taking the photo, someone else is hauling hot water to their animals and cleaning up after children and getting dressed and undressed and redressed and undressed and dressed and undressed yet again within an HOUR and all that other crap! Yeah, I love it alright. Love watching it on TV, love watching it from the window from inside a warm and cozy house and love especially when I don't have to deal with it.WHY did we move here again??? The kids have been out playing in it about 500 times now! It hasn't even been here 24 hours. WHY did we move here again?!?! Thankfully both the kids are in school as I write this otherwise that 500 would easily triple. WHY did we move here again?

Imagine me dragging Drew along out to the road to catch the bus all the while I am almost screaming at him to stay in the tire tracks that Daddy had made that morning as he left for work only to get to the bus about 300 feet away from the house to find him COVERED in snow!  I had to ask myself if I was that one tacked minded trying to get him TO the bus if I didn't realize I was dragging him IN the snow. Nope, I wasn't. He just thought that walking through 8 inches of it was much more fun than walking in the packed down tire tracks!

It was nice alright. Nice for the first 5 minutes when I woke up and everything is blanketed in white. That was about the extent of the nice but since then, I have had it! Those 20 lbs. I lost are easily going to turn into about 50 with the trips I am making to the goats with hot water and convincing them that it's not anthrax! It's not the trips I mind with the water bucket. I could easily put in a deicer cutting my trips to 2 or even one to just feed. It's all the other crap! (i.e. dressing, putting on boots, falling on my as...rear end in the snow, etc. and then reversing all of that on the trip back up.) It's not even the cold for the most part. I scored a wool zip up jacket yesterday at the farm store for $10. I am WARM. If I knew I wouldn't freeze to death by wearing nothing, surely I would just so I didn't have to deal with taking all the layers off and putting them back on and dragging snow and dirt inside, ug. If I had to deal with this more than 2-3 months out of the year (and LORD HELP ME IF IT'S A BAD YEAR AND IT STICKS AROUND THAT LONG), I'd literally choke myself to death on snow. NO JOKE! People who like living in snow are INSANE! Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go kick a snowball!

FRIZZLE FRACKING FLARKIN FLICKIN SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's official...I'm sick!

Sick of fall and winter, sick of cold, sick of ice, sick of gloves, and hats and runny noses and cold wind and Thomas (our wood stove), and cloudy days and brown foliage and leafless trees! I'm sick of it all. I want Spring!!!

We had some last minute company the past week. Gary, Jeremiah's brother-in-law (Rebecca's husband), Thomas and Sarah visited us from WV. 

It was 66 degrees on Thursday. As you can see...after wearing long sleeves and jackets and hats and gloves for what seems like forever, 66 degrees feels like summer and out came the tank tops, shorts and flip flops! Can you believe it?

 

(Left to right: Rachel, Sarah, Drew, and Thomas. Sarah was 14 months old at our wedding and Thomas was our 3 year old ring bearer...how quickly they grow. How quickly time flies!)

But what a tease...what a horrible horrible awful terrible tease. I knew it wouldn't last. I secretly hoped it would of course but my wishing was fruitless. Thursday evening after such a beautiful day with a warm southern wind, the north wind won out and the temperature dropped so quickly. The clouds rolled in and we had sleet on Thursday night. It was a frozen wonder wasteland by Friday morning followed by snow flurries by 9 AM.



I long for spring! It cannot come fast enough.

Today is Saturday, day one of 2011. We're ringing in the new year working on the basement. We've been slacking off the past few weeks, I'll admit. I have a list of "honey do's" for the next 2 months to include painting the inside of the house. We'll see how far I get with that.

Some new somewhat old news...The Healthy Baby Boutique in Newton (about half an hour due east) will be stocking some of my diapers towards the middle of the month. That's pretty exciting!

One of my goats, PJ, will not settle (as in, she has not gotten pregnant yet). I've run the gauntlet as to the reason for her infertility and narrowed it down to a few possible reasons. I talked to a goat mentor of mine and she said possibly a uterine infection so yesterday, when she came back into heat again (I wanted to wait to be sure she wasn't pregnant as filling her full of antibiotics could harm potential fetus') I started her on a heavy duty dose on Penicillin, after 7 days of that she'll get another 7 days of a tetracycline (which is another antibiotic) and hopefully when she comes back into heat again (approx. 7 days after all the full two weeks of  antibiotics) she'll finally settle. I am hoping an infection is her problem because I have about run out of other possible causes. Her daughter Emmy from this year that I kept isn't settling either...I've put her onto the back burner for now hoping that a dose of selenium may be her problem. I'm still waiting to see if she cycles again or not. As for everyone else that I wanted bred is bred so, at least the infertility isn't herd wide, though it may be easier to diagnose the problem if it was! Oh well.