David took the winter picture the other day from our deck. And Katie, our neighbor is checking out the picture above the goats today while she was helping milk. Are you cool enough? I sure am. Our temp. today high was 19 degrees and a wind chill factor of 8. Well, Sunday morning I was going to go to Seattle with David. We packed the car and got everything ready to go. The snow hadn't started coming down. But at 4:30am when we got up it was very icy and white on the ground. So we did our chores and then came and got dressed to go. And headed out ..... only to get to the bottom of our road... a little slippery but really shinny. We were listening to the Seattle radio station for road reports and all we heard were lots of crashes and really icy roads.
We decided to turn around at the road that leads us to the freeway and come home. It wasn't worth our lives. It was a hard decision since we are really needing this money to pay some bills. But in the end God will take care of our needs and watch over our farm. We had arranged for the youth paster to come get the girls for play practice that day too. He called and we told him not to try and come up our hill it was really icy. Anyway we spent the day at home - trying to get ready for the cold weather to come. I went out and drained the milk out of the bulk tank as it was to old to use, and clean out the tank. I got creative and decided to make it really shinny inside - so I used this stong acid stuff that makes it really bright. Boy it smelled like rotten eggs. When Danyel came out to milk she said it stunk, so she opened the parlor window to air out the room. We had the heater going in the bulk tank room and the propane heater going in the milking room. Milking was over and we decided to watch a movie while we ate dinner. I decided I should write down all our farmers markets in a record book so we could see really what we have done this year. I got all of them but about 20 market sheets wrote into the record book. I logged the stall fees and all the meals out we have eaten. Wow, I was impressed. I finished the rest of it on Monday. We decided to not go to market on Monday either. So Monday morning I went out and started to clean the parlor to find the window had never been shut and there was no water running in the parlor or milking room. We will have to milk by hand - unless we can get this water running. So started the morning. We hauled warm water to all the goat water buckets and I hauled water to the parlor sink so I could wash the inline system . It took till about 8:30 before we could start milking this morning. I got the water running in the bulk tank room but not in the milking room. David worked on the other water faucets/ to recover them and to check to see if they were frozen. We got to eat breakfast about 10:30 this morning. Our little neighbor girl is staying with us and their house was totally frozen - her dad was working on getting them unthawed. So the girls ended up taking warm water from our house in the wagon to their animals. This afternoon David went and got the studs put on our car. And picked up some dog food and milk filters for the bulk tank. I stayed home and finished the bookkeeping stuff. The Christmas music is playing in the background and its so peaceful. Our milking is done for the evening and now we'll sit down to a fried chicken, baked potatoes, corn and green salad for dinner. And watch a movie together and then off to bed. The life of a farmer in the winter is really nice - the days are short and you don't seem quite as tired as the summer days.
Our tree is up and its half blue and half pink for our two daughters. We have no gifts under the tree yet. David and I will do shopping a few days before Christmas. Most everyone on our list gets a cheese basket. But there are a few surprises for the rest of the family. So all is ready for the holidays.
Have a Great Holiday Season. Enjoy the small things that seem to get un-noticed.
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