Sunday, November 29, 2009

Thanksgiving wrap up

Winding down the long weekend. The turkey is about to make its final appearance as soup for supper. We have been living off awesome turkey sandwiches and now it's time to pick the bones.

The weather finally broke to sunshine today-two days of drizzle led to serious rain on Friday and Saturday, both of which I had to work in the mornings at the farm. Boss hurt her back and was down on Friday-R and I flew through the chores and finished early. T came in on Saturday, much to my delight, since it had been just myself and the Boss the last few Saturdays. Boss made an appearance in the barn to do HOOVES. Yes, flat on her back for two days and then comes in to do hooves. Well, she didn't make it to the bucks-T and I left early and to my surprise the bucks wanted their walk in the rain.

R and I had put in a new gate to allow the bucks access to a huge side field, and I learned that R and Boss had forgotten to secure the gate last week. Well, when those bucks took off Saturday, I stopped to grab my snack-homemade sticky buns. I have a great sweet dough recipe that makes great dinner rolls and it such a huge recipe that I also made two small pans of sticky buns-cinnamon buns with honey and pecans. Anyhow, I start stuffing in the sticky buns and saw the bucks get some wind under their sails, so I raced through the saturated fields to cut them off.

We faced off along the highway. Well, this is Maine, so don't think four lane Beltway-just a two lane with a 45 speed limit, but most folks do 60 and there are a lot of gravel and lumber trucks that drive it as well. Four of the newer bucks spread out and kept pushing that line to the road. casting glances across to a green field. The older boys hung back in a pack waiting to see what would happen. I stomped along in the road racing from one of the leaders to the next, brr-ing and barking and stomping and finally picked up some styrofoam trash to whack Chrissie back from the road. I found out later that the bucks had crossed the road when they freed themselves earlier in the week, and apparently they knew the grass WAS greener on the other side, but I was having none of it.

Finally they gave up and headed back to the wild strawberry runners along the treeline-ripping mouthfuls of runners and behaving themselves. (as much as 15 bucks can behave themselves)

I had today off and had a huge to do list, still racing the snow. I cut up the rest of the recent tree drops in the goat pens into haulable lengths, cut some softwood into lengths for something to stack wood on. That was supposed to be the end of my pen work, but I couldn't resist dropping a couple of trees for the goats, and had a good sized beech fall back instead of forward, and it hung itself up in some trees behind it. The wind wasn't in my favor, either. I raced back to the house and got a length of stout rope and hooked it up in the branches and pulled it down=towards me, with the saplings shouting "it's coming!" and me running like lightning to get out of the way.

"You can run fast," said the Firebird. LOL.

Then lunch break followed by going under the house for winterizing-that is the grossest job and my skin was crawling between the spiders and fiberglass and the smell of something like a snake nest...a boiling hot bath took care of that, now for supper and another rain/snow day at the farm in the am...ugh, my feet are going to rot! and all my workclothes smell like wet goat (buck) so it looks like one of those days off this week will be spent on laundry...sigh..somehow we will find the time to get a Christmas tree and make wreaths and haul out the Christmas stuff!

Happy December!

Still waiting for that computer part....:(

1 comment:

Tonia said...

I picked the bones today!! Made a cassarole with the left overs. It needs some tweaking though...
Flat on her back then comes out to do Hooves?!?! Lol Thats just asking to be back down on your back!
Goats have a great memory when it comes to where the tasty stuff is!lol
My PC is fixed just gotta get the $$ to get it!!