It is COLD out! 8 degrees at 8pm. It has been snowing all day today, 9 inches on top of a settled base of 15 inches. We've had snow for only 5 days and I'm ready for Spring already. Sunday night and Monday we got 16 inches, then a break, then 5 more on Wednesday, then more today.
Things could get quite interesting next week as it's supposed to warm way up. I hope a lot of this melts, we are already out of room for plowed snow on our access road. It's pretty narrow. This is the amount we usually have in March, not the start of winter!
I took the runner sled out this afternoon and did a run down our driveway, which is a very steep hill. That was fun! I need to wax the runners though, I didn't go very fast. I'll try it again tomorrow.
I'm sure glad the goats have good housing this year. For once I'm not too worried about them in this cold.
This picture was taken on Tuesday, before all the snow today! We are getting way too much snow!
Here is Luna, one of this year's kids with all her cashmere on. This will be easy to dehair next Spring, no long guard hairs! I call her Looney, she's such a wild girl. I don't like having goats I can't just walk up to, but her and her mom are fairly wild. Once I get a hold of them, then they are okay, but they sure don't want to be caught!
I'm not even attempting to run the dehairing machine in this cold. I'll wait till Sunday when it's warmer. Now I'm spinning and crocheting, in between all the shoveling, etc. Ah, winter. One is supposed to be able to slow down a bit, but not around here with it snowing all the time! Oh well, it could warm up and all of this melt in a month, too. We'll see.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!
Well, I think I'm ready for winter now. The goats are all situated, everything is picked up and cleaned up, and the does are all bred except for one. Somehow I missed her heat cycle this last time, even though I was watching her pretty closely. So, next time around she will get put in with a buck. It's probably a good thing she will be bred later. She seems to have her kids in the very early morning hours, which I miss most the time, so if it's in the middle of April, it will be warmer, and hopefully they won't freeze like the last ones did. I just barely saved the little boy, and the girl was already dead when I got out there. So I really don't want that to happen again!
Today was a beautiful sunny day in the upper 40's. I got all the gates into the hayshed re-done so they swing easily, then dehaired all afternoon. Now that the days are short, I have to quit dehairing at 4pm so I have time to do the chores before it gets dark. I can't start till noon, so it's short days for dehairing now. Good thing I'm almost done with outside orders! Then I can finally do my own! Yippee!!!
Tonight just before dark as I was filling water buckets, I watched the local Murder (flock) of Ravens, 36 of them! do their nightly fly-by. They have a rookery, or whatever you call the nesting grounds of ravens, over on the other side of the hill behind us somewhere. They always take a nightly group flight in a big circle around this area. Kind of eerie when they fly over enmasse like that. Especially when they call out occasionally. Spooky! Someday I'm going to go find their rookery and see what it looks like around there.
Well, I'm off to spin some more yarn and crochet some mitts for a customer. More as it happens....
