After a fairly mild autumn, we are getting a dose of winter that looks like it's going to last for a while. Single digits overnight on Saturday! The ground will finally freeze in the goat pen muck. I am really looking forward to that. We got a couple of inches of snow overnight last night. Made for an interesting trip into the valley to get yet another bale of hay. We could get at least 6 more inches over the weekend starting on T-Day and into the weekend. Although I've come to expect more than what they forecast. Last night was only supposed to be a half inch, 2" later...
The 4wd went out on the truck the other day, so it was a 2wd trip down the mountain and into the valley today. I went diagonal a couple of times going down the forest service road, it's a bit icy with all the hunter traffic on it, plus the people that live up here. The county road was icy off and on all the way to Kila. A slow trip to the highway. At least the highway was bare and wet. Coming home with the big bale of hay was better. All that weight (1200 lbs) made a big difference. Although I did slip once down near the bottom of the forest service road coming home. The steep hill that is our driveway was actually ok, I got a good run at it and made it all the way to the top without a problem.
Skippy's new way to have fun is to take a flying leap into the back of the truck and slide into the front of the bed, then slip and slide back out and do it all over again. Silly dog. The first time he did that, the slipperiness caught him by surprise, and he whacked his jaw pretty good on the wheel well when he slipped. He looked at me like I made him slip and I told him he did that all by himself. So, he jumped back out and did it all over again. Goof ball. He has learned the word "treat" really fast. Whenever he's starting to take off away from us when we're out working and he's with us, we call out "Skippy, treat" and he comes running. He gets a little piece of jerky for dogs. It's a high quality, no chemicals or icky things in it, bag of jerky. He really likes them. Now if I could just trust him not to chase the guineas or the goats, he could be out of his pen all the time instead of just when we are out. We put up an electric wire around the yard and driveway fence, which he's touched a few times, so he's not getting close to the fence anymore.
A bit of sad news. Ivory, my ugly duckling goat, died on Saturday. She was my hard luck goat, always near the bottom of the pecking order, so she was always having to dodge the other goats. Had both her horns broke off about 5 inches from her head at different times. Blood on a white goat really stands out! Her eyes were "bug eyed" so she always had runny eyes. She was 10 years old. She had the nicest cashmere, fine micron even this year. She only had one daughter, who also has nice cashmere. I kept her. She's better looking than her mom. I could never keep a collar on Ivory. She somehow got every one of them off. I do not know how she did that, unless Miracle (her daughter) somehow unbuckled them. One less goat here now. I'm down to 21 cashmere goats.
I got my weaving and spinning mojo back! For the last couple of months or so, I just haven't felt like doing much of either, had to force myself to do the weaving. I am going to get that table loom warp done by the end of this month! It's only been on there since May. Sunday I all of a sudden got the urge to get back to weaving and spinning. I got one ounce of cashmere singles spun and worked on the loom and actually got a good amount of weaving in. Ideas for what to make with the cloth I've woven are popping into my head, too. Some experimenting is going to be happening. Now that it looks like outside projects are done till spring, it's time to get fibery again! I will post pictures of the things I make coming up.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day to the folks celebrating it. I have a lot to be thankful for this year; it's been a pretty good year despite a few interesting times. Stay safe out there, it looks like a wild weather week for most of the country again.
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