Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas. Its Christmas Eve day and it doesn't feel like Christmas is even here. We are snowed in up here and non of our older children are coming for Christmas. Its really a blessing in design, because we have no money to buy gifts or to feed them all. So after the snow goes away we are planning a big dinner - Mom's gift to her kids.
David got home alright last night from Seattle... he did a good Tue - but a bad day for two days before Christmas. Danyel and David left this morning at 6am for Seattle again. I bet he comes home around 2 today though, cause its snowing pretty good here.

This is our house on Monday

This will give Danyel a chance to do some Christmas shopping for her nieces and nephews. The girls have so much fun shopping for their brothers and sisters.
Today Ali and I will wrap the gifts we have for each other and make some fudge. Tomorrow we are going to frost our sugar cookies and decorate them pretty.
Yesterday Danyel and I worked on the family puzzle in the front room and read our books. Danyel took off another 10 goats on the milk line. So we are down to two loads about 15 goats now. We did the evening chores, which consisted of separating horned goats, from milkers from non milkers. The horned got locked on one side of the barn to be grained - the milkers got the hay first and the non milkers went through the milk parlor to get fed one at a time (8 can eat at once). That took about an hour to feed them but I bet it was 45 min. to separate them all into their special spaces. Tonight, we are going to grain everyone through the milk parlor except the horned goats. Their horns don't fit in the stantions, so they eat in bowls on the ground. Hopefully it wont take us so long to feed.
When Ali and I went out to this morning there was no sign that a car left or the goats were fed - there were no shoe prints in the snow. The snow is blowing off the roof and the icesicles are still dripping from my roof. The icesicles could kill you if they fell, they are so big.
My book I am reading is really good, its getting me motivated for this spring to do some planning and make our house run a little more self sufficient. Use some of the canning jars I'v saved for years - I probably have about 900 jars. But today they are all empty.... so next year the goal will be to fill them. Or at least some.
Danyel worked on her Biology project - CAE - its a goat virus that can kill your goats. She also finished one of the three books she is reading.
As I look outside its so peaceful and beautiful. I have a warm house and good smells coming from my kitchen. I have things to keep me busy. We have no TV anymore- so we watch DVD or VHS movies. We listen to the radio for our news and entertainment. Its great and simple. I enjoy my life here at the dairy - even when I am stressed about finances. But all in all its a good life and it has great potential. Everyday I wake up with goals to complete and visions of the future. What more can you ask for..... Peace on Earth.

Have a Great Christmas Eve and a Very Merry Christmas from our Family and Farm to Yours.
Remember the Reason for the Season. JESUS
May God Bless You and Your Family.

From The David and Rhonda Rider Family

Big Snow Storm and Drive Home

Good Morning
I am not sure where to even begin this blog. It snowed on Wed. so we decided we wouldn't try and go to market till Friday. So on Thur. we packed the car and prayed for no snow and clear roads as we went to bed that night. I packed extra clothes in case we had to walk when we got stuck. I wrote a note in case something happened to us, to where the girls wanted to go - if need be, one of their sisters and not to the STATE. Friday morning 4:30 came, and David and I were up doing our chores, Haying and cleaning the parlor and setting it up. We got in the car with our hot thermos and and cups of coffee and buckled up. Backed out of our nice dry carport and headed down our driveway. The grooves were pretty deep. We had 8 inches of snow on the ground.
( Ali sculped this goat on our deck on Thur.)
Just getting to the freeway 7 miles away was very bad, icy compacted snow. We drove slow and careful. Once to the freeway it was pretty icy too. We drove no higher than 60 miles an hour but down to 30 all the way there. It took us at least 3 1/2 hours to get to Seattle. Once we got closer to Seattle you could see the darkness of the freeway. We took one of the exits that kept us low in Seattle. Those roads were icy too but no hills. Once we got there at 8:45 - there were no other vender's there yet. We ended up being one of three farmers that showed up to sell the rest of the market was full of crafter's. We did better than an other Friday on sales, but not that good. It was so cold- we had hand warmers that kept our hand warm but our toes froze. Our ice in the tubs that we display our cheese in (because the State says so!) had not melted any so we just dumped it into our coolers and decided to reuse it tomorrow. We stayed until 4:30 and packed up and were surprised with the drive home. The roads were bare and dry and driving was easy. All the way home we heard the weather report for Sat. but figured the roads would be dry going back to Seattle the next day so we would go.... we had to go.... our finances are pretty dependent on the market right now and we had missed 4 days of some of the best market money due to weather. While we were gone to market Danyel and Ali had to hold down the farm. We always leave my cell phone with them so they can beep us anytime they need too. Their day went not without incident too. About 2pm Danyel called us to tell me her new puppy, Maggy, ate my Dairy Goat Journal. Doesn't sound like a big issue until you know it was the one I had saved from 2005 that had our first article in it, I was rereading it as I wrote my new article for the Dairy Goat Journal. Oh well, I'll just reorder the mag. but DARN! The next call came about 6pm telling me Danyel had dropped my cell phone in the barn and Cloe had chewed on it and she though she broke it. Great! And of course things always happen in threes so I was a little nervous what I was going get for the third incident. That one came about half hour later, when they called again and said the switch to turn on the compressor didn't work - so they had to turn it on at the junction box. Alright enough is enough. When we got home David unloaded the car and I went out to check the parlor - to make sure things were done the way I had told them. Like water running though the hose. Nope it wasn't running so it was froze. So I proceeded to run hot water on the hose to get it thawed out. The iodine was also froze cause they hadn't put it in the bulk room. So I move it and I was so unnerved that I decided to clean the milk parlor then.
On our way home Friday night we decided we'd have fun with the storm news, so we put together a survival one night basket. (Wine, 2 glasses, garlic and dill chevre, plain chevre, honey, bread, chocolate hazelnuts, candles and matches). We displayed this with a reader board announcing the Emergency Storm Kit on our table on Sat.
So the trip Sat morning went great as it did with our drive home Friday night. We got there at 7:30 normal time and set up the table and then went and got a donut and sat in the car warming up until 8:30 when we went in and put the ice in the tubs we use to display our cheese. We also had brought a light with a 150 bulb in it to hook under the table to warm our toes. So we turned it on and put our honey bottle under it to warm up, we like to sample the honey with our chevre to show people how wonderful natural frutose tastes with our cheese (like berries and such). There were more farmers today at the market. The traffic through the market started right at about 9am but it got pretty heavy at about 11am. No snow yet and no wind. They had expected the storm to hit Seattle between 3-8pm and we were hoping for at least 5:00pm. We kept calling the girls to get the weather report... thiers was always snowing mom (that started about 8:30am). People loved our survival kit. We also had put extra decorations for Christmas on our table - the market was having a contest. Needless to say we won - we got a package of smoked salmon. No one else did much to show the season were are in. That was fun. David and I took turns sitting in the car during the day warming up and listening to the weather report. We had decided when it started snowing we'd head out. Well about 2:45 it started spitting snow and we kept close watch, by 3:00 it was snowing and had put a light coat on the ground. So we packed up and started tword home. To make a long story short it took us 6 hours to get home. You couldn't see the lanes on I-5 and no one seemed to know where they were so everyone was driving all over. I want to know where the snow Plowers were........we never saw one. We had to stop about every 20 miles and de-ice our windshield wipers. It was pretty bad and very dangerous. And seeing what the freeway looked like we couldn't imagine what our off the beaten path roads were going to look like. Well they were really bad. We got to our hill and had to take three tries at it before we acutally crested the hill and then we just had our driveway to get up. NOT! we made it half way up and then walked to the house.
This morning David took the tractor and moved snow and dug under out tires of the car so he could get it in the carport. It worked. No we will unload and put away the cheese. I will atempt to get some milk down to the processing plant this morning to make some cheese.
The goats are happy as they are dry and have full tummies. But our hay is running out and so is our grain. Hope the thaw comes very soon or at least a snow plow. Living on a hill is awsome until you need to get down.
Well I will post some other pictures on the blog tomorrow and fill in any of the other things happening on our little farm in Washington.