Sunday

Still alive and kicking although I feel like I have been through a mangler.

I didn't make it to the farm on Wednesday, opting to close in the little goat house number one before the storm, and then we had a blizzard. I spent the afternoon stressed out about the goats and contemplating calling the guy to come and get them, but decided to sleep on it.

I worked the farm on Thursday, and had a couple accidents. The first I walked into a steel rod and whacked my cheek, but at least I missed the eye. That's what happens when you wear a hood up-you lose peripheral vision. Then at Prescott I went to dump the wheelbarrow and P tried to stop me so she could finish digging a path through the snow to the pile, but I said, "no, I can make it."

Ha. I went full bore with that wheelbarrow and hit the snow and the handles flew up and I went over the top and twisted around and fell to the side so luckily I didn't get any poo on me or go headfirst into the pile, but it hurt non the less.

P was in the barn but I think she might have seen it and ran back in laughing-it must have looked pretty funny.

R and I worked the farm Friday and he wiped out a couple times riding the sled with the bale of hay and just standing on his own feet, but I had the grace not to laugh and he's young and strong so probably fine.

Friday night Willow and I did night chores and it was freezing again...brrrr...as was Saturday am but I did manage to unthaw my fingers. I had a bad spot when I wondered if I could stay out in the cold. My fingertips are still a little numb and tingly as I type this..

Yesterday afternoon was pretty windy so I decided to strip the rest of the roof on the goat house and pull enough boards to finish little house number two. I was jambing a flatbar under the roll roofing that was covered in ice, and it went in really fast and far and the edge of the roll roofing caught me in the flexed bicep and I was in agony. My wrist hurst, my elbow hurt-I thought I busted a vein, but I kept at it until I was kneeling on three six-inch icy boards and figured that was good enough!

Then my knees were so tender from the ice and asphalt I could barely kneel on them today.

Today the wind finally died down and I went to drop some big standing dead fir in the goat pen that might flatten a house. The first went down fine-I knew the second was going to hang up in some trees, and the Firebird and I spent an hour trying to hook the top with a rope to pull it back to no avail.

We hooked it a couple times and I would start pulling and the rope would slip and I would go flying back on my tush...ha.

We never managed to get the tree down but we got it hung up pretty well so it should be there awhile.

So I moved on to little house number two-assembling it. It came out much better than number one, since I had realized where I went wrong, or where I could do better.

So the goats now have three little houses,(two new) a tarp house only Obiwan sleeps in, and the little dog house. They still have the lean to and side house off the old house; both have overhead shelter but are pretty drafty. It is raining right now so at least not the blowing snow from the middle of the week. Three goats could easily fit in the new little houses, but three of the wethers usually sleep alone so they'll have to figure it out, I guess.

Then we went Christmas tree shopping and cut our own tree.
(for $35 UGH! I'd rather cut a wild one but we didn't have a good one here this year) It is on the back step at the moment waiting for the stand to unthaw. I left the stand out a week or two ago and it has an inch of ice in the bottom, so that is by the stove trying to thaw so we can bring the tree in. Now with the rain the tree will be soaked and I don't know if I dare light and decorate a wet tree, so we might not get that in and started tonight, but we're getting there....

HO ho ho who wouldn't know? :)