Transplanted City Girl

• Friday, April 21, 2006 - Before I fall asleep....

Yep.  I'm planning on going straight back to bed as soon as I finish this post.  *stops to snore*  Worked in the barnyard all day yesterday, went to town for groceries last night, and Dad wanted us to do his shopping as well so it took a lot longer then usual, nevermind the fact that we left very late anyway.  Then I milked for Chris this morning so that he just had to wake up and leave for work. Yesterday made some more cheese.  Everyone seems to love Chevre flavored with garlic and chives: it disappears rapidly.   Mary Lou (our milk cow) is bagging up, so I cleaned out the milk barn really well before she drops her calf.  Bathed one of the goats, too.  For some reason both Mandy and Shadoe have very, very mild mastitis, but they have it none the less.  So I'm trying to keep everything really clean, including my shedding goats.   Milking is getting harder and harder as the bending over highly upsets my little one, so Chris has informed me he's building a milking bench for me.  When Mary Lou drops her calf then I will have to take over miking the goats, and it will some in handy!  Oh, here's a funny conversation from last night. Me, holding my arms out in front of me, palms upward, grinning in triumph as I see two slight bulges on the insides of my forearms.  "Look, honey, I'm getting fat rolls on my arms." Chris.  "Impossible.  It's probably muscle." Me, laughing scornfully.  "Muscle?  How would I get muscle?" Chris, calm and matter-of-fact, "You've been milking quite a bit lately, dear." Me:  Disappointed it wasn't fat. Our bull is gone bald!  What is even weirder, neither of the cows in with him have lost more hair then usual.  He is eating fine, not scratching or itching or peeling.  He's just losing all of his hair.  So it has been my job to swap his back down with some iodine water until the vet can come take a look at him.  We had quite the little "whos-who" battle going on yesterday: he's wonderful and sweet but the bully in him does come out when upset.  So he got a bonked nose pretty frequently until he decided he should bang his head somewhere other then my hip. Happy to announce that after a week of frantic discipline, my lovely lady goats view me with as much awe as they do Chris.  They are all still friendly, but far more respectful.  Now if I could get their kids to act the same way...... Got the goose GOOD this morning.  Feeling vey daring, and wearing proper shoes, I pretended I did not see him charging me this morning.  But as soon as he was close enough, I whirled around and kicked him right in his jaw.  He hissed indignantly, but ran just as fast in the other direction. Might have two different families to babysit here.  Hoping at least one works out.  Both are little kids, and it would be a daycare type of thing.  Not for sure yet, but I really want this to work out. Saturday Chris will be home!   It will be his first Saturday home all month, and I can't wait.  But until then, I'm back to bed for an hour or two.  Goodbye!

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• Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - Windy Days and Dirty Houses

Wind.  There is always wind, and lots of it, here in Penrose, but we periodically have a few days that can be thought of as nothing but one long dust cloud blowing straw and grit into every possible entrance into your house and face.  The last few days have been like that, and by the end of each day there is a heavy, brown swirl pattern stretching from my back door across my kitchen floor.  Tables, pots, pans: they are all covered in a thick film of fine dust.  While bottle feeding my little ones, (goats) I am constantly having to tuck my head down at a very uncomfortable angle to keep the wind from blowing things in my eyes.  I used to bend over, but my growing tummy is making this a more difficult, and painful, operation each day. So, with grand plans to clean out several pens yesterday, the wind was so severe I had to settle for cleaning my house.  Which, after several days of wind, is just... dirty.  Oh, add to that the fact that my wonderful husband gave the shedding dog a bath, and said shedding dog proceeded to dry himself off in the livingroom and shed much more in the process.....  Anyway, the house did need a thorough cleaning, which it got.  There were problems I ran into, such as finding out the dogs had destroyed my one and only duster, .  But that was really my fault for leaving the door open and falling asleep.  Did a few loads of laundry as well, and had to hang them all around the house, because there was simply too much dut to hang them outside. Dad's deep freezer had somehow come unplugged, and so I took a thoroughly thawed ham and cooked it up for everyone: when I cook their food up for them then I get enough to take home for our dinner.  It was a nine pound ham, and the entire thing was gone by this morning.  Well, I used a few scraps that were left from our dinner and fried 'em up with Chris's breakfast.  Overall, it was a productive, but exhausting, day.  I slept like a rock, which is getting more and more unusual lately. Speaking of cooking, I made a sweet goat cheese the other day.  Tried it, and it was really not that special: the sweetness with the goat was..... weird.  But I needed to eat it, so I had it with some strawberries that were still a little tart: It was DELICIOUS!!!  Something about the tartness with the cheese just balanced everything right out, the cheese was so creamy and soft with the berry.  I have eaten quite a few bowlfuls of berries and cheese since then.  I've been eating so much cheese lately, but the midwife kept telling me that fresh fruit was fine to snack on, but I should make it a habit to get some protein every time I had something fresh.  The goat cheese makes it easy to do this, and any way you look at it, Chevre is better then store-bought Cottage Cheese.  I like to add Garlic Powder and Chives to the Chevre, and everyone here seems to like it that way.  It makes a wonderful spreadable cheese you  can use on bagels, crackers or eat by the spoonful.  Every now and then I go through a few days where it feels like my stomach just triples in size: suddenly half of my clothes don't fit any more, constantly bumping into stuff.  Things like that.  Well, the last few days have been "those days".  I don't sit anymore, I sprawl.  Can't bend over, I have to squat down to pick stuff up.  And now perfect strangers offer congratulations.  Finally into the third trimester, I simply can't wait.  Every day I get more and more excited.  I know they say worrying is bad, but is excitement?  Because I'm not in the least worried and I am terribly excited.  Next Saturday we have another midwife appointment, and if everything is still going great I think I'll stay excited.   We're not going to get the garden planted until the first week of May, but we do have all our transplants ready and going strong.  I'm actually getting to see some green now.  YEA!!!!  I want to take soem pictures of our house before anything is planted, and then some of afterwards.  I KNOW it will be so pretty once everything is in place.  Believe it or not, that's all I can think of to say.  So I'll say goodbye for now.

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• Friday, April 14, 2006 - Wonderful Evenings.

We have had the most beautiful evenings here for the last few days.  A slight breeze, about 70 degrees after the sun goes down, it has been wonderful.  Wednesday evening Chris and I went for a bike ride to visit some friends, and we didn't get back home until almost midnight.  It was great.  We rode all around town and raced each other and laughed and laughed. Yesterday after Chris got home we went to look at a gun he's been wanting.  We took Shama with us, and after we got the gun then we went to Sonic to eat.  It was too hot to stay in the car, so we sat out on the curb and gave Shama french fries through the window.  But now there is doggy drool all over my car window.  The other mishap was that we had Shama out in the car, and Chris was waiting for me to finish filtering the milk.  Well, Wrangler realized his arch enemy was in the car, and they got in a "fight" through the window, and now the side of the car is all scratched up from Wrangler jumping and biting all over it.  Once we got home, then we still had to disbud Shadoe's kid, (who has been named Sprout) as he is now a week old.  I helped with it, because I do not want to just deal with the pleasant side of the animals: I want to know what the "ugly" side is like as well.  So I held my precious Sprout while Chris burned the horns off.  I almost cried, but I didn't actually.  Now my adorable white kid has two black holes burned into his skull.  Uggh.  He's back to normal now, I can touch his head and he doesn't flinch.  I have been very strict with my little Sprout: no jumping top say hello, no sucking on fingers, none of the cute stuff baby goats do.  But I let the other goats get away with it and they do not have manners of any type, and I want Sprout to be gentle and mannerly and trustworthy.  Besides, he is just so adorable anyway he doesn't need to be rude to be cute.  I haven't had to pull his ears once.  Yet. Well, enough about Sprout.  (I could talk about him forever!)  With Chris working 60+ hour weeks, I've been doing the morning milking so he can get some extra sleep.  I enjoy the milking, and after being really, really mean a few times, the nannies have learned that I do plan to milk them in the same order Chris does, and that I will not let them steal grain from each other.  It did take quite a bit of convincing, though.  None of the animals ever try to pull stuff off on Chris, yet they all run to the fence just so he will pet them when he's walking by.  I guess he inspires respect in animals, too.  Well, except for Shama.  He has a soft spot for that dog, and Shama can get away with SOOOOO much stuff.  All he has to do is look at Chris all sad and pleading.  It's hilarious. So much to talk about and nothing to say.  I hate that feeling.  I have another batch of cheese on the stove, I am slowly but surely catching up with our backlog of milk.  The baby is moving again, for a while she hardly moved.  It's hard to imagine I'll be 6 months along tomorrow.  Wow, time flies!  Bending over is getting harder and harder, I find myself bending to the side whenever I can.  I'm still trying to find the digital camera to get some pictures, but it has mysteriously, and thoroughly, disappeared. For all those involved or helping out with the next issue of Keepers, we need to get our articles underway and to start laying some groundwork plans.  Until Margaret comes back on board we can't do a whole lot, but anyone who is wanting to submit something, go right ahead.  And all officers, please write down/keep track of all questions, and all of your wonderful ideas.  We will need them!  Thanks for your patience as we get started, again.

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• Thursday, April 13, 2006 - a hang-over from Xanga, in case someone missed it.

Cheese Cheese Cheese.  That's how I start out my mornings now.  It's really fun, I'm just loving it, and it definitely keeps me busy during these long weeks, with Chris working longer hours and more days then usual.  How I miss him!  It's as if I live two lives: the glorious, wonderful hours when he's home, and then the long, try-to-stay-busy-and-be-productive hours when he's gone.  Whenever I can, I still sneak in a day of work with him, but with six kids (goat kids) to bottle feed and a garden underway this is getting harder and harder. Speaking of goat kids, Shadoe's little one is simply and completely adorable!  He is the cutest and funniest baby to date.  He has the most precious little sneeze, and stamps and stomps and leaps his way around the other babies.  So I have fallen in love with him, and the other day I asked Chris if I could keep him as long as I trained him to be a harness goat.  *grin*   I haven't seen Chris look that helpless in a while, and then he told me he was not going to answer that question while the goat is this young.  So I'm going to go ahead and work with him, because if I can get him trained then it's much more likely Chris will believe it can be done.  Still haven't come up with a name for him.  Snowball is too obvious, Snickers.... Well, I knew a Yorkie named Snickers and I simply couldn't name a white goat that now.  Simon reminds me of our tall, gangly neighbor.  And all the other names I am thinking of are either too sissy or or not.... goaty enough.  So, as soon as I can find the digital camera, I am going to post a picture of him and ask everyone to help with names.  It's been so warm and beautiful here.  I got a row of radishes planted, which was promptly dug up two nights later by Critter, Dad's puupy.  That dog digs holes everywhere!  He is so funny and loveable you simply can't get upset with him.  But trying to stretch the fence so that it covered the hole he was getting through, I was holding a board and I am absolutely positive that board jumped out of my hand and smacked me right in between the eyes.  Now I can't touch it 'cause it is really painful!  I bruise so easily just in my work around the house, as well as managing to cut and scrape myself on anything and everything.  Then when the weekend comes I am walking around the grocery store with this big guy, covered in bruises and cuts.  It's kind of funny. DO NOT READ FURTHER UNLESS YOU WANT A PLAY_BY_PLAY OF OUR GARDEN!  Other then radishes, we have okra, green beans, peas, watermelon, corn, cherry tomatoes and regular tomatoes, lots of cucumbers, green peppers and few other things that I can't rememer at the moment.  Oh.  Cantaloupe.  And there might be more....  Anyway, I'll close now and go check on my cheese.  Later ya'll!

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• Thursday, April 13, 2006 - A little Introduction