Your Blogger is Back

An almost two month hiatus is over and your blogger is back. Things have been hopping around Calamity Acres, and we are preparing for winter, though it's only mid-October. A new hayshed has gone up, and should be finished this weekend, now that the rains have stopped. We will be able to store a dozen square bales just outside the horsepen, along with the metal cans that the feed for horses and llamas is kept in. It will make chores that much easier once the cold hits in earnest. These last two weeks have been cold in the morning, and now we are wearing jeans and long sweats, as well as gloves when we go out to do chores. It's pitch black in the morning, and I have taken to wearing a "miner's light" on a band around my head so that I can see what I'm doing. It's still so dark outside, the hens do not want to leave the shelter of the big henhouse for the dark henyard, so I let everyone go just as I am leaving for work. Tomorrow after church, we'll start putting plastic up on the henhouse windows, both large and small, and check the electric cords we run the water tank heaters off.

Our "borrowed" mini horse, Lilly, called Oreo now, appears to be pregnant. What we thought was a grass belly appears to be moving, so we let our friends know that they have a possible foal on the way. We like her a lot, and so does gentle Uncle Beau, who stays with her always. He has spring in his step now, and the other night we went to groom him and it took both Husband and me to catch him! We had a good laugh, cut the burrs out of his long mane, and wormed him. We'll worm little Oreo today. She is out there now, laying down after breakfast in the muddy pen, but we are waiting for Beau to eat his grain with his almost toothless mouth before turning them out in the pasture.

The pond is holding water now, and the algae of summer is gone, so the ducks are loving this time of year. We had a pond man come to look at, and are aiming for a pond three times as large in the spring. We know we may lose a few frogs, but we hope to gain many more, and be able to stock the new pond with fish so that family members can come and fish it. Our dreams and wishes about Calamity Acres are slowly coming true.

The geese and ducks are wandering around the top of the pasture, and next Saturday they will get a new shelter for winter built of straw bales and a roof, and be able to get themselves out of the cold winds. Little seems to bother them though, and they hunker down with their heads under their wings and sleep on, impervious to the rains.

Fall brighten the view now, and the bed of mums is sprawling with it's autumnal color, it's a pleasure to go out and sit on the deck. Soon our neighbors will finish fencing the five acres to our north, and we will have cattle as our closest neighbors over the fence, which suits us fine!