We used to trade chickens for oak sawmill slabs, but our slab guy quit milling wood a while back.  That bad ice storm MO had last January took down thousands in trees here in the Ozarks. Dh has been heading out with his chain saw every couple of days.  I haven't been paying real close attention.  Today, I asked him where he was getting the wood and how much he thought was there.  He told me he was just taking out the tractor and cutting "dead standing" along the tree line.  He thought there would be enough for at least 2 years.  What a blessing.  He's cleaning up the farm and providing for the warmth of our home at the same time!

Work has been slow and the 2 big boys have had several days off of work around the holidays here.  Today, Dad and the big boys went out and "worked" the new lambs (ear tags, banding, etc...).  We have 7 lambs now.  It looks like we'll have 15+ yearlings to take to the butcher this year.  It was really, really cold.

After they came in for the day, the girls made hot chocolate for everybody.  We stoked the woodstove and the kids started a good long game of "Farm-opoly".  What a riot!  They were playing for hours.  It was so nice to have a good dinner in our tummys, a warm fire in our home, and Dad and the kids playing a board game. Grandma sat and watched to antics.   I sat and whittled my soaps.  As silly as it sounds, it's therapeutic.  I take a little paring knife and shave off the edges of the bar.  Kind of like beveling.

It was such a joy to watch 6 of our children sit around and just have fun together.  Here they are 26 to 12 and they're playing board games.  What a joy.

I don't think life's been this quiet (relatively speaking....the cattle calls and pig calls in the game weren't too quiet  ;-) since we were without power for 15 days last January.

It'll be back to the frozen water lines for the animals in the morning.  But tonight, it was warm and wonderful.  I think I'm starting to like January.

TKB