Update Picture of 7 week old LJ

Okay, here's the boy. Today he will be getting his first bath. I woke up yesterday morning and he had this dried blood looking stuff on his forehead. Turns out someone dripped some Hershey's chocolate syrup on the boy's head. He was probably begging and got a few drops on his head. The arrow is pointing to his favorite chew toy. It is a bone that is very hard, but spongy looking. It is from either a cow or goat's head.

I am really hungry now, and tired. So I'm going to get off this computer, eat my cottage cheese and snuggle back in bed.

Until next time.

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Puppy Sweater

OH my gosh. Look at that face! Isn't that the cutest thing?!

Okay, so here's LJ in his sweater. This is a picture that I took a few weeks ago, believe it or not! Next I'll post an update picture of the boy. He's already gotten so much bigger. This photo was taken March 17th and he was about 5 weeks old here.

He didn't really like this sweater too much. Although I think he did appreciate it when going outdoors, as it was pretty cold at that time. I made this one on the fly, kind of following the baby goat sweater pattern. But the chest area between the two front legs was too narrow, so kind of restricting.

By the way, I'm awake because I'm hungry. On occasion I do this thing where I wake up in the middle of the night and cannot sleep any longer. It is true, I was in bed before 7pm last night (still tired from last weekend!) but I woke up by midnight and was just lying there, trying to get back to sleep. I do not feel hungry when I'm lying there. Hunger does not actually show up physically for many hours. But then, I've been lying there, trying to sleep all that time. So I've found it's best to get up and eat something, even though it's the last thing my body wants.

But this morning, I've not eaten and am just now beginning to feel hungry. I think I will have some cottage cheese. That sounds good. I have to make sure I eat something moist.

Until next time.

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Crocheted Dog Scarf

Okay, here's the doggie scarf I designed and crocheted. I even wrote the pattern down, and have crocheted a second one to make sure I got the pattern right! I sell scarves on the Internet and a dog club in Canada wrote and asked if we would be willing to donate something to them. So I created this scarf.

I tried to reach the lady who emailed me twice, and finally she got back to me and said she'd been away from a computer for three weeks. She finally gave me the address where I could send the donation.

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We're NOT moving

In an earlier entry, I talked about our trip to a city rather far from where we live now, and said that we might be moving. We decided against that move.

I was very upset by the thought of moving so far away. It upset me more than I knew. I sometimes get triggered by things and don't even realize how badly it's affected me. Anyway, no one in our family really liked the place we looked at, especially not the home. It was an ancient single wide mobile home, and just looked really old.

There was another post I needed to address. That was one for a dog scarf I'd crocheted. I promised to show it when I was done. I will make that reply next.

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Exhaustion

Just a quick note. After Friday and Saturday, I had a very hard time getting motivated on Sunday and Monday. I got the bare minimum done, like washing the dishes and vacuuming. I actually rarely vacuum, but of course being in such a dusty climate we could vacuum several times a day and still pick up dirt. My goal is to vacuum every morning (of the days I'm not working) as one of my chores. I had some neighbors over for about an hour and a half on Monday, to see the critters. It was funny, the hubby brought his camera to take pics of his wife holding the baby goat, the baby chick. The pics are to show their granddaughter. The wife said their grandchildren would be in HEAVEN on our little mini farm. I told the lady that I would have been in heaven here as a child. They live back east and we babysit their "winter" home.

Anyway, I have been exhausted all week long. Tired, like falling asleep while driving. That is not good, since I have a long drive. I was so tired last night I was ready to go to bed by 6pm, but I managed to stay up a bit longer. I was in bed before 7pm, and asleep by 7pm. My back can't take that many hours in bed, and I was stiff by the time I finally got up about 4:45am. My back does not get as stiff as it used to, but 9 hours in bed still is an issue for me.

We have decided we want to keep LJ. I've been reading up on pit bulls and it appears that much of the things we've heard about them is urban legend/myth. Like the locking jaw thing. It's well-known that they clamp onto someone's leg, and there is no getting them loose due to the locked jaw. Well, apparently that's not true. They are a lot of work though. They must be socialized carefully. That will be a big thing for us.

I've invited my mom to come visit on Saturday. I'm not sure if she will or not, but she would probably enjoy seeing and holding the baby goat, and baby chicks. Oh, speaking of my mom, I have a new baby nephew. My sister who is 9 years younger than me just had her first baby on Tuesday morning at 12:09am. My mom also wants to buy two of my green egg laying chickens.

Anyway, I have to say I feel well rested and wide awake this morning. I haven't taken a day nap in weeks (on my days off) so this says to me that my energy level is better than it used to be. But Friday and Saturday were just exhausting. I will need to pace myself this coming weekend. I plan to clean the "boy's bathroom" and hopefully mine (the only female in the house). I'm actually kind of excited about getting this done, the bathrooms are really messy and it will be much easier to keep them clean once I do a deep cleaning on them. I must remember to pace myself though!

I had my power cocoa this morning. It is sooo good and healthy. The point is to not heat too hot, thereby killing the good nutrients with heat. I use 1 cup raw milk gently warmed, add a heaping tablespoon organic cocoa, some honey/maple syrup - about a tablespoon or so, 1/2 t. vanilla, 2 Tablespoons organic virgin coconut oil and two egg yolks. Whisk together the first four ingredients and warm gently, then remove the pan from the stove, plop in the coconut oil and let it melt, whisk again, then put in the two egg yolks and whisk again. I use one of those stick mixers. Wonderful invention! I also took my cod liver oil (Green Pastures Blue Ice) before leaving home this morning.

Until next time.

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Saturday Burst of Energy

I was able to get a lot done yesterday, too. Here's what my day looked like:

5:30-7:30

1. Internet/computer

7:30-8:05

1. I lost track of this time.

8:05-9:15

1. Talked with my mom on the phone.

9:15-11:00

1. Milked LS and Dallas
2. Rebuilt the nesting boxes. I removed the debris from the other two nesting boxes, repositioned the lid so it is tilted, so the chickens cannot stand on it and poop. I put in a nail so we can hook some hay twine around the lid while gathering the eggs.
3. Placed hay in the nesting boxes.
4. Fed the chickens.

11:00-11:30

1. Spent time with LJ and on the computer.

11:30-12:05

1. Lunch, and talked with my sister on the phone.

12:05-12:40

1. Feed everyone for lunch.

12:40-12:50

1. Processed milk (shhhh! another long delay before processing!)
2. Changed out kefir milk.
3. Washed milk pails and strainer.

12:50-1:15

1. Computer.

1:15-1:30

1. Break. Can you tell I was having trouble getting motivated?

1:30-4:30

1. Cleaned living room.
2. Vacuumed under couch.
3. Cleaned table off - put everything in a box that was worth anything.
4. Bring desk in from outside.
5. Used circular saw to remove shelf from desk.
6. Moved computer, monitor, keyboard and mouse to new desk. Didn't get it hooked up until this morning, though.

That was a MAJOR, major piece of work there. I totally redid the living room to how I've been wanting to do it for months now. We need to get rid of the couch we have now. It is one of those "L" shaped ones, and it just takes up too much room. We just need one long one and a chair.

4:30-5:00

1. Fold clothes.

5:00-5:40

1. Feed.
2. Milk LS.
3. Gather eggs.
4. Fill water.

LJ came with me to do chores. He was a little bit scared while in the chicken pen. He kept sitting and whining.

5:40-7:05

1. Continue working on the livingroom, finding a place to put things.

7:05-8:25

1. Washed two loads dishes. Put one load away.
2. Swept and mopped floor.
3. Started leftover enchiladas warming, made another batch of sauce.

8:25-8:35

1. Shower.

Dh and ds arrived home about 10 minutes later. We ate dinner, and I went to bed.

I am going to make myself take a break today. I need to work on a client's website, and hopefully spend some time visiting one of our neighbors. She is in town until the end of the month. We babysit their home.

There is just so much to do. I know I'll get burned out if I try to keep going every single day.

I am rather impressed with my level of energy though. I am trying not to get my hopes up, so if it dissipates I won't become depressed.

I'm hungry, and it's almost time to start on chores. The guys are home today, so I won't have to do it all myself.

Until next time.

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Everything in its place...

DISCLAIMER: Before you get the impression that no one in my family does ANYTHING, let me set that straight right away. We have a lot to do, it's just that some things are more important to me, than to others. Things do get done, and done better than when I was a stay-at-home mother. At least the dishes do get washed each day, meals are cooked, clothes are washed. It's just the little extra things that a "woman's touch" adds. Things that don't occur to men, as a general rule. That may sound sexist, but at least in my home, the menfolk don't seem to understand what organizing, and deep cleaning are... and on with my ranting.

An ex-coworker of mine and I finally got a chance to get together at her home. I had taken pictures of her backyard when it was just dirt, and she finally got it finished. It was pretty, although I'd envisioned something quite different. I had envisioned green grass, she had flagstone all over the yard with ground cover planted in between. She hates grass, she has spent the past couple of years trying to kill it. A cat has been visiting her yard, you can tell by the muddy pawprints on the wall. My friend lives in an HOA and LOVES it. She thinks it is the greatest thing (I think they are horrid). She says she is going to find out whose cat that is, and REPORT it. Anyway, she was saying she comes home and spends most of her time sitting at her porch table outside. Her house is immaculate. She made a comment about "everything in its place".

I found myself feeling a bit envious. I mentioned on my days off that there is so much to do that I could work from morning 'til night for a year and never be finished. It is overwhelming to say the least. I have learned from reading various "get organized" books that you really have to take little bites and just stay with it, exercise consistency! I was doing "FlyLady" stuff before I even knew what the Internet was. FlyLady is based on Sidetracked Home Executives written by two sisters named Pam Young and Peggy Jones. I started doing S.H.E. back in 1988. And I'm still not organized!!! Well, that's because I've tried again and again and again. Now I've come to believe that getting organized just won't happen for me.

I mean, I used to get my hopes up that THIS TIME would be the time, that I'd get organized and STAY organized. But it takes SOOO much effort and time to even get things in order. So now, when I make the kitchen spotless I just try to keep it that way for as long as I can get myself to do so. That thing about 21 days to make a habit? Doesn't work for me. I usually can't make it to 21 days, but the times I have, I get sick and tired of it by then.

Anyway, I just wanted to detail my day yesterday.

4:30am to 8:00am Mostly this time was spent figuring out how to download the .qif files from the various institutions that deal with my money, importing the files, reconciling accounts, etc. I needed to find out where "the money is". I figured it out, we're in the hole, but it will be okay due to money coming in.

8:00-8:30

1. Watched an episode of Amazing Stories on Sci-Fi

8:30-9:30

1. Milked our primary milker (who gave me 2 pounds)
2. Fed the turkeys and cows
3. Raked out the turkey pen
4. Filled up the cow and turkey water containers

9:30-9:50

1. Took a break, sat with LJ until he fell to sleep (he whines and cries when he is tired and wants to be held until he falls to sleep.

9:50-10:10

1. Internet break

10:10-11:10

1. Gathered Wednesday and Thursday's eggs. 38 eggs, luckily it is still cold enough out that it is like they were refrigerated. This really got on my nerves because the eggs should be gathered at least once daily.
2. Cleaned out one nesting box. There are three nests in the main nesting area. The design is flawed -- the lid opens, but the chickens stand on it and poop, and when you open the lid, the poop falls down into the nesting box. When it rained the other day, the nesting box apparently became soaked and so today when I started to fish out the crap in the nest, I discovered there was a 2-3 inch layer of wet straw, hay, dirt, etc. I have asthma and can't do too much dust. I had taken an Allegra earlier, anticipating allergic reactions. So I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth and used a hand shovel to scoop out the debris.
3. Bagged up three feed bags with the debris from the turkey pen.
4. Picked up the empty baking soda boxes that were just tossed on the ground weeks earlier.
5. Milked our herd queen, since one side of her udder looked really full and the teat was really big. The baby can't latch on when her teat is that big, so I milked her out. She gave me 1.5 pounds. That's not a whole lot -- but for her, it's pretty good. The milk will be for LJ.
6. Walked down to the cows to see if their "old hay" could be used for nesting material. It is so awful and MOLDY. So I didn't want to make the hens nest in that. I picked up dried hay that was around the cow's bales of hay and that had blown from the corral for the strip nests for the hens. Some of the hens use these nests, but the main nesting box is much more popular.
7. Blocked open the main nesting box so it could air out and dry out. I still have two nests that need the crap dug out of them. Dh told me where the dust masks are, so I will do one or maybe both nests today.
8. Walked the yellow square plastic soap container full of nest debris to my garden and dumped it there.

11:10-11:45

1. Went inside, went back outside to get an old beat up plastic trash can that I'm going to use to recycle aluminum cans. No one here can (okay WILL) recycle, but I'm determined that now that I have more time off, we're going to. Because I'm going to do it myself, and prove that it CAN be done.
2. Mashed all the aluminum cans with my foot (about 2 dozen).
3. Cleared the area in front of the china hutch (which doesn't have china in it). I cleaned it last weekend, but of course during the three days I was away from home much of each day, people dug things out of the hutch and left them on the floor, and made other such messes in that area. I am a pig, and live with a bunch of pigs. It would just be nice if ONE of us wasn't such a slob.

11:45-12:35

1. Strained my kefir grains, put them into new milk. Poor things, I forgot them in the cupboard. Have been forgetting them lately.
2. Filled the ice cube trays, which are always empty. I'm the only one that seems to know how to fill them back up... (grrrrr).
3. Processed the milk (it is supposed to be done within minutes of milking, but since it was to be used for kefir today, I just let it set until I got around to it).
4. Cleaned milk cooling pail, which sits in the milk fridge. The water has to be removed frequently, at least twice a week or it becomes stale (starts stinking, okay?). I am the only one that knows how to do this, also. If I don't do it, it won't get done. Anyway, ice cube trays being full of ice are necessary to milk processing, so it was lucky today that the milk was going for kefir, since it doesn't need cooling.
5. Soaked the eggs, then rinsed and dried them, then cartoned them.

12:35-2:00

1. Threw hay, brought LJ with me so he would be tired and take another nap when we got inside. Intersperse in the day, little trips to take LJ out to potty.
2. Lunch. I made some leftover chili, with cheese. I also had white spaghetti with butter and garlic. I'm trying to avoid white spaghetti (regular cheap store brand) because it is so processed. But I was hungry for it, so I had some.
3. Watched some television. Another episode and a half of Amazing Stories.

2:00-3:05

1. Tidied up the livingroom so I could vacuum (while my oldest son made his lunch).
2. Washed two loads of dishes.
3. Washed the bread maker -- the little thing that goes round and round on the bottom gets dough stuck under it, and we can't seem to get the thing removed to clean it properly, so it has to be soaked for about 24 hours. I made rye bread last weekend, and so it ended up soaking from Monday, all through the week until I tended to it myself today. Another thing no one else seems to be able to do.
4. Wiped the stovetop and counter to the right of the stove. This is another chore no one knows how to do. If I don't do it, it will not get done. Trust me. It is aggravating that no one seems to notice the debris on the counters...
5. Tightened the handle on one of my pans. Yep, you guessed it. I'm sure if I didn't tighten the handles, then eventually we'd just use the pans without handles.
6. Wiped off counter on the left side of the stove.

3:05-5:30

1. Began cooking. I made Enchilada Sauce from scratch. I use the recipe from La Leche League's Whole Foods for the Whole Family, the 1987 edition. And guess what? That particular page has gone missing. I keep the book safe inside a gallon ziploc bag, but on occasion someone removes it from the bag, and I then have to make a point to give the book a new bag. It is spiral bound; you find your recipe and then PLACE THE BOOK BACK INSIDE THE ZIPLOC BAG. This protects the book from further wear and damage. So I went to the 'net to see if I could find this recipe, I could not. Then I decided to see if by chance I had placed it on my favorite recipes webpage. Thank God, yes I had.
2. I made cheese enchiladas, and chicken/cheese enchiladas for my dh.
3. I browned some broken up pieces of spaghetti to make spanish Rice-a-Roni. I had some leftover brown rice from last weekend's meals. That turned out really good.
4. I had taken some frozen pinto beans from the freezer to make refried beans.
5. I also discovered that freezer was thawing out, and finally dh called back and told me it was unplugged. I had checked that, but not every extension cord connection, and missed the one that was plugged to a different extension cord. We have to use several long extension cords to get anything done around here. HEY, I just realized! Dh and ds can use their new generator now, instead of stringing cords all over the place.
6. I used the stick blender on the pinto beans, that works GREAT!
7. I wiped the remaining counters.
8. I washed the dishes I'd used to make the enchiladas. The only thing I didn't get done was sweeping/mopping the floor. I'll do that today.
9. Threw hay for the goats.
10. Milked Little Stupid. I should have gathered eggs once more, but didn't.

5:30-8:00

1. Dh and I left for town. Dh and ds had just arrived home about 5:20. I had to make two pickups (I am paid $15 each), so we had to go to one town 15 miles away, then another one that is 25 miles from there. Then it's 22 miles back home.
2. We did a bit of shopping at Walmart. I bought a plunger for MY toilet. I seem to be having problems with it flushing properly of late.
3. Picked up a couple of items at Home Depot.
4. Purchased gasoline. There is a three cent discount when you "swipe your card" but I don't have a card, I use my phone number instead. The machine told me "See Attendant" so I went to the attendant and he said they aren't set up to use phone numbers, you have to have a card. So I huffed off, immediately ticked, and told dh. He was all mellow, "Okay, we'll just do it next time." I told him, "No, I don't want to get gas here." So he was okay with that, and was putting the gas cap back on, and then a lady getting gas next to us gave us her card. She said it is her second one and we could have it, since she has another, and one on her keychain. I thanked her and told her I didn't have to throw a hissy fit anymore.
5. Drive home for 30 minutes.

8:30-9:30

1. Ate dinner.
2. Had a small portion of some Breyer's Cherry Vanilla ice cream.
3. Spent some time on the Internet

And that was it. Into bed for me. I slept in this morning, until about 6am. I think this blog shows the time that you started writing. I could be wrong. I will see when I publish it. (I actually started typing here around 5:30am. I was not typing every minute).

So was that a really busy day? I think it would be in comparison to my ex-coworker.

Until next time. P.S. I'm really falling in love with the puppy, and was crying on Tuesday morning and all depressed because we shouldn't keep him. I'm thinking of buying one of those Internet books that you can download as an e-book.

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oh dear!!!!! We love our worms...

I forgot the last straw to driving me to maniacal laughter.

I finally made a point to check the feed tags on the chicken feed, the stuff we've been giving to the chickens that produce our eggs, and that we are planning to eat... and the "plant protein" they use is SOY. Great, just great.

So I went onto the 'net to look for this one place Lions Grip which has chicken feed calculations, so I could see what we could give the chickens, to make our own feed for them.

I discovered that worms are very high in protein. Chickens need a lot of protein to produce their eggs; eggs are, after all, a source of protein.

So I have a couple of questions about worms. How many do the chickens need to eat? I read that they can live happily in rabbit manure. Goat manure is like rabbit manure, so could they live happily in goat berries? Also, what about when it gets hot? How to keep the worms alive?

So I found a Yahoo group and joined. I asked my questions in my introductory post and I kid you not, this was one of the responses:

"oh dear!!!!! We love our worms and would never feed them to animals. We use the worm compost to feed gardens. Your poor worms are on the wrong end of the feeding chain."

Come on, we're talking about WORMS! Hello?! Worms!? Worms, that birds eat?

Gimme a break!

Until next time.

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Uh... heeheehaaaheeheeeheeeheeee

That's me laughing maniacally, how do you spell maniacally anyway?

I was thinking a few minutes ago, this is my blog. If I want to write LONG entries, that's my choice. I don't have to care that anyone is falling asleep and they won't be able to drop my letter behind their headboard having fallen asleep from apparently sheer boredom.

So I took a vacation of sorts this weekend. Not the kind of vacation that anyone would consider calling a vacation. I was right on the spelling of maniacally, for the record. Anyway, I got to stay home this weekend, instead of having to leave most days.

So what that meant was I got to clean house and cook dinner every single night. Don't get me wrong, I love cooking for my family, but it sure does take a lot of time out of each day.

I won't go into all the details, but suffice it to say, things look more tidy. You couldn't say perfect, and most people would probably think things look messy, but there you have it, as Sticky D would say.

So the puppy we are fostering, as expected, I'm falling in love with him. He's very aggressive, definitely we should not keep him. But he is such a baby. He cries when he's tired, he wants to be held. He loves sleeping with me, with his face on my throat, of course.

I disbudded our first baby goat of the year. She did good. I did good. I have done three others, last spring. Two of our own, one of the lady who taught me. But this time, it was just me. I also gave two of our pregnant does a kidding clip. That just means we clip the hair around the bottom and the tail. After they kid, they have discharge, as females usually do, and clipping the hair prevents the gunk from building up and looking messy. We have never done clips before, but this year I did our first doe to kid, and it has been so much nicer. Before I'd have to get out there with scissors and clip the dried clumps.

Note to self. Follow the advice of goat mentor and do NOT use that yellow antiseptic spray stuff after disbudding. She says they will scratch their heads with their little hooves and the little doeling did just that. Next time I will not forget.

So this morning, dh and ds take our second vehicle to get two new tires and have the brakes checked. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty, and when they called I decided to run down with a credit card. Nearly $800 for two tires and brake repair. They wanted to, in the end, put in a master cylinder for another $250. Funny, huh? My dh told them, "Sorry dude, but no thanks." He can do the master cylinder himself. Then when I started to go back home, my vehicle decides it is jealous and wants in on the action. The brakes on my vehicle start shuddering and grinding. I have not had any problems, save for some odd grinding now and again. So it was pretty bad, and I didn't want to drive that way. So they checked out my vehicle and as it turns out, I need the rotors REPLACED because they are too thin to grind, and my front pads are 95% gone. Interesting, dh just looked at my brake shoes last weekend and they looked fine to us. But, we decided to just have them take care of it. Dh could have done this repair also, and we could have saved probably $150-$200. That ended up costing just a couple dollars shy of $500.

Now do you understand the maniacal laughter? No, I'm not really going crazy. It's just once again, been a BUSY weekend and next weekend I need to seriously take a break. Going to work tomorrow is going to be like going on a vacation.

There's more, but now I have to go pick through some corned beef so we can have Reubens for supper. Cooked them using a recipe I found on the 'net for Beer Brisket. We don't drink beer or wine here, but have found it can add some awesome flavor to food.

So that's it for now. I think somebody (a cat) peed near my desk, it sure smells like it. They don't usually do that. Maybe it's the puppy that has them upset.

Until next time.

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Chilled to the Bone

So we finally broke our drought record and it began raining. 144 days without measurable rain. During the last few months, we grew lax at our rain shelters for the critters, and so when I realized it was going to rain all day long I knew I had to figure out something for the bucks. They were already wet and it was cold. They used to have a covering on the top of their shelter, but it had holes in it. I ended up having to move them to another pen area altogether. In the process -- since like a dope I went out in shorts and a long sleeved shirt -- I got very chilled. I didn't feel cold while I was out there, but once I got inside I realized my shirt was almost completely soaked. I changed clothes and climbed into bed to warm up, but even though I felt thawed out I remained cold to the core. I finally got into a hot tub of water and kept adding more and more straight hot water until the water was very hot! I had to sit there at least half an hour until I finally warmed up. I imagine what happened is that the blood in my legs and lower body was warmed as it moved through my body parts that were in the hot water, then coursed through to the rest of my body. Finally I was feeling too warm, and started sweating. After I got out of the tub I climbed back into bed and slept for a couple of hours and felt very snuggly warm and needed to stay warm.

I crocheted a baby goat sweater for our first baby, born on Thursday. An uneventful birth. One single doeling born to our herd queen. She is tiny in comparison to what this doe produced last year. Last year she produced twin bucklings and they weighed 10 and 9 pounds each. The new little princess weighs just 7 pounds.

Because she was a singleton and sleeping all alone, while her dam was outside of the barn, looking in at her, calling to her, I decided to make her a sweater to keep her warmer since the wind was blowing and it was chilly in the barn. I'm really glad I made her one because the next day was when it started raining, and it was freezing cold out there. The little doeling was snuggly warm in her sweater.

I think about my blog occasionally, but most of the time it is just so busy that I don't think of it, and don't have the time.

I did not finish my billing at work, thankfully the lady who approves it on the other end is on vacation until next week. That was lucky for me.

Better get a bottle for the new baby. We have her on a bottle several times a day. She is still nursing her dam, but her dam has never given much milk and also has bacteria in one side of her udder. Staph aureus to be exact. I do not know if she had the bacteria last year when she raised her bucklings herself, but we were drinking the milk raw and it didn't kill us. So I'm sure it will be okay for the little doeling to have some of her mother's milk straight from the udder. I am also milking the doe twice daily, pasteurizing that milk for the doeling's bottles.

Last year's kids were skittish and not as people friendly as I'd like. I want a happy medium. Not Little Screamer friendly, but not as skittish as ours were.

We are also fostering a puppy for a friend that does rescues. He is caramel colored all over, except for a white spot on his face, a white tipped tail and white on part of his body. He is barely three weeks old. He sleeps A LOT. Yesterday he slept almost all day long. He loves to be snuggled and held so he can fall asleep. We are pretty sure he has pitbull in him, and we have always said we will not have a dog with pit bull. He certainly is mouthy at his tender age. He looks sweet when he's asleep but once he wakes up, he's all mouth. We are disciplining him to not bite us at all, and we don't allow him to growl either.

No one knows the lineage of this little boy and it is very possible that he is from long lines of aggressive dogs. My friend said she will take him back and place him when he is eight weeks old, but she was mostly interested in our fostering him because he was so tiny that he needed goat's milk. He took his milk from a bottle for a few days, but then weaned himself from that. He was a little bony when we took him in, but he's looking better now. He weighed 3.2 pounds when we got him and now weighs 3.9#.

Okay, out to survey the damage from the rain, and to milk and feed.

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Busy, Too Busy

Here I am finally. Long days lately. We might be moving. We live on 3.5 acres, and have caught wind of a 10 acre property about 150 miles from here. I hate moving. But the city is closing in on us here, and we want to be out in the COUNTRY.

It would be 200 miles from my job. I just got a raise of $1/hour and make $21/hour. I'm not going to find a job making that much money per hour in a small community.

But the thing is, our property has risen so much in value (maybe FOUR times in four years) that we could pay for our mortgage here, buy the new place outright AND not work for a few years, just concentrate on building our farm and making it into a profitable business.

I feel a great deal of obligation to my current job. I am an important piece and relied upon heavily by two of the main people. I do nearly all of the billing. I don't know how they will survive without me. When my ex-boss left, it dealt a great blow to our agency. But we survived.

A "rotten apple" was hired by my ex-boss before he left, and since no one will ever be fired under the current management, he was there every day, rottening the whole work experience for everyone. Thank you God, for answering my prayers. When he went to another state with his wife for vacation at Christmas, I prayed that he would find a new job in the other state. His wife's family lives there. And he came back from vacation, and gave his two week resignation!!! Praise God!

We have two new employees, they are both a breath of fresh air. The person to replace "rotten apple's" position seems to be a pretty good kid. We talked yesterday and I am tentatively giving him my seal of approval.

Better get going to milk. Just too much going on to document it all.

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