Sunday

Friday morning my other wood dealer called with my order ready. I was aghast. With all the wet weather, the drive is a mucky mess, and he wanted to bring in nearly 3 cord of wood on one truck.

Well, it could get even worse, so I finally agreed to have him bring it on.

We hurried through goat chores and put a big push on to stack the rest of S's wood so that the tarp would be free for the next load. Of course the driver took one look at the phone lines and said he couldn't drop it there. That only left the side drive-which can suck a big truck in up to the axles when the ground is soft. So be it. Of course he couldn't get it back very far and ended up dropping it all in the muck.

Once he left I had a good look at it, and the pieces are enormous. At least half of them won't even fit in the stove, requiring tedious back breaking hand-splitting. Lovely. I told the saplings I was going to make a note on the calendar NOT to use him next year.

Of course it then started to rain-a cold wet drizzle that thoroughly soaked the whole load even with an old lumber tarp over part of it.

So yesterday's priority was getting some of it stacked. The Firebird was a great help, filling one wheelbarrow with smaller pieces while I filled another with pieces I was splitting down. Then I would stack the barrow while he filled the next, and so on.

We had about 1/8 of it stacked and discovered Sir Nicholas had broken into the little goat pen AGAIN. Nic is my cashmere wether that had one testicle, which is long gone from elastration. That apparently rendered him sterile, but the retained testicle also retained his buck characteristics. He became quite possessive of the does as they came into heat, so I moved him out back with the big wethers, Caesar and Julius.

That worked out pretty well, actually, as the three get along. But the does have come back into heat and Nic has been breaking into the pen. So, I had to stop what I was doing and run a hot strand in front of a bit of fence that he was breaking through. Then we got to listen to his pathetic cries for his girl all afternoon.

We aren't breeding any goats this year. In fact, every so often I swear I am going to sell them all. The only trouble is that we all have different favorites and can't agree who should go. Nic is probably top of the list, except with his cashmere he is the only one that makes his keep. Figures.

Anyhow, after fixing the fence and some other chores, we stacked another row into sunset, so I estimate we stacked about 1/4 of it. Amazingly I am not sore and stiff this am. Hopefully we will be able to stack more this afternoon after I make a run to town for supplies.