Barking, Caulking, and Pear Eating Donkeys

Wendigo was barking last night.  Her furious woofing woke us up in the wee hours, and when I asked Brandon what he thought she was barking at, he just said "who knows" and fell back to sleep!  Wendi barks like that sometimes, and if we make the late night journey outside to see what monster she is holding at bay, we can't find any reason for her agitation.  I imagine that whatever it is that's out there, it hears her booming barks and keeps it's distance.  It's probably nothing.  At least that's what I tell myself as I put a pillow over my ears and go back to sleep.  This morning as the sun was rising, she was resting peacefully on her lounger, despite the frost.  I hope she got some rest today, so she has the energy to bark through the night again.  Doh!     

We had the first fire of the season in our wood-stove this week.  So exciting.  And warm! 

The arrival of the cold weather inspired Brandon do some caulking on the west and north walls of our house.  For the past two winters we have felt a slight breeze from around the windows, doors, and floor boards, and we threatened to caulk all the cracks, but never actually pulled out the furniture and made it happen.  

Some of our cracks were so big they sucked up entire tubes of caulk!  We think it makes a noticeable difference already, and there's still more caulking fun to be had. 

We may be doing winter prep, but inside the greenhouse the tomato plants are blooming! 

I can snack on cherry tomatoes when I visit the chicks in the brooder.  Nice. 

I collected marigold seeds from the still blooming plants in the greenhouse, and zinnia and sunflower seeds from the garden. 

Check out this monster sized swiss chard!  It loves the greenhouse now that the temperatures are cooler.  I'm curious to see how long it will thrive.  Next year I need to plant more greens in the greenhouse late in the summer.  Remind me, would ya?  

I didn't do any food preservation this year.  No canning or drying or freezing.  I may regret that this winter when we dependent on the grocery, but I was glad to give myself a pass this year.  I tried hard to eat as much of the garden's bounty as I could, straight from the garden, although I was happy to have the jars of tomato sauce my brother-in-law shared with me from the family tomato patch.  The old pear tree has fewer pears than ever before, but the pears it has are huge and sweet.  I make it a habit to collect the freshly dropped pears and share them with the donkeys.  They eat their pears fast, and then demand to have my pear core before I'm even finished!  

Rufus and Hattie have grown in thick coats of winter fur.  They look so adorable with their shaggy foreheads.  For some reason the flies love Hattie's eyes, but not Rufus's.  Rufus has beautiful eyes. 

I think Hattie must have blocked tear ducts, because her eyes are often watery, and the flies like to land on her lower lids and drink her tears.  And bite her face.  I've dabbed so many ointments and repellents on her fly bites that when I reach toward her face now, she recoils, like I'm going to do something to her.  By the time I got a fly mask on her, she had sores on her face with bald patches, and she did not enjoy it when I tied her up and cleaned and treated her sore spots.  But now that the flies are gone, and the mask is off, we have a system.  As long as she has a pear to chew on, she doesn't mind if I reach from behind her head and rub an ointment on her bald spots.  She's mostly healed up now, thank goodness.  I'll be ready with the fly mask early next fly season.  

Eyes and Baby Meat

Before the sun was set last evening, the goats and dogs and I took a long walk around the little farm.  The dogs entertained themselves sniffing sniffs, and the goats were happy munching leaves and weeds.  I mostly just admired my goats.  They make such a pretty herd.  

Especially now that we have Little Buck.  His coat is soft and shiny, and he thinks it's fun to let the herd get ahead of him and then pretend he has been left behind, so he can run and jump to catch up.  His ears flop all over the place when he prances.  I can tell he thinks he's cute stuff.  He is. 

His eyes are the color of amber, and the setting sun makes them glow. 

Peaches has yellow eyes, and when she faces the sun her pupils shrink to tiny rectangles inside a shiny yellow marble. 

Dark River has bright blue eyes. 

So does Light River, although sometimes they are so light they look clear, or gray.  Square pupils never cease to be surprising when I notice them.  I think goats might be aliens from another planet. 

Wendigo has pretty brown eyes and always wears dark eyeliner.  Her bottom lids are droopy though, so the pink shows through and makes her look grouchy, even when she isn't.   

When she's getting petted and snuggled, she gets so relaxed that her entire face hangs down.  Her jowls wobble and her forehead droops down and her eyes get lost in her skin.  It's like her skin is too big for her face!  

Puck's skin fits him perfectly.  His chocolate eyes still shine bright, but under certain light I can see a faint transparent haze over this eyes now.  Cataracts, maybe? 

For some reason I counted up how many eyes lives here now.  One hundred and twenty-four!  This includes two for myself and two for Brandon, plus two eyes each on the twenty-five meat chicks that live in the brooder box in the greenhouse.  The picture above is from two weeks ago, when they arrived at the post office in a card board box. 

This is what they look like now.  They grow so fast!  And look at the size of those feet.  These are the bar-b-q special, which are some sort of cornish cross birds bred for their size and speed of growth.  I've never raised this kind of chick before, and I'm already amazed at how fast they grow and how much they eat! 

This is a picture of them all on day one...

 and now here they are after only two weeks.  Of course, they've consumed nearly an entire forty pound bag of food in these two weeks, and they drink the entire bucket of water each day.  It won't be long before they will be too big for the brooder. 

The hatchery routinely gives you an option for a free "bonus" chick, which I said yes to, but I didn't think about it being so much smaller than these meat babies.  It's name is MJ, and I worry that it will be squished by it's giant brooder mates.  So far, he's okay, and he walks on the backs of his big buddies when they crowd him out from the food.  

Home from Tybee Island

Do you remember the last time you saw the sun rise from the ocean?  Can you still hear the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, and smell the early morning ocean breeze, and see the flocks of pelicans passing overhead?  I can, even though it's been several days since I've been home from our family camping trip to Tybee Island in Georgia. 

We all converged on the campground last Wednesday, and stayed through Sunday exploring beaches, shops, and all the beauty of southern coastal towns.  I rode with my parents and my aunt (look at us, back in 1979!) and we towed my parents camper all the way there. 

If the moon's gravity creates the tides, and the tide sculpts pools and ripples in the sand, does that make these moon sculptures? 

We swam in the pool, rode bicycles, built sand castles, collected sea shells, fished, boogie boarded, cooked, ate, and drank plenty of tasty beverages.  We watched a movie, The Great Outdoors, from our beach chairs in the campground pavilion, and we laughed so hard we were nearly disturbers of the campground peace!  We even went on dolphin boat tours and rented kayaks and paddled to an island right on the border of the open ocean and the river delta. 

Despite the wind that constantly tried to blow us off course, my niece and I managed to paddle ourselves to the island and back again.  A whole pod of dolphins rose from the water to check us out, including a baby dolphin!  We saw them very close, right next to our kayak.  That's when I truly realized, there are things living in this water!  Big things, with snouts and fins and teeth!  I've seen dolphins and whales from boats before, but this is the first time I've felt like I was in the water with them.  It's a little scary, but so exciting!

If you want to see some of our vacation photos, click play below.   

  

Lordy, Lordy...

Tomorrow is my birthday.  My fortieth birthday!  Strange, isn't it, how a fortieth birthday seems to represent a certain maturity, but is also a reminder how much there is to look forward to.  If I think about all the life experiences that came with the first forty, and then try to imagine what the next forty will bring... I don't know if I'm excited or exhausted!  

But maybe that's one of the good things about entering middle age.  So many of my big ticket items on life's to do list are less demanding of my energies now.  There are check marks in the columns for school, marriage, career, dream home - even donkey ownership!  I can relax now, right?  I got this. 

Not that I expect anything to remain static, but I feel optimistic, which surprises me.  Shouldn't I be worrying about wrinkles and retirement plans?  Nah.     

Something about milestone birthdays encourage declarations.  Like that country song about the next thirty years, where he "conquers his adolescent fears" and plans to eat a few more salads and not so many beers.  Me too. 

I plan to grow things in my dirt.  I plan to have such good dirt. 

And I'll go to work, and do a good job, and I'll make more memories with my friends and family.  And I'll watch the sunset with my puppies. 

And I'll snuggle the cats.  Whether they like it or not! 

I'll do all those things, and even more.  Or I won't.  How would I know what the future holds.  After all, I'm only forty!